Mutations: Chapter 9 – Trapped…

Xao Fe was trapped. For weeks, ever since the death of their son, his wife had been too ill to work and his wages from the cannery simply couldn’t cover the medicines she needed whilst the white doctor had been out of town. On top of that he had to find the money to bury what was left of his son; Xan had converted and out of love Xao had followed her, but despite her devotion to the faith, the local church still saw them as outsiders, untrustworthy and beneath them, and insisted upon payment in advance. He briefly considered asking his sister, but the shame of asking  her coupled with the shame of admitting how she earnt her money in the employ of the Dragon Lady ensured that it was but a brief consideration.

So Xao did what he’d never done before; he took a gamble. His wife’s brother was out at sea fishing with Captain Williams and when he returned Xao was sure he would help out, meaning that Xao only had to find enough money to cover the funeral and Xan’s medicines for a week, maybe two. With this to steady his nerves, he had approached the Tong for a loan. Sure the interest was high, but Chi would be back in a week and he could pay it off and Xan could have the medicines she needed.

Only Chi never made it home. He had been killed and any wages on him had been stolen, taking with them any hope Xao had of paying the Tong. The Tong did not take such matters lightly, in fact  it was known that several of the more violent thugs in the Tong’s employ relished the non-payers as it gave them something to do with their knives and clubs. Xao was, he believed, a condemned man when the money lender sidled up to him at the cutting table. But instead of threatening to cut off his fingers one by one, the shark offered him a simple, one-off job to repay the debt. All he had to do was make a delivery, just that, nothing more, just simply row over to the sampan lagoon below the Dragon Lands hotel and hand a package over to a contact and his debt would be cleared. Xao didn’t believe that last part for one second, but what could he do? He was trapped.

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The journey across Shanghai bay in the early hours of the morning was uneventful, yet Xao couldn’t shake the feeling he would be caught at any minute. He glanced down over and over again at bulging tarpaulin in the middle of the boat, beneath it lay the wooden crate he was to hand over. He pulled into the lagoon and moored up. There was no one about and only the soft lapping of the waters against the boats moored around him broke the dead silence. Again and again he found his gaze wandering down to the box. What was in it? What if it were drugs? Or worse, guns? He could turn a blind eye to smuggling, he could ignore many things the Tong did, but the thought that he might be involved in gun running horrified him. He had to look, he had to know.

With a final check  that no one, most of all his Tong contact, was around Xao pulled back the tarp and opened the box. His eye grew wide with horror! In the box lay three sticks of dynamite connected to a ticking clock: a bomb!

As his mind raced with the realisation of what he had uncovered, he heard footsteps on the path leading to the hotel above him. Looking up he could see the retinue of the Dragon Lady leaving the building and making their way down to the lagoon where he and the bomb lay in wait. This, he realised, was no smuggling operation but a cold-blooded assassination and he was the expendable fool the Tong were using to kill their greatest rival! He looked back at the bomb and then again to the small group coming down the path. The Dragon Lady was there, hidden from view beneath an exquisite parasol of red embroidered silk tumbling to the ground all around her to ensure no human eye ever saw her. Around her a small knot of serving girls held the shade in place, with two burly armed guards, one in front and one behind, providing security. But Xao’s eyes ignored them all save one of the girls holding the silk. It was Meili, his sister. In an instant he knew he couldn’t allow her to be hurt. He shouted a warning at the retinue which stopped in its tracks. The lead guard barked orders and his comrade began to pull and push the girls and his mistress back up the steps to the hotel. Xao shouted at them all to keep back, that there was a bomb on the boat and when he saw Meili being ushered back to safety he bent to grab the device so he could throw it into the lagoon.

He had no way of knowing about the wire-bound trigger at its base. As he lifted it out of the boat a pin was pulled out and a short-fused detonator was armed. Xao manged to roll it overboard, but before it had time to even hit the water the dynamite exploded and the lagoon was filled with sound and fury…

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High above them all, she watched the explosion with a wry smile on her face. As the caboose keeled over and smashed through the wooden bridge and fell into the lagoon, she was already planning her retaliation…

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To be continued…

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) All my “Mutations” posts can be read on my blog here
2) In Shanghai, a lone Yakuza eyes this development with interest. Read more here
3) All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here

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Steal Head: Chapter 4 – Sharper Than Steel, Deeper Than Forever…

I’d told Beck some of my dreams but I couldn’t tell him all of them. Mostly they were memories and not all mine. Memories of other worlds. Some were of Shade, others were of the world that was here before. Others were of ‘his’ world and I liked those the least. They were of a life not mine. Things and people and places and events, none of them I had experienced yet I remembered them all as if I had. Tennyson should had tried having someone else’s happy memories swimming about his head for a week, especially after a fire reduced him to a walking freak show, and then see how he felt about loving and losing. No, Beck wouldn’t understand those dreams so I kept them to myself. But this dream, well this dream was different. Maybe I should tell Beck about this one.

