Trollheart's Do You Want More?

[Trollheart]

What I'm going to do here is post a small snippet of three of my short stories. Whichever one people want to read more of - if any of them - I will post another small snippet and as long as there's still interest I'll continue doing so. If nobody expresses any interest in any of the stories, then I hate you all and hope you die in a fire. No, just kidding. But I do hope you die. All right then, I hope you're crippled for life. SLightly hurt? Endure a small inconvenience? Catch a cold? Well, I'll be hurt, is all I'll say. And you'll all pay. Maybe.

The choices are
"Fork in the Road" (Speculative fiction)
"Under New Management (Humorous Fantasy)
"Chance in Hell" (Humorous Fantasy)

FORK IN THE ROAD

There's no two ways about it, a dark forest is a scary place to get lost in, even if you're an adult. Peter was not: he had just recently celebrated his eighth birthday, and while in his mind this might mark him out as no longer a child, in the eyes of the world, the law and of course his parents this is exactly what he was: a child. And not only that, but a lost child too. He knew he should not have wandered off into the wood, but there was something about it that seemed to call to him, as if a  voice issued from within the thickets, a siren call that emanated from the darkness and sought to pull him into itself. He had told himself he was not frightened, and this was partially true – when he was outside the forest, or even on the fringes, where he could look back through the tall spruce and sycamore trunks and see the faint lights of the village where he lived, where the comforting sound of traffic making its way up and down the road still came to his ears, and while he could still consider himself connected to the world outside the wood.

But as he had advanced into the thick stand of trees, brushing leaves and the occasional branch away from him, his feet ever less sure as the hilly path turned to a broken, pitted, uneven track of soil and mud, the confidence he had felt on stepping into the wood was deserting him rapidly, and his heart began to hammer as he realised that, dark as the wood was, and having stumbled several times and so become disorientated, he was not at all sure he could find his way back. The trunks of the trees seemed to crowd together, as if purposely blocking his retreat, and forcing him on, deeper and deeper into their domain. Suddenly something fluttered in the gathering gloom – a bird, a bat, something other, he had no idea, but the sound was enough to unnerve him – and he shouted, backing up against one of the trees that lined the path ahead.

That was when he saw him.

His heart jumped, and he was not sure whether he should take this as a good or bad sign. One of the things Peter's mother had always impressed upon him about the forest, presumably in the hopes of keeping her son from exploring that dark place, was that it was a known haunt for what she termed "bad men". Drug pushers, rapists, paedophiles, perhaps even murderers were known – according to her – to frequent the place and conduct their dark and nefarious business under the lowering eaves. She had frightened her young son with the dread warning that a little boy could be killed and buried in the forest, and nobody would ever find him.

Naturally, this had only made Peter want to investigate the dark, forbidding and forbidden place even more, so he grasped the first opportunity that came his way, part of him perhaps hoping, in that macabre way kids have, to come across one such unmarked grave, the final resting place of some unlucky boy or girl who had fallen foul of the demons of the forest, buried there among the trees and the buzzing insects, another statistic, another unsolved crime, another son or daughter whose parents would never have closure.

A small, mostly unheard or at least ignored voice inside him had whispered that he could become that very victim, something for another kid in the future to come searching for, a curiosity to be explored even as he now explored, but of course like all kids he paid the internal warning no mind.

Not, that is, until the figure appeared before him, seeming, to his childish and (though he refused steadfastly to admit it to himself) terrified mind, to rise up out of the very earth, like a dark tree himself, but one which had grown at an impossibly accelerated rate. He would have said, later, had he been questioned, that the man wore black, but of course here in the depths of the forest, with daylight already fading and little if any sun making its way into the dense copse, he could not tell for sure. But the clothes the man wore looked... wrong, somehow. He tried (as his heart pounded and sweat filmed his hands) to work out why, what was wrong with them, but concluded that it was hardly important. Maybe they looked old, like maybe out of another era? Maybe. He certainly wore the kind of hat Peter had seen in books about Victorian London, a tall, shiny one.

