Tuesday 25 March 2014

A note about tonight's story

After yesterday's post about Britain's most common phobias including Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, I couldn't resist dedicating a story to our custard pie-flinging slapstick friends.

Maybe after writing this short piece, I do understand how people can fear clowns. The idea of a smiling, loveable and innocent children's entertainer hiding a malevolent and murderous soul beneath the grease paint is a very disturbing concept.

I mean, just what do those clowns get up to once the show is over, the people have trodden away from the big top across a muddy field, and the campsite lies quiet? Perhaps there's still the smell of popcorn and candy floss on the air, a few lights twinkling in the performer's trailers, the stillness only broken by the sound of lunatic cackling from the clowns as they prepare their evening feast....

Tonight's short but certainly not sweet terror tale: Fears of a Clown


Fears of a Clown

The corporate world was no place for me. It broke me. Took my livelihood, my wife, and for a while, my sanity.

The circus took me in, offered me a new life, a new identity. A clown. Something I’d loved since childhood.

The other clowns aren’t as I imagined. Away from the big top, they change. They frighten me. After the show, strange voices, singing, demented laughter can be heard from their trailer deep into the night.

Last night, I peered in the window. They were cutting strips of flesh from a living child, putting them in hot dog buns.

Monday 24 March 2014

On writing, my 100 word flash fiction stories and the great fears of the British public.

I hope somebody out there is enjoying my flash fiction horror stories, I'm certainly enjoying writing them. I am going to try, whenever reasonably possible, to write one every day. I'm doing this to help get me into good practise of writing every day, to hopefully encourage people to regularly view my blog, and also as an exercise to hone my skills.

You'd find, if you really wanted to count, that every one of my flash fiction terror tales is exactly 100 words long; not 99, not 101, precisely 100; a century. To write any kind of story whilst adhering to that rule is challenging, but to send a little frisson of fear through your reader's breast is very difficult indeed. Hopefully I've succeeded in doing that with my stories, or at least in provoking your interest.

Either way, feel free to leave comments. I've set this blog up so anyone can post on it, you don't need to log in with a username/password. Whether you want to lavish me with praise, or unleash a torrent of hellish abuse on me, I want to hear your thoughts!

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An interesting article in today's Independent about a survey conducted on the yougov website to discover the nation's greatest phobia. Fear of heights proved to be number one, which I found rather surprising. In fact, I feel rather cheated that the nation's greatest fear could be something so mundane. Heights? Come on, show some imagination!

A couple of more interesting phobias cropped up in the top 13 (see what they did there?) such as Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), Hemophobia (fear of blood), but by far the most interesting for me was Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. Clowns. They are quite macabre and scary beings in many ways, and yet can reduce people to fits of laughter. What does this say about what we find funny and what we find frightening? Is there a very fine line between the two? Is this why many people laugh at those 'home videos' of people falling over, or stand up comedians that single audience members out for abuse? Because they're actually afraid of it happening to them and relieved it's not?

Clowns. Interesting.

Tonight's twisted 100 word yarn provides dreams, solitude, awakening and intergalactic, interspecies love!


Suburban Baby Boom

When it came it wasn't like the movies. It took me in my sleep, a discreet home invasion of my unremarkable home in the suburbs.

I lay alone, dreaming; a recurring dream about arriving to work naked.

It seems so petty now. The nude human form, a mundane sack of meat.

When I awoke, the tentacle was snaking down my throat. Ice cold, serrated. Warm salty blood filled my mouth.

It took me back, showed me such sights. When it came time to change me, I welcomed it.

I will bear its young on Earth, and then others will come.


Sunday 23 March 2014

A dystopian terror tale for anyone dreading Monday morning: 'A Question of Confinement'


A Question of Confinement

The thought.

It just popped into my mind on my morning commute, crammed into the shuttle with all the other cattle.

‘Why do we tolerate this?’

The alarm above my seat sounded and two Company droids came from the cockpit, moving jerkily down the cabin to come and arrest me, take me back to HQ for disciplinary action.

The operation will be conducted without anaesthetic and will be painful. Machinery will sustain me while my organs are replaced with synthetics. Components will be placed in my skull, making me programmable; a droid never able to question the Company again.

Friday 21 March 2014

Tonight's twisted tale filled with Glaswegian swagger. Enjoy, ya bass.....


Fuckin Lost Ya Cunt

Where the fuck are they cunts? Fuckin stag night in London n the cunts’ve fuckin left ays. Nae fuckin clue where ah um. Goat tae find thum or all never get back tae thi hotel.

Walk in this fuckin place, Victorian place, eh? Cunt comes up tae ays, says he kens am lost, kin set ays right.  Says come in the back room n all tell ye where yer pals are.

Aye, OK.

Walk in there n the cunt pulls a knife. Stabs ays in the throat. Ah hear them chantin, guttural words ah canne understand.

Then ah black oot.

Thursday 20 March 2014

Tonight's 100 word terror tale is here! Ever wondered what your own funeral will look like?


A Small Gathering

So this is my funeral; a dismal turnout after half a century of life. My mother weeps, the others stand stony faced. Impassive.

Is this my fate? An eternity spent haunting the living. Unseen and it would seem, unlamented.

There’s somebody yawning. Maybe I’ll pay him a little visit later, see what harm I can do him.

