Magenta Monster

Writers feel free to use this image to help spark ideas for stories 🙂

I was in the second inflatable airlock thinking about how I needed more Stim, I had set them all going and was about to head back to sort out a rota, one that would involve most people in some fashion, the big dig had started, we would get out!

But then I heard it, a great rushing a susurration, a wall of sound and the echos of… screams, my purples closed and I turned to the other in the airlock confused. ‘Shut the airlock!’ hissed my lecturer. I reacted on instinct. A mass of people pilled into the narrow tunnel we were in, slipping and sliding on the uneven floor, they pushed and batted at each other, clawing to get ahead.

I looked at the others fearfully, ‘what… what is going on?’ one of them asked.

‘I don’t know I admitted,’ stamped? Riot?

‘It sounds like water,’ said my lecturer slowly.

I stared at him, hoping our little bubble would remain unnoticed by the thundering herd, ‘but there is no stream to burst like that and even a large storm above ground wouldn’t cause that sort of sound.’

‘Fire!’ squeaked another of the team, a woman with the remnants of dye in her fur.

‘My kids are out there!’ cried a middling man with course ears that weren’t very expressive, I didn’t need flapping ears to tell me he was panicking.

‘We would be crushed by the crowd if we went out there.’ I managed to say just as they all burst out talking and shouting and arguing at once. If it was a fire we were trapped. I snatched at the hand unit my father had pressed onto me and tried to call, but no one responded. Then the thud of the wave hit our tunnel, those running past were bowled over as it crashed and rolled.

‘By the Everliving!’ hissed my lecturer as a yougling was smashed into our airlock, I expected it to give but it was a good design and the shattered creature was carried away a moment later. I stepped back in horror.

Screams and wails bounced around our little bubble as the realisation sunk in, the cave was being flooded. Everyone out there was dead, family, friends, I staggered at the thought of my parents. ‘Mum! Dad!’ I hiccuped and turned away from the torrent rushing by, the water tumbled corpses and was dark. Sobbing racked most of the team, I lent back against the wall and quivered with suppressed rage. They had lied to us! They had let us believe there was hope!

There was no way this cataclysm was natural they had to have pumped that water in! The Nesu would die if I ever got out of there, that was one thing I knew for certain, how dare they! I had understood the quarantine in a cold objective way but this… I shook with rage my purples flaring and locking down tight.

I thought of the efforts the council had gone to, trying to preserve something of us as a people, a culture and then the laughter hit me, they had bought the antique chairs to try and preserve them as a legacy of who we were and now those chairs would be smashed to pieces, the tapestries wet and so would rot. The laughter rocked me with a violence once I started I could not stop, dared not stop, what would I be without the raw sound gushing from my throat – just a puddle of nothing hiding in a precarious bubble deep below the earth whilst her race was annihilated.

I threw my head back into the rock wall behind me.

I had failed, my parents had failed and I laughed. ‘Ginglar! Stop!’ my lecturer commanded, I grinned horribly at him but he strode to me and pushed me down onto the floor. He sat upon my prostrate legs so he was facing me, his knees either side of my own. His fingers were strong, he was a classic miner unlike me, slender and slight, not good for child baring as my grandmother always used to intone – he held my head, made me look at him. ‘We need you, there are still Suma surviving, still a race that needs you!’

I tried to shake my head, I wanted to just close my eyes and ignore the nightmare, maybe when I awoke it would be gone. But his penetrating eyes calmed me and slowly my breathing returned less ragid, the laughter was quelled. He kissed my forehead and smiled sadly. ‘I shall get the first aid kit.’ And was moving before I could ask what for, I saw his fingers were covered in yellow, I was bleeding!

I looked up at the wall and saw the splatters from where I had hit my head, I shuddered with cold and fear but the blood loss was minimal. As he bandaged me I thought on what we could do stuck as we were, what food did we have with us? What resources other than digging equipment and then the thought I wished I hadn’t had – we were in a sealed bubble of air, ‘tranquilize everyone,’ I whispered to him. He nodded and spoke quietly to the medic in the team. She looked at me and nodded and began setting out her needles.

The man who’s children were now in the watery grave beyond fought but was soon restrained and drugged to a stupor. The medic approached me, ‘how much air do we have?’ she asked, I grimaced and shrugged, ‘I do not know.’ She nodded and looked back at the prown group.

‘Should I euthanas?’ she asked quietly. I felt the cold queasiness slosh through my gut and shook my head. ‘No we need to try and survive… we are probably the only remnant of the Suma.’

‘Ah yes,’ she said looking serious, ‘but I do not rate our chances.’

I sat up at her tone and looked at the wall of water, ‘they wont want to waste so much water and energy pumping it, it will receed and then we can… salvage what we can and see to getting out of this damn cavern.’

‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ I saw she was shaking.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I… I’m not supposed to say but I suppose you are the council now?’

I nodded.

‘The rite will not have been performed and most of the population is a cadava out there.’

