Chiick Adee - Spike Rider

"She is probably better known for her heavenly looks, rather than the fact she is the world renowned Spike Rider. Today we are happy to have a live interview with Chiick Adee. For all of you who have been in a post apocalyptical coma for the past one thousand years, Spike Riding is a race. However all the riders have all manner of Spikes, hence the name, strapped, taped or bolted to and from every possible place on their bodies to make sure they have the best possible chance to defeat all other riders they are racing, almost forgot that they are no rules and no come backs. The old adage, “What happens in the race stays in the race” was probably coined for this exact thing.

Chiick, or Miss Adee is running late as her call time was forty two minutes ago and now my programme is also going to run late. To be honest with you, I will probably stay here until she arrives; after all I am not going to cancel her. Sixteen Hundred and Sixty four confirmed kills in her last seventy seven races. She is about as hard and as ruthless as they come and I am completely frightened of her, so I am going to need to pad this until she arrives in the studio. If you have any questions that you would like me to ask her please send them into our interlink 6 address you can see on the screen just below me here. This is Jim Inkbutt in the I6 studios back in twenty minutes after the news and weather from Stacy Hungtaft and Fullman Nicefella."

Jim Inkbutt spent the next four and a half hours making small talk with listeners showing replay footage of past races from all over the world and some of the best bits from the off world racing scene, when he heard in his ear phone the words he had been waiting 5 hours to hear. "Chiick Adee is in the building and is on her way up to the studio", "Ladies, Gentlemen, children and grandparents other world beings and of course everyone else not covered by this introduction, I have just heard that she is just minutes away from the studio so we will wrap up her best of digital clips and start the roll we prepared for her entrance, Play DV" Jim said.

The DV played in the background and a camera outside the studio caught sight of her from the stair well. Jim hadn’t actually been given the correct information because Chiick Adee was in her full racing kit and was making her way up the outside of the building smashing every armoured window on the way up. The camera followed her as she caused heavy destruction throughout the glazed building and effortlessly threw herself from the side of the building onto the 88th floor landing stage right outside the studio. The camera switched to inside the studio and Jim was looking out towards the entrance not knowing her entrance was right behind him.She landed on the platform and Jim continued to look in the wrong direction until the bullet proof and sound proof arched sliding doors behind his seating arrangement broke into a billion little bullets flying through the air in every direction.

Jim lunged forward under his table and cameras moved and followed the action until she entered the studio, stamped the three foot long spikes strapped to her feet into the studio flow, followed by the six foot long spikes attached to her arms and she unclasped the restraints and dropped onto the sofa next to where Jim was originally sat. She bent down and looked under the small table by her feet and said it was OK for him to come out. Being the professional that he is Jim turned to the camera, brushed himself down and sat on the seat next to her. He looked into the camera for everyone to be addressed and all he said was, "If you are not watching this is 3D vision surround please see our sponsors pages for the greatest deals, then watch again directly from the set if for nothing else to see this spike clad beauty in everything she is offering us right now. Call me the second luckiest man in the world because in all honesty I am."

Chiick said, "Why the second?" and Jim just said, "You are married and that man gets to sleep next to you at night and only other people’s imaginations can make up anything else." Chiick turned a funny crimson colour and coyly said, "Jim shut up, you are making me blush."

Jim started the Interview with the most obvious question, “So Chiick, how did you get your name?”

“Well Jim, I am only guessing with this one, but I probably got it the same way you got yours, my parents gave it to me.” Chiick said.

“Chiick, how did they come up with that one?”

“Well Jim, they were both farmers and apparently on the day I was born a little baby chicken hatched to an old chicken that had never laid an egg before and my father was just going to kill it for the pot and I was stopped because of me.”

There was a distance alarm that started ringing but Jim and Chiick had a little giggle, “See this is what happens when you break all the windows in the building.” Jim said and continued, “Why did you do that?”

Chiick smiled, “Well Jim, that was all a publicity stunt, as you probably know there is an otherworld race being held here on earth in a one week’s time and the publicity alone that is received from this stunt will pay for the repairs on this building let alone the exposure we will get too. What do you think of my work clothes?” Chiick stood up and the automated cameras followed her, zoomed in on her and zoomed out to show a full profile, she had leather spiked suit that look as though it had been painted on. The spikes that came out around the front of the body were long and sharp whilst the ones on the back were shorter and fatter.

That alarm was still ringing in the distance but was being helped along by a deep thumping noise. All of a sudden the all of the automated cameras moved and repointed automatically over Chiick and Jims shoulders. On every monitor in the studio and in the gallery a face appeared in full screen. Green squares swarmed over the image picking out one of two hundred and thirty six defining features that the human face has, modern face recognition uses more and more points to help define bone structure as well as facial features to see through face lifts and restructuring. A new siren started to sound in the studio now and every automated weapon the studio was fitted with, trained all bullets on the figure on the balcony. The sharp crack of a bullet was heard for a split second, Chiick dodged to one side and saw the bullet propel Jim back and a mist of blood remained in the air following the wake of flying, limp body.Everything seemingly moving in slow motion, Chiick pulled her communication unit from a small pouch around her waist and attached it to the leather ribbons that weaved around the back of her head. Permanently on the other end of her headset is her agent and as the studio armaments fired in a massive explosion of bullets she said, “Mark upload my DNA to the I6 studio computers I don’t want one of these useless guns to hit me in the cross fire. Also contact the lawyers and get me a no prosecution pass on this. Get the streaming provider to activate the race cameras and hack the I6 camera array and more importantly get in touch with all of our sponsors and sell the rights.”

