So it’s a new decade or something.

So yeah, it’s been a while. I get it. Basically I’m going to skip the now obvious apologies for not updating sooner, and crack right on with things. If it helps, you can imagine me writing this while prostrated in the full-on Japanese imperial bow, which is pretty much the politest thing anyone can do, ever.

So anyway, it’s been a slow…month or two for writing, hence the lack of updates. However, the meme is back. Been working recently on teaching myself to draw, you can have a gander at my inane scribblings if you so choose. The plan is to keep practicing til say, Summer, whereupon I’ll emerge from a crysalis, blinking and gasping like that bit in The Matrix, as a ‘competent’ artist. And then I’ll probably start my own webcomic. For “probably” read: “definitely.”

But for now, it’s all “words words words” as Hamlet would say, when he wasn’t dropping C-Bombs and stabbing curtains. There’s a bunch of things I want to write about (the wussiness of recent video games, upcoming movies, comic books, and maybe something not nerdy but probably not). Right now though, those topics are kinda uncohesive, so I’ll favour you with the last decent thing I wrote, a short story (heavily inspired by the esteemed webcomic Johnny Wander) which I handed in last semester for one of my writing modules. I haven’t got a mark back for it yet though. Lame.

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Death’s Notebook

Another day, another death is what’s written on the front of my book. The book’s a kind of a family heirloom, I suppose. Heirlooms are a funny thing to have in my family, considering that none of us ever die. Father’s off sunning himself on a beach on the astral plane, last I heard of it. Father always did like to be slightly whimsical. I’m not sure what Grandfather’s been up to for the last few aeons, but anyway; I digress.

My notebook was what started it all off; that and the sentiment so lovingly inscribed on the front. I was scribbling a few lines across the pages, a hastily scrawled sonnet or some such, I can’t quite recall at the moment, when I saw my latest… you know, I’ve been in this line of work for nearly 70 years now, and I still haven’t found a good word for the people I work with. Targets sounds so vicious, customers is too mercenary, especially considering no money ever changes hands. I suppose ward fits nicely. It’ll do for now, at any rate. So there I sat, watching my latest ward, waiting for my notebook to update itself. The ink on the pages shifted, wiping away my poem – most frustrating – and formed the words: Marie Durand, 23, will be hit by an autobus at precisely 4.32 pm. It always says precisely, for some reason; as if I’m likely to doubt the word of a supernatural death-predicting notebook.
Marie. A rather fetching young French girl, sauntering down the street in a particularly Gallic way, paying no attention to the myriad passers-by, or to anything else for that matter. Which was to be her undoing on this particular day, which is to say, her last one.

***

To be honest with you, I hesitate to describe this next part. Obviously, in my day-to-day life, I see a lot of people dying. I mean a lot. To be quite correct, I see every person who every dies – and usually I’m alright with it. Ever since I was a boy at school, I always knew that when Father retired, it’d be my time to take over the family business. So I generally keep a stiff upper lip. But there’s something about seeing a young lady like that disappear all of a sudden that chills me to the bone. And like I said, that’s not something that happens easily to a man like me. But, I suppose in the interests of narrative, I must continue.
The Paris autobus hurtled down Rue Lagrange with a pleasant little puttering noise. The driver turned his head to spit the end of his cigarette out of the window, at the same time as Mademoiselle Marie stepped out into the road. Hence the accident. He tried to hit the brake in time, but regrettably couldn’t slow the speeding public conveyance quite enough to prevent the Parisienne – is that a word? If not then I suppose I just invented it – from being sent flying a good 50 feet. Incidentally, the driver would meet his tragic end a little while later, choking on a particularly chewy piece of calamari, not a pretty sight, I have to say. But I find it difficult to have sympathy for smokers; they increase my workload like you would not believe.

I do apologise. If I keep going on about this and that, I’m never going to get to the point of what happened that day. You see it was kind of a turning point in my life. Recently, I’d kind of got caught in a rut. I know how strange that must sound to one such as yourself, coming from me. I do have a rather unique job, and I know I get to meet a lot of interesting people, but still, I’ve been escorting the recently passed for about seventy years now. To be honest I was really going through the motions at this point.

