Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 92

#FridayFlash - Tourists

He crouched low on the roof, fingers curled under the edge of the tiles. A city spread out in all directions, a maze of red roofs, haphazard towers and imposing churches.



A maze without street names.



He'd scaled the Campanile and skittered across these roofs so many times through the portal of his PS3. Enough times to feel he knew the city. But now he'd had the order, and he was here. Things were different. For one thing, there was no way he could navigate the city skyline without being seen from the street.



Ezio never had this problem.



He unlocked his phone and flicked to the photo of his target. Diplomat, having a quiet city break with his wife. More importantly - a diplomat incognito. A diplomat who wanted to blend in.



Hardly surprising, given the shenanigans he’s been up to.



The incessant chatter of tourists floated up from the narrow street below. He peered down, noting the oversized cameras, upside down maps and matching backpacks. His target was probably in a similar group, trekking through the Dorsoduro district in search of the quieter side of the city.



They all look the same.



A light bulb flicked on in his head. Why should he clamber around Venetian rooftops when he could stroll around the streets below?



I just have to make sure I don’t fall into a canal.



He slithered down the side of the building into a cramped court. An old woman washed the ground floor shutters of the building opposite. He ignored her quizzical look and set off in the direction of San Marco and its shops.



I’m sure I saw an H&M there yesterday.



He navigated the twisting labyrinth of alleyways and squares, pausing in a wide campo to buy a map and the novelty sunglasses favoured by tourists. The map was in the wrong language but that was fine. It would help him to build a character for himself. He folded it up and slid it into his back pocket. A new name popped into his head and he smiled.



I’ll be the Tourist Assassin.

Photo Prompt 95

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 95th prompt is Light Breaks Through.













All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

#FridayFlash - The Raid

The man in the pinstripe suit strolled down the alley. To his left lay a Chinese restaurant, to his right, the Joseph Street Mission. He chose to ignore both, heading for a set of stairs at the rear of the mission. His footsteps rang out on the rusty iron, and he descended below street level into a cramped vestibule.



"Name?" A man built like a brick outhouse blocked his progress.



"You don't need to know my name, but I am here on the recommendation of Styles."



"Enter." The large man moved aside, his expression blank and glassy in the gloom. He held back a thick velvet curtain and allowed the man in the pinstripe suit to pass.



Sizzling jazz filled the smoky air of the illicit den behind the curtain. The man made his way between the crowded tables to an empty table near the stage. Dancing girls skipped and wiggled in time with the band. The man named Styles sat two tables away, surrounded by oversized goons in matching suits. The man hung his black overcoat on the back of the chair and sat down, placing his fedora on the table.



"Get you anything?"



A red-haired girl appeared at his elbow, clad in the same powder blue outfit as the chorus girls on stage. She held an empty tray at an angle designed to deflect wandering hands.



"Just a coffee will suffice, thank you." The man in the pinstripe suit smiled.



"Ya ain't a regular here, are ya?" The girl raised an eyebrow.



"No, you could say that. I have been a frequent visitor to Chicago over the years, although this is my first visit to this establishment."



"Are you British?"



"Mostly." The man in the pinstripe suit winked.



The girl peered over her shoulder before leaning in close.



"I don't wanna speak out of turn, mister, but I got a bad feelin' about tonight. You seem like a nice guy...maybe you should try the coffee house down the street."



"I shall be perfectly safe here, my dear, but I appreciate your concern all the same. As it happens, I am here for work purposes."



"Are you a cop?" The girl straightened up and threw worried glances from side to side.



"Not at all, I assure you. Now, I prefer my coffee black and without sugar, thank you."



The girl nodded and threaded her way between the tables. 
The man in the pinstripe suit sat back in his chair and watched the band. Music fascinated him, and he often wondered what direction his life might have taken had he chosen to pursue such a career. The thought made him grimace; his job was his life, and not one he had the luxury to choose, or leave.



The waitress reappeared with his coffee. She put the cup on the table, evidently amused that someone would order coffee and actually just want coffee. The girl turned to leave, and the man reached out to grasp her wrist. She stared down at him.



"I would not normally do this, but I happen to share your bad feeling about this evening. Perhaps it would be wise for you to leave early. I am sure your mother would be glad of your company tonight."



She opened her eyes wide, and nodded. The man patted her hand and released his grip on her arm. She darted across the room and disappeared through a door near the bar.



Moments later, the large man guarding the entrance tumbled down the stairs and landed in a heap on the floor. The man in the pinstripe suit retrieved a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat, checked the time, and smiled. Four men raced down the stairs and clambered over the twisted body of the guard. They brandished tommy guns, and the staccato song of their bullets drowned out the music of the band.