A Crackle back on the other end of the line said, “DNA uploaded” Chiick ran and jumped into her hand and foot spikes and they automatically detected her unique signature and clamped in place around her arms and legs. “You have the pass, the stream will be running in 2 minutes, we have Gladstone Hooter online mow and he wants exclusive rights on the whole event. 150 million he is paying.”

Chiick said, “Take nothing less than 200 million, he has the money in his shoe.”

Out on the landing stage the torrent of bullets hit the shields set out in front of the invader, he hardly moved but was being forced inch by inch back towards the edge of the stage. Chiick saw the online light appear in her goggles and looked out towards the shielded man walking slowly out on her spikes she edged closer. The unknown attacker was unable to return fire whilst his shield was engaged so Chiick made a quick charge. Seeing her come he threw down his shield generator and jumped. Chiick made it up to the edge of the landing stage and looked over to see an old fashioned parachute falling to the earth. However her attention was taken by movement in her peripheral vision and all up and around the outside of the building were literally hundreds of spiked attackers making their way up the building and Chiick said into her headset, “Mark, get Gladstone Hooter up to 500 million and if I come out of here alive I will dance totally naked in one of his Gentleman’s lounges.

Chiick stood right at the very edge overlooking the 88 floor drop and thought for a short time, the automatic camera from the studio followed her every move and hovered around her and out in thin air getting the full picture. Chiick threw herself off the platform and plummeted down the side of the building, her acceleration was increase substantially when she pulled herself into the sleekest high dive shape, face down hands right out in front of her and the spike attached to her wrists sticking out further like the tines on a fork. She heard over her headset, “Chiick, six hundred and ten million and he has booked you in on his four hundred thousand capacity other world lounge the day after tomorrow. Apparently the ticket sales are almost sold out and this has only been aired for 6 minutes.”

Hearing this she said hopefully, “Are they going to supply a costume?” Mark replied, “No negotiation on a costume. And it will be beamed live via I6 and every other medium on subscription to approximately 47 billion viewers.”

“I had better not get injured then, had I?” she said. She stuck her right arm out until she made contact with the building and then hit the first opponent directly through the protective helmet he or it was wearing the other end of her spike came out of its right foot, a quick jerk of her arm the sharp spike came out sideways. Her first contact fell through the air and took out anyone its way. She used her left arm on the building to slow herself down and moved forcefully sideways slashing each time a limb wash free of the movements. Spike riders fell out in front of her, a large explosion came from the sixty fourth floor just above her, making her way up she re-entered the building there and stood for a few seconds watching as the Spike riders on the other side of the building smashed their way through and onto the mezzanine section of the 5 or so floors above and below. Camera hover and automatic weaponry fire thousands of rounds of ammunition every second. Riders were hit and some knock back by the impact on their shields.

Fortunately it is not possible to have a complete shield as you can only use the shield to cover a one hundred and eighty degree circle around the emitter, some came to the party equipped with a front and rear emitter. Chiick saw that one of the riders had two shields defending him from the fire on both sides. She swiftly worked around the walls and with every more either killed, maimed or knocked anything in her way. Taking advantage of the opponents shielding she hit the weak point all around the edges of the shield just where they should meet and managed to remove a leg, stab he spike through an arm and as the rider flailed in pain and blood gushed from the leg stump she threw a left arm straight through his side armour and he fell. The automatic fire trained on his still warm and moving body booted the shielded and dead rider around like an old fashioned football.

Now running at speed she used the unique sharpness of her own spikes to jump and hang from the concrete structure sometime turning upside down and removing rider’s one after the other and hitting shielded ones so they fell down the open space that runs the entire height of the internal structure. In her goggles she saw the viewing figures gradually grow and grow until they hit 94.1 million, pressing a finger to the side of her goggles she turned off the display and started to run, very fast and impaled a first rider and then a second and third rider, throwing both arms to her side quickly she released the freshly dead in the quickest way, through their middles as if being split open from the middle to one side was not enough of an injury, as they fell she stamped her foot spikes through their bodies making sure the job was complete.

She jumped from the mezzanine and landed on a rider on the opposite floor and grabbed it in a bear hug impaling it on at least thirty two spikes from her body armour and without releasing it she flung herself out of the exterior window and dropped the rider into the nothingness below.Chiick impaled both her feet in glorious 3d vision through both lenses of a hovering camera and pushed off back into the building and just stopped an arm and spike width from the edge, she positioned a leg as a pivot point and slowly started to twist herself like a gyroscope using the wall for leverage her free leg was out and down and both arms at different heights and as the now grouping riders climbed the outside they were mutilated by rotating hell that Chiick Adee could be mistaken for. One after another the body parts of the climbing riders were disposed of by shear force and the automatic fire the building security.