So anyway, I made my way over to Marie’s body; I was invisible to the human eye by this point, it’s a handy skill of mine, and I reached down and tugged out her soul. There’s a spot on the back of the neck that if you squeeze in a certain way, the spirit just pops right out of the body. There’s a knack to it.
We went through the usual routine, the where am I’s and wherefores and what happened to my beautiful faces. I shan’t bore you with the details.
The important part happened later.
We were sitting on a park bench, still invisible, as I said. I don’t generally like to guide people on straight away. It’s disconcerting enough standing over a crimson mess on the ground which used to be your body, without having to deal with the plethora of issues that come after that. So I generally take them for a little walk some place peaceful, have a chat, and then send them on their way. It’s the least I can do, really.
“Will I go to heaven? Or… someplace else?” Marie asked me, hesitantly – obviously that’s been translated, she was speaking French to me. Gift of tongues, it comes with the job.
“I’m afraid I really don’t know about that,” I replied. “It’s not part of my field I’m afraid.” And I really don’t know, before you ask. I’ve never been able to get a straight answer on the whole theology thing. It’s extremely frustrating.
Mlle. Durand then, and I don’t know how she did this, proceeded to pull a cigarette and lighter from her (now purely ethereal) pocket, light up, and begin smoking. I think it’s a French thing: they all seem to be able to smoke after they’ve died. But no matter.
“So what else do you do? I mean outside of being la Faucheuse.” she enquired between puffs on her spectral cigarette.
And so I told her everything I’ve just told you, which is to say: not an awful lot. How weary I’d become of doing this every single day, without rest, or cessation of any kind. I don’t know why, but I talked for hours and hours, maybe even days. She didn’t mind. Maybe I’d just reached breaking point. Maybe it was the environment; places like Paris always bring out the emotional poet in me. Maybe I was just lonely.
But then she said the most amazing thing, to snap me out of my reverie.
She said:
“What point is eternal life if you don’t feel alive?”
I know it probably doesn’t seem like much to you, but it was a case of the exact right words at the exact right time. I suppose that makes it poetry, doesn’t it?

I wanted more than anything to take her hand at that point, to pull that poor deceased girl who’d saved my wretched life to her feet, and push her back into life. Into my life. But I couldn’t. It’s against the rules. And I wouldn’t even know how if I were so inclined. So I showed her the way to the other side, praying to whichever deity existed to send her to a better place, as they say.
I wasn’t sure where to go next, but I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to meet someone new. Someone not dead, or even dying for that matter. Maybe find someone I could… well, love I suppose. I mean I’m alive, in a rather profound sense of the word. There was no reason why I couldn’t form a relationship with other technically alive people.

And I wanted to feel alive myself. So I ran. I ran through the streets of Paris, invisible to everyone, but feeling more included in the human race than I ever have before. And as I ran, I wondered what kind of a girl could fall for la Faucheuse.

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I’ll try and update again super-soon. Until then you can probably find me on Twitter making crass observations about Nachos and video games.

I don’t really know what to title this.

It’s blog time again. This time I’m LIVE in the good old Anglia Ruskin University Library, drawn here by the smell of a free wireless internet connection. That’s right everyone, I’m back in Cambridge, if you didn’t already know. So what to write, what to write… I haven’t written anything creative since I last blogged, so this is going to be one of those posts where I write about a subject that regularly passes through my head. In fact, I think I’m going to write about a subject which I muse on fairly regularly, if only to stop wasting time thinking about it – and that subject is video games.

I could actually write for hours about video games without stopping, but my laptop only has a limited battery, and eventually I’d be pulled out of the library in need of food and drink and so on. So never fear.
One day, attempting to not sound too much like some kind of soapbox evangelist, I hope to see video games in the place that they deserve. I honestly believe that video games have the potential to be perfectly accepted forms of art in the same vein as films and TV shows. When both of these advances appeared in the world, people discarded them as just momentary distractions, toys which would be forgotten about eventually. And now look. So basically, I’m jumping ahead of the game, and saying ahead of time how great I think video games are.

Not that I’m exactly treading new ground here; I’m certain there’s a lot of people who have already made all the points I’m about to make, but I’m a very busy man (no I’m not), I don’t have time to do anything as strenuous as research.