The entourage surrounding Styles rose to return fire, and two men squeezed out retaliatory shots before they fell backward, crimson flowers blooming on their white shirts. The man picked up his cup and took a sip of coffee. The men with tommy guns advanced into the speakeasy, forcing back the panicked throng of drinkers. Styles cowered behind a large bald man with a revolver, but more gunfire cut the bodyguard down. The man in the pinstripe suit took another sip of coffee. A stray bullet thumped into the table before him, sending splinters in all directions.



Two of the band members cast aside their instruments and pulled out shotguns. The man in the pinstripe suit stared – he hadn’t seen a Browning Auto-5 in ten years. One of them shot Styles, while the other took out two of the tommy gun boys.



The man sat his empty cup in its saucer, and stood up. Silence reigned and the dust settled over hiding patrons and dead bodies alike. The man in the pinstripe suit pulled a pencil and a small notebook from his breast pocket. He tapped it in the air like a grotesque conductor, counting the bodies strewn across the floor. He checked the number again, and made a tally in the small notebook.



He put on his fedora and picked up his overcoat. He picked his away across the room, smiling at the shaken survivors he passed.



“I’d say that it might be wise for you to leave now. You’ve escaped this time, but I shall see you all again. Some sooner than others.”



He climbed the stairs and strolled out into the cool night. The wolf bark of sirens filled the air as he opened a nondescript black door across the alley, and disappeared into eternity.

Photo Prompt 94

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 94th prompt is Dark Skies.











All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

#FridayFlash - Ghost Train

The train lurches out of the Tottenham Court Road station and rattles east. Elsa flicks from her Kindle app to the clock - another ten minutes and she'll be at Liverpool Street. Plenty of time to catch the train to Stansted before her flight to Naples.



The train slows, and rumbles to a stop. Elsa looks up, expecting to see Holborn station. Instead, she sees simply darkness outside the window. Across the carriage, she sees the familiar tunnel walls, with their cables and metalwork. Just another random stoppage on the London Underground.



A scraping sound, like nails on glass, scratches behind her. She turns to look over her shoulder, and sees empty space where there should be a tunnel wall. She presses her face to the window and peers into the gloom. She makes out a wall several feet away, and the remains of old tiles form a sad mosaic of abandonment. Fragments of facts, dispensed at a party like ice breaking sweets, flit through her mind. Nothing substantial, just enough to amuse for a second or so. Elsa stares into the darkness, wondering if she's really looking at the remains of the British Museum station, closed almost eighty years previously.



A face looms large at the window, its eyes lined in thick kohl and beads hanging among braided hair. Elsa scrambles out of her seat and over her suitcase, terrified not just by the face, but by the fact she can see the outline of the tiles through it. Dark eyes catch sight of Elsa, and painted lips turn up at the corners. Elsa fumbles with her phone, scrolling through the apps to find the camera. She doesn't want a permanent record of that rictus grin, but no one will believe her without one.



The shutter sound breaks the silence in the carriage, and Elsa looks around to see if her fellow passengers have noticed anything is amiss. It is still too early for most commuters, and those few who ride the train with her are asleep, or engrossed in battered paperbacks. No one is aware of the smiling face in the tunnel, or the fingers that now stroke the windows. The curved nails leave grooves in the grime caked on the glass. Elsa stands and reaches for her case, intending to move down the carriage.



She glances at the face, the grin now replaced by a wide open mouth. A scream both surrounds and penetrates Elsa, buffeting her body and echoing inside her head. Elsa throws herself into a seat and clamps her hands over her ears. The scream is wild and unbridled, full of arcane lore and ancient deeds.



The train shudders into life and hauls itself onwards, leaving behind the ghost station and its resident. Elsa leans her head back against the window and closes her eyes, forcing her breathing to slow. The driver makes an announcement, mumbling futile apologies about unexpected delays.



Without looking at the screen, Elsa fumbles to slide her phone into her pocket. She does not see the saved image of the Egyptian princess with the grin of Death itself.




* * *


This flash was inspired by a Twitter conversation with the very excellent Nerine Dorman, whose latest book, Inkarna, is heavily steeped in ancient Egyptian mysticism. It's also inspired by the legend that tells of the ghost of a mummy who allegedly haunts the old British Museum station, that was closed in 1933. It lies halfway between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn, and you can read more about it here, here, and here, if that tickles your fancy. As a side note, I was once on a train that stopped in the station, and I could just about make out where the old platform would have been (before they tore it up). Sadly (?) no faces peered in at me that day.