My lecturer moaned, ‘please tell me you are just superstitious?’ he murmured.

She shook her head. I lent back against the wall and closed my eyes. This had to be a dream, please please. But I knew it wasn’t.

Story starters are there for other writers to share and/or use as they wish – the idea is that they will help get the old juices flowing!

1) The coat was lost, she had left it draped over the seat and now no one would admit to finding it. What was she going to do?

2) The floor beneath their feet had begun to vibrate.

3) Seven was the number, it had always been the number, how had they forgetting such a simple rule?

4) Rankness curled the nose as she pulled the door open, this was not going to be good…

5) Slithers of light seemed to break the wall into a strange and beautiful piece of art work

6) ‘Times change and so do people,’ he shrugged, ‘the sooner you accept that the better,’

7) It was a relatively simple experiment, there should have been no problems, no complications and no law suits.

8) The glass sat bubble strewn, glassy eyes stared no longer seeing at the flickering screen

9) It had been predicted by the Powers that Be that the end times were coming but no one listened except the paranoid, after all it was all just crowd controlling hype, right?

10) If he had to listen to anymore cheesy rubbish, he was going to start breaking some heads.

This year sees the Monster blogs as a concept reach five years in age 🙂

So the plan is that there will be a little something going live or being produced each month as a celebration 🙂

These will probably be electronic in nature though I would like to get some physical things out there as well 🙂

I started the monsters initially as characters that would speak to each other and have adventures, I hoped they would inspire people – they have inspired me, a lot, and of course I am not the only person writing them as I have dragged on board various family members which was the original plan for them 🙂

There are still a couple of monsters yet to be born as such so we shall see if they can be created 🙂

January will see web badges of the Muse Monsters created so check back for them 🙂

I also intent to blog a bit more often than I normally do 🙂

It is the end of another year, I feel I have achieve much and hope to continue in the New Year – maybe get some more of those almost finished project out there for you all to enjoy 🙂

Hope you are all having a lovely festive season 🙂

And there is still time to sponsor me for illustrating Percival’s Christmas wish and thus giving well needed money to the charity Shelter.

You can down load the audio version here 🙂

A pressure seemed to clamp down on my head and a strange, clang that reverberated through my bones and awoke me from a deep slumber, I felt muddled and then the horror struck me – we were sealed in. Panic struck me, I couldn’t breath, I felt the panic tighten around my chest, I moaned and whimpered, and around me every other Suma did the same.

We are strange creatures in many ways we will happily go caving and exploring but to actually be trapped? Then my mothers voice seemed to fill the air, I realised they must have set a sound system up around the caves, it gave me a moment of clarity – they had not used it yet to try ad shock us out of this panic, this fear, this chaos looming. I felt sick but my mothers voice reassured and demanded that we begin digging at once.

A calm began to filter out through the cavern and I recognised it as something very young hatchlings have with their mother or any suitable parental figure, and then I felt comfortable and dozy and a smell that reminded me of Blint and the warmth of home at that festival. As my eyelids drooped I surmised they had pumped a hormone around. It was the mother snuggle hormone, I wondered if it would work on all the adults, I was still hardly out of the Youngling phase of development. In many ways my physiology was so much more different to those of the elders.

A sharp pain in my arm shocked me out of my half dream state, ‘sorry to be so brutal’ Jenleg said, ‘but we need you now.’ I staggered drunkenly out of the covers, I felt strangely whoozy and sick. I went to get dressed but was forcibly dragged by the arm away from my sleeping quarters. My mouth was fuzzy and seemed full of ash, I could not find the words to protest. I was sat down at the council table, everyone seemed to be yawning and a fresh vat of stim was placed in front of me. I gulped it, scalding my mouth and then put it out for a refill, I had a feeling I was going to need to be attentive.

‘As you have probably guessed Ginglar we have drugged the general population, but that will not hold them for long, we need to have occupying work in place as and when they start to come round. Things are going to be tough now, very tough.’

‘I have three points at which we can begin digging,’ I said another great yawn escaping my lips. ‘Do you wish to focus on one spot or to go with all three keeping people more occupied?’

My mother and father looked at each other, I could see the hopelessness there and felt its weight dig into me. ‘How likely are we to get out that way?’ my father asked strained.

I shrugged my shoulders, ‘it is not going to be easy, we can’t use explosives, we can’t even use hammer machines on the one that is closest to the surface as the scaffolding wont take the pressure and the sound would be deafening in the main cavern. We can use them on the side tunnel we found though but even with them it will take a long time.’

‘And the third option?’ my mother snapped.

‘There is a cavern… another cavern below that I can see in the scans, it could contain a) a way out and b) a source of water, and if it contains water then we may have a way out via that though it could be vary dangerous. Breaking through to the cavern could be dangerous too, I have no idea if there is a gas build up in there or not…’

‘We can give you another air lock for that,’ I nodded wondering why I hadn’t thought of such an obvious solution, of course I had no idea how many of the things they had.

