Isolation Space (Anthology)

Isolation Space

Published By The Author On Smashwords 2011

Copyright (c) 2009/2011 Mark Cantrell

All Rights Reserved

Mark Cantrell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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Mark Cantrell,

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK

tykewriter@supanet.com

www.mark-cantrell.blogspot.com

Cover image depicts V838 Monocerotis photographed by the Hubble Telescope in 2004. It shows a light echo effect revealing a hitherto unseen dust halo illuminated by a sudden pulse of starlight. Source: NASA and Hubble Heritage (www.hubblesite.org)

Isolation Space: Contents

Preface

The Author gives his greetings…

1: Window Gazers

There's something fiendish outside, looking to get in, so knowing that are you sure you're sitting comfortably? Then let us begin…

2: Affordable Housing

An Englishman's home is his castle, until they want the land for regeneration…

3: Brain Drain

Alcohol and brains don't tend to mix well, unless you're feeling peckish that is…

4: Time Changeth The Man

Step outside the Hive and see the world from a new perspective. Be warned – it can be an unsettling experience. How can any creature possibly live like this?

5: The Rise & Fall Of Sisyphus

We all have our ups and downs in life, but when it comes to being stuck in a rut, this old Greek legend really had it made – or so he thought…

6: A Walk In The Woods

When the most beautiful woman in the world begs a humble woodcutter for her life, there's only one way for him to fulfil her wish – he must wield the axe…

7: To Heal The World

Only Man was able to save the world; well of course, since He was the one killing it – but He saved the Old Girl in the end. Pity His method proved to be somewhat drastic…

8: Of Unicorns & Vampyres

Blood will out, it is said. When a group of vampires go looking for their origins what they discover is more than they can stomach, but revenge proves it has an unexpected bite …

9: Sinners In Streaming Video

These days it takes real dedication and commitment for modern authors to get themselves noticed. Reality television is all very well, but isn't a live execution for heresy a little extreme? Still, think of the Royalties…

10: At Death's Door

There's a door in the mind that keeps the ghosts of the past firmly locked at bay, but that door can be forced open – after that you're on your own…

11: The Ghost Of Sarajevo

Another time, another war, but either this correspondent is going nuts or the city is haunted. That ought to be the last of his worries…

12: There Is No Sanctuary Here

Pity the strangers among us, for there is little mercy in the world we made for them – but is it possible their presence hints that some ember of hope still smoulders in our hearts? Hear their call…

13: One For The Road

The perils of hitch-hiking pale against experience when Sarah finds herself picked up by a vampire who knows her better than she does herself. She can run but she can't hide – especially from her true self…

14: Shopping For Katie

For the modern consumer planning that perfect baby, it pays to shop around – and read the small print in the warranty too…

15: One Way Trip

When a salvage crew scavenging the outer rings of Saturn turns up the long-lost hulk of a generation ship, it seems like an easy fortune – but deep inside ancient evil thirsts. In space nobody can hear the children of the night howl…

16: Nathan's Friend

Tonight's the night – that Nathan cuts loose a close and personal friend. They've been a team since adolescence, but enough is enough, he's got Nathan into trouble once too often – so it's time for some blood and retribution…

17: Deadly Night Shade

She was the one who was afraid of the dark, that's why the other vamps in her gang laughingly called her Shade, but she's the one still breathing – and now she's stalking the man who slaughtered them. So, he's just another vampire-slayer – right? Think again. Shade is in for one hell of a surprise…

18: Joe's Last Meal

First contact is a delicate and harrowing business, so when the aliens do drop in to say hello where will you take them for lunch? Beware, the fate of the world rests on the choice of menu…

19: An Englishman's Home Is A…

Can't afford to buy or rent a home – then this is the ideal solution to solve the housing crisis. Forget gated communities, razor-wire is so this season…

20: Taste Of The Night Life

A night on the town is all very well, but maybe a date with the city's pre-eminent vampire slayer isn't exactly a long-term prospect. It's not what you think – and he sure as hell ain't Buffy…

A Bit Of Back Story

Where the stories appeared before.

About The Author

So, who the hell is he?

Preface

THERE'S a time and a place for everything; this is one of them. This is mine. More pertinently, this time and this place belong to the stories about to unfold in the auditorium of the mind. Here and now, in the amalgamated space-time of the book, a compression of 20 years of creative writing finds a neat encapsulation in paper and ink.