The onslaught gradually died off and Chiick slowed down her rotation until she was stood catching her breathe looking down over edge and down over 50 floors. She said into her headset, “Mark have the police drones got my DNA, if not you have better get it to them very, very quickly” and she started to run into the heart of the building. The bullets tore big holes into the walls and floors around her, red lasers swiped around her and holes appeared in the laser wake. Jumping and falling from mezzanine to mezzanine, she lost her footing and fell landing hard inside an office suite selling the very latest in how security camera and automated weaponry. The outside wall exploded with 8 inch holes as drone artillery fired on her location, they must be using heat sensors to approximate her location. Eight spikes tore through the block walling over to her left and then the wall disappeared as it was pushed through by four riders until a blaze of crimson filled the air as the drones picked off each of them in less than a second. Chiick jumped up and exiting through the new opening she hit the sprinkler riser pipe and drowned her location in fire killing cool water and the bullets around her stopped and over the sound of the rushing water all went quiet immediately around her. Stepping out of the water for a few seconds she said, “Mark, my DNA upload where are we?” And Mark replied, “Going through now give it another 20 seconds, by the way we now have nine point six billion viewers.”

Just inches from her head the wall behind Chiick gained an extra hole; the heat from her exposed head had attracted a drone. The shock of it made her react by running and performing a dive over the edge of the mezzanine and she fell uncontrolled right down the centre of the I6 news corporation building. Bullets holes appeared following her fall, she hit steel cables holding up advertising banners when she hit the third cable the old fashioned vinyl banner caught onto the spike binding on her left arm and she was jerked violently around just feet from the ground floor reception. Swiping her other spike over her head released the last clasp on the banner and she fell feet first onto the floor and debris rained down on her head.

She let out a big sigh and before she could say anything to Mark she looked around and found she had landed in amongst a large accumulation of riders, she took a deep breath and as she started to make a move to begin the fight a massive torrent of bullets came from everywhere and every remaining rider, exploded as the armaments fired from everything now inside and outside was unleashed down on them. Mark said in her ear, “DNA uploaded to everything, 16 billion viewers” she wiped a large amount of blood from her face and took in her surroundings.

Two days later on the stage at Gladstone Hooters Gentleman’s lounge Chiick appeared on stage in nothing but a smile and a massive pay check.

Questioning My Mortality

I had never actually questioned my mortality until the day I managed to fall down the stairs.  Over the years, I must have taken the top step down thousands of times.  You see, just so I don’t sound like a big buffoon, from the upstairs landing we have a single step down to the top step of the stairway then you have the option of, down step by step to the ground floor, or to an adjacent step up into the upstairs bathroom.

It was the unsteady navigation of that top step, the three foot square top step that you have to cross to go to the toilet in the blackness of the early hours where the only light is the shrouding orange emanating from the street lights and penetrating the edges of ill-fitting curtains in the spare room.  As some of you reading  this will be able to relate to, the early hours visit to the toilet something most have only the latter years to thank.

That step, the life changing step, 3.14am the bleary eyed trot down the landing, bouncing from wall to wall and unhooking the baby gate, we still have up for the grandchildren.  Then it happened, and I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced this before, that pivotal moment when everything seems to stand still and you are able to stop and purvey everything, not sure if it is a psychological anomaly, you think this has actually happened but in reality you have had a moment of pure open mindedness when you take in immaculate details to be recalled remember it in extreme detail later.

But this is what happened to me, the gate swung open and when it clanged against the wall, everything stopped, this just coincided with the very instant I fell.  As I came out of my momentary trance I lost my footing on the top step went over painfully on my ankle, the pain was instant and bad, but didn’t last very long as I fell and landed on my shoulder on half way down the stairs and the pain as my shoulder joint separated was definitely worse, and my entire body flipped or bounced, you choose, and landed on my back with my head on the bottom step.  Surely when I was found by the paramedics it probably looked like I had decided to fall asleep there.

My sight was blurred and cloudy and everything looked black and white, I am not sure why I was able to see anything at all, it was the middle of the night and I distinctly remember turning the lights off and locking all the doors.  A routine I have been serious about for many years, I am getting on now and the scare stories you hear about on the TV about the elderly being preyed on by opportunists and downright scoundrels.   I know of a few people who are a little more remote than I am who have had intruders, one of who had been injured in an attack but the rest stayed in their rooms and let it happen.  I have been vigilant since then and make sure my safety is paramount.  I have my son and grandchildren to think about and being seventy eight years old means I am unable to do a great deal of things I had previously been able to.

A black blurred shape came slowly into my field of vision and I thanked whoever was looking after this disassembling world for that company.  The shape in what vision I had was like seeing a silhouette through dirty net curtains and all I could think of was the hooded children that went around terrorizing everyone, this was my fear of the opportunists taking advantage of my situation.

