Monstrous Ink E-Book

James Webster

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 182

Beschreibung

"I saw a fury on the street today."
Talons and teeth. Lairs and labyrinths. Those beasts we fear and those we secretly admire. These are stories about monsters.
Featuring 52 very short stories, Monstrous Ink is a deep-dive into the murky waters of monster-dom from which so many of our most beloved sci-fi and fantasy stories came.
Told with sharp insight, spiky humour, and spine-tingling atmosphere, these tales explore what it means to be a monster and the power of reclaiming what (we fear) is monstrous inside ourselves.

Leseprobe

MONSTROUS INK

James Webster

Published by Inspired Quill: October 2021

First Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher has no control over, and is not responsible for, any third-party websites or their contents.

Content Warning: Animal aggression, Homophobia (suggested), Mental illness.

Monstrous Ink © 2021 by James Webster

Contact the author through their website: https://strangelittlestories.tumblr.com

Chief Editor: Sara-Jayne Slack

Proofreader: Laura Cayuela Ferrero

Cover Design: ChocolateRaisinFury

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-913117-07-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-913117-08-5

EPUB Edition

Inspired Quill Publishing, UK

Business Reg. No. 7592847

https://www.inspired-quill.com

Praise for James Webster

“Funny, thought-provoking, heartbreaking, empowering, unique, and utterly wonderful, Heroine Chic contains every story I wish I’d heard as a little girl told in fairy-tale format. Witches, fairies, scientists, librarians, queens, superheroines, there’s something in each of these stories for everyone. From quiet little girls who make friends with monsters, to new twists on old and familiar faces, this is going to stay with you for a long, long time.”

– RK Summers,

author of The Old Ways

“At each page, I feel that tremulous bubbling sense of fitness, of wonder, that I remember having on reading Calvino’s Invisible Cities or Carter’s Bloody Chamber for the first time. This book is delicious.”

– Antonia GR,

reviewer

“Every part of this book is still relevant, still deep, and still jaw-droppingly beautiful.”

– I. Slipper,

reviewer

To all the monsters who are not monsters.

To all the ones I’ve sung to sleep.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Praise for James Webster

Dedication

1. Theseus and Asteron

2. Ask Questions Later

3. Fly Trap

4. Little Ivan

5. I Can Show You…

6. Pretty Ribbons

7. Vasili And His Favourite Bear

8. Foxglove

9. Basilisk

10. Thank You For Reading

11. Prison Buddies

12. Red

13. Elegy For Gorgons

14. The Swanson Limit

15. The Queen And The Mirror

16. A Comedy

17. Greta And The Woodsperson

18. Dying Curse

19. Empire

20. Salt-Weathered Skin

21. Ilyana And The Piper

22. Labyrinth Days

23. A Town Called Chaos

24. Scooby-Doo Is The Best Horror Story Ever Written

25. Potential

26. Steadfast

27. Abeyance

28. Dilemma

29. Structural

30. The Heart Of An Angel

31. Perfectly Normal

32. Orphans

33. Horseshoe

34. Drunk God

35. The God Of Light

36. Tell It To A Stone

37. Cool Cultists Don’t Look At Explosions

38. Toxic

39. Grey Days

40. The Gunnery Sergeant Isn’t A Werewolf

41. Guilty

42. Pitch

43. Swipe Right

44. Monster On A Leash

45. Everything

46. This Solid Flesh

47. A Minute’s Silence

48. My Anger On The Bridge

49. Eater Of Happiness

50. Blood

51. Pearl

52. Firstborn

Dear Reader

Acknowledgements

About the Author

More From This Author

1.

Theseus and Asteron

Why does someonemake a Labyrinth? For people to get lost in?

No. You make a Labyrinth with a centre. You put people in it to find the path.

Why do you put something in a Labyrinth? To hide it?

Ha. Putting something at the centre of a Labyrinth is the surest way to make people seek it.

For this is what Pasiphae did when she gave birth to a monster. Pasiphae, child of Helios. Pasiphae Sunspawn. Pasiphae the Oracle, who saw with eyes as bright as daybreak.

Pasiphae, who was more sunfire than woman. Who mated with a godly bull because fuck you that’s why.

Pasiphae, who saw her child’s twisted path as clear as dawning.

What do you put in a Labyrinth? What do you keep swaddled at its heart?

Oh, something precious. Something that must be kept safe.

She called him Asterion, for the stars that were his eyes.

She suckled him on sunshine and when he was big enough, she weaned him onto scraps of scorched meat.

The rumours abounded, of course, that Asterion was feeding on the flesh of humans. And perhaps it is possible that when wicked people came to take him away from his mother, he fought and killed them with the godly strength that others would call monstrous.

Would you not have fought for a parent?

Alas, rumours are what they are. Something had to be done.

What kind of person designs a Labyrinth as a prison? An engineer?