Few people in Yorkshire wore hats, and any that did favoured the typical northern flat cap. This was the fifties; with the war over the trend for wearing the likes of Hombergs, Bowlers and Fedoras was dying out, and while some men still wanted to cover the head, hats were not seen as the status symbol or denoter of class that they were ten years ago. Of course, the city gents in London wore, as they probably always would, bowler hats. But this wasn't London. This was Cottingley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, no place further from the centre of political and financial power that was the nation's capital. So to see a man wearing any hat other than a cap – especially one of those old top hats – well, it marked that person out as... different.

The man stepped forward, seeming to flow like mist, though that could have been a combination of Peter's fear and the gathering darkness, and smiled at the boy. Peter did not like the smile, but strangely, it made him feel less apprehensive, less frightened. In a clear and cultured voice, the man asked "Do you know who I am, boy?" Peter shook his head; words would not come, and anyway, he didn't know the stranger's identity, had never seen him before. The smile widened and the man swept his tall hat off, bowing low. "Then please allow me to introduce myself," he grinned. "I'm a man of wealth and taste." When the boy looked blank, a frown crossed the man's face, and, as if annoyed with himself for the slip, he muttered "Oh, right. Won't be written for another, what, thirteen years? In that case," he spoke out loud again, and again directing his attention towards Peter, "I have many names, but I believe you often call me the Devil."

[Trollheart]

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT

        21:40 GMT; Booth seven, The Lounge of The Dog and Geese, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5, England, United Kingdom.
     
"Get the drinks in, Michael. Mine's a pint."

"Why do I have to keep getting them in?" complained the target of the order, scowling. The one who had issued the order shrugged, a watery grin on his face.

"It's your round," he said reasonably. Michael's scowl did not disappear. If anything, it deepened.

"It's been my round four times now," he pointed out with no small amount of irritation, which actually surprised him, as he did not usually get irritated easily. Or at all. "Isn't it about time someone else bought one?"

"Hey, you were the one who wanted us all to come," pointed out his shrugging companion, his eyes, somewhat blearily it must be said, straying to the pint glass in front of him. There have been many debates about whether a glass in which fifty percent of the contents has been drunk is half full, or half empty, when in fact both are true, but in this case, neither were true. This glass was fully empty, only the barest few dribbles remaining in the bottom, residue from the recent beer that had occupied it frosting the sides and making the vessel appear as if it was in the process of some weird condensation.

"Yeah, that's true," chimed in another, no less inebriated voice. "You called this meeting, Micky boy. Drinks're ... drink's are on you."

Glaring at the new speaker, Michael snapped "Don't call me Micky, Gabriel! Nobody calls me that. My name is Michael."

"Sure," agreed Gabriel agreeably. "Michael. So get 'em in, Michael." He winked and slapped the irate Michael's shoulder. "And while you're at it," he gave the impression of a man trying to hold in a belly laugh as he was about to make the funniest joke, "why don'tcha row the boat ashore, too!"

The belly laugh punched its way out, and Gabriel guffawed so hard he actually slid beneath the table, only his eyes visible, and those not seeing too well anyway. Nobody else seemed to have got it, but this didn't bother Gabriel: a drunk doesn't care when nobody understands his joke. It's enough that he does.

In the end, Michael reflected, lookng with mild disgust at his brother, pissed out of his mind, what did it matter? Though he was tired (not physically, which was of course impossible, but mentally, emotionally) of going to the bar every time the boys needed a refill, it was the smallest price to pay for getting them all here in one place. He hadn't actually expected to be able to pull it off, and every time one of them promised to meet up he had expected they, or one of the others, would pull out at the last minute. But here they are were, gathered around one table in this pub, like plotters in a bad drama.

My God! He thought to himself, as the enormity of the situation broke upon him. We're actually going to do it. Here we are, all assembled, all – hopefully – of one mind, and we all know what  has to be done.

As he returned with the beers (and a juice for Cassie, who refused to touch alcohol, unsurprisingly) he noted with annoyance that it was out again. "Sam!" he hissed. "The sword!"

"What?" The annoyance in Michael's tone was mirrored both in the reply he got and the eyes of the one addressed.

Michael sighed. "What did we agree only five minutes ago?"

