Thomas Brown's Blog, page 3
March 19, 2016
Damned Words 16
Fading
Christopher Liccardi
Mitchell sits on its broken foam seat, feeling the pain diminish. Blood loss pulls him from his cares and worries. He can feel his hands slipping from the sides of the chair. His choice was made by another, but not the one holding the blade. It was the demon in the chair that made the choice. It spoke to him and told him what it needed; more blood. He closed his eyes and the voice faded until it was a whisper. The last thought on Mitchell’s mind wasn’t death, but the chair. Who would feed it once he was gone?
Barbaric Elegance
Jon Olson
Nothing like this had ever been found before; the diggers unsure of their discovery. What is it? Excitement, confusion and terror glisten in their eyes. Months spent sifting through rubble, burrowing into the past with little to show for it; very few indications or evidence…
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March 14, 2016
4320 and the Hard 6
As soon as he landed at McCarran, the heat-baked shimmer of city life was visible, vibrant. He stopped on the jetway to peer through the sooty glass. The reflection was breathtaking even from three miles away. This place really was a treasure trove waiting to be taken by someone brave enough to grab it.
He pushed up the ramp toward his new home and caught the smell of decay as he passed into the open-air walkway. Something must have died on the tarmac; it was faint but undeniable. For an entrepreneur about to open his first hotel in sin city, this might have seemed a bad omen, but not to him; he didn’t believe in that shit.
Two hundred hours: The casino business had been good. His first ten days were coming to a close and he didn’t see anything but the glitter and sex. Fuck if he could remember the…
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March 8, 2016
In The Eyes Of A Victim
He waits behind the crowd, swaying in a corner—visible, yet perfectly forgettable. His incoherent mumbling is as much a disguise as the layers of filth he stole from the corpse of a homeless man only a few hours earlier. The corpse, when alive, had spent most of its time begging for change in the very spot this impostor now stood—both shuffling feet and jingling coins in a cup.
The bustle of men and women blindly swarms past, cramming onto the subway platform with a narrow, narcissistic awareness. Hot gusts of air swirl through the tiled alcove as trains rumble along distant rails, pushing and pulling putrid fumes that nearly mask the scent of urine on the man’s clothes.
I watch as he watches.
His eyes flit from face to face, searching for the right one, the right moment.
A train arrives in a whirlwind of garbage and air pressure. The…
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February 2, 2016
Protégé
Dark, beautiful fiction by Magenta Nero:
The front gates of your fortress are tall, ornate and heavily guarded, much like I imagine the gates of Heaven to be. I easily make it through security when they realize who I am. Your protégé has returned at last. I walk slowly up the long winding road admiring the impeccable and wonderful gardens that surround your mansion.
On the marble steps of the entrance I stand like a crucified god, both arms outstretched as your bodyguards search me, and I smile at the irony. I step into the great hall where a devotee bows to me then requests that I remove my shoes. I am given a white robe and led into a change room. I have not worn the robe for so long that I feel and look like another person. I glance at my reflection for a long time, the memories swell and churn. I lived…
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February 1, 2016
Featherbones by Thomas Brown
Felix walks the same way to work through Southampton every morning, and the same way home again in the evenings. His life up to this point feels like one day repeated over and over; a speck of silt caught in the city’s muddied waters. Sometimes it is all he can do to sit and watch while the urban sprawl races indifferently around him. But when the city stares back at him, one evening after work, everything changes.
He doesn’t see the statue’s head move, but he feels its eyes on him, studying him from its lofty perch in East Park. From then on he continues to glimpse it, or something like it, encroaching with every visitation. With it come memories, spilling through the streets, crawling through the dark, haunting his night-time flat, until he isn’t quite sure what is real anymore and what is imagined, in…
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January 23, 2016
All The World’s A Stage
Resonant storytelling from Joseph Pinto for this week’s Pen of the Damned tale!
“You have been dogged in your pursuit for an exclusive, so here it is—contrary to popular belief, I owe my new-found stardom to her. She, my biggest fan. But before all that, there are facts you need to understand about me, as well my recent rise to fame.
“I had to adapt a different persona, you see, one that would allow me reintegration back into society. I had grown stale, my message old, ineffective. I had lost my edge, and I admit now, for all your viewers, that I was too proud to see it. As an artist, I committed a grave mistake—I failed miserably in keeping with the changing times.
