MY LIFE IN HORROR: JIM DIES AT THE END

October's My Life In Horror is a special one, Kit Power has kindly given permission to reprint his contribution to the Jim Mcleod Must Die!  anthology.  Jim Mcleod Must Die! was the brainchild of Phil Sloman, who after hearing that I would love to appear as a recurring character that got killed wherever he appeared, contacted a bunch of authors with the sole purpose of killing me in a story.  He also got my best friend Fiona Fiona Ní Éalaighthe to write the afterword. The book was printed in a limited edition of 1 of 1  by Graeme Reynolds and presented to me with many of the contributing authors present at the launch of Adam Nevill's Lost Girl.  

It was one of the greatest moments of my life.  Thank you to everyone who had a hand in in this I love you all. 

---

JIM DIES AT THE END. 

“What the actual fuck?”

The old nun stared up at Jim from her prone position on the floor. At least, Jim assumed she was staring at him. The milky cataracts that covered her pupils made it tough to tell for sure. Her face was pointed in the right general direction, at any rate.

She licked her wrinkled lips, giving Jim an unwelcome glimpse of the blackened teeth behind them, then spoke again.

“I said, you need to come with me.”

Jim's mind rebelled at the thought. He felt dread, bone deep, flooding his system, threatening paralysis.

“What, under the fucking bed?”

---

“Of course.” She sounded impatient, as though she were scolding an unruly child.

“With you?”

“No, on your tod, you bampot! Of course with me!”

She held out her hand. Jim could see the blue veins under translucent white skin. Fingernails like talons. The smell coming off her skin was sweet on top, rancid underneath. Jim felt his stomach cramp, turn over.

“You must be out your fucking mind! Why in the fuck would I crawl under the bed with...”

“With the nun from your nightmares? The one that you met on the doorstep when you were at your mother's house all those years ago?”

Jim felt as though the bed were shifting under him – like he was suddenly at sea. He felt his face flush, sweat popping on his forehead. A dream, that's all – a fucking nightmare. It's probably HER, torturing me again for something, sending me this...

“You have to come with me, Jim. There isn't much time. Cuth'Ella sleeps, but soon she will wake...”

“CUTH'ELLA NEVER SLEEPS! HAIL CUTH'ELLA!” Jim yelled, voice almost cracking with the effort.

“That's what she says. But she does sleep, Jim. Once a year, on the day of her ascension, she sleeps. She has to. Think! Really think. Reach out with your mind, Jim. Can't you feel it?”

“NO, I ...” but he could, he realised, trailing off. He could feel it. The barbs in his brain, like dark tentacles coiled around his every thought. They were gone. The feeling was so disorienting, Jim felt his head begin to spin again.

“It's not possible, she...”

“She sleeps, Jim. Now, she sleeps. But only for tonight. We don't have much time. You have to come with me.”

“I.. But...”

With alarming speed, the nun reached out and grabbed Jim's arm. Her skin was dry and leathery, and her hand radiated a sick heat that made Jim flinch. Her grip was fierce and tight, utterly unyielding.

“Now!”

She tugged, and Jim felt his arm groan with protest in his socket at the sudden movement. Her pull was as strong as her grip, and he pitched forward off the bed, head colliding with the wooden floor. The pain was immediate and jarring. His vision blacked out momentarily, and in that moment, he felt the ground slide underneath him, as the nun dragged him by the arm under the bed.

His eyes flew open in panic, adrenaline surging through his system. He tried to thrash out with his fists, his feet, but he felt the nun wrap herself around him, her thin frame impossibly strong, holding him tight as a straight-jacket. He felt the panic surge in his chest, and he panted, crying out.

“Ssshhh.” The crone breathed into his ear, and the foetid smell forced Jim to turn his face away. He saw the thin band of light, the gap between the bed and the floor, the world he knew – a world of blood and horror, yes, under the vicious rule of Cuth'Ella, but at least a world he understood.

Then the nun began to sing, a soft crooning voice.

“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour,

But heaven knows I'm miserable now...”

Jim opened his mouth to yell in protest at this fresh indignity, but then he saw that crack of light begin to move, to rise up. The shout died in his throat as he tried to process what was happening. No, it's not rising – it's us SINKING.

“I was looking for a job, and then I found a job,

And heaven knows I'm miserable now...”