An engineer is really just a person who solves puzzles. And when Pasiphae came to Daedalus with a puzzle, he saw a way all the parts could fit together.

In return, she made sure he had plenty of wax and feathers in his cell. For all the good it did him.

What do you call a Labyrinth that you don’t plan to leave? A trap?

Or, perhaps, if you were safe and if your sister Ariadne (who could find the secret ways of the maze with string to guide her) brought you enough food and enough books, you might call it home. For a while at least. You might, deep in the dark with an ever-shrinking supply of candles, even remember that you are more than a monster. At times.

But Pasiphae dreamed of more than this for her darling child. For the precious, holy creature who held heavens in his countenance.

So, when one of her other sons (one of Minos’s brats) died due to Athenian treachery, Pasiphae saw a way that salvation could perhaps be bought with that tragedy. Knowing the Greeks and their fondness for Heroes, she knew that demanding reparation in a tithe of human lives would surely bring a shining paragon who would rescue her child.

Admittedly, she did not expect it to take so long. She saved what poor unfortunates she could from their fate in the maze (though it must be said, that was as much to spare Asterion the guilt as to spare them their lives).

Finally, Theseus arrived. Ariadne was persuaded to make doe eyes and escort him into the Labyrinth’s core.

What do you call a person who willingly goes into an impossible Labyrinth to confront a holy monster? A hero?

You might be better off calling him an optimist.

For when Theseus met with Asterion, he fell for him immediately. How could he not, when his eyes seemed full of galaxies? And so, in the heart of a maze made by a master, their two hearts were joined.

The extraction wasn’t easy to arrange, but everyone involved was determined. And Minos was very much prepared to believe that the bull remains he found in the maze were those of Asterion.

Once the lovers set anchor at Naxos, so that Ariadne could disembark to meet her own lover, Dionysus, it should have been plain sailing for them.

But Poseidon had never liked Asterion and he threw up a storm to scupper their ship and their hopes.

With home tantalisingly close, Theseus had the crew rig up black sails, to indicate that the Gods were displeased and that sacrifice should be made.

Theseus’s father, King Aegeus, tried every sacrifice he could think of. Wine, gold, animals… nothing worked. He grew desperate.

What do you call it when you would give anything? When you would pay your every iota and dash yourself upon the rocks, praying that you might wrestle fate aside?

You might call it sacrifice. You might call it ritual. You might call it love.

Whatever you call it, the storm broke. Theseus and Asterion made safe harbour.

Their happiness would be tinged with tragedy, but it was always going to be. And it was happiness, nonetheless.

And far away, looking down on them through the sun as it burned through the clouds, Pasiphae smiled.

Why does someone make a Labyrinth?

So that something precious might be found in its heart.

2.

Ask Questions Later

Elle forced her decaying tongue into action. Spittle, blood and other matter sprayed from her mouth.

It resisted, of course. Every part of her body, from her toes to her brain, resisted in these end days.

Except her teeth that is. Her teeth were always eager.

Those teeth clacked and cracked and the bone beneath them gave way. She slurped the contents down as if she were a child again, upending her soup bowl to let the liquid spill down her chin.

She smacked her lips.

Squirrel was good, but a bugger to catch and the traps were getting harder and harder to manage as she lost fingers. Still, she fumbled in the undergrowth until the catch clicked back into place.

She heard another click.

She sniffed.

The rich scent of the squirrel’s viscera had masked the smell of the hunting party.

She saw them now through rheumy eyes, a blurred slow-moving menace. Her eyes hadn’t been good even before the change, now all they could make out was the glint of metal pointed at her.

Elle forced her decaying tongue into action, hope and stubbornness holding her flesh together.

With Herculean effort she managed a single word.

“Stop!”

The bark of gunfire drowned her out.

3.

Fly Trap

In a plain white room, a woman sat with a bowl of red liquid in front of her. She did not touch it. Her captors did not know she was a vegan, and she did not know if the previous owner of this blood had consented.

“Did you know that vampires are actually closer to plants than to animals?” A faint smile spread across the woman’s tanned face; a smile that would have been gentle if not for the fangs. “On a cellular level, that is.”

“Do not speak unless spoken to.” The voice crackled over a speaker, seeming to come from each of the plain white walls at once.

The woman sat still, a spot of vibrant energy in a washed-out prison.

“Isn’t that funny?” She said.

“Speak only when spoken to. Non-compliance will be disciplined.”

“Isn’t that funny?” She repeated. “A plant that cannot stand the sun’s light?”

“You were warned.”

The white walls flared to brilliance, flooding the room with ultraviolet light.

“Aaaaaaaaa—” the woman began to scream and writhe in pain, “aaaaaaaaaah ha hahaha.”

The screams turned to laughter and her writhing stopped. Her laughter continued to ring out.