Now, I’m fully aware that not ALL games are even intended to be artistic in anyway, some are in fact designed intentionally to be momentary distractions, but the same could be said of the majority of TV shows, and films too. And to be honest, the fact that video games are still relatively new to the world means that they haven’t gotten stale yet, and that’s something that I’m afraid can’t honestly be said of the other two mediums I just mentioned.

Obviously I’d never say that all films and all TV shows are now stale, but… think about the last… say ten, films you saw, if you can remember them. How many were either sequels, or remakes, or adaptations of a book, comic, TV show or video game? I bet it’s quite a large proportion. I know most of the films I’ve seen recently fall into that category, and its just too many. I can’t believe that filmmakers are running out of ideas, it can only be that the industry, the people picking what gets made and what doesn’t, this is what’s grown stale and stagnant.

I’m beginning to think that this is just rambling here, so I’m going to give a couple of plugs and move on to something else.
There are so many games out there that are doing it right, and deserve to be held as examples for all the rest to follow.
Final Fantasy, for all its faults in certain incarnations, still manages to do what they set out to do every time; to tell a good story (except maybe XII, but maybe thats just a matter of taste). Because they change the entire world each time, it gives them heaps of creative scope, and because of that they can actually produce something great each time. I still feel moved when I hear the theme song and think of the ending to FFX, it genuinely has one of the best paced and well narrated stories I’ve ever been aware of.
Can’t wait to see how XIII turns out either, apparently they’re taking Advent Children as the artistic basis so I don’t think they can go too far wrong there
Off on that tangient, Kingdom Hearts deserves props for taking something that wasn’t their own and making a really great story out of it. Both games (soon to be three or even four I read) are essentially some kind of bizarre high-profile fan fiction, but if all fan fiction was this good, the internet would be a much better place. The art style and animations are just friggin’ beautiful as well.

Metal Gear Solid. Just… just fantastic. I hear a lot of people bitch about it – “Oh its just like watching a movie” is the usual criticism, to which I say here: “What’s wrong with watching movies? Watching movies is great, surely a game that combines the two should be great too. Or are you just afraid of innovation?” Seriously. Metal Gear Solid – I won’t hear a word against it.

Apparently there’s a new Jak game coming out soon too. It’s been a while since we were last favoured with one, which gives me hope that its being made because they wanted to make it, rather than just churning out as many sequels as they can get away with. This one’s not actually by Naughty Dog as such, I believe its their sister company, but I’m interested to see where it goes, the ending to the last one was actually pretty interesting.

Nintendo, that giant lumbering behemoth of a games company, I’m kind of in two minds about. Now you may scoff at their ridiculously named console and their silly waggling controllers, but Nintendo are the only ones who are actually thinking about the technology, and at least trying to innovate in ways beyond your standard graphical improvements and so on. Games like Phoenix Wright and Trauma centre are the way they need to go in my opinion, and it looks like they’ve been porting some kinda visual novel type games like Hotel Dusk and this other one I saw for the Wii (see what I mean about research?) The only problem is that they’re too reliant on their old stable of characters. Zelda, Mario, Metroid, even cute little Kirby – in my opinion they all need to be axed. Seriously, did you play Twilight Princess? So much wasted opportunity. Just thinking about that game makes me cross.

Well, that’s my two cents on the whole thing. By next time I should have something creative which you can read, if that kind of thing is your bag. If not, expect some other kind of ramble in the near future, I’m never that far away from a rant, although maybe the next one will be a bit less nerdy. (Speaking of which, I’ve got a new review up on UKA – take a look)

See you later.

About Bloody Time.

Before I start properly, I should say: my bad, guys. Regardless of how many people actually read this blog, I enjoy doing it, and it’s probably good for me as “a writer”, and I’ve pretty much dropped the ball in not updating, so sorry for that (Furthermore, I am aware of how many blog posts I’ve started in this way; the embarassment of apologising every time should motivate me to update more often if nothing else will.)

Anyway, I have many many things that I’ve wanted to write about for a while now, so expect a rash of hastily thought out ramblings on a variety of topics, or maybe just about anime and video games. I’m funny that way. There may even be some creative stuff too, who can say? I certainly have something for you all today, so if my current writing bug keeps hold and clamps its mandibles into my central nervous system, I may well write more things of partial to actual worth.