A warm and wet unwelcome feeling spread across my pelvis and pooling around my lower back as my bladder gave up the fight and I urinated.  The same feeling was across my shoulders and head that because it was elevated knew couldn’t be related.  It must be blood from my head and shoulder causing this.

The shadow came in closer to me and took up most of what I was able to define, I said, “Are you the paramedics?” and the soft voice replied in a very relaxing manner, “I am not your paramedic but I will help you whilst they are coming.”

That voice had already started to relax me, in the few seconds since I first saw the person I had a comforting feeling and the pain was subsiding.  He kept me relaxed by asking me questions that kept my mind lucid and my thoughts away from what I had just done.  To keep me in this comfortable state he asked me to tell him about my earliest memory.

I had this seemingly long conversation about that day, it was my fifth birthday, a mere seventy three years ago, and I remember this as though I was reliving it every day.  Me and my best friend, I can’t remember his name, not everything in this memory is clear, went outside on a bright clear day in the beginning of October with balloons, the remnants of the early year’s party that had just finished.  We walk to the field next to our housing row and kicked loose stones out of the farmers dry stone wall, as we peered over the top we could see the beautiful landscape of the Snowdonia mountain range in the distance, the wind was blowing straight towards it and we had a balloon race to see whose could reach the summit of Mount Snowdon first.

As clear as a summer’s day the balloons were taken, but although the mountains were about thirty miles away as the crow flies we watched then fly, taken on the wind and far away, we were convinced that we could see the balloons even after they had actually disappeared from sight.  All the way to the summit we had a neck and neck race and I distinctly remember seeing the balloons hit the summit.  My balloon had just won the race by a nose.  We were giddy school children at that point.  I was jumping around at my victory and he was kicking his feet in the uncut grass at the foot of the wall with his head slumped. 

I even told my companion about the night we had spent as a family just a few days after my birthday when we found out my father, an armorer in the RAF, had been posted to Hong Kong, BFPO1, and we had out an old battered atlas to find out where it was and was convinced I knew where it was, but doe to my lack of formal education at five years of age, I couldn’t even spell it let alone know how to use an atlas.  I think my guess was a few thousand miles away from where we were going to be spending two years of our lives.

My companion said after it was obvious that my side of our conversation had stopped, “So you lived in Hong Kong, I have been there myself on a number of occasions.” This baffled me even more, as to the identity of the strange silhouette I was exchanging these polite details with.  “Whereabouts were you?”

Again, bearing my soul in order to take my mind away from the pain and uncomfortable situation I wished so badly to be out of I said, “We were in the New Territories, a few miles up the road from RAF Sek Kong.  The mountain all round covered in forests and beautiful greenery.  My reminiscence of that time spilled out of me, watching the authorities chasing down and capturing rabid dogs, being stuck in school whilst the golf ball size hail stones fell dangerously from the sky, the Christmases when Father Christmas talked to us on the military telephone, one of those big green one you see so often in the American war films.  He was also delivered to us not only on the back of a green fire engine on the run up but also in a big green military helicopter onto our school sports field during our end of year party.  That was what defined the magic that completed the Christmas in the UK forces in a tropical client.

“What else?” he said, wanting me to keep my mind occupied and away from this pain, life affirming pain that your wishes could not give to your most dire enemies.  “One of the things that has a burning memory for me is the time, I must have been about five or six years old, I woke up and told my mum about a dream I had.  It was a vivid and perfect dream, one of those dreams when you wake up and its reality actually seems real in every detail, mannerism and fact.  Your eyes open and for a minute you do not believe you are lying in the same bed you went to sleep in, but have actually woken up in the bed of your dream.  It was a man, a grey haired old man stood in front of an old sand stone building.  It wasn’t until after I had told her about this dream, after hearing the tale I told my mother she told me that seven years before my birth my great uncle Mac had died, an elderly Scottish Gentleman who lived in a sand stone town house next to a river.  He was silver haired and wore very distinctive black glasses that I managed to describe to her making the dream all the more real.

A sudden burst of pain shot through my shoulder and I could feel the creep of fresh warmth, around the base of my throat, the warmth of my blood pooling in that little indented area and then overflowing and running onto my chest and down under my arms, “Stay with me?” my companion said, “Tell me, you are still in your childhood, what more” I screwed up my face as another bout of pain shot through the vertebra in my neck and into my head, “focus on me not the pain,”

“Have we met before?” I said, and in reply the man said, “I have one of those faces that everyone thinks they have met before.” I don’t know it I actually smiled at that statement or if it was in my head, “You have lived a long life and you only seem to be talking about the beginning of it, carry on and focus on those things and on me, you will not notice the pain.”