Sam looked down, seeming to see the huge black sword for the first time. "Oh. Right. Sorry." He managed to look sheepishly at the bearer of drinks, and as Michael placed the six glasses down on the table with the seeming expertise of one well practiced in such things, spilling not a drop, he whispered "What did you want it to be again?"

Michael, taking his seat, rolled his eyes. "I don't fucking care, Sam!" he told the owner of the huge sword. "Anything. Just make it ... something that will, I don't know, blend in, you know? Something that won't attract attention."

"Hey man!" said a voice, which was, at this point, the fourth distinctive one to speak. "Cool sword! Like it! Sweet!"

"Uh, thanks." Sam, the owner of the huge black sword, which looked as out of place in this small English pub as would, say, a sperm whale ordering shots at the bar, nodded at the newcomer, who was not one of the people at the table. This guy had wandered over from another table, or maybe from the bar, drink in hand, following his beer belly to their table, and now stood nodding and gazing in open approval at the weapon. Michael wished silently that the ground would open and swallow the sword, Sam, the interloper, or all three. Or even himself. He realised he could make all of those things happen, but he was trying to divert attention from the group, not attract it. So all remained where they were, and Sam was looking more than a little uncomfortable, a fact that was completely lost on the admirer.

"Fucking sweet!" he repeated, adding an expletive for good measure, or just emphasis, or to assure the owner of the amazing sword that the guy was indeed impressed, as if his opinion on the sword, or indeed anything, mattered to the man called Sam. "Don't tell me!" The guy raised a pudgy hand filled with pudgy fingers, his other pudgy hand retaining a firm grip on his pint. Everything about him was pudgy, and so it would not have been a terrible surprise to find that his pint too was pudgy, except that that would have been impossible. And while any of the people seated at the table could have, and had, done six (at least) impossible things before breakfast, this wasn't one of them.

 His small, piggy yet intent eyes, in which there seemed to dwell some form of intelligence which had not as yet been completely drowned by the alcohol, peered at the sword, as if it were an adversary he must defeat.

"Not Japanese," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "Not Spanish, that's for sure. Not French. English?" He seemed now to be having a debate with himself. He came to a conclusion, answered himself, while out of his line of sight (or caring; he was totally immersed now in his study of the sword) Michael clapped his hands to his eyes and swore softly under his breath.

"No. I'd have to say no, not English," the fat guy decided. "But what..." His fat face was totally screwed up now, both in concentration and consternation as he worked feverishly on the problem of the sword's origin. Michael fancied he could actually see the synapses firing behind his eyes. Of course, as it happened, he could. "Scottish ... claymore?" Suddenly the fat guy snapped his fat fingers, grinning a fat grin. "Got it!" he beamed. "Viking! Probably ... Danish, ninth century? Maybe tenth?"

"Uh ... yeah." Unsure what to say, Sam glanced at Michael, who was frantically communicating with his eyes that unmistakable gesture: get that fucker out of here! Easiest way to do that, he figured, was pretend the guy had guessed right. Which of course he hadn't. Because nobody ever could, or would. But he didn't need to know that. He just needed to go. Now, before the fat cunt brought any more attention to them.

Delighted he had cracked it, the fat guy placed his glass on the table, wiped his fat  palms on his dirty black combats, grinned that fat grin again. "Can I hold it, man? I'll be careful, I swear."

Again, thinking maybe this was the easiest way of getting rid of the guy (he could think of another, but not here, not here) Sam shrugged and made a gesture towards the sword but Michael shot out a hand, grasping the guy's fat wrist so hard that though he looked much heavier than Michael, the fat guy yelled.

"Sorry!" Michael relaxed his grip on the guy's wrist, but did not release it yet. "Can't let you do that."

"Jeez man! My fucking wrist! What are you: some kind of bodyguard for this guy?"

Suddenly, his eyes lit up in a whole new way, and he took a step backwards, his half-full (or half-empty) glass for the moment forgotten, still on their table. "Oh wow!" he breathed, looking at the six seated individuals in front of him with awe. "That's it, isn't it? You're ... you're some sort of ... government types? MI5? Black Ops?" His voice dropped to a whisper.