That may well be the grossest metaphor I’ve ever run with. Ew.

At any rate, here is a story I wrote the other day, just a short thing really, but I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s kind of outside what I normally do, and there’s a lot of dialogue, which I’m not entirely sure I’m good at yet. Ignoring the self-analysis, I’ll let you make your own decisions. Have fun.

The Usual Spot.

There was always a specific sort of aroma Sam could smell to know when Chase was around. Nothing unpleasant, just a smell she knew was unique to him. It wasn’t that she had an especially good nose either, because it never worked when she tried using it to find anyone else. Although maybe she never really wanted to find anyone else all that badly. It was like throwing snowballs; when you really tried hard to do it, you could never hit anything.
As she climbed the sort-of-hill that led up to the usual spot, Sam could see a wispy trail of cigarette smoke that led her right to Chase. It was always an odd kind of meeting place, they never really planned to go there, but one always knew that the other would be there if they made the trek. The usual spot overlooked a large car park that belonged to a huge and controversial supermarket. A couple of times they’d seen crumpled up leaflets protesting the building’s construction roll by through the grass. It was ironic, or something.
Sam sat on the grass unceremoniously, to show that she was sort of maybe pissed off, a little bit. Chase ignored what he would have called her “amateur dramatics” and rolled a can of drink across the grass to her. It had some kind of icy steam coming off it in the warm evening air. Sam traced her finger up and down it, collecting droplets of condensation underneath her fingernail. She didn’t want to speak first, but she knew Chase, and knew he’d sit around in complete silence all night if he wanted to, apart from coke slurps and cigarette puffs, of course.
“So…” she mumbled, looking into the middle difference.
“So.” Chase agreed.
“It’s just… you’re so stupid! It’s a stupid idea. I don’t even get it.” Sam huffed, cracking open her can for added dramatic effect.
“What’s to get?” Chase stared into the depths of his own can, swirling it round.
“Well… where are you even going? Why are you even going? Are you coming back?”
“I don’t know.” Chase mumbled around his rapidly declining cigarette. “I haven’t decided on any of that stuff yet. I’m just… going, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess I know.” and then “is it because of me?”
Chase didn’t answer for a while. It was a stupid question anyway really. Then he said “I wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for you.” Which was technically true, although it wasn’t a big deal.
“Whatever,” snorted Sam, and then wished she hadn’t. “Can I come too?”
“Do you want to come?”
“No, not, like, really anyway” This was a lie, she totally wanted to go along with him. But Chase had real stuff going on, and Sam didn’t, so if she went with him it would be like she thought her stuff was on the same level as his, or something like that. Sam’s thought processes were never exactly articulate, but she understood them, which was enough. She wiped her hands on her jeans, and then thought about changing her mind and going anyway, but she didn’t like to do that.
It was always weird when she didn’t feel like talking. Usually she talked and Chase listened, but she didn’t want to talk much, and he barely said anything anyway, so the silence was unusual.
A pair of tears formed in Sam’s eyes, against her will. “You’re such a spaz,” she said, by way of a distraction. Not that it worked, probably. He noticed pretty much everything she did, embarrassing or otherwise. She raised up a too-long sleeve to wipe them away, but ended up leaving the side furthest from him to run down her cheek, where it left a quickly-drying trail.
Chase dropped his cigarette butt inside the can, and threw it down the hill, where a small pile of similar leavings was starting to form. They’d been chucking their cans down the hill for a while, but it was really their little part of the world, so who cared what they did with it?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly, once again wishing she hadn’t said something so stupid. What was up with her today? It wasn’t even like he was gone yet, but she kept saying dumb things.
“Nothing.” he replied, which was pretty much the standard answer to whenever anyone asked him that. It was handy like that. Chase had learned early on that to articulate everything he was thinking was more effort than he was prepared to put in, and some things don’t even have words for them yet, anyway.
“You’re my only friend, you know,” Sam stated sternly, as if daring him to disagree.
“Whatever. Girls always have, like, loads of friends right? You’ll be fine.”
“That is such a cliché, or something. You’re a dork, Chase,” she scowled across at him, looking at him properly for the first time that evening. He looked kind of a mess, to be honest.
“Takes one to know one,” he retorted childishly, cracking a familiar grin back across at her. She smiled, despite herself. He really was a dork, though.
They both looked out across the abandoned car park.
“I thought there was loads of stuff we were going to do anyway. Can’t do it if you’re not here, can we?”
“So we’ll do it when I get back.”
Sam folded her arms, then let them drop again. “So now you’re coming back? Make your mind up, man.”
He shrugged in response. “Sounds like it.”
“Whatever. You’ll probably get lost or bored or something without me along.”
“Probably.”
She leaned across and kissed him then, sort of clumsily, somewhere between his cheek and the corner of his mouth. He didn’t respond as such, but he sort of leaned slightly closer. That was enough, and she was good at reading body language stuff anyway.
She stood up, feeling oddly confident for once, and started to trudge back down the hill. “You know you better get me a present, right?” she called over her shoulder.
“What? Man, I just got you a can of coke.” He shouted back to her sullenly.
“A proper present. See you.”
“Yep.”
He ended up coming back in something like four-and-a-half weeks anyway. Everything was so dramatic all the time back then.