“We were living in the New Territories in Hong Kong when I had that dream, it was a great place for a child to grow up, this was back when Hong Kong was a part, albeit a rented part, of the United Kingdom.  I took my very first photograph, I still remember it, they were building a new play park, on our complex and I could see it from the balcony of the apartments three or four floors up from mine.  The was a slide, it was large and must have had twenty steps to get to the top and a long stainless steel, brand new run down to the bottom.  I photographed it, a landscape that was completely dominated by this slide and the brown soil that surrounded it.  The supports and steps were painted a fresh orange colour and the hand holds all the way up, were painted sky blue.  Although after my dad got them developed he ripped it into small pieces I can still see that picture clearly in my head.  I can still feel the disappointment of see it ripped without care into small pieces.  That park dominated the time spent in the Orient, it was the site me and my brothers watched the authorities chasing down and capturing rabid dogs, we saw the trucks taking away bananas from the plantation not far off, and more truck bringing in loads of toys for storage for the refugees someway off.”

I drifted for a little while not into the darkness around me but into memories for my childhood.  The memories bounced around into different ages, starting school after school depending on where we had been posted to, the horror stories other child would tell me about certain teachers in the school in Scotland, the horror stories about abandoned builds and shelters that were used during one war or another although I never heard of most of the places actually being involved in any wars.

When my memory cleared the comfort of the man’s voice was telling me to, “Stay with me” and I came out of it and he said, “So you were stuck up a cherry tree with a bad feeling in your belly.” I had seemed to jump forward in time a few years, but did I speak it out loud, I don’t remember saying anything but had this conversation vanished from my head because of the amount of pain I was in.

“So you have danced on the same stage as Madonna then, that is impressive!” he said, my memories jumped another 15 years, I used to tell people this to get a rise out of them, to make me seem more interesting than I was, few questioned me about it, but in essence it was true, Madonna appeared in the Hacienda in Manchester in the nineteen eighties and whilst in college in Manchester I danced on the very stage she had, the just happened to be 10+ years between the two moments.  I often found by telling people things and omitting pertinent pieces of information made the story into a conversation that could make more of what it was, rather than the gloomy boredom that ultimately came out of stark silence.

Our conversation continued in the same vein, when I say conversation I don’t know if I actually said anything, I have no recollection of saying anything at all.  It felt like everything we talked about was in a different order to the way it happened, and for some reason, I started talking about a time when I was eight years old, a friend and me went sledging next to our school most of the others there had the latest toboggan or shiny plastic sledge, but we had an old hand made, heavy monstrosity that made me a little embarrassed but the end goal was to sit down and slide very fast down a steep hill.  A small laugh came from my comforter and he said, “Tell me more.” So I did, but there was an air of confusion in my head, why would he be so fascinated by a children’s story all about sledging, but I continued and told him how it was cut short by me being cut off at the ankles by an unstoppable sledge that hit me hard and sent me in a complete somersault landing hard and barrel rolling down the hill to the very bottom.  The thought of the pain I remembered made my current pain rear its ugly head again.

“Calm yourself, keep focused on me, you have told me a great deal but you are not telling what I believe is your happiest memories.  Think of those and tell me.”

I thought, it didn’t take me too long to put things straight in my head, “September 19^th 2008, this was the day my wife came out of the toilet in the first house we brought.  She was holding the dry end of a pregnancy test; we had been trying for six years after being married for nine.  We looked at the little window and within seconds, the little pink lines appeared and I distinctly remember saying to her, as the tears started to flow from her eyes, that the instructions said to wait three minutes.  We waited three minutes, then after five we were still watching it and after thirty minutes of rechecking we both decided that it wasn’t going to change and that we were actually going to have a baby.  And as all good news is not good news until someone else confirms it she did another test.  Same process, the lines appeared almost immediately and then we waited and waited and phoned the doctors, and talked to our GP.  This is also the wonderful man who had referred us to a specialist for the fertility treatment and subsequently talked us through other options, all he had to say to us on this occasion was, “Congratulations.” Through our happiness we neglected to see what a major change this was going to be to our lives, we endured a full nine months of morning sickness, post natal depression, a vigorous post natal infection and a massive amount of sleep loss.

His first tooth at three months, his first unassisted steps just before his first birthday, first day at school which was hard for my wife to leave him for such a large amount of time.  Birthday parties, his need to continually eat hotdog sausages, watch Sonic and Super Mario on YouTube, illnesses.  Heart breaking illnesses allergic reactions, swimming, his addiction to the beach and going in the sea, although he said it was a river.  His first day in high school, watching emotionally as he walked to the bus stop with a back pack that looked too big for him and a blazer that made him look little and vulnerable.

The pain rose again in my head, the blood pounding harder making me feel both hot and cold at the same time, the increasing size of the blood pool under my neck and back was more and more obvious to me.  The click of fingers was rapping at my consciousness, as I remembered the last eight days just before my mother died which was when I was twenty six and only 3 months after my wedding, I had always told my mum I would dance with her on my wedding day.  A sort of final gesture as she became only my mother and not the main woman in my life, but she couldn’t she had a sore hip, I thought it was her sciatica playing up, but I wasn’t to know that two months later she would be taken into hospital only to leave to go to a hospice to spend her last eight days of life lying medicated until finally her race had been run.

“Ah her they come” my companion said, as I heard elephant like footsteps descending the stairs behind me.  “Dad, oh no dad.” A sudden urgency took ahold of his voice as he shouted for his wife to call an ambulance, “What took you so long?” I asked him, “You woke me when you were walking down the corridor I heard you fall and came running.”