Sure, thought Michael sarcastically, wondering what these people did for brains sometimes. We're a covert operations squad who are all just out for a drink, in a public place, all together, and one of us just happens to have a huge fucking black sword!

But he knew, as the brains of the outfit – or at least, the one most used to dealing with these people – it was up to him to provide a plausible explanation that would appease this guy. He might be a fool, but never judge a book by its cover. He still remembered Jilly Cooper's Riders, and shuddered whenever he did.
Then it hit him. Perfect!

"Sorry," he again apologised to the fat guy, who was still massaging his fat wrists. He looked like a huge pig trying to give itself a Chinese burn. "We can't let you touch the sword. It's, well, it's a prop, see, for this movie we're all involved in and ..."

Fat guy's fat eyes lit up for a third time. Kind of the same as when he had spotted the sword and been determined to identify or place it, but with a different edge this time.

"Oh wow!" he said again. "You filming here? Like, here, man?" He said "here" twice, as if, for some odd reason that Michael couldn't quite understand, there was any ambiguity about the word. Knowing how these things worked, Michael gave him a sly wink.

"Unofficially," he replied, lifting his glass and taking a draught. Damn, that felt good! It had been too long. "The announcement hasn't been made yet, but ..." He tapped one long, perfectly-manicured finger alongside his nose, which drew a fat grin and, yes, a fat nod from the fat guy.

"Message received, man. Mum's the word," he promised Michael, and Sam, the latter of whom looked not so much nonplussed as totally bewildered. It was clear that this was Michael's show.

Fishing a card out of his pocket, Michael passed it to the fat guy. In a low voice, the kind of volume conspirators use, he muttered "We may be looking for extras in a few weeks. Why don't you give me a call?"

Fat guy was delighted. He retrieved his pint, pulled off some sort of sloppy salute – fat, of course -  that no doubt he had seen on television and believed these "movie guys" would recognise and get a kick out of (Michael pretended to do just that, though the gesture meant nothing to him) and departed, with a last fat thumbs up to Sam and a final longing glance at the sword. Michael watched him go, waving and smiling, but when the interloper was out of sight he turned to Sam, and the smile died on his lips. His eyes were hard, unforgiving.

"I told you not to bring that fucking monstrosity!" he snarled, but Sam met his gaze levelly.

"It goes everywhere with me, Michael," he retorted. "You know that."

Michael sighed. "Fine," he agreed. "Nothing we can do about it now anyway. But that guy looks like he's here for the night, and we've already drawn too much attention. Time to participate in an ancient ritual I believe they call the pub crawl."

"I'm sorry?"

Michael flashed a look over at the fat guy, who waved happily at his new friends. Fuck.

"Time we found another meeting place," he clarified. "Let's go."

"But," piped up Gabriel, who, up to now, had remained silent after his one interjection, "he was supposed to meet us here, wasn't he? Isn't that what you said? Isn't that what you told him? Meet us here?"

Michael sighed again. He seemed to be doing a lot of sighing today. "I'll tell him there's been a change of plans," he promised a trifle more shortly than he had intended. "Now come on, let's go, before Fat Guy over there decides to start spilling the beans about this film we're supposed to be making."

"Beans?" Gabriel, well out of it and anyway not the most familiar with these sort of situations, moaned in confusion, then followed the others out as they headed for the door. Fat guy saw them go, and waved again. By the time they had made it down the street he was already on the internet expounding on how he was going to be an extra on... he frowned. What had they said the movie was going to be called?

[Trollheart]

CHANCE IN HELL

He was alive.

He was still surprised that he could say that, and that it was true, but he was.

Alive and safe.

He glanced back, shielding his eyes against the smoke, peering into the flames now that he was a safe distance from them. Safe, he repeated, liking the taste of the word on his tongue. Couldn't say the same for those poor buggers though, he noted, a slight twinge of  - what? Regret? Shame? Uncertainty? - shivering through him as he pulled the silver foil blanket tighter around his shoulders, shutting out the freezing cold. He almost laughed. He had just survived being baked alive in a goddamn inferno, and now he was worried about cold! He worried that his sanity might be slipping slightly, but contented himself with the knowledge that anyone coming alive out of such a tragedy would probably have the odd marble rolling around loosely inside his head. He was sure it was only a temporary thing, and soon he would be right as rain.