Scrivener: The Verdict

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I'll say up front that this is probably going to be a slightly contentious post but...I don't think I get all the fuss about Scrivener.



After everyone told me how fantastic it was, I downloaded the trial copy. I've still got fourteen days left, but if I'm honest, I don't think I'll be purchasing the full version. I've written my last few projects, including two novels, my weekly serial The First Tale , my novella The Guns of Retribution , and countless short stories, using Word, and I really can't see any reason to deviate from my system now. Before you throw your hands up in horror or leap to the comment form to tell me I'm wrong, let me explain (and please bear in mind that there are as many different ways to write a book as there are people writing them).





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Everyone told me that Scrivener's big advantage was the note card system. Sure, it's a good idea, and I can see how others might find it useful, but with regards to my work in progress, I've almost found it restrictive, and I find myself changing the content of the cards on a regular basis as I find more story that I want to write than the cards might otherwise allow. It makes for a fluid outline, at least. Instead, I write out a list of scene headings, and a brief description of each scene, in my Word document. I use the paragraph style 'heading' to highlight each scene, meaning I can whizz between them using Word's Document Map option (2007 - in 2010, it's under Navigation). Next time I write a novel, I'll probably put my notes on ACTUAL note cards.



I like the fact that Scrivener keeps all of your work in one place, but to be honest, I already had separate documents for character sheets, location sheets, story arcs and other pertinent info. OK so Scrivener keeps them all in one place but that's no different to me having a folder on my hard drive (that's backed up regularly) containing the files I need. I might need to access them individually to retrieve information but I'm pretty good at remembering things. I just haven't colour coded anything in my Scrivener project as it doesn't suit my way of working.




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Scrivener likes to keep scenes separate, and this leads to an awful lot of the Blank Page Syndrome. Sure, I can flick back to the previous scene to see where I left off, but I still have to come back to an empty page. At least if I write in a single Word document, that's simply broken into scenes using headings, my page is never blank, and I never feel like I'm starting from scratch.



I should also point out that I don't just write using a single machine. Sometimes I write on my laptop, especially if I have other things I need to do in a given timeframe, such as using Photoshop etc, and that's where I keep Scrivener. But I also write on my Netbook, as well as my PC at work if I want to write on my lunchbreak. It's difficult to do that with Scrivener, unless I work from a different file and copy and paste back into Scrivener whenever I get back onto my laptop. To be honest, I've been using a Word file containing all of my work in progress so far for the past couple of weeks and I haven't even noticed that I'm not using Scrivener at all.



I've seen some writers announce, in a somewhat patronising and supercilious way, that real writers don't use Word, as if the software used somehow influences the quality of the end product. Well I'm pretty sure Jane Austen didn't use Scrivener, and it didn't do her too much harm. I know a lot of people swear by Scrivener, but I just don't think it's for me. Sure, Word has a lot of issues and it isn't perfect, but it suits my particular methods for now. And before anyone says anything, I'll be formatting my next story collection (hopefully due out by Halloween) in InDesign before conversion to e-book...

Inspiration behind Population, One

I haven't done an 'inspiration' post for a while, so I thought I'd do one about my most recent Friday Flash, Population, One . (If you haven't read it, do so now, for there are 'spoilers' ahead!) Now, my dad happened to tell me about a photo he'd seen online for a town whose population was just one, but he couldn't remember what it was called. A Google search later and I discovered he meant Buford, in Wyoming. The photo I used for the flash is the 'town' itself, although I chose to change the name on the sign, as well as changing the names of the people concerned and the circumstances surrounding the town.



It was strange, the moment my dad told me about Buford, I instantly wondered what would happen to the number on the town sign when the sole inhabitant died. Who would change it? I think the seed of wonder was sown by an old anecdote I heard about the last man on earth being so tormented by loneliness that he threw himself off a building, only to hear a telephone ringing as he falls to his death. On top of that, I came across the first two lines to a short story by Frederic Brown, called 'Knock', which simply read "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." This idea of 'The Last Man' intrigued me. The population sign came from the film, Population 436. If you get the chance to watch it, do so - don't let the fact it stars Fred Durst put you off, he's actually really good.)





Originally, the stranger was just going to be a regular chap who happened to drop by and wonder the same thing, and it was only when I was reading Carlos Claren's An Illustrated History of the Horror Film and he was talking about Death Takes A Holiday from 1934, in which the Grim Reaper goes on holiday, only to find that no one can die while he's not working (this was parodied in an episode of Family Guy when Death hurts his leg and Peter has to take over his job). Thus the idea came into my head to cast Death as the stranger - I know my version of Death is usually a black-lipped young woman with a voice like buzzing flies, but I think she likes to play dress-up from time to time, and in this instance, the man in the pinstripe suit seemed a better fit.