I weakly said, “What is the time?” and he told me it was 3.14 am, but that was the time I got up to go to the toilet, “But I have been here hours, this man has been keeping me calm.”

“What man” he said and I replied, “I am starting to see a little clearer now”

My companion said over the words my son was saying, “And the time is now here for you to repay the debt you have held for the past forty years”

I said weakly, “Yes we have met, I knew I recognized you.”

He said, “Yes we have, we shouldn’t have though, you have seen something a rare few in all time have”

I said, “As a child, my son” I turned my head to as best as I could to look at my son, “fell down the stairs, he was mortally hurt and you were hunched over him.”

He said, “I don’t hunch, I am more graceful than to hunch.”

“Yes, I asked you to spare him and you obliged me.”

“Now I am here to get what you owe me.”

 “Not him, please.” I begged.

He Said, “No not him, you have had a good and full life and others thought you were better in this world until your time.”

“Thank you”

At this he disappeared and from the gloom, another figure walked beautifully towards me and held out her hand, my wife had come back to me and the lifelong promise I made to her I can now keep.

“I promise I will be yours for life and whatever is after this one, you are my soul mate and I will be yours for all eternity.”

Toads in the Road at Night

Turning left from Old Road Bwlchgwyn at the Moors Inn onto the road that takes you over the Llandegla moors, a road which I travel everyday going to and from work, a sign I see every day shone brightly in my head lights. Toads in the Road at Night, this time there were toads in the road, they were all over the road and something I wasn’t expecting. Because this stretch of road adhered to the national speed limit of sixty miles an hour and because I am supposed to use this speed guidance as a ceiling not a target or even, as was this case, something I can excessively beat, I put my foot down. Tonight like any other night the road was deserted, really everyone was either in their own homes or out at a Halloween party and this is where I was travelling back from. 

I was the designated driver, my turn always seems to come on a day when there is a celebration or a weekend, never on a Tuesday. 23.33 flicked over on the back lit, standard green display when the front end of the car started to slide out and as the adrenalin pumped the wheels caught the road surface just as quickly as they lost it. It was a dry night and the moon was surrounded by every star visible in the northern hemisphere twinkling like a sheet of cheap Christmas lights. Gaining control, the wheels straightened and I let out a deep breath and saw a quick red and white flash out of the corner of my eye. I had never before noticed it at night but tonight it was a colourful streak I just had to look at. And for that split second that I turned my head was when the toads could be seen in the slightly hidden dip. That part of a dip your headlights don’t reach until you car clears the preceding hump. 

The car slid once more, my attention drawn back to where it should have been, the road was moving and so was the car, but the car had spun and was moving sideways. Then the migrating toads stopped and the car tyres gained purchase on the tarmac and flipped it onto it’s side, the screams of my friends as we were thrown about was deafening. 

It wasn’t until the second impact came, the windows on the road side of the car shattered into small square safety cubes. Sparks emitted from the scraping roof bars until they got caught in one of last winter’s pot holes and the car started to roll over and over. Every single bit of dust, piece of paper, chewing gum wrapper and all other things that are strewn around a car started to tumble around with the small cubes of glass and as the other side of the car smashed on the road so did the windows, imploding more cubes to hit and hurt everything they touched as the car was spinning and tumbling down the road.  

After revisiting the site many days after it all happened I found out that the car had finally come to a stop about one hundred yards down the road in the trees just passed the start of the forest. I am not sure how long I was knocked out for but I woke upside down being held safely in place by the seat belt and the now deflated airbag pouches all around me. I wasn’t actually feeling any pain until I release the seat belt and gravity took a hold of me and I fell onto the ceiling of the car. Gathering myself up I reached to the dashboard to my phone where the satnav app was indicating I was off track and need to turn around. I found the button to turn on the flash light and the upturned inside of my car was shrouded in the green glow light it was throwing out. When my disoriented vision started to pass I realised I was facing straight out of the windscreen of the car and I turned to see the back seat and check on my friends but they weren’t there. 

I pulled my way out falling in a pile on to the pine needle covered soil and used the tree that had broken the momentum of the tumbling car to pull myself to my feet. Searching around the car I was unable to see where they were. I looked around from a stationary position and saw the wreckage all down the road; the full moon highlighted the white lines and a small area of the tarmac in brilliant chromium white. I walked, following the wreckage back down the road; a solitary squawk from a crow startled me and looking around I could see in perched on a tatty fence post back at the edge of the forest. As if it was stood to attention just where the deciduous trees ended and an open but newly planted field of trees started.

I walked up to and passed the crow, it never moved, I looked on the verge and down the walls close to the road when my attention was caught by a fiery glow in the trees a couple of hundred yards up into the forest. I climbed the fence near where the crow was standing expecting it to see me as a threat to it but it still never moved. Instead it let out a long screeching squawk followed by a small amount of little ones to follow. I didn’t really think much of that until there was what seemed like a distant reply, more squawks coming from the direction of the orange glow ahead of me. I stopped when I heard this and stayed there rooted with pain and the first pangs of fear until I was brought back to life by the flapping of the wings from the near distance behind me. What I now thought was a sentry crow took off a flew passed me very quickly and it was so close that it’s wings actually made contact with my head. This contact made me even more scared than I was and I dropped to the ground and shielded myself from anything else that may want to try and do the same. 