They descended, Jim held fast, sweating, feeling beyond terror,  as though his very sanity was under strain, groaning with the weight of what it was being asked to bare. He stared at that bar of light as it got further and further away, until it passed from his sight entirely.

Perhaps I'm dying. Perhaps I fell from my bed, banged my head, and this is just the concussion sending me out.

 

But no. Cuth'Ella would never let him die so easily, he knew. Was it instead some punishment dream she'd sent him for some failing, real or imagined, that he'd committed that day? But again he noticed the absence in his mind of that painful, suffocating presence.

Sleeping, aye.

“In my life,

Why do I give valuable time...”

Jim became aware of a new light source below him. It was a warm orange yellow glow. Flickering. Then he smelt the smoke – good clean wood-smoke, so unlike the smell of burning human fat he'd become accustomed to. A scent he'd imagined he'd never experience again, after Cuth'Ella destroyed all the trees following The Day Of The Splinter.

Jim shuddered at the memory.

The descent ended, and the nun released Jim. He gained his feet quickly, and took in his surroundings. The floor felt rough under his bare feet, like gravel or stone. He could see no walls or ceiling. In the centre of his field of vision was a bonfire, huge, roaring and smoking. Jim remembered scout camp, and his heart ached at the simple recollection.

From either side of the fire, more nuns appeared, each seemingly identical to the one who'd taken him from his bed. The walked until they stood in a line, three either side of the fire, arms by their sides, pale eyes seeming to stare through him.

“Well met, sisterhood.”

The voice from behind made Jim jump, and then he flinched again as the nuns in front of him intoned “Well met, sisters of The Flame.” They spoke in identical voices, in perfect unison. The effect was chilling.

Jim licked his lips, nerves warring with panic and rage, a sickening, toxic cocktail in his head and stomach. He waited for more, but the nuns simply stared at him. Waiting.

Jim closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he opened them. The nuns and the fire were still there.

Okay, then...

 

“What the fuck is this?”

He was surprised and a little proud at how even his voice came out.

The nun on the far left spoke. “We are the Sisters of The Flame.”

In the quiet that followed, Jim listened to the wood crackle and burn. The sound and smell had an almost hypnotic effect.

“The fuck does that mean?”

The second nun spoke. “We guard the sacred Flame of History. Our Order exists to preserve the fate of humanity, and prevent destruction by the forces of darkness.”

The laugh erupted out of Jim, there before he knew what was happening. He threw his head back and bellowed laughter, helpless before it, carried like a small paper boat in flood water. He thought of all the horror and misery he'd seen in the last seven years since Cuth'Ella's awakening, the carnage, the massacres, and he laughed, great tears rolling down his cheeks...

Eventually he got himself under control. The nuns had remained immobile throughout his outburst, blank stares in place, faces displaying no flicker of emotion.

Waiting for him to speak again.

“Preserving the fate of humanity? How's that shit working out?”

“Not well.” The third nun spoke from her place next to the fire. “Cuth'Ella was … unexpected. She was upon humanity before we had a chance.”

Jim recalled that bloody morning seven years ago. How the sun turned red, the sky black, the new, alien constellations shining a light that drove those who stared too long mad...

 “Then what fucking use are you? The time for intervention is a tad overdue, don't you think?”

The fourth nun spoke up. “The sacred flame provides the means to affect the course of history. We have been using it. To try and undo what has happened.”

Jim shook his head, as if to clear it. “The fuck?”

“Time travel, Jim.” The fifth nun turned slightly to look at him. Jim shuddered at her vacant stare.

“We use the flame to travel through time. Trying to put right what has gone wrong.”

“I.. but.. hang on, you've been at this shit for seven fucking years and we're still in this shithole? The fuck?”

“We can only make one attempt a night. This is all The Flame allows. And we cannot use it when Cuth'Ella is awake – she would sense the temporal distortion, locate The Flame, and extinguish it for good. So...”

“Got it, you've only had six tries. Still, six! Why the hell haven't you...”

The first nun spoke again. “We did not learn the cause of Cuth'Ella's awakening until late. That cost us. First we tried something simple – we went to the day of the awakening and tried to stop it. But we didn't know what caused it, and it happened so quickly we could not prevent it, However...”

“...we learned that the awakening had been caused by something on the website.” The second nun took over.

“Fucking Gingernuts caused this?”

“Yes. We learned on our first trip back that something you'd posted that day caused the awakening – one of the articles went viral, and the resulting surge of energy and focus somehow...”