Rain.

It was really coming down now, and though he tried to convince himself that God's firehose might help douse the flames behind him, he knew this was a vain hope. The only thing that would put that fire out now was firefighter-grade foam, and this was of course already being sprayed over the burning frame of the airliner as it sat in the middle of the runway, a metal skeleton, twisted, charred and melted. Glass littered the tarmac around it, dark engine oil had spilled out onto the runway and merged with the deep, thick black lines where the tyres of the failing undercarriage, desperately trying to slow the aircraft before it ran out of runway, had given their vulcanised lives valiantly, managing to bring the ATR 72 to a stop halfway down runway 31L.

Unfortunately, the aircraft, having a wing that sat atop the airliner rather than the more usual cantilever arrangement of jets such as the Airbus and Boeing series, had tumbled over and the starboard wing, hitting the tarmac hard, had split, bending upwards and slamming the engine into the ground, where it had exploded on contact, propellor blades still spinning as flame gouted from the split nacelle. This fire had raced back along the fuselage to the tail, which had also snapped off as the ATR rolled, creating a curtain of fire that effectively blocked off the exit for passengers, who, again in contrast to the front and side-loading doors of the bigger airliners, entered through the tail.

All this he had learned later, of course, including the miraculous details of his own escape. Having been trapped in the john as the plane came weaving in for a crash-landing, he had been blown, along with the whole structure, clear through the side of the aircraft when it hit, the walls of the bathroom providing him enough protection not to break his neck as the thing was fired like a bullet through the hole torn in the fuselage by the splintering wing, to land with a massive jolt on the runway, his head ringing, bruises and bumps and a broken arm his lot, but otherwise the only survivor of Eastern Pacific Flight 95.

He felt for the others, sure. He knew that an aircraft like the ATR 72 could hold up to seventy passengers, though flight 95 had been nowhere near full. Still, that meant at least thirty people, not including the crew, had lost their lives.

But he was safe.

A thought flashed through his mind, though he tried to push it away. A scene, a memory he tried to ignore. He saw himself staggering out of the pulverised remains of the cubicle, standing up and looking blearily back at the burning aircraft. His own personal safety capsule had landed about maybe thirty metres from the wreckage, and now he could see her face, a woman who had somehow also been thrown clear of the fire, clinging desperately to the surface of the port wing, which was pointing almost directly up to the sky, bent at a sharp angle, her fingers slipping as she tried to maintain her hold, sliding slowly down the metal surface. She was badly burned, might be dead already, except she was still screaming.

And looking at him.

Looking directly at him, her eyes beseeching, pleading, scared. He knew he had a chance to save her. Just go back, stagger towards the aircraft and catch her as she slid down the wing, stop her from breaking every bone in her body when she fell off the metal and onto the hard ground, or being burned alive when the port engine, smoking now but not yet caught on fire, burst into flame like its brother on the far side.

Just go back.

But he didn't. He was scared, and not prepared to face the awful conflagration he had escaped from so miraculously, risk his own death for the sake of the life of someone he didn't even know. He told himself again that she might already be dead, anyway, but he knew in his heart she wasn't.

He had turned away, ignoring her cries, and a few moments later the port engine had ignited with a loud bang and a series of gouts of flame, and that had been that.

He was sorry for her, but he was alive, and that was the most important thing.

The drone of the sirens of the emergency vehicles suddenly merged with a louder, more strident and measured sound. It reminded him of a klaxon, or one of those noises they made on gameshows when you got the question wrong.

It was louder now, and as it grew in volume, something began to take shape in front of his eyes, even as the ambulance on whose step he was sitting, the burning, smoking wreck of the ATR 72 and the airport itself all began to fade. He was falling, falling into blackness, and a hot fear gripped him that he had not actually survived, that he was now having a heart attack. The injustice of it all made him angry and want to cry all at once; he had made it out of a burning plane wreck only to die of a coronary while sitting in an ambulance. Were they trying to save him? Were those voices he could hear, dimly in the background?