“Hahahaha. Oh, wow. I got you, right? You bought the whole ‘oh no, I’m meeeeelting’ bit? Oh darn.” She wiped a sticky, tar-like black tear from her eye and then adjusted the heavy pleather coat, a comforting battered presence around her shoulders. It had been her armour since childhood. “Seriously, though? Ultraviolet? That’s reassuring. Good to know I’m working with amateurs. What are you, government? The Catholics or Orthodox wouldn’t pull this shit, for sure.” She stood and stretched out her arms. “Been a while since I got a good tanning session in…”

The speakers crackled but nothing was said.

“Oh, don’t mind me. No need to keep me entertained with conversation. I can be sparkling all by myself.” She rocked back and forth on her heels. “You’re lucky you got me, to be honest. Not all of us manage to keep our faculties intact. The rest get very ‘ra ra bitey bitey’. Not such good company.”

Crackle.

“Ultraviolet may not be effective, but this room is equipped with sprinklers and we will use them.”

“Our brains are vestigial, you know. Did you know that? Probably you didn’t.” The speakers crackled again, but she kept talking over them. “It’s part of the whole—”

“You will comply or—”

“—plant phenomenon, after we change, you see—”

“—we will initiate countermeasures and your expiration—”

“—our vitals become somewhat, well, less than vital, so—”

“—is an acceptable, if regrettable, outcome for ensuring you—”

“—you need to keep those pathways firing and fed or they fade quick.”

“—remain contained. Repeat: we will use holy water in 5, 4, 3, 2—”

“Holy water?”

A pause.

“Permission to speak, my dear captors?”

Crackle.

“Granted.”

“Do you want to know an interesting fact about holy water? Of course you do.” She had not once stopped smiling. “Now, holy water will definitely work. So will most holy things. So will unholy water for that matter. Wrap your head around that one!”

Crackle.

“Is there a point to this?”

“Have you worked out the desaturation point yet?”

Another long pause. The speakers did not crackle.

“Because,” she continued, “genuine holy water will kill me dead. But there is a measurable point at which holy water is contaminated enough that it is no longer, axiomatically speaking, pure. How old are these pipes? How long has the water been standing? Do you know how much copper, how much bacteria, it takes for water to unsanctify? It’s low. And, honey, holy is a binary state…”

A crackle again. The sound of two hands wrestling for the microphone.

One hand won.

“I don’t care, doctor, your experiment is evidently out of your control. Alpha Team: commence Expiration Protocol.”

A wall slid open. Several heavy armoured figures emerged, clad head-to-toe in a truly unnecessary amount of tactical gear. Two grabbed the woman’s arms. A third held a modified pneumatic battering ram to the woman’s chest and pressed a button.

She screamed. But she didn’t fall.

“Ow, my fucking ribs. Good bloody gad, you dicks!”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“Oh, it’s a stab-proof vest.” She rapped on her chest. Her arms were somehow free, the guards grasping at empty air. Something beneath her leather coat clunked faintly. “Bought it on eBay.”

She looked directly at the hidden camera.

“My turn.”

4.

Little Ivan

Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Ivan.

Then Ivan died.

His family mourned, the village sang dirges, then they drank all through the night as death was not uncommon there and they, at least, were still alive.

It was some surprise to Ivan, then, when he woke up the next morning. He crawled out of the earth, scrabbling through it like a grub-nosed dire mole, his limbs full of strength he did not know he had.

Not knowing what to do, he dragged his drying husk of a body back towards his village. When he got to the spiked palisade, he knocked as best he could. The palisade’s wooden frame shook and Ivan’s fist scraped against one of its many pointy spikes, but Ivan felt nothing.

The guard on duty approached with bleary, blood-rimmed eyes and started when he saw the boy.

“Ivan, is that you?”

“I think so,” said Ivan, his tongue rasping, paper-dry.

“What foul sorcery has brought you back, Ivan?” spluttered the guard.

“I don’t know.”

“Was it some fell magic?”

“Probably,” sighed Ivan, who was not stupid. A tear rolled down his cheek, leaving a trail of gore down his too-pale skin.

“Hey, Chief!” the guard called, “Ivan’s been brought back. Probably by dark arts!”

“Well don’t let him in, you wanker!” yelled the chief, striding purposefully over. “He’ll likely kill us all.”

“Sorry, Ivan,” she continued, “you understand.”

“Yes,” said Ivan quietly. “I understand.”

And Ivan walked alone into the cold, biting snow. But he felt nothing.

Ivan wandered on shambling legs through the wilds. The wolves ignored him since they didn’t care for the taste of corpse meat. A carrion bird began to peck out his eyes, but Ivan reached up quickly and snapped its neck with strong leathery fingers before it did too much damage.