“I don't fucking remember that.”

“Of course not – the internet shut down as soon as She awakened. There's been no electricity since. You could not know. Anyway, having established the cause was the site, we next visited you as a child. Hoping that the nun under the bed would scare you away from horror.”

Jim shook his head in disbelief. “Why in the fuck didn't you just fuckin' TELL me?!?”

The third nun spoke. “We tried that next. The visit at your mum's house. Unfortunately, you'd developed a phobia of our kind by then...”

“I wonder fucking why...”

“...and your wife intervened before we could deliver the full message – 'we are going to get you, fat boy, and we are going to suck your soul dry if you ever take up internet blogging.'”

Until that moment, Jim had held on to the notion that this was all some paranoid fever dream. With those words, the nun dispelled that feeling for good. None knew what Jim had thought he'd heard that day – he'd told no-one, not his wife, not his mother. Even when he blogged about it, years later, he'd left off the last part, some sick superstition preventing him from sharing the whole truth. And now...

“Don't you get it, you stupid cow? You fucking MADE me take up the blogging! I had to prove to myself I wasn't afraid, that I could conquer my fears!”

The nuns looked at each other, then back at Jim. The fourth one spoke. “That is regrettable.”

Jim didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or drop kick a nun, though the way his feet itched made the drop kick seem the most likely course of action.

“So, what was your next genius plan? Try and stop my wife from marrying me, maybe?”

Nun number four spoke up. “Wow. Good guess.”

“And how exactly did you manage to fuck that up?”

“We sent a drunk, semi famous person out to hit on her. But you beat him up.”

Jim felt his head start to ache with rage – his jaw clenched, blood pressure dangerously high. He thought about trying to articulate how badly they'd mangled that particular assignment, and decided he didn't have the self control to do it without commuting an act of bloodshed.

The fifth nun spoke. “Then we decided to try and kill Kit Power.”

Jim considered this carefully before speaking. “Why would you do that? Sure, he can be a bit irritating, a tad over enthusiastic, especially when he's had a couple, but...”

“We'd worked out it was one of his articles that triggered The Awakening.”

How in the fuck can they talk with capital letters like that? Jim thought with irritation. “Then what?”

“Well, we'd realised we had to try something different. Regroup. So we used the day to go back and research, try and figure out once and for all the root cause.”

“And?”

“We learned two things. The first was that we were almost out of time – that Cuth'Ella would sleep only twice before completing her assent and consuming the planet for all eternity...”

“No fuckin' pressure then...” Jim muttered under his breath...

“...and secondly, we learned the precise article that led to Cuth'Ella's awakening. One of Power's My Life In Horror articles. The blog was posted on the 31st of November, 2015. The details were sketchy, but we knew it involved an incident he'd witnessed outside of a Skunk Anansie concert in 2000.”

Skunk Anansie. Why the fuck did it have to be Skunk Anansie? Thought Jim.

 

The sixth nun spoke. “Since the article gave us a precise time/space location, we decided to target Kit there. We waited until after the show, knowing he would be taking the Docklands Light Railway home afterwards. Our plan was simple: get close to him while he waited at the platforms edge, and push him under the train.”

 

Jim had to admit to himself that sounded like a pretty good plan. Clean, simple, good chance of executing without being detected. However, he'd also detected a theme in the stories so far told... “And you fucked this up how?”

 

The flickering firelight made it impossible to be sure, but Jim thought he detected an extra shade of colour in the sixth nun's cheeks as she spoke again.

“We… pushed the wrong person.”

Jim nodded, face impassive.

“It was an accident! They all had long hair and leather jackets! We thought we were tracking the right guy, but… Well, anyway…”

“Anyway,” said the nun behind Jim, causing him to jump with surprise, “Kit saw the whole thing. Saw the man who looked very like him fall into the path of the train. It haunted him, scarred him deeply. And when he came to write for you, he knew that he’d have to reckon with that day.”

“But why that article? How did it trigger the awakening?”

“Memory of blood sacrifice, an innocent death, amplified by the temporal distortion around the event, compounded by the psychic energy generated as the article went viral…”

“So this whole sweaty pile of bollocks is your fucking fault?!?!” Jim felt the rage rising in him, like the urge to vomit, threatening to choke him.

The nuns, as one, hung their heads in shame. The voice from behind Jim spoke again. “It is... unfortunate. But we are where we are.”

“Aye, in deep fucking shit...”