From my crouched position I caught a glance of where the fiery glow was coming from and I could see that the glow was from a large fire in a clearing in the trees and there was movement. I stood up and ran as quietly as I could with high expectations to find my two intoxicated friends playing silly games around camp fire in the post party and post car crash state. 

I reached the edge of the clearing and I could feel the heat from the fire hit my face but I wasn’t greeted by two idiots dancing naked around a fire in the middle of a cold autumn night but in the clearing there were more crows. I scanned the area before moving away and I could see on the far side of the fire was two solid trunks of wood standing bolt upright to about eight feet high. I moved further around and realise that there was rope draped over the top of each trunk and it was pulled taught. Tripping over my own feet I fell to the ground, as I picked myself up I saw that the taught ropes had one of my oldest friends tied and suspended between the two up rights. Quietly moving my position to get a better view I could see there were ropes ties to both ankles and the rope had been wrapped once around the base and tied off to a steak in the ground a few feet away. Although I am no engineer I would say these two ropes had been used to increase the tension so he was unable to move too much. Still moving I was now able to see that he was completely naked and sweat was pouring from everywhere. The start of blisters were beginning to form on his meaty bits, his thighs, pectorals, belly and biceps and it was then the realisation that he wasn’t sweating but it was his fat oozing from his body; He was being cooked. 

My fall and my moving around to get a better view didn’t go un noticed and just a few feet away from me was yet another crow, it looked at me and then threw its head back and let out an ear piercing squawk and on hearing this from about 4 feet away another looked up and did exactly the same thing, threw its head back and squawk, this was then followed by every other crow around and after just a few seconds they all stopped and then simultaneously they all took off flying around in a big circle climbing higher and higher until they were well over the tree line staying in their formation. 

Picking myself up I ran into the clearing and right up to the far side of the fire. Jasper was hanging naked tied by both hands and feet. When I saw this from a distance I was almost correct, closer scrutiny showed that he wasn't so much tied as someone had put pipes through his lower arms and upper legs with harsh rope fed through the pipes. The pipes through his arms must have been implanted through the gap between the radius and ulna using this to take the entire weight without being torn out from the soft fleshy skin and muscle surrounding the bones in the lower arm. His legs had two large metal rings pushed through the skin and looped around the bone on the inner thigh, but I was correct with the tensioner setup, tied tightly to the bottom of one post, the rope was fed through the two rings and around the bottom of the other post, the end then off to another ring and then the steak it was tied to. Primitive but affective setup, it worked for millennia so why not now? 

Jaspers skin was bubbling and being burnt badly by the furious heat coming from the fire, for a very short time I stood so I could see his face and his hanging head and it wasn't until now I became scared for my own life. I stepped back when the heat got too much for me and in the outskirts of my vision, far above my head I could see the circling crows but I could only hear the violent crackling of the fire. I looked directly up to the crows and thought how Jasper was strung up like this, the crows wouldn’t be able to do it and how long was I unconscious in the car. As I looked around the clearing and my glance darted passed Jaspers strung body his eyes were open and his head upright this caught me complete unawares and the shock and fear threw me back and I landed heavily on a fallen stump, "Go now" Jasper said, "Go now before he comes." 

I fell back further until I was on my back and trying to hide as much of myself behind the log, "GO NOW, OR YOU WILL BE LIKE THIS" Jasper shouted with more urgency than someone who wasn't in the position he was, saliva and blood spat from his mouth as he shouted and his voice stopped but he still seemed to be shouting, the blisters exploded one after another spraying a torrent puss out towards the fire. He sharply turned his head upwards and the circling birds, I watched the blackness of the circling birds change to the normal bluer black a clear night sky is, as they started to fly down to the clearing and slammed hard into Jasper, the poles and a large area around him. 

Some of the birds missed their target completely, hitting the ground all around, crow sized flaming balls shot out of the fire, sending embers and fire into the air, the fireballs scattering all around the forest floor and even bouncing off the log I was hidden behind. The piles of burning birds didn’t just stay burning they got up off the floor and started flying and made their way back to Jasper like a phoenix. 

The crows flew around Jasper pecking small bits of flesh off him, he hadn’t moved for a short time now and I took it he was now dead. One by one they started to land on him and peck the beaks wherever they could and tore large areas of flesh from his body. It was almost as if they had taken a number in line at the deli counter. One moved away and another took it’s place, except more and more were starting to land on my friends body until the murderous crows looks as though they could have been a body bag.  

Before this night I was like the majority of people who had never thought about what tearing flesh sounds like and the squidgy sound it takes on when expertly removed in the beak of a crow, but when there is about one hundred crows tearing flesh and muscle the sound immediately registers as one thing that will never be forgotten for the rest of your life and beyond. 

