Kzine Issue 1

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  No, age didn’t matter. Dennis was cute in a rugged kind of way, with bundles of charm and charisma.

  Of course that might just be the booze talking.

  She looked over at the plasma TV. The screen was bigger than the walls in her flat. She wanted a television like that. She deserved a television like that.

  As she examined the television a faint whisper drifted across the lounge.

  She looked round. ‘Dennis?’

  The lounge was empty.

  Shrugging, she ran her fingertips across the top of Dennis’s stereo system; speakers the size of skyscrapers and more switches and digital displays than a NASA control console.

  Another whisper scurried across the room; hushed, urgent. She spun round but the lounge was still empty.

  She stepped forward, senses straining, trying to locate the source of the sound. The only sounds that greeted her were the fizz of champagne in her glass and the soft rustling of the carpet beneath her feet.

  Poking her head into the next room she found nothing but tasteful furnishings. She was about to give up when she heard it again, a soft voice floating around the corners of the room before dissipating on the breeze.

  Nikki went to the next room and the next, passing by a multigym and exercise bike, gleaming bathroom fixtures and a Jacuzzi. Then she came to a room decorated with photos of Dennis palling around with various celebrities: actors, singers, TV presenters, footballers, Big Brother contestants, WAGs and Page 3 girls. There were also several pictures of Dennis shaking hands with various middle-aged men in suits, fawning over them as though they were the most important people in the world. Nikki didn’t recognise any of them; she guessed they were politicians.

  Awards dotted the room: Businessman of the Year, Innovation in Business Award, Entrepreneur of the Year. Framed newspaper headlines hung alongside the photos; some from tabloids, some with the salmon pink pages of the Financial Times. “Melling Makes First Million”, “Mellingonaire!” “Melling Keeps On Selling.” Other headlines came with photos; Dennis waving and showing off his dental work, a beautiful girl hanging off his arm. At least Nikki assumed the girls in the photos were beautiful. Although their shapely legs, pert breasts and glossy hair were all in perfect focus their faces were vague, indistinct, hidden by shadow or blurred by an out of focus camera, the features giving the impression of beauty but lacking definition or any stamp of individuality. The headlines reflected this: “Melling’s Mystery Minx”, “Melling Attends Charity Bash With Mystery Babe”, “Who’s That Girl?”

  Frowning, Nikki read the articles, searching for a clue, any clue, that the newspapers knew who any of Dennis’s girlfriends had been.

  Nothing. Not even the slightest hint. The girls seemed only to exist in the headlines.

  Nikki pulled at her lip, a habit that aided her thought process but which played havoc with her lip gloss. Hooking up with Dennis had been all about raising her profile but judging by the articles his girlfriends got little to no media exposure; a blurry photo in the tabloids then back to obscurity.

  Well, not this girlfriend. Dennis might be used to getting his own way but he had never been up against Nikki before. She was cleverer than he thought - after all, she had an A Level.

  She would seduce and tease, flirt and arouse and absolutely not put out until he gave her what she wanted. After Paolo and the others she had learned her lesson. No way was she going to be a trophy girlfriend.

  From now on she stood on her own two feet. Until it was time to lie on her back.

  Nikki smiled, pleased with her decision.

  Then she heard the whisper again.

  But this time it wasn’t just one voice. There were two or three, wrapping around each other, the different tones running together. Then they faded.

  Nikki hesitated. The whispering had come from upstairs. The further she strayed from the lounge the more it looked as if she was snooping if she got caught. And that made it less likely that Dennis would give her what she wanted. She stood, her hand on the doorknob, undecided.

  Then, frowning, she closed the door and went upstairs.

  Creeping along the landing she opened a door. Airing cupboard. Next door. Another bathroom. And the next door. A bedroom.

  And what a bedroom. King-size bed, bedside cabinet, walk-in wardrobes lining two of the walls. Nikki gazed around her, drinking in the splendour.

  She didn’t get to enjoy the moment.

  The whispering came back, louder than ever, and now there weren’t just two or three voices, there were a dozen or more, all of them female, all of them giving her the same instruction, shrieking it at her in the same hoarse roar.

  ‘Get out.’

  She jumped back, the champagne glass falling from her hand, shattering, tiny glistening fragments flying across the room, embedding themselves in the carpet to lie there, sparkling.

  ‘Get out.’

  Nikki’s hands went to her mouth, her face turning pale as she answered the fierce whisper with one of her own, voice stretched so thin across the octaves as to be almost inaudible. ‘Oh. My. God.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘W-who are you?’

  A moment of silence, hesitation.