He walked for many days and the bitter cold stopped decay from sinking its claws into his body. He was grateful for this, as he would not have liked to have his soul trapped in a prison of rotting flesh. A prison of frozen flesh was definitely preferable, even if it did make his limbs hard to move.

When he came to the next village he barely resembled the boy he had been and the guards were not so kind.

“Get away, dead boy!” They shouted. “We don’t want your taint here.”

And Ivan would have cried, if only the viscera that filled his tear ducts had not frozen solid.

“Please,” he croaked. “Please help—”

The first arrow took him in the shoulder and twisted his body down onto the icy ground. The second hit him in the arm and sizzled as its flaming arrowhead extinguished itself in his frozen meat. Ivan felt nothing.

He shuffled off before more fire could follow him.

He walked through the frozen wilds for a long time and saw many things. He saw the great waterfall of the north frozen in mid flow, its tumultuous essence captured in a single moment – he saw his face reflected in its rippling ice and felt something flutter in his chest. He saw the great beasts that slumbered beneath the dirt begin to stir as they tasted the first gusts of spring upon the sharp winds. He saw the old woman of the forest, sitting outside her yurt of bones on a rocking chair made of shadows, and even she shrank back from him.

When he finally came to the third village, they were suspicious at first, but the village’s chief was young and soft of heart and he took pity on the little frozen boy and thought that just one night would not hurt. Ivan sat by the fire, which spread its warmth through the ice of his body and he reached out with his hands to grasp more of its nourishing warmth.

“Careful!” said the chief. “You wouldn’t want to burn yourself!”

But Ivan felt nothing.

That night, as Ivan’s flesh began to thaw, so too did the death that lived inside him. It stretched itself out and flowed through Ivan’s unused veins, letting its corruption trickle down through every inch of him. It moved the little boy’s limbs like he was a puppet, pulling him out of bed in short, jerky movements. Ivan tried to pull himself back, to take control of his rebellious bones, but they were stronger than he could believe.

Ivan left a trail of gory tear-stains all the way from his bed to the village’s gates.

In the morning, when the sun speared its rays through the morning’s frost, Ivan looked about him.

He saw the village’s gates splintered off their hinges.

He saw the village’s wards smudged and splattered by his bloody tears.

He saw the village’s people laid out in broken piles on the uncaring ground.

And Ivan felt nothing.

And when the dead villagers rose the next day and built their homes anew into a great construction of ice and dirt and bone… they felt nothing, either.

5.

I Can Show You…

Getting past the firewall was easy – no matter how much money these companies plugged into security, it all fell apart when one of the execs used “opensesame” as their password.

The hacker gave a little chuckle as the vault door slid open and, for a moment, he imagined the whoosh of air was a sigh of anticipation.

But for all his technical nous, he failed to see the pressure plate on the floor. As the blast door slammed down, he had to admit it had something of the sound of the guillotine about it.

His frantic attempts to find an exit halted when the lights went off. He twitched an eyebrow and flicked his lenses into infrared mode, then started back in alarm.

One of the strongboxes was ablaze.

No bigger than a music box, it was so bright it burnt an ugly blacklight blur into his sightline. He quickly averted his gaze and whacked the side of his head with the palm of his hand just in case the display was acting up, but all he got for his trouble was a headache. Something was seriously off – that much heat should have incinerated him and most of the facility. It was like a nuke in a bottle.

Screw it, he thought, I’ve got nothing to lose…

He picked up the strongbox – despite the way the infrared had flared with heat, it was cool in his hands – and aimed it at one of the walls. He cracked the lock with the decrypter in his trembling thumb and prayed to the Faceless Gods of 733t.

He had, in all honesty, been expecting an explosion followed by swift oblivion. What actually happened was closer to an implosion he’d once seen – a scheduled solar demolition that all the kids on his slum planet had watched with nihilistic glee.

The blaze from the box trembled and collapsed to a single point. The air shimmered and solidified with dust and debris that came from nowhere. A figure formed in front of him, the edges hazy but solidifying as it pulled something from the space around it.

The hacker’s lenses crackled and his eyes filled with static as the circuits fried. He scrambled to pop them out and threw them to the floor. They sizzled. The shelves and boxes of the vault, lit by the marble-sized conflagration in this thing’s core, all seemed greyer than before. Even with all the treasures they may have contained, they had become background.

It was as if this thing was sucking the realness into itself. It was a wraith of fire and smoke, glittering with glass dust – hot, sharp and beautiful.

That’s when the hacker realised what it was. A djinn. They’d caged a bloody djinn.

The thing turned its eyes – if you could call the glow of two tiny plasma cores eyes – on the hacker.

“Traditionally,” it said in a voice that tingled and tickled in his ears like cinders, “you have three wish—”

“I wish for your freedom!” He blurted out.

“…really?” The creature seemed somewhat taken aback. “Normally there’s more… preamble.”