As the clearing was filled with more and more crows circling in a tempest frenzy trying to feast on my friends flesh, the roaring flames from the fire started to burn them and very quickly the fire spread through contact and the tempest changed into what I initially could only be Dante’s inferno and all nine circles of hell spread out before me. 

Watching this spectacle and avoiding the falling balls of flaming dead birds I hadn’t really noticed the single, rather large, crow fly down into the very centre and land directly in the fire. The initial impact threw a definitive fire circle out in every direction, consuming all the remaining birds. It tore at everything it touched and consumed everything including the log I was hiding behind throwing it and me into the air and back a further ten feet. I hit a tree flat across my back and fell to its exposed roots just before the log hit, unable to muster up enough energy to flee the log landed across my right leg. The unnatural cracking sound my leg made accompanied by the searing pain made me physically sick and I blacked out. 

I lay there on the ground as the darkness that took a hold of everything started to lighten, the stars in the night sky gradually appeared, seconds, minutes or hours later, who knows. The deathly silence in the air was then broken by my screams. As the pain centres of my brain realise there was pain and my who body reacted causing spasms to strike every muscle. The second and even louder scream was let free as the log rolled off my leg. 

The embers or the fire took hold to whatever hadn't yet burned away and a small flame danced in the centre of the clearing. All around I saw trees and bushes on fire as well as the burning remnants of the flock of birds who had devoured Jasper. Through my tears, I could start to make out the shadows cast on the trees on the far side of the clearing and saw that Jasper was no longer strung up, the two posts that held him up were now only a couple of feet high and burning at the tops. The flames in the centre of the clearing playfully took hold over more un-burnt wood and as the flames grew, the flickering light it cast was going to be enough for me to painfully get away from there and back to the road. Not believing that anyone would actually stop for me in this condition at whatever time of night it was now, but this was my only choice. 

I dragged myself back towards where I had entered the clearing some time earlier and as I entered the clearing, by the light of the still growing fire I could see a figure, a dark hooded figure sat next to the fire. Just sat there, sat there warming him or herself. I remembered thinking to myself it is at this point everyone in those cheap made for television movies thinks that salvation has arrived and they are there to help. I however thought that the vision of someone in a hooded cloak out in the middle of the woods sat next to a fire after what I had just witnessed was far too sinister so I tried my best to crawl away as quietly as I could but the pain I was feeling from my limp and dragging leg was so bad I thought that even the deaf would have been able to hear me. 

I stopped sharply as I heard a relatively quiet, "Squawk". My breathing rate increased and I could feel the temperature drop. I looked slowly over to the fire whilst doing my best to quietly move backwards and the hooded thing was still sat there motionless, again a quiet squawk was in the air. I turned and pulling myself as hard as I possibly could my urges made me look back to the fire and the hooded figure had disappeared. The fear grew within me my urgently now and this spurred me back to getting out of there. Reaching the edge of the clearing I pulled myself up to standing with the aid of a stone wall and stood on my one good leg. The wall plus a good hop will mean I can get the one hundred or so yards back to the road quite quickly. 

Squawk, louder and more definite this time, I couldn't make out where it was coming from. I glanced back to the fire and it was clear. Picking up the pace as much as I could I pulled myself along and hopped as best I could along the wall back to the road. In my haste I felt a pain that any one person should never be subjected to as I caught the top part of my injury on a dislodged stone in the wall. My dangling leg kicked my other leg and I fell to the floor and the pain shot right through my body, I reached down to the main area of the pain and I felt sharp bone and the dampness of blood oozing out of the open wound.
 
From above me I could hear the loud flapping, round and round until a quiet rushing of a large falling object and then an impact of two feet on stone, wood and mulching mud. A large hand grabbed me on one of my shoulders and picked me up roughly. I was man handled up to the head height and looking as the shadowy figure I saw what looked like a hood, the silent figure from the fire, back in the clearing. I was shaking up and down and then stopped but the hood wasn't a hood at all and the cloak wasn't a cloak either. From behind the figure opened two large black feathery wings that it gently flapped as if it was either getting ready to take off or fanning the flames of hell until from the field, the other side of the stone wall was a I heard the shouts of a group of people. I looked over and saw what could only be described as a small army or a large village. The thing that held me turned its head to look over to them and for the first time I saw the silhouette of a black beak and the bleak feature of a man crow, crow man, a damn big crow. 

The thing dropped me to the floor and I fell on top of the dry stone wall. The garrison cracking of many guns echoed throughout the hills and across the moors. There was no large falling of a massive crow to the ground but instead the disassembling of a forest full of crows flying up into the free sky and the gun fire continued and the thud, thud, thud of the dead bodies of normal hell raising crows fell in the fields, trees and even on the road. 

A head appeared over the wall and I looked up to see my other friend the other member of our exciting party night out and the other survivor of the horror that this Halloween has turned into. But it turns out that this wasn't the first time this has happened. I was transported back to the pub up the road on the corner and its original name was The Moors Watcher and it was built to keep an eye out over the moors for the Crow Master who comes out once a year to feast on whatever and whoever it can.