“...and this is the last night of action. The final night that the Sacred Flame can be ridden into the past, and history may yet be saved. After tonight, Cuth'Ella sleeps no more, the Sacred Flame will be extinguished for good, and the end times will begin.”

Jim's mind was reeling from the info dump, the combination of excessive amounts of data and mind bending stupidity threatening shutdown. The rage kept him afloat.

“So why fuckin' me? Last chance, why call me in? The fuck am I supposed to do?”

The voice from behind him was cold.

“Prevent Ella's birth.”

Jim felt the rage in his gut turn from hot to cold.

“You must travel back to when your wife was pregnant, and then...”

The reverse roundhouse kick was quick and brutally executed, the product of years of muscle memory. The nuns voice was cut off mid syllable with a squeak, and Jim heard her hit the deck like a sack of twigs.

He turned and stood over her, fists clenched, trembling.

“That's my fucking daughter you're talking about!”

The nun struggled to talk, to breathe, but her crushed larynx prevented it. She flopped like a fish, spasming, then grew still. Jim watched the light fade from her eyes with cold satisfaction. Then he turned back to the group. They were even paler than before, he saw, but none had moved from their spot.

“So, what's plan B? Anyone?”

The nuns turned to each other, seeming to Jim to communicate without words, then turned back to him. The first nun spoke.

“There is no plan B. With Mother Superior dead, our plan lies in ruins anyway. Only she knew how to placate The Guardian. Without her...”

“The fucking what now?”

The second nun spoke. “The Guardian of the time-stream. When you pass through the Flame, you must face The Guardian.”

“So? Why is that a problem?”

“The Guardian represents the most facile, smug, power-hungry facets of humanity. He is vacuous and greedy, but devious and slick. A Lord of Lies, seeking power for it's own sake, a...”

“Yeah, yeah, gotcha, he's a bam-pot. So we placate him how exactly?”

The third nun spoke. “Only Mother knew how. Without her, the path to the past may be impassible anyway.”

“Not that it matters,” the fourth nun said. “If you are not prepared to...”

Jim took a single step forward, and the nun changed tack. “...that is, if our plan is not acceptable, then we have no other way to prevent what will happen.”

The fifth nun spoke. “Cuth'Ella will fully ascend. History ends tonight.”

“Bollocks!” Said Jim. “We've just got to figure out another way, that's all. Let me think...”

“The hour grows short, Jim!” The sixth nun said, a tone of panic in her voice. “If we are to use The Flame, we must do it soon!”

“All right, all right! Fuck's sake! Shut yer hole and lemmie think...” Jim closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. He could feel them all looking at him, those hideous milky whites staring without seeing...

“Wait, wait! That's fucking it, isn't it? You lot caused this mess, right? You actually dropped the kid in front of the train that led to the post that kicked off the whole fucking mess, right?”

One by one, the nuns nodded.

“That's it, then! I don't have to stop Ella, or Kit. I've gotta stop you fuckers!”

The nuns looked at each other again, then the first nun spoke. “That may work, Jim, aye, it may just. But you'll still have to get through the Flame to The Guardian...”

“Yeah, yeah. Better get on with it then. How does it work?”

The second nun spoke. “You'll need The Song in order to pass The Flame unharmed.” She paused, then seeing the look on Jim's face, hastily continued “It'll be the number one single from the week you're looking to get to. You need to sing the song while thinking of the location...”

“Dockland's Arena, aye? Where Slipknot shot that crappy live DVD?”

“You didn't like it? I thought it was pretty good.”

Jim stared back, brow furrowed. “You're a pretty fucking odd kind of nun, aren't you?”

The nun didn't reply. Jim looked around, and shrugged as he realised it had been kind of a dumb question.

“Okay, okay, so what was the song? I'm not much of a singer, to be honest...”

“Let's see, 2nd July 2000... ooh, lucky! It's Eminem, 'The Real Slim Shady!”

“Fucking lucky how?”

“Well, you don't have to sing. Just as well it didn't happen the day before, you'd have been stuck with Kylie...”

“Don't know the fucking words either way...”

“Don't worry, look, here's the lyrics, we've still got them from last year. Sorry, they are rather rude.”

Jim shook his head at the absurdity of the comment. “I'll fucking cope. So I just sing the song... then what?”

“Walk into the flame. Sing the song. Picture the destination. The Flame will do the rest. It will take you to The Guardian. After that, if you defeat him, you will arrive at your destination.”