Twenty years – time hurries on. It seems only the other week that I was enthusiastically bashing out my first short story, back in the days when I had much to learn and innocence (ignorance?) propelled me onwards. There have been numerous heartbreaks, many rewrites, since then to arrive where we sit today. This anthology has been a long-time coming; in another sense it has taken no time at all to arrive in the world of 2009. All the hard work was done long ago... or thereabouts.

The 20 stories contained within the Isolation Space are anything but the sum total of my work over these past two decades. Nor do they neatly represent one-to-one each of those years in question. That period of time was but the medium through which my exploits flowed, from pen to paper, from the first tale to the days we call the present. A temporal place, then, to inhabit and build the stage set for this anthology.

Plenty more material lurks written in my archives, and there is still more undergoing that arduous process of finding an audience. No matter the tale, or the form, before a work of literature – whether a short story, a novel, a poem – can even begin to search out the audience that gives it life, it must first navigate the maze and negotiate the gatekeepers of the publishing 'bibliopolis' (sic). That, of course, is easier said than done.

In part, that's why I opted to deliver this edition myself, but there is more to it, of course. All of the stories herein have gained an airing on my literature blog A Penny's Worth Of Dread (formerly called Tyke Script Redrafted, both now defunct). Moreover, not all, but most of the stories selected for Isolation Space have also found expression in the pages of a variety of small press publications over the years. Each of those appearances has marked but one stage in the long and winding literary journey that has led, finally, to this gathering.

In a sense, the stories have earned their place in a singular anthology. I'd say they've earned their rest, but there are still fresh minds to seek, more life yet for these stories, beyond the pages of the small press. Well, there'd be no reason to bind them together otherwise... so the new chapter opens as it were.

Once, the short story was a staple diet for an author – they earned them a living wage. For readers, dare one say the short story offered an aperitif, say, to the main course of a novel. If not, then certainly they provided a wholesome literary feast delivered buffet-style, pick and mix to taste.

Things are no longer quite the same; the short form lives and it earns still a fortunate writer a few morsels of a living, but less so than once was the case. Far less so, in fact. Still, the small press keeps the short story alive, breathing the 'oxygen of awareness' over the lovingly crafted entities that might otherwise all too easily smoulder to a dead clinker. And there is the publication of anthologies, by third party publishers and, in the best traditions of literature, the self-publishing exploits of authors themselves.

In the old days, it was chapbooks; now we add websites and print-on-demand and ebooks to the audacious mechanisms available to preserve and present the poems, the stories, the novels of tomorrow. They represent new twists on the timeless theme of building awareness and a relationship with readers.

Here, from the Isolation Space, then, I reach out to find you; hopefully to enthral, engage and bind you into the web of words I have yet to weave. This is not an end; this is a beginning.

Mark Cantrell,

Manchester,

6 January 2009

1: Window Gazers

THEY were at the window again. The three of them watching, as they always did, with that single-minded focus that cut to the quick of his soul.

Gaunt and pallid faces, nearly luminescent in the gleam from the desk lamp, were almost pressed against the glass of the dormer window, as though their owners wanted to ooze by osmosis through the transparent security of the glass barrier.

Wild hair blended into the shade of the night. Pale, intense eyes burned like an Antarctic chill. Unnaturally wide grins leered full of teeth and venom.

Tom shivered as he sat there in his bubble of light, frozen at his desk by those piercing eyes. God alone knew how long they'd been there already, staring into the shadow-draped room. He'd only glanced up from his typewriter as he moved his arm to gulp his coffee. Now that too was as cold as his heart.

How many minutes had elapsed while they watched each other through the glass? He didn't know. He couldn't tear his eyes away to look at the clock on the wall, or the watch on his wrist. The entirety of his existence had become those faces.

Each one was a chilling canvas for the expression of malicious glee. They looked so hungry too. Not in the ravenous sense, but in gluttonous greed. They didn't need him, just wanted him.

He had thought – no, hoped – at first that they were a phantasm manifested from a troubled mind's troubled sleep. Since the last visitation, he even managed to convince himself it was true. Now they were out there again. On the roof, as if it was a perfectly ordinary place to crouch.

To watch him.

The cup he was holding finally slipped from his limp grip and clattered in a pool of coffee. Its thump accelerated his heart. He shifted in his seat, still unable to look away. The motion brought a change of perception.

With the change, he realised they weren't out there after all.

The light from the desk lamp and his overtired eyes had merely joined forces for a cruel trick. Whatever they were, these creatures weren't looking in. They were staring intently at his reflection, from the shadows just behind where he sat.

They'd found a way in from the cold.

One of the reflections moved. At his ear, a hiss of cold breath, a cackle, his hackles rose too late.

2: Affordable Housing

"AFFORDABLE housing? Affordable housing! Are you taking the piss?"

