Candiru – 1 – Emergence

I like B-Movies.

A lot.

Probably more than ‘actual’ movies. To this end my effort in the great ‘Stuporcollider Literary Challenge’ will hopefully feel a little like the b-movie. Perhaps with less cheesy dialogue but who knows.

I like Emo.

A bit.

But as the token emo of the group I have to ‘rep for my hood.’ Or whatever it is the kids are saying these days. To this end I will probably have drawn out introspectives from the somewhat emo protaganist. Bear with them, there will be killings aplenty right after.

Ultimately, it’s going to be an allegory for attitudes towards sex, relationships, promiscuity and gender roles, through the time honoured medium of monster gore fest.

So without further adieu, I give you Chapter One of:

Candiru

Emergence

Gutteral.

That’s the only way she can describe how he sounds. No trace of the jovial lilt she loves, it’s all been replaced by the low rumblings that now emanate from him.

“Please Bek.” He sounds like he’s in pain. Struggling to fight. “Go.”

Wisps of terror start to tug at her, pulling her all the way awake. She sits up sharply, her unfamiliar surroundings adding to her ill feeling.

She remains sat upright, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the blankets of darkness around them; all the time aware of his frantically increasing movements.

“Jon? Honey, what’s wrong?”

In reply he lets out another animal cry, his back arched in a grotesque parody of a spine. As she watches she’s almost certain she can see a ridge begin to form just below his neck.

She feels bubbles of panic start to rise, threatening to engulf her; confusion and anxiety eating at her. She looks around the room, her night vision starting to give her focus, and sees her scattered clothes discarded at the side of the bed closest to her. They remind her of the night before, a night that had seemed to take so long to arrive but had been worth every moment of nervous waiting; moments that now feel so far away.

His foot brushes hers, startling her from her reverie. His foot feels unnaturally hot against her skin and stirs her to movement.

She slides her feet slowly over the side of the bed, and stands. As she extends one toned leg into her underwear she glances back at Jon. What she sees terrifies her. Tendrils of steam and smoke drift upwards from his prone form, his back a writhing, fluid, mass of ridges.

She’s acutely aware that she is in danger, not least of fascination, but it’s just a fleeting thought that’s replaced as quickly as it arrived by concern for her boyfriend, but she can do little more than watch as he starts to lift himself from the bed.

She steps back involuntarily, her legs tangled in her underwear she falls with a crash and a curse. The Jonthing’s head snaps up and slowly it turns to face her.

She looks up into the twisted visage of her boyfriend looming over her and feels complete revulsion wash over her. There is nothing that she recognises; just a domino mask of pain and hunger.

She tries to scramble to her feet but her sweaty palms slip on the laminate flooring. “Please…” she starts to say but the Jonthing stops her in her tracks. Its voice is choral, as though it is not just one voice but many.

“Thank you mother.”

Candiru by Gazz Hayes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Tags: B-Movie, B-Novel, campaign, Candiru, Emo, Literary Adventure 2010, writing

The Bleeping Bleeper

So I’m sat there in the wonderful silence of a just emptied office.

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” says my phone and I ignore it. It’s probably just Vodaphone telling me I’ll get free texts for an hour in February if I spend another 43p on ring tones or some such.

[Five Great British minutes pass]

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” erhhhh, I sigh. I’m trying to get some open-eyed sleep here. I glance to my phone and it’s glowing it’s little flashy “I have something for you” glow. “Leave me alone world”, I think out load and continue to ignore.

[A further five minutes go by]

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” I take a cleansing breath, sit up a little straighter and turn to the handset. The screen is progressively lighting up then darkening out as I stare. “Oh well” I think, “it could be a dirty text…”.

I take hold of the phone, closing my eyes wearily as I bring it closer, flicking the screen up with my thumb, revealing the keypad beneath and unlocking the myriad delights that lie within.

I pause for a second then open my eyes. “Low Battery” it says on the half-dark screen. The closing down animation begins and blingy-blongs at me as the phone dies.

Placing the silver now brick aside, I close my eyes and hold my head in my hands thinking about the genius that decided a cell phone’s final resources would be best spent on bleeping and flashing the technicolour death rattle I just experienced. Probably the same wonder-kint that devised the system that sent me 17 e-mails while I was on holiday, to inform me that I had too many e-mails in my inbox.

I raise my head, a solitary tear trickling down my cheek with the final realisation of why they’re actually called cell phones…

Tags: bleep, bleepy, cell, Emo, mobile

Love is an Addiction

Poets carve a life from it; musicians often try to evoke the feeling; bookshops have whole sections devoted to it and websites are there for people that don’t have it. Even Plato said that ‘the god of love lives in the state of need’, and it can feel that way, like a need for water and food, so hard to ignore, but what is love?

Love is an addiction, beginning with cravings, growing with tolerance levels leaving you wanting more and more. Once the drug is gone we feel withdrawal and occasionally relapse. A song comes on the radio and you are hit with memories and feelings you would rather keep buried.

The same region of the brain that responds to cocaine is at work in people that are in love, an area called the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) near the base of the brain responsible for our reward system, part of what is termed the ‘Reptilian Core’ releases dopamine in response to the subject of our emotions. This is why we can’t help but think of another; or as an 8th century Japanese poet put it ‘My longing has no time when it ceases’.

A study by Helen Fisher of MRI scans of people who had recently been dumped had some interesting findings; the area associated with intense romantic love was firing strongly; the feelings of love are as strong when we can’t have the object of our desires. Terence Thereaux put it better; ‘The less my hope the hotter my love’. Similarly the area responsible for gambling and calculating odds, gains and losses was active; a likely source of the ‘what went wrong?’ questioning that comes after a break-up. It’s not just flowery prose to say that love is lifes greatest prize. Finally the area responsible for the sense of attachment to another was active; We just can’t get that person out of our head.

A questionairre of American college students contained the questions ‘Have you ever been rejected by someone you really loved?’ and ‘Have you ever dumped anyone who really loved you?’. Over 95% of both men and women answered yes to both – there is no escaping the pain associated with love. Emily Dickenson said ‘Parting is all we need to know of hell’.

So why do we love one person over another? Studies have shown that we generally love someone of similar intelligence, looks and socio-economic background but that doesn’t really explain it. If we were at a party full of people matching these criteria why would we not be attracted to everyone there? There must still be an x-factor; something that just ‘clicks’. Will science ever find it? Will that destroy the magic of love?

Tags: Emo, Introspective, Love, Questions