Jim looked at the lyric sheet with disgust. Still, they were right, it could be worse...

“If you are successful, you'll need to sing the Home song. 'Heaven's Knows I'm Miserable Now.'

Fucking one way trip, then, Jim thought to himself.

 

“All right then, might as well get on with it.” He read the first lines and started walking towards the fire...

“May I have your attention please?” I feel like such an idiot! “May I have your attention please?”

Jim continued to recite from the sheet as he took slow, deliberate steps towards the fire.

“Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?”

The flames were bright enough to force Jim to squint, but the expected heat did not come. He could sense it in the air somehow, but it appeared not to reach him.

“I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?”

Just a couple of paces away now. His eyes watered with the effort of trying to read the printed words...

“We're gonna have a problem here...”

Jim stepped into the fire. The flames surrounded him, roaring, bright yellow. The coals glowed vivid red under his feet.

“Y'all act like you never seen a white person before,”

His breath came normally, the paper with the lyric printed on it unharmed by the surrounding heat.

“Jaws all on the floor, like Pam and Tommy just walked in the door...”

The fires surrounded him, all sense of place, time, direction fading.

“And started wooping her ass worse than before they first were divorced, throwing her over furniture...”

Jim tried to focus on reading, walking, and holding the image of that horrible building in his mind, the date 2nd July 2000. The inane lyrics fell from his lips, forgotten as soon as they were spoken, and gradually the flames around him faded, until he strolled through ash and into a long, dark tunnel. The sides were unreachable, but in the distance, he could see a small circle of light. He marched towards it quickly, eager to make it to the destination before he had to start reading this ridiculous 'song' again, and though it seemed maybe a mile away when he first saw it, the distance closed incredibly quickly.

He was perhaps twenty feet from the exit when the figure appeared.

Slightly portly, around six feet tall, male, balding. Jim couldn't

make out his features, as he was facing Jim, silhouetted by the light at the end of the tunnel. Jim could tell by the outline that he was wearing a suit.

“Let me guess – you're The Guardian?”

“That's right, yes. I'd like to offer you a brighter future.”

Jim froze in his spot. The voice was one he hadn't heard in years, but he recognised it instantly.

The figure spoke again. “Hope rather than despair. A future where we hold our destiny in our own hands, as free, proud people.”

It can't be! Thought Jim. It can't.

 

The figure turned his face to the side, and the light illuminated his profile.

“I hope I can count on your support, Jim.” Said Alex Salmond, smiling a smug smile.

Jim stared back, breathing slow and hard. “So you're The Guardian?”

“Aye.”

“ And I have to defeat you in single combat in order to go back to 2000?”

“Aye, you do.” The man looked relaxed. “But I don't want to fight you, Jim. I want to help you. I don't want to go back, to a past where we're governed from on high by an elite, out of touch...” The voice trailed off, uncertain, and the smile slowly slipped from Salmond's face.”Why are you grinning like that, Jim?”

Jim took a step forward. “Because,” He said, as he made his hands into fists and walked forward, eyes narrowing, “my shitty day just got a whole lot better...”

 #

Skunk Anansie were thirty minutes into their set when it happened. Skin was shrieking the chorus to 'Selling Jesus' when an explosion of blue light ripped above the centre of the stage, out of the middle of which fell two figures. They plummeted twenty feet, colliding with the singer and sending her flying off the stage and into the crash barrier with a sickening crunch.

Jim stood up, letting the bloody beaten corpse of Alex Salmond fall off him like a snake shedding skin. He stared from the stage out at the arena. Thousands of people stared back at him, frozen in shock. He looked down at the crash barrier, and saw what looked a lot like the lead singer of Skunk Anansie lying on the floor, head bleeding, neck at an unnatural angle.

Hmm. That's probably not good.

 

He looked back up, scanning the crowd frantically. Then he saw what he was looking for – a small gathering of wimples, on the edge of the crowd, near the back.

Gotcha!

 

Not pausing for breath, Jim broke into a run and dove from the stage into the crowd. There was an instant roar of appreciation, and the band struck up the song again, playing the riff without vocals. The crowd started thrashing, and Jim found himself bounced up and down, punched, flipped. His spine let it's discomfort at this treatment, along with the recent unexpected drop, very clear to Jim, and he roared with pain. The motion of the crowd was uneven, but it carried him in the right direction, the collection of black and white headgear moving closer and closer. Finally, he was roughly dropped, barely six feet away from them.