  ‘We don’t know.’ Sadness and uncertainty tinged the whispers. ‘We don’t remember.’

  Nikki tried to stop shaking. ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘No. Now get out of here before he does to you what he did to us.’

  Nikki’s lip quivered. ‘What did he do?’

  The voices swirled about her in a furious maelstrom of sound.

  ‘Lied to us.’

  ‘Promised us things.’

  ‘Seduced us.’

  ‘Took everything we had. Stripped us bare.’

  ‘He made us watch!’

  Nikki staggered back, hands clamped over her ears. Still the whispers hammered at her; furious, scared, hysterical.

  Finally one of the voices boomed out, silencing the others. ‘Quiet! We need to focus.’

  When the whispers spoke again they had reunited, all delivering the same message. ‘Go now before he comes back.’

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed. Now the whispers had unified once more she finally worked out that they emanated from the wardrobe on the far side of the room. Before she could think what she was doing she strode towards the wardrobe.

  ‘What are you doing? Get away!’

  She wanted to heed the whispers’ advice but her feet carried her forward, drawn on by some dreadful curiosity.

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  Her trembling hand reached out to the wardrobe door.

  ‘Stop.’

  Grasping the door handle she began to slide the wardrobe open.

  A man’s voice cut across the room. ‘If you wanted the guided tour you only had to ask.’

  Spinning round she saw Dennis leaning against the bedroom doorframe, a repugnant smirk shaping his lips. ‘I thought we could have a little fun before it came to this but I guess we’ll just have to move things along a little.’

  He stepped into the room, locking the door behind him.

  Nikki backed away. ‘People know I’m here.’

  ‘No they don’t. The only people who got a clear look at us together were at the bistro and they won’t remember anything more than seeing me with a pretty blonde.’ He smiled. ‘Trust me. I’ve done this before.’ He turned to the wardrobe. ‘Isn’t that right, girls?’

  ‘I texted all my friends that I was here.’

  Shaking his head and wagging a finger Dennis reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. Hers.

  He dropped the phone to the floor, crushed it beneath his heel.

  The whispers hissed at Nikki. ‘Don’t let him touch you.’

  ‘Not fair telling her the rules. You all had to work it out for yourselves.’

  Dennis stepped forward, extending his hand, his smirk widening, distorting his face.

  Nikki snatched up one of the pillows from the bed and hurled it
at him. Dennis caught it, plumped it up then tossed it aside. ‘You might want to try something a little bit heftier.’

  Nikki grabbed the lamp on the bedside cabinet, ready to smash it into Dennis’s face. The lamp didn’t budge. She tried again, straining her muscles; the lamp couldn’t be that heavy.

  Dennis coughed. ‘It’s fixed to the cabinet. I could fetch you a screwdriver if you like.’

  Desperate, Nikki yanked off one of her stilettos and hurled it at Dennis’s head. He ducked to one side, the shoe bouncing off the wall behind him.

  She grabbed her other shoe, brandishing it above her head like a knife. ‘Keep away from me.’

  Dennis reached out to stroke her cheek and she lashed out at him with the shoe, the heel smacking into his temple. He flinched, twisting away, his arms flying up to protect his face and Nikki rained blows down on the back of his head. Recovering, Dennis lunged forward, hands shielding his face, forearms acting as battering rams, slamming into Nikki, smashing her against the wall. All the breath fled her body, leaving her to collapse in upon herself like a dying star.

  Grabbing her by the hair Dennis dragged Nikki over to the wardrobe and forced her to her knees. He leaned against the wardrobe, wincing, hand clamped to his temple. Blood leaked from between his fingers.

  Straightening up he swayed before the wardrobe, his cocky swagger evaporated. ‘You wanted to see what’s in the wardrobe? Well, here you go.’

  Dennis flung open the wardrobe door. Nikki gasped.

  The wardrobe was full of girls. All naked, all frozen in various provocative poses: breasts squeezed together; arms folded behind the head, tousling luxuriant hair; gazing back over the shoulder while leaning forward to accentuate the roundness of their buttocks.

  And all of them had vague, indistinct features. Bland, undistinguished, like unfinished waxworks. The girls could be told apart by height and hair colour but their faces all possessed a bland homogenous beauty which made them indistinguishable from each other.

  They stood frozen in their poses. Human prizes. Living statuettes. If you could call it living.

  ‘What do you think of my little harem? My little collection of wannabe celebs?’

  Nikki tried to jump up, to run away, but her body refused to move. Her legs stiffened, her arms became rigid. Only her face remained mobile, trembling as she sobbed.