I rolled my eyes. Phil was off on one again.

"A fucking palace is affordable if you've got the fucking money, but you don't get that by working for it. Working class folk like us aren't allowed on the property market. We'll be lucky if they let us live in shanty towns."

Who's 'they', then?

Phil glared. Who d'you think? The fucking middle class. The fucking politicians. The fucking yuppies. The people who are selling everything off and leaving us no place to live.

You're talking crap. They haven't sold our estate off.

But they're going to.

We got rights. They have to consult us. We'll win the vote. Now't they can do it about it.

They ain't won the vote in some places.

And they have in others. So we can do it too.

What about the next one, or the one after that? They'll keep hammering at you 'til you break and give 'em what they want. Or maybe they'll do it anyway. Those bastards only like democracy when it does what they fucking tell it!

Oh give it a rest will you, you miserable sod.

Can't answer that can you. It's all fucking crap. You, you're living in a future car park, or an office, or a fucking set of yuppie flats. They want us out. Out of the estate, out of this town, out of their fucking lives.

Don't be daft, who'd do the work if we weren't around?

Us. You daft sod. They'll bus us in like those poor bastards under Apartheid.

I often wondered about Phil. He was hard work at times. Always ranting about things. Everything. Politics. Religion. And things only he knew what to call 'em. He was a right gloom merchant, especially after a few.

A right know-it-all.

You just couldn't talk to him when he was in that state...

WELL, that was then and this is now. And damn, but that old bastard had a way of being right. Must have had a fucking crystal ball, or something.

So, here I am. Sun's coming up, but it's cold. Nobody's saying anything. What's there to say? What can we do? There's cops everywhere, guarding the 'dozers and the hard hatted, hardhearted bastards from the city.

I built the place myself. Put it together piece by piece from old timber and corrugated iron I scavenged from the places my Dad and his Dad used to work. Old factories. Demolition sites. Building sites, nowadays. Places I knew as a kid. Building them up or knocking them down to make everything Phil said.

It's not bricks and mortar, that shack, but it is my place.

To the bulldozer it might as well be paper. In a moment of cracking wood and shrieking metal, it's nothing but junk crushed into the earth. My home.

They huffed and puffed and blew my house down. Squatters, they called us, from over there in their clean, glittering prosperous city. The place where I used to live. Where once I could afford to live. The whole shanty was an eyesore, they said, but it's not like we got any place else to live. Now. They saw to that.

So much for that future we were promised.

Just as well, really, that old Phil's not here to see it. He'd only say:

I told you so.

Fat of lot of good that'd do us. We should have stopped them when we had the chance…

3: Brain Drain

JOE stared lustily at his pint before he raised it to his hairy lips. Steadily, he started to gulp it down – and down and down.

His eyes bulged with every gulp, almost like those of a drowning man, as the amber fluid gushed down his neck. Then it happened. A sneeze. Loud. Explosive. Beer splattered everywhere.

Once Joe had finished the nasal eruption, he looked aghast at his precious beer. There was something lurking within. Floating in the fluid like a pickled gherkin was something that looked like a rotten sprout. And it wasn't a congealed snot torpedo. In horror, he realised it was his brain: squeezed from its cranial pan by the sheer violence of the sneeze.

It span slowly in its intoxicating bath.

Bloody hell Joe! it said indignantly. Can't you take better care of me than this?

What are you complaining about? You should be used to being pickled by now.

The brain drifted in its amber fluid. There was something to its lazy motion that suggested a two-fingered salute. At the very least a pout.

You never appreciated me, Joe. I don't know why I have stuck it out for so long.

Joe just belched, and then reached for the glass.

Waste not want not, he muttered.

He raised the glass and gulped down the remaining beer, congealed snot spray and all. Once the brain brushed against his lips he sucked it into his mouth. The brain screamed shrill and brief as Joe began to chew...

4: Time Changeth The Man

MY nightmare begins with the birth of each day, when it drags me from the security of sleep. Today is no different; my eyelids open, still heavy with the burden of the coming day, to find the sun pallid through the shabby curtains.

There is nothing welcoming about the light. The few weak rays possess a lifeless, opaque quality that seems quite alien. All the same, I crawl from the pit I call a bed and shake myself free of the bedclothes and the drowsiness.

Once dressed I throw back the curtains and squint at the sudden glare. Even that pale light manages to hurt my eyes, dazzling my mind with memories of pleasant summer days long since past.

Turning back to the gloom, the mirror catches my sight and I meet my own stare as if it belongs to a stranger. All I perceive is a