“So I went back underground. I played the small circuits and as I did so, I painstakingly recast myself. Gone was the haughtiness that once defined me. A humble thing, I developed a greater sense of self. Who…
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December 31, 2015
Damned Words 15
Rusted Relics
Jon Olson
Are they gone? The Creepers I mean? Fuck that was close. Too close. Shit, they almost got me. Cold-blooded bastards. They’re most active in the sun, yet you ventured out in daylight. We can’t take any more chances; there are so few of us left now. At one time, we were many; powerful and dominant. Then the Creepers came. Their war with us was quick; brutal; unrelenting; genocidal. These old war machines, these rusted relics, once a source of pride in our dominance, now gravestones of a dying civilization. Grim reminders of what we were and of what we’ve become.
Delirium
Zack Kullis
Delirium from the dehydration twisted his worst memory to the sweetest- the blood. The fall into the abandoned coal pulverizer broke his back and legs, but the compound fracture in his left leg covered his face with blood. Warm, wet blood. What had…
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November 28, 2015
Writing Is Weird
Writing is weird. You can spend months fumbling through a first draft like a child with wet clay and no supervision. Sentences slip through your hands. The chapters won’t stay together. You get an awful lot of it under your nails, and around your mouth. (The carpet’s ruined.)
You begin to doubt yourself, and your abilities. You know what you want to say, you know the story you want to tell, but it won’t seem to take shape. Sometimes it takes everything not to pick up that clay, mash it into a ball and hurl it through the window. (Open or closed – take your pick.)
Then, one afternoon, when you’ve just about given up and resigned yourself to writing something else, it works. In hours you scan through the same draft that has fought you for months, shifting sentences, crafting chapters, pinching words between finger and thumb, and the story appears. It’s still clay. It’s soft, grey, unbaked, you’re going to need to wash your hair three times to get the stray clumps out, but it’s there.
I don’t know what the secret is. I’m tired, I’ve had a long day. Lunch was lasagne, dinner beans on toast. I’ve probably knocked back more tea than usual. I should have been doing something else entirely this evening, but there we have it.
Writing is weird. It is frustrating, time-consuming, the sore-behind-the-eyes kind of tiring out. But when it comes together, for whatever reason, it’s one of the most satisfying feelings.
Learning and self-improvement is so important. Never stop playing, with clay or words. Take a handful, and create something special yourself.
To read more of my writing, pre-order your copy of my second book, FEATHERBONES, from Amazon here.
Find out more about me and my writing in This Year in Writing.
November 19, 2015
New Breed
Magenta’s prose is breathtaking. Enjoy her latest Damned story, ‘New Breed’.
Originally posted on Pen of the Damned:
I was born twice. Once in my own world, of which I recall very little, and once again by a human vessel. My consciousness was merged with human seed and implanted in a hot womb of thriving tissue. Perhaps those months spent within my human host are the most enjoyable in my memory. No one could reach me there. I was happy, alone, protected and silent; safe from the Fathers and not yet privy to the horrors of this Earth. Nourishment was instant. I desired nothing, much like the state I once enjoyed in my homeland. Then came the time to be expelled and no matter how much I refused, the imperative of the human body was unstoppable. I was squeezed in the most undignified way through a narrow canal, my skull and limbs crushed by straining muscles.
Deformed and coated in human slime, I arrived on this planet. I…
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November 16, 2015
Featherbones by Thomas Brown…..a soon-to-be-released novel by a fine writer.
A big thank you to Angela Thomas for taking the time to read and review my upcoming book, FEATHERBONES. Here’s her review.
Originally posted on Fantastic Books:
“Featherbones” is the second of Thomas Brown’s novels that I have read and I think that I enjoyed this more than “Lynnwood”, which I loved. Having made this statement, however, the book is going to be hard to review without telling readers too much about the plot.
Felix, the main character, is a young graduate, living his rather mundane life in Southampton. The highlight of his week is his Friday night drinking binge with his workmate and long-time friend, Michael. All seems fairly commonplace, until an event acts as a trigger for Felix to fall, swoop, descend into unreality.
The novel looks back to Felix’s traumatic childhood – so many events that could lead to an uncertain future for Felix’s mental health. Looking into the past, we meet Felix’s father, his teacher, his very best friend, Harriet and a man who was supposed to be helping Felix overcome his…
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