  ‘Well, girls, aren’t you going to say hello to the newest addition to your club?’

  The whispers said nothing.

  Dennis towered over Nikki, undoing his flies. The Viagra had kicked in.

  Nikki tried to scream but her face finally succumbed to the paralysis effecting the rest of her body, freezing in place, leaving her mouth stuck wide in horror. Too late she realised that was exactly what Dennis wanted from her right now.

  As Dennis satisfied his urges Nikki sobbed silently to herself. Despite her best efforts she had ended up becoming a trophy girlfriend after all.

  CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

  Mike Chinn has had short fiction most recently published in DARK HORIZONS, DARK VALENTINE, DOOMOLOGY: THE DAWNING OF DISASTERS, MORPHEUS TALES URBAN HORROR SPECIAL, NULL IMMORTALIS (NEMONYMOUS 10) and POSTSCRIPTS. As well as scripting comics for DC Thomson (his last foray was in 2005: an 8-week “Billy the Cat” adventure for the BEANO) he has published two books on how to write comics: WRITING AND ILLUSTRATING THE GRAPHIC NOVEL and CREATE YOUR OWN GRAPHIC NOVEL. His collection of Pulp adventure stories THE PALADIN MANDATES was critically acclaimed, and Damian Paladin resurfaced in the 2009 novella “Sailors of the Skies”.

  Caroline Dunford is now Writer in Residence for Theatre Company Siege Perilous. She’s author of the Euphemia Martins Mysteries, a light English Country murder mystery series, but she is still in love with Sci-fi and Horror. She has two YA novels awaiting publication, keeps writing plays about murders and hopes one day to write sci-fi for tv. Her play about the Edinburgh serial killers, ‘Burke’, is about to go on tour. Fundamentally she likes frightening, challenging and entertaining others. Writing seems the safest way to do this. www.carolinedunford.com

  Julie Travis has been compared to Clive Barker, Thomas Ligotti and the Stephen King/Peter Straub collaborations. She’s had short stories published widely in the British slipstream and horror small press, including REM, Kimota (the magazine and Kindle anthology), The Third Alternative (now known as Black Static), Psychotrope Saccade, Premonitions: Causes For Alarm (which received an Honourable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror 2009) and May 2011’s Covers of Darkness anthology, her first appearance in a U.S. publication. She has also appeared in two queer anthologies: Necrologue - the Diva Book of the Dead and the Undead (nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Literary Award 2004) and Va Va Voom. Born in London in 1967, she now lives by the sea in West Cornwall and spends much of her time at stone circles and other sacred sites. www.julietravis.wordpress.com.

  Stuart Young is author of three short story collections — Spare Parts, Shards of Dreams, and The Mask Behind the Face. Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

  Martin Owton writes fantasy and science stories and novels and is a member of the London-based T-Party writers’ group. His first completed novel is a secondary world fantasy adventure called ‘The Exile of Darien’. He is now writing a modern fantasy/crime novel set in the New Forest, where he grew up. www.martinowton.com

  Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer. His adventures so far have included traveling to over 30 countries, playing a card game for a living, and building a successful business. Alex resides in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and son. His recently published fiction is linked at alexshvartsman.livejournal.com

  Don Norum lives on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, far enough from the beach that he can’t just go there, and close enough to still get hit by hurricanes. He writes things, and sometimes they are published. Examples of the latter have appeared in Bull Spec and Sybil’s Garage, as well as online at Cosmos Magazine and Pseudopod.

  Dave Windett is a professional illustrator and comics artist, his work has been published in Britain, Europe and America. He has drawn comics featuring licenced characters including Inspector Gadget, Eek the Cat, Ace Ventura, Daffy Duck and Korky the Cat. For the Scandinavian market he has illustrated educational books, business manuals and comics. He has also designed original characters for a variety of publications and provided illustrations for everything from magazines and websites to mobile phones, games and children’s shoes. Samples of his work can be seen on his website at www.davewindett.com and on his blog.

  Graeme Hurry lives in Lancashire and edited Kimota magazine an anthology called Northern Chills last century.

  Table of Contents

  Editorial by Graeme Hurry

  THE FAMILY PROGRAMME by Caroline Dunford

  MONTY ARGLISS’S DOG by Don Norum

  BLUE by Julie Travis

  A TEAR IN THE WEB by Alex Shvartsman

  SONS OF THE DRAGON by Mike Chinn

  LEILA by Martin Owton

  WHAT YOU GET IS NO TOMORROW by Stuart Young

  Contributor Notes