Ramblings Part II: This time it’s whimsical

Not got much in the way of creative stuff to offer up once more; being as I only have one thing in the pipeline right now, and that’s being saved til after my exam. However I’m pretty excited about it, it’s something a lot different from what I’ve done before, and should be pretty cool, if I don’t get hacked off and give up on it. Fingers crossed and so on.

As I haven’t updated much recently though (sorry), I know I need to fill this space with something, so I’ve decided to favour you with another of my ridiculous musings – one with a bit more structure maybe than last time, as I kinda exhausted my supply of cool things to wax lyrical about, and if you know me, which most of my loyal fanbase already do, you’re probably tired of me pestering you about good books and games and anime and so on. But you know you love it really.

Speaking of which, something that has got me thinking was getting a friend in my halls here into Avatar. Now as I’ve said, I’m not going to talk here about whether it’s good or not. I think it’s good. If you want to know exactly how good, ask me in person, and I will talk to you at great length about its virtues.

What it got me thinking about, or rather re-thinking, was the idea of certain mediums getting pushed out of the spotlight. Not only that, certain genres too. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Avatar is an American animated series, which takes a lot of influence from anime, as well as other sources, such as martial arts movies and western influences.
Now, this could be as a result of my upbringing, but I can’t, I simply can’t see why this series, for example, is not held up as exemplary by all the right-thinking TV viewing public of the world. I realise in this case, it could be because the series was designed with “a younger audience” in mind, and so the massive cult fanbase of the show is a pretty good achievement. But it’s no more infantile than a lot of stuff that airs pre-watershed. Hell, Doctor Who seems to scrape up pretty damn good ratings every episode, and that’s hardly a cavalcade of gore and nudity.
To me, the ‘problem’ seems to be that its an animated series. The live-action movie rights to this have been snapped up by M. Night Shyamalan, who will have to restrain his urge to tack on a phony twist ending somehow. And do you know what? It might be good. I really mean it. But if it is good, it won’t be because it’s live-action. In fact, the fact that it’s live-action throws up more problems than solutions. In animation, you can do literally anything, and herein lies the point I’m trying to make, such as it is. There’s no problems with special effects, because everything is created on the same plane, more or less. Want this guy to shoot fire, have his soul jump out of his body, fly through the air? No problem. If everything is animated, nothing looks out of place.

Now I’m not saying that animated stuff is the perfect medium. It all depends on the story you want to tell. Sometimes, you really do need a real-life person to connect with. Sometimes a story works better drawn in a comic, and sometimes you need to have it on the big screen, nothing else will do.
However. It’s all fiction. All the stuff I’m talking about here anyway. What I can’t get straight in my mind is, although I can see the divisions, I don’t understand why one medium gets more or less attention. They’re all just telling stories, right? Sure, genres are a matter of taste, as are specific stories, but why are some entire mediums, ones with so much art and beauty and poetry and promise to offer the world, cast out from the spotlight? I realise that there are reasons why certain people might not read a comic book, or play a video game, generational and cultural stuff comes into play, but surely, for the vast majority, the sheer staleness of what’s being offered in the mainstream right now must be enough to drive them to different forms of art, right? (On a side note, I’m also heavily restraining myself from talking about the virtues of video games as art. Maybe in another post )
I can see the blocks at play here, that stop people from experiencing an entire range of fiction, but I can’t help but wish more people would see “fiction”, rather than a blinkered view of the medium the story is told in.