He moved without hesitation and struck without mercy. He broke the neck of the first nun from behind, wrenching her head to one side. She was dead before she hit the ground. The remaining nuns froze, and he took the opportunity to press the attack, felling the nun to his left with a vicious uppercut, then sending a spinning kick to the jaw of the nun on his right, dropping her instantly.

The remaining nuns moved out into a wider circle.

The nun Jim knew as Mother Superior spoke. “I don't know who you are, but you've made a powerful enemy here!”

“Oh, quit talking nunsence!” Said Jim, then winced at his own pun. Stick to the violence, big man, he thought, and leapt forwards.

The band stopped playing, finally realising that something terrible had happened to their lead singer, and the subsequent combat took place in an otherwise eerie silence. The nuns were fast, and surprisingly strong, but Jim had animal rage, years of instinct, and absolutely nothing to lose. With a few quick blows, the remaining nuns were dispatched, and lay in a broken circle at his feet.

Jim looked up, sweat running down his face. In front of him, a short, long haired young man stood. He was clean shaven, with a 'FUCK CEN***SHIP' T-shirt under a leather jacket. His blues eyes looked scared as they met Jim's, but he didn't look away, and to Jim's surprise, he broke the silence by asking “Fucking hell, man, what have you got against nuns?”

Jim looked at him calmly. “Long fucking story.” He looked down at the black and white and red all over bodies around him, then back at the man. “You don't happen to know the words to 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now', do you?”

The man laughed, a shaky sound. “Why in the fuck would I know that?”

Jim smiled ruefully, then looked down at the bodies.

They were starting to fade, becoming insubstantial. As he looked, the first nun he'd taken out vanished entirely. What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” The young man was pointing at Jim's hand, frowning. Jim looked and saw that was fading too. Just like Back To The Future Part II, thought Jim. I'm old Biff from the deleted scene. I've done it. I've changed the past.

Jim looked back up at the man, and suddenly it hit him – the hair was longer, thicker, there were no glasses or beard, but... “You're Kit, aren't you?”

The young man's shocked face was answer enough. Jim nodded. “All this is kind of your fault, you know.”

“Wh.. what?” Kit was pale, shaking, clearly terrified.

“Well, sort of. Not really. But, as this is all going to disappear soon anyway...”

Jim brought his foot forward as hard as he could. It was still accelerating when his bare toes collided with Kit's testicles with a very satisfying crunch.

“That's for making me read fucking Eminem lyrics, ya bawbag!”

Then Jim's legs vanished, and he fell to the ground. He held his hand up in front of his face, and watched it fade, along with his vision.

Jim died.

#

The clicking sound snapped Jim out of his momentary trance. What had he been thinking about? He couldn't remember. He brought up his Facebook page and opened the message from Kit.

28/11/15 : 00:10

Hey Jim,

Sorry this one has been so late – I've just had so much to do on the writing front and work is mental. Anyway, I know I always say you don't have to run it, but I mean it this time – you REALLY don't have to run this one. It's... beyond bizarre. Most of it didn't happen for starters. It's just I had the WIERDEST dream last night, and when I woke up... this was in my head. Anyway, I've attached it, so let me know and see what you think – personally I'm not too sure, I think it's a bit too post-modern maybe? If you don't want it, I guess I'll take a crack at that Lost Boys article I keep putting off.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Kit

Attachment: MliH Jim Dies FINAL.doc

Jim frowned, cursor hovering over the 'open' button. Then he checked the time. Gone midnight. That last one had run to four and a half thousand words, and he really had other things to be getting on with...

Fuck it, thought Jim, I'll read this shit later.

 

He turned off the monitor and left the room.

END

KIT POWER 

Somebody wants answers.


North Devon, England. 1995. A born-again revival meeting in a public building. The usual mix of the faithful, the curious, and the desperate. And one other – an atheist suicide bomber. He's angry. He wants answers. And if God doesn't come and talk to him personally, he's going to kill everyone in the building...

Kit Power lives in the UK and writes fiction that lurks at the boundaries of the horror, fantasy, and thriller genres, trying to bum a smoke or hitch a ride from the unwary.

In his secret alter ego of Kit Gonzo, he also performs as front man (and occasionally blogs) for death cult and popular beat combo The Disciples Of Gonzo, www.disciplesofgonzo.com

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