If you take all of these seemingly disparate elements and let them marinade for a while in the unconscious, they spring forth with an idea of their own. Once the idea of the stranger as being Death popped into my head, I wrote the story in about ten minutes - previously, I'd found it too hard to put it on paper, not knowing where to start or how to end it. I think my ultimate point is that inspiration can and does come from many different places, and a writer shouldn't be afraid to expose themselves to film and non-fiction as well as novels when hunting for ideas.



In what way has inspiration suddenly struck you when writing?

Photo Prompt 93

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 93rd prompt is Eye.









All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

#FridayFlash - Population, One

Bobby Giles sat in his rocking chair behind the counter at the Axford Drive ‘n’ Dine. He glanced over his newspaper at the clock – only twenty minutes until closing time.



The bell over the door jangled and a gust of cold wind ruffled the newspapers in the rack. Bobby wrapped his gnarled hands around the arms of the chair and heaved himself upright. A stranger stood on the door mat, brushing stray snowflakes from a battered trilby hat. Bobby’s practiced eye took in the three-piece pinstripe suit and pocket watch beneath the black overcoat, and raised an eyebrow.



“Good evening, sir. Don’t trouble yourself, I shan’t be long.” The stranger smiled at Bobby.



“No problem. You take as long as you need.”



Bobby leaned against the counter. The stranger ignored the almost-empty sandwich fridge and headed towards the drinks section. He chose a bottle of lemon-flavoured sparkling water and strode towards Bobby.



“I think this shall be all. How much do I owe you?”



“That’ll be two bucks fifty.”



The stranger handed over the money, the leather of his gloves creaking in the quiet room. He nodded towards the ancient television set behind the counter.



“I suppose you mustn’t get the best signal out here,” he said.



“Naw, it ain’t great. But it’s somethin’ to look at,” replied Bobby.



“It must get awfully quiet.”



The young man looked out of the window at the desolate plains beyond the parking lot. Bobby frowned slightly. It wasn’t just the clipped English accent, or the old-fashioned clothes. There was something sad about him, too. Bobby hobbled back to his rocking chair and lowered himself into his small nest of cushions.



“Well I get a couple of hundred visitors a day come summer. Everybody wants to see Axford, population of one. The photo of the damn sign is all over the Internet. Plus there ain’t a lot of decent gas stations around here, certainly not those that sell food too, so they swing by and I chat to ‘em where I can. It’s quieter come winter but I like the peace.”



“You don’t ever think you might like to move? Closer to family, perhaps?” The stranger fiddled with the cap on the bottle of water.



“I ain’t got none. My wife was the last, and she passed four years back. Naw, don’t you worry about me, young fella, I got all the company I need.” Bobby smiled. I don’t want him feelin’ sorry for me.



“I’m glad you’re so content. Tell me, when did this place cease to be a diner?”



“Aw, that must’ve been ten years back, when we had population forty. When folk started driftin’ away, I turned the diner into a convenience store. The name just kinda stuck though.”



“I think names may be the stickiest of all things in the world,” said the stranger.



He smirked, as if remembering the punchline to some obscure joke. Bobby smiled too, although he couldn’t help noticing that the parking lot was empty – and the nearest town was an hour’s walk away.



“Say, son –”



“I apologise in advance, and this may be a morbid question, but who will change the sign when you’re not around any longer?”



Bobby looked at the stranger and laughed, reminded of a joke about the last man on earth and a ringing telephone. The stranger stared back, that same mild, impassive expression on his face. An oddly comforting winter swirled in his grey eyes. The laughter died in Bobby’s throat.



"What did you say your name was?"



"I didn't."



The stranger raised his bottle of water in a silent toast, and turned away from the counter. Behind it, Bobby sat in his rocking chair, eyes closed and a slight smile on his face.



You would swear he was sleeping, thought the stranger.



He opened the door, silencing the jangling bell with a single look. He put his trilby back on, adjusting it to the slight angle he preferred, and crossed the parking lot. The town sign stood beyond the fence beside the deserted highway. The stranger stretched out his hand to cross out the ‘1’, before drawing a zero with his finger.



The man in the pinstripe suit looked back to the Drive ‘n’ Dine. An old man stood at the window and raised his hand in a wave. The stranger nodded, and the old man dissolved into thin air. Satisfied at a job well done, the stranger fetched the scythe from its hiding place among the long grass. He drew a line in the air, parted the fabric of the universe, and walked into infinity.

Photo Prompt 92

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 92nd prompt is Giant's Table.









All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!