I’d be interested to know what other people think about this; I’m sure I’ve missed some crucial point in my biased and foolish meanderings. But anyhoo, well done and thank you if you’ve made it this far, I’ve written a mini-bloody-essay here, so thanks for reading, unless you skipped to the end, in which case I forgive you

Until next time,
Jake.

Some procrastinative ramblings.

I’m not sure if ‘procrastinative’ is a word or not, if it isn’t, it should be.

This is my first post on location (woo hurray). By on location, I mean, in the library, wherein I’m skillfully and adeptly avoiding writing an essay. This is a skill honed through literally years of practise, although I still amaze myself at times with my capacity to ignore work. It’ll all get done in the end, I suppose.

Ok, this is a post where I’m gonna talk about lots of cool stuff that’s been on my mind lately, cos there’s a lot of it going on right now.
First of all; anime. Always floating somewhere around the top of my consciousness
Eden of the East is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long while. In the aftermath of Death Note, I’ve not seen any kind of thriller/mystery-type series to really make me take notice and genuinely think, after watching, about what the bloody hell is going on here. Awesome animation, really good writing, and superb voice-acting, which I can’t say I usually notice, at least in subbed anime, not being a Japanese speaker (yet). Also the theme tune is by Oasis, which is all seven kinds of cool. Check it out post haste.

Um, what else was there? Ah yes. If you know me, it’s entirely possible that I’ve raved like a mad fiend at you about the Scott Pilgrim comic books. If I have, then you can probably skip this bit. If not:
They’re fantastic – somehow managing to hit all the humour bases at the same time, pop-culture references that don’t feel contrived, the whole series just exudes some kind of ineffable cool which makes you feel like a better person for reading it.
Also, there’s a movie of it coming out, and I know everyone likes to be able to say “yeah I read those a while back – the movie’s not as good as the comics” You know it makes sense.

This has been quite a nerdy post so far (surprise, surprise), time for a bit of balance. Music and that.
These are my recommendations for stuff to listen to over the summer, which is sort-of-kind-of here, which is pretty much the best you can hope for in this country (English weather is bad! Oh ho how topical of me)
Anyhow:

Tubelord are an awesome band, fully worthy of your attention. There’s not much I can say to describe them other than ‘bloody good’ so click that link I cunningly posted up there and give them a listen.

Man Factory have an album, which is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever listened to: a rock-opera based on Street Fighter II. It’s just really good music, in a totally non-ironic and also entirely ironic way.

Blood Red Shoes are also great (Jesus, I’m giving Myspace a lot of traffic here aren’t I? They should be paying me.)

I want to be able to provide some kind of link to the Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad soundtrack, but to my knowledge it doesn’t have a myspace music page or whatnot. If you can get your hands on it though, it’s awesomesauce.
Speaking of Beck(s), Guero by Mr. Beck himself is the perfect album for those extremely dry summer days, and makes me want to drive around America in an old car. Which is a pretty high accolade, considering I’d first have to learn to drive.

That’s all for today I think, the word count on this post stands at 590 words so far, if I’d done this much of my essay already I could have gone home by now. Let it never be said I don’t do anything for you eh?

Bye.

Yet another stopgap.

I’ve not been writing my own stuff lately, on account of far far too much work to do. So sorry for not updating this nearly enough. However, you all get to read some of my work in an attempt to placate you until I can get something good written and posted here!

The project I promised you last time I posted is proceeding, albeit slowly. I was hoping to have had enough time to write the first ‘episode’ of it by now, but the aforementioned workload, coupled with a myriad of other stuff has conspired against me. But it does exist, and it will be written soon. Have patience.

In the meantime, please enjoy this humble little short story I wrote for one of my portfolios.
P.S. Watch ‘A Detective Story‘ if you haven’t before – because it’s awesome, and it inspired this story.

Anyway here it is, in its cliched but fun goodness:

Fin.