How weird, he thought: I could swear I heard a typewriter, a phone, feet walking, doors opening. Not the kind of sounds you normally associated with the aftermath of a plane crash. Ah, he had it! He was in hospital. They had saved him, or were trying to. Now the sounds made sense. Except he didn't hear the beeping of any monitors, but maybe he just wasn't perceiving all the ambient sounds.

He got the weird feeling that something was suspended above him, as if on his head. What was it? He couldn't see of course, just get a vague impression that he was wearing... glowing letters on his head? He tried to get a better look at it, ducking and moving his head, but it seemed to move with him, like a hat, or as if someone had placed a sign atop his head.

It was definitely letters.

And now he heard wails, cries, screams. Definitely in a hospital, no question about it. He wondered if he would be able to sell his story? I Was the Only Survivor of Flight 95! They would want interviews, accounts, details. Hey, they might even make a TV movie out of his ordeal. This could be just the thing to turn his financial fortunes around. His face creased in a silly grin as he contemplated the fact that this plane crash could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

Letters. Big, red letters. Rolling his eyes back as far as he could, looking up to where his hairline was he could see them slightly more clearly. Looked like they were on fire, now that he stared at them more closely, or they became clearer. He could almost... was that a backwards "L"? He felt sure it was. And... a straight line – or was it an "I" beside it? L-I? Certainly looked that way. The klaxon continued to blare, making his head thump painfully. He wished someone would shut it off. Like a car alarm that was alerting someone who was not at home, the sound blared and blared on, driving him nuts.

Footsteps. Footsteps which seemed to be coming from a distance, someone walking up a long corridor? Slow, measured footsteps, the sound of a door creaking.

L-I- was that an "A"? L-I-A...? The last letter, if it was a letter, was too far beyond the scope of his vision to make out. LIA? What the -?

"You can go in now."

"What?"

His voice, which he had seemed almost to have forgotten how to use, rasped out the word, and his eyes swivelled to take in the figure standing over him. His heart leaped – no. No, it didn't. His heart didn't do anything, he realised in a sudden burst of panic. It should have jumped, but it didn't even seem to be beating. As a terrible premise began to form in his head, his brain registered the figure standing over him.
It was about seven feet tall, dressed in a smart pantsuit, holding a clipboard in one long-taloned hand, its huge, bulbous head inclined down to look at him.

"I said," repeated the demon, with a roll of bloodshot, cracked eyes, "you can go in now. He's ready for you."

All he could do was repeat what he had said, but this time the word would not come out. He sat, frozen in terror, trying to deny the existence of this horrible creature that stood before him, trying to reconcile its appearance with any sort of reality he knew, and failed.

And then somehow, as he moved, his eyes managed to catch the last letter, floating before his eyes, as it came into focus.

It was an "F".

L-I-A-F.

Liaf? That didn't spell anything, did it?

Then the penny dropped. He realised that if this was, somehow, a sign standing on his head, he would be viewing it from behind, as in a mirror, and so the letters needed to reversed. L-I-A-F became..
F-A-I-L.

Fail.

Fail? He thought stupidly to himself. Fail? Fail what? Heart failure? Has my heart failed? Could they not save me?

Am I dead?

"Of course you're dead!" snapped the demon, as if hearing his thoughts, or perhaps it had just dealt with this sort of thing so many times already that it recognised the look. "But that doesn't mean you can keep Mr. Jolly waiting. Now please, follow me." The demon turned to go, turned back. "Oh, and a word to the wise?" Its voice was like the hiss of a snake. "Get your shit together, 444,706,910,000,301,145: Mr. Jolly isn't as accommodating as I am. This way."

Stunned, unable to figure out what was happening, he shuffled his way along behind the demon, who, as it walked, ticked off notes on its clipboard, alternately nodding and shaking its huge head. Once, it looked back at him and gave him a searching look, sighed, then faced forward again. At length it came to a black door, outside which it stopped.

"In there." It began to walk away, then, seeing that  444,706,910,000,301,145 hadn't got it, snapped "Just knock."