My grave looks so deep, dark. I can’t even see the bottom.  I can hear voices coming from it, beckoning. Demanding.  Shapes rise to the surface and pull me down.

Down, down, deep into the cold, dank earth.

Then I see Him.

Sunday 16 March 2014

Tonight's bloody morsel of horror: 100 fear-filled words for a Sunday night


Family Rearrangements

At first the voice came only in my sleep. A few whispered words, a mirthless tittering laugh. Soon it came to me in daylight, too. Questions, usually. “Would you like to see her dead, butchered?”  At first, I ignored the voice, tried to think of something else.

But it became more insistent and I realised that it often expressed things I wanted. It made murder, torture seem logical. Inevitable. And he knew things. Things nobody should know.

He said they used to call him Jack.

He told me to start with my daughter. Rearrange her organs.

I did.

Wednesday 12 March 2014

A flash of horror fiction and an exorcism of prog/psych prejudices

Hail fellow horror fans,

It has occurred to me that given that I've only posted one story on this blog, its title is somewhat misleading; it might more properly be called Nick Harkins' Twisted Tale. This is largely because I recently suffered from a massively debilitating illness and have been unable to do anything more productive than blow my nose for the last month or so.

In an effort to remedy this, I am going to have a go at some very short horror stories over the next few weeks until I've finished something more substantial. In the spirit of shameless self promotion, I should also mention that I've had one of my flash horror fiction stories published:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Popcorn-Horror-Presents-Words-Stories-ebook/dp/B00EPM9DXY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394651530&sr=8-1&keywords=popcorn+horror

And here, my grisly friends, is this evening's effort. A Twisted Tale in 100 words:

Unrepentant

Strangulation is merciful. A repentant witch is throttled before burning. I am unrepentant and will feel the flesh melt from my bones before the end.

Flames lick higher, the burning peat raging beneath my feet; a growing inferno inching closer. I inhale the smoke hoping it will help me lose consciousness. It doesn’t work. I struggle vainly to extricate myself from the stone pillar I’m bound to.

The flames take my feet, pain sharp. Excruciating. I scream my agony and they jeer back at me.

Their mocking gives me strength and I scream words of power. I will be back.

Hope you enjoyed that, I enjoyed writing it.

On a final note for tonight, I finally listened to 'Wind and Wuthering' by Genesis earlier, an album they recorded after Peter Gabriel left, with Phil Collins as lead vocalist. I inherited this vinyl LP along with a number of others a few years ago, and always felt reluctant to listen to it as I assumed it would not be true prog/psych like the Gabriel era stuff. How wrong I was! It's a majestic example of 70s prog that deserves wider acclaim. Who would have thought that Phil Collins was, many moons ago, very cool.

Monday 10 March 2014

More to fantasy than Tolkien and George RR Martin

I started Michael Moorcock's 'Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff' a few days ago, and have been utterly enthralled by it ever since. It's such a shame that for so many people fantasy begins and ends with Tolkien, or perhaps since the HBO TV show Game of Thrones, George RR Martin.

There really is so much more in the fantasy genre that is just as good, and, dare I say it, perhaps even better.

'Hawkmoon: The History of the Runestaff' compiles three novels featuring Dorian Hawkmoon, a fabulously realised  character full of interesting contradictions; brave and loyal, a passionate lover and ferocious fighter who is at times also murderously ruthless and cold. The whole landscape is incredibly imaginative and filled with strange and wonderful beasts, beauteous maidens, psychopathic warlords, enigmatic sorcerers and strange cities.

In keeping with a lot of Moorcock's work, there is some social commentary here. The world that Hawkmoon roams is clearly our distant future, at some point after the breakdown of 'ancient civilisation' due to the 'Tragic Millenium', and many of the cities and countries names are bastardised versions of real places. The heart of evil lies in Granbretan, a nation of brutal savages that aim to conquer the world, creating one huge empire. Reminiscent of the imperialism of Great Britain and her Empire? Certainly.

So far, I've only read the first book in this collection, 'The Jewel in the Skull', but I am eagerly anticipating the rest of the Hawkmoon novels in this volume.

Just to make Hawkmoon's adventures even more perfect, the first volume is dedicated to the one and only Dave Brock, frontman of the legendary psychedelic space rockers Hawkwind, who Moorcock had a long association with.

Far fucking out, man.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Fever Dreams

As my last post suggests, I have suffered an extremely nasty bout of illness. Bronchitis, no less. For some weeks, I was unable to do pretty much anything; writing, planning future projects, exercise, and in fact anything besides playing Skyrim, proved to be beyond me.

Thankfully, my strength is now returning. I managed to do a decent workout today, and am now chomping at the bit ready to make up for lost time with my writing.

The only tiny positive I can take from the last two weeks, it is that in my fevered state I had a number of remarkably vivid dreams; far more vivid than I would normally have in a healthy state. A few of them were quite pleasant, but some were disturbing; unbelievably disturbing, and so vivid that for some time after waking, I had to keep telling myself that the events in the dream never really happened.

Of course, for someone that writes twisted, scary stories such dreams were a gift from whatever Gods administer nightmares, and at least one is going to form the basis of an upcoming story.

And thinking about that last paragraph, there's an interesting concept: a God of Nightmares gleefully spreading fear amongst the vulnerable legions of sleepy mortals...

I think perhaps we may meet him or her, too.