It was a black-and-white sort of a day. Walking back, you felt like an old movie, some silent flick where all you can hear is the wind barging any other noises out of the way. They used to show those kinda things down at the old theatre, with some jaunty piano guy playing along to the story. There was no music here though. Not today.

The paint was flaking off the door again, rather ruining the effect of the professionally done lettering on the window. My name, and then the words “Private Detective and Investigator” underneath. Very classy. Not that I’d ever once had what you’d call ‘a case.’ That’s the problem with this country. Everyone’s the same. Just flock to the police and they’ll make everything ok again, right? It’s ludicrous. Six months I’ve been in the business, and all, literally all, the work I’d had was from suspicious spouses wanting me to spy on hotel rooms. To be honest with you, I was just about ready to pack it all in.

Faux-dozing in the chair, in my stereotypical private-detectivey kind of way, I waited for the phone to ring. There would be one last case. One more shot at the dream, and then we were out. Then I’d go and work at a burger joint, or something. This point, this moment in time right here, this is when the phone should ring, if my life were a movie. But it’s not. I’ve learnt that by now. So the phone didn’t ring.

However.

One in the morning, with me now truthfully asleep in the hard-backed chair, there’s a scratching at the door, a rustle, a muffled knock, and a series of hasty footsteps down the path. All very dramatic, no?
So obviously, I fall backwards off the chair. All standard procedure for imperturbable loners like myself. Very good, sir. Cursing my bruised head and my inability to sleep in a goddamn bed for once, I amble over to the front door. Where there’s a note of paper crumpled underneath, pushed through the gap in the floor. Whoever put it there obviously had never heard of a letterbox.

To whomsoever receives this letter,
the letter said.

Come to the abandoned house at 324 Oldham Street.
There may be a job for you.
A job that pays money.

And that’s all that was there.
Well, this was somewhat peculiar. I mean what kind of a job? And it wasn’t even signed. Obviously, something was up. But what kind of a detective would I be if I didn’t go to check it out? Possible answers here: either a smart one, or a busy one. But I was neither. So check it out I did.

But this is where it gets really weird.

I was basically straight out the door, whatever the time was by now. And then my mobile rings. Now, nobody has my mobile number. It’s ‘strictly for work purposes,’ so I’ve actually never given it to anyone. I don’t even know the goddamn thing myself. But as I open the door, the damn thing starts ringing.
“Don’t leave yet,” says the voice on the other end. I don’t know if it was a woman or a man, young or old. There’s one of those voice messer-upper things over the top, like they’re speaking with a mouthful of bees or some crap like that.
I start to say something, but they cut me off.
“Don’t talk, just listen,” they say. Now I’m all over this. This is the shit I’ve been waiting for. This is it, I think.
“I know where it is you’re going. I’m not going to try to stop you from going there. I know you wouldn’t listen. But where you’re going, that house, it is dangerous. Be careful, and go armed”.

Now. You may have guessed this about me already, but I have something of a penchant for the dramatic. Always have done. So naturally, this gets me in a big way. Go armed. Brilliant.
And as a matter of fact, I do have a gun. A revolver. It was an inheritance from my Gran actually. A crazy old gal if ever there was one. So I grab it, and head out the door. Today, I curse the weather. There’s shafts of sunlight poking through yesterday’s rainclouds. All well and good, but dark and stormy works so much better for this kind of outing. Much more atmospheric, if you’ll excuse the pun.

But the house is great. Makes my house look like the Taj Ma-goddamn-hal.
Inside, shadows slink around the skirting boards, and there’s a steady drumbeat of water droplets, a staccato rhythm all throughout the house. It is disgusting, and it is glorious. My kind of place, although even I have some standards. I climb the stairs, calling out, my voice much more confident then I ever was. My voice is in its element here, apparently.
As I round the corner at the top, I end up in a big old room. I think it probably used to be several rooms, but there’s only jagged stumps of wall, like a stripped forest, to show where the boundaries used to be.

And right there, right in the centre of it all, are a pair of identical twin kids like you wouldn’t even think could exist. Yet there they are, staring at me and all. And boy can they stare.

I ask if it was them who wrote the note, if they have the job for me. Although if it was them, I’m starting to have doubts. I mean they’re dressed up pretty upmarket and all, but what do a kid brother and sister want with an investigator like me?
But the little girl, she nods at me.