‘We going with all three options?’ I asked – it was a risk, using up the resources on three different routes could mean we wouldn’t get out of any, but there was issues with each so maybe this was the best way.

I spent the next couple of hours showing other stim fuelled people where to set up equipment. At about the point I was getting a stim headache and the horrible bleeding taste in my mouth, my father announced that some people were coming around and that they were being rounded up for me. I felt sick. My fur crawled and I wanted out.

I nodded and headed off to sort them into working parties. I had them up and on the scaffolding chipping away laboriously at the rock. It was a central location and the other people awaking would see the activity, the means of possible escape – the hope. I was weary as I climbed down the ladder but lifted my head high to greet the crowd that now surrounded the tower in the middle of the Cavern. ‘Friends as you can see we have started the Escape! I need two more teams for another two routes, one to water and one to help the sick and elderly exit more easily.’ I was making it up, I saw the nods and the desperation with which they clung to my lies.

I set up the digging down into the below cavern, again using only hand tools as I didn’t want to ignite a gas chamber and obliterate us all. I was starting to drag my feet now and wondered how I was going to get through the hammer training when Jenleg appeared with another shot for me. ‘There will be stim bought to your last location.’ She said business like as she rushed away on some other errand.

To my surprise my old lecturer was there and seemed egar to help me demonstrate how the machines worked, I hoped that they would make short work of the mountain wall but worried that it would be too much for the cave structure – I did not want any more cave ins but really this did seem the only option to me.

Start with the first word and end with the last and include all the ones in between in you story – this is a fun little exercise that can get the juices flowing 🙂

1) Shadows

2) Flint

3) Shimmer

4) Stealth

5) Jealousy

6) Cashew

7) Priest

8) Oil

9) Mother

10) Steely

11) Champagne

12) Bergamot

13) Wool

14) Mississippi

15) Tiger

16) Keyring

17) Hamburger

18) Candlewax

19) Absolution

20) Coast

So last month was very hectic for me and I am going to be taking it nice and slow on the run up to Christmas 🙂

However I am going to be attempting to finish the Promethias novels – I am considering steadily putting all the Punk stuff up on here. I have done this in the past but was finding the stories were getting so complex and entwined that I was having to change names and things and felt that it would be very confusing. But there is still The Cavern series to finish going out plus lots of other stuff so hopefully I will be ready to edit and sned the Punk stuff out – there are already quiet a few bits on here.

Unedited bits of the various novels are on Purple and Black Monster anyway if anyone is interested 🙂

Charcole (First published on Turquoise Monster)

We collect sticks
We are refugees
We walk miles to make charchole
We are employed to carry heavy sacks
We are hungry and care not what’s legal
We need fuel ourselves
We are hoping to feed our children
We are stopped
We fear
We are pushed to the ground
We know what comes next
We are not rapped this time
We just beg for mercy held at gun point
We taste the earth
We are told off
We cry, they fine us
We have no way to pay
We are released but now we can not cook our food
We are dying a slow death
We have no money, no future, no hope
We are the women of the Congo

Darren

Darren sat and watched the sky, he often did. It helped him dream and think of the past times when he was happy, when the world had seemed to be on his side. But that had been a long time ago now and he hadn’t been left with much, just the clothes on his back and the train ticket. Ah yes the train ticket. It had been a golden egg, though he hadn’t thought so on the long journey as he’d watched others eating and drinking.

He’d got no money and no hope and he had no idea why he had gone to the station and gotten on the train and even less of an idea what he would do the other end. He had been pretty sure he was in trouble; he was in debt so deep and had dragged others with him. Then in desperation he had thought to claim on insurance for a small fire that he had orchestrated. But it had gone wrong and the whole lot had gone up and he knew with a sinking feeling watching the firemen that they suspected him.

And so he had boarded the train and it had taken him to the Lake District and there beneath a dark blanket of sky he had decided to become a non-person.

No money? Who cared? He’d been sure he could find something and that he had. First it had been an old barn and then when he was turfed from that six weeks later he had found a hollow tree the size of a small (very small) room. Then when he thought the Woodland people had found him he’d moved on.

He’d been malnourished by then but had not cared. Then he’d found the campsite and had showered and washed the tatters that were his clothes. He’d slept the first night in the toilets and then had found an abandoned tarp the next day. The campsite wasn’t manned and only asked for donations and he had the tarp. He made a shelter and then? Then he was camping and there were fires permitted and people left their wood behind, bits here and there, and often they didn’t want to take excess food home.

And so Darren had lived at the campsite and spent the days walking the barren hills. But his mind niggled. He remembered the before and it seemed to him he was never warm now, never not hungry and he wondered sometimes if prison was better than this but the purple clouds and green hills had him captivated. He shivered and wrapped the old tarp around himself in the hope of some extra warmth.

That night he sank into the warmest of sleeps, one he would not have awoken from if the farmer who ran the campsite hadn’t been collecting the money from their box. When he awoke Darren wasn’t sure he was grateful.