Who's driving this thing?!

I love that moment when you are on the edge of your seat, totally engrossed in an action packed story. You have no idea what is going to happen next.How is the hero going to get out of this impossible situation?

... And the only thing you can do is keep typing to find out.

Old Stories: The Tower

I've been trawling through some old files and finding old stories. This one is from 2009 or earlier. Never published of course.

The Tower by Paul Mannering

The architect and reason for the tower were lost to the sea in aeons past.  Only the stones remained. Each block of black basalt curved slightly, just enough to cling to its brethren and encompass the tiniest angle of curvature in the round edifice.  The tower stood tall and phallic on the barren black cliffs above a storm grey sea and waited.

 Tomlay and Adelsa left the tower in dull morning light cast by the ancient red sun. The tide had receded uncovering the rich mudflats and the shellfish that they harvested.  Today they called each other Tomlay and Adelsa, yesterday each had created different names for the other.  One was male and the other female, and after smashing the hard calcite husks of their meal, they slurped and gnashed their teeth against the pale slime flesh nestled within.

The emptiness of their bellies satiated, Tomlay grunted at Adelsa and pushed up against her buttocks, his genitals swelling.  Adelsa, today bearing the complimentary female parts refused him and Tomlay pushed harder, grunting with increased ferocity.  The female scampered away and climbed the sea-worn stones of the cliff, pausing, crouched on a narrow ledge to throw small stones at the furious male below.

With a dismissive gesture, Tomlay turned away from her and loped off down the beach.  Hunched over, his flat pale hands slapped the hard-packed wet sand every few strides and he collected and discarded anything that caught his eye without pausing in his rush.

Adelsa’s hoots faded into the hiss and moan of the surf.  Tomlay scampered over the horizon, if Adelsa would refuse him today, then he would seek solace elsewhere.

The sun was midway between the grey sea and the highest point of the sky when Tomlay reached the next bay.  The tide was returning, sweeping back in a long pulsing flood to cover the mud and sand, refreshing the shellfish beds and maintaining the smooth palate of the long beach. Tomlay splashed through the edge of the surf until the salt stung his eyes and his translucent eyelids flexed shut and turned his view into a muted sepia shade.

Turning away from the water, he scuttled on long boned legs, up and over the dunes as barren as the tower cliffs, to the border of the marshlands beyond.  The marsh did not interest Tomlay or Adelsa, they had never found reason to penetrate its humid, rustling depths.  Passing along the soft-earthed strip of land between sand and bog Tomlay felt his lust swell anew.

At the further end of the second bay, a peninsula rose.  Twin to the rock under the tower, this outcrop made a pedestal for a statue, vast and unknowable, the smooth stone rose to a dizzying height in the air and bore a pleasing feminine shape like that which Adelsa wore today and Tomlay might wear tomorrow if Adelsa tired of it.

His hairless body glowing with exertion Tomlay bounded up the rocks, leaping and grunting he sprang and clung until he reached the top.  Here he rested, idly stroking himself as he crouched and breathed the salty air. Squinting up at the statue Tomlay considered every curve and niche.  Not wanting to waste his climax, he released his grip upon himself and hooting in delight scuttled forward to leap upon the naked toe of the figure. From there he scampered up the smooth incline of the massive carved foot and laid his hands on the cool stone of the giant ankle.

Adelsa grew bored with crouching on her ledge.  She knew where Tomlay was going, having been there herself many times. Straightening, she finished climbing to the top of the cliff and with her back to the tower; she flexed and twisted her body, catching the warmth of the morning sun on the waxen flesh of her breasts and thighs.

Tomlay became one with the embodiment of female essence.  He entered her; this vast repository for all that was female, merging his own flesh with that of the dark stone.  In the warmth of her womb, he was zygote.  Fertilized egg dividing and conscious of all existence, the seething turmoil of a billion-billion generations of DNA twisted around him.  Filtered light glowed sanguine and comforting; he remembered conception and birth throughout time.  This was the culmination of life, only the genetic memory remained. Tomlay ejaculated and cried out, his emissions floating in the warm space that both surrounded and engulfed him.

Returning to the tower Adelsa felt the shuddering connection that Tomlay made with the female, encased in the up-thrust structure. With a moaning cry to the burning sun her own form broke down and joined with his in the union of genetic replication. Together they disseminated in to the component units of genes and the chemical codex of life. 

Through out the day and the night they would gestate. In the following dawn two new forms would emerge, craft names for themselves and bask under the pale light of the red sun and experience the success of life.

Not My Daisy

With Not My Daisy we return to the realms of insanity. It's a recurring theme in the collection and one that seems to have an inexhaustible wellspring of stories for me to write.

The idea of a man who is clearly insane from the get go allowed me to explore what fears a serial killer has. He isn't some all powerful destroyer and corrupter. He is a terrified and anxious individual who is doing what he can to keep his world safe and pure. Of course along the way a lot of innocent girls are going to suffer horrific deaths at his hands.

The Birth

First published by now defunct magazine 'The Willows,' this story was an homage to HP Lovecraft and the weird Universe he created. It's a pastiche but many great writers have done that, each one adding to the Cthulhu Mythos with their own macabre tales.
All the usual elements are there. An intellectual male, strident in his belief in science, finds himself in a situation that cannot be explained or perhaps survived.

I've always loved HP Lovecraft's stories. Mostly because they don't generally have happy endings. That in itself creates a sense of realism that is lacking in most fiction.

Too often there is the expectation that good will triumph over evil, that the good guys will win. But horror doesn't require that. One of the best elements of horror is when we realise that in fact, we can never be the same again. There can be no return to the safe ignorance of before. The reader, like the protagonist, is transformed by their experience.

After Lights Out

I'm going to write a series of short story essays. Kind of an author's notes for the stories found in my short story collection.

The first story is 'After Lights Out.'

Set in a private boys school, this story explores the issues of discipline and the generation gap that exists between adolescents and the senior teachers. My family went to boarding school. My brother was a senior when I started at Nelson College. It was very Lord of The Flies. I could write an entire book about it - but it might end up banned. I only went to boarding school for one year. After that my parents decided to move me and my older sister back to a co-ed school in the city we had moved to from the farm I grew up on.

Violence is common in boarding schools. Angry young men in a strict hierarchical system it's quite Darwinian. I broke another kid's leg in a fight. 


Because it's fiction I take the story of After Lights Out to a different level. I like the idea of insanity from the madman's point of view. I think there is a definite sense of clarity in irrational acts. It goes beyond justification - the truly crazy are doing exactly what they know to be right. It's an evangelical state of mind. Everything becomes black and white and the consequences are irrelevant - because the absolute knowledge that you are right.

So we are treated to a clear descent into madness, or senility or is it just the kind of discipline that the youth of today really need? It's the complete calmness of the protagonist that is the unsettling element.