“You’re just like us,” she says “You’re all make-believe.” She has a point, I suppose.
I inquire again; what’s the job? And she replies:
“No job. No money. We’re liars. Liars like everyone else. But we’re so much more than that. We like to hurt people too.” And she says it all with the sweetest grin on her face.

Did I mention that it got weird around here?

I don’t know whether it was cold sweat, or one of those ceiling drips I mentioned, but something ran straight down my back, freezing all the way down my spine. Maybe it was just a premonition or something.
Because then the brother, who’d been standing here with god-knows-what kind of vacant expression on his face, he pulls out some kind of knife. It was one of those, what are they called, those commando knives. That’s the one. So anyway, he jabs the knife at me, and it cuts a score right across my stomach. I haven’t been hurt, not properly, in a long time, so just a little scratch sends me gasping to the floor. Then you can see it, he thinks, this little psycho, that that’s it for me. I’m done for. Tell the truth, I was thinking that myself.
But then there it is. The gun. I mean I forgot it was there, who would be used to carrying a gun around? So I pull it real quick, thrusting it in the face of Master Psychopath here.
And call me crazy too if you want, but I like this. This I like. Just like a movie. Of course, in the movies, they don’t shoot the kids, even when they are crazier than a bag of cats. So I run the hell away. I’m dripping everywhere. I guess that scratch was deeper than I thought. But anyway, I run run run down the stairs, and through the open door.

The door has daylight streaming right through it and all, so it’s like running into the jaws of an angel. It was like being born. And I swear to God I laughed.

So that’s how it happened. My last case. Out with a bang, or not. Whatever. Roll the credits, please.

I’m working on something!

Bascially, I’ve not posted anything in a while. My bad, guys. Had a fairly hectic couple of weeks, but mostly I’ve just been lazy.

HOWEVER.

Fear not. As the title may suggest to you, I am in fact working on something fun for everyone to read up here. I’ve been wanting to write something episodic for a while now, and that’s what I’m hoping to get the first episode of up here within the next few days. It’s looking to be a low-brow but enjoyable fantasy action type affair. I’m certainly having fun devising it at any rate, and thats usually a good indication.

In short, watch this space, there should be something halfways decent up here soon, so don’t give up on me

Jake

Something to be going on with.

Hi there. As I mentioned in post # 1, I’m going to put a couple of old bits up here so it doesn’t look like I’ve just been sitting on my hands all day (I have). Minor digression: is the phrase ‘sitting on your hands’ rude? I always thought it was just a term for procrastination, but typing it there I thought it looked a bit obscene… but never mind. It stays.

Now, what to post, what to post….

I’m going to put up a poem I wrote a few weeks ago for my Imaginative Writing class. Don’t think I ever handed it in, so you can all see it now (By the way, I know that posting my own poetry on the internet is a very emo thing to do, but I defend myself on the grounds that I am actually a writing student. Do people still talk about emos? I think they’ve suffered a blow since the fall of myspace. Despite the best efforts of many, you can’t adorn a facebook page with pink stars and My Chemical Romance lyrics.)

Anyway, without further ado, here is my poem. Enjoy.

The Great Rock and the Girl

When will you stop this, and move again?
Can’t you remember?
You used to be alive, so alive
We used to be alive together
Rising clouds and scaling sunsets

It’s time for you to wake up
You’re far too young to be so grey
Take my arms around you
Take my warmth if you need it

Remember your name and run with me
For we were made to run, not to linger
Waiting here, waiting for life

There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore
The monsters have finished their fighting
And the soldiers are all dead

One thousand years is not such a long time
I’ll rest here at your feet, and I can wait
For your eyes to meet my eyes

We’ll stand side by side,
Looking out at our lives
Ready to run again.

My first post. (Duh)

Hello, everyone. As you may well be able to see, this is the first page of my GLORIOUS NEW BLOG. I’m going to make an effort to put something up here every few days or so, be it a semi-coherent rant, or some of a story, or anything. So basically, I want you, my readers (if I end up actually having any) to give me a kick up the arse if I start getting slack.

I may post some random stuff on here today that I’ve already done, just to fill it out a bit, or I may do something entirely new (lord knows I’m bored enough). Either way, enjoy!