It was night, the full moon sending silver light tumbling trough my cabin window. Something had woken me, some noise outside I think. I rose, the room swaying and bending as if made of jelly as I found I was unsteady on my feet. I looked down and gasped as I saw my legs: they were naked and covered in fur! In place of my burnt flesh and twisted limbs I was once more a strange mix of gazelle and human. Elated, I flung open the front door and leapt outside to the rocky overhang that jutted out into the river. On my knees, almost too nervous to see what the moonlit reflection would reveal, I stretched my head out over the still water. The breath caught in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes. My face was once more whole and unburnt, my ears and nose back from the stumps the fire had left me with, even my horns had returned, glinting darkly in the moonlight.

And then I saw it. As I gazed into the dark water like a dreaming Narcissus, the reflection of a quicksilver movement on the roof above and behind me caught my eye. I had a brief second in which the image of a monstrous toad came to mind before the air itself screamed as something sharper than steel sliced through it towards me. And then I was tumbling, rolling over and over into the water and down. And as I dropped to the depths of the river I saw my body, now headless on the rock above me, collapse onto its side before the darkness of the water closed the world above from my horrified eyes. With a gentle bump, my still concious head came to rest on the silty riverbed and silence began to envelop me.

There I lay. Alone, scared, undying, ever-concious until I felt I would go mad with the horror of it. And then I felt the movement. The water and silt shifting around me. I couldn’t move, only my eyes could flick back and forth, desperately searching for what I knew was coming until, with a cruel slow deliberateness, a huge clawed hand curled over my face and my head, silently screaming in terror, was dragged off into the dark.

Thankfully it was at this point I awoke, panting heavily and swearing like a navvy.

God alone knows what Beck would make of this one. Hopefully he won’t think I’ve gone totally loopy as, to be honest, I don’t fancy another stay at Caledon’s Sanitorium, not after the last time.

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To be continued…

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here and on the Steelhead Ning here.
2) A “Steal Head” Story So Far recap can be found here.
3) All my “Mutations” posts can be read on my blog here
4) Details of how HBA came to be burnt are in the “Lost and Found” posts on my blog here
5) Details of how HBA came to be in the dubious care of Caledon’s Sanatorium are in the “Far From Home” posts on my blog here
6) Details of how HBA came to be a half-gazelle are in the “Backpacking Burro” posts on my blog here

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Steal Head: Chapter 3 – A Second Letter to the Town Council

Dear Esteemed Members of the Town Council,

As you are no doubt aware the incidents of shared dreams, or rather nightmares, have risen over the last week but I have to say that I am so far at a loss to explain what is causing them. Frau Lowey’s staff have been conducting many experiments to see if there are poisons present in the water supply, soil or air but so far all tests are proving negative in their findings. I have been studying the pattern and locations of the ‘incidents’ but once again no answers are forthcoming. Of course we will keep looking, especially after the panic caused by the madman scrawling the messages all over town, but I am at a loss as to what to try next. It is possible that some change or mutation in whatever is causing these dreams will present itself and that will allow us to at last get a purchase on the problem, or it may be that the event ends as mysteriously as it began, I simply can not say.

One interesting development from Frau Lowey is she has noticed that people of a strong faith (irregardless of what that faith is) seem to be troubled far less, and sometimes not at all, by these night terrors. Why this should be I can not say but I rather believe that the speculation of some form of mental energy attacking the city currently popular in certain quarters is very unhelpful. Not only is it obviously unscientific, but the sight of fully-grown Jeagers wearing little pointy tin-foil hats is comedic in the extreme and I fear it is only a matter of time before one’s natural inclination to giggle at such a spectacle leads to several cases of severe mauling landing at my door! If they must wear them, maybe they could be hidden under some of their especially floppy hats?

In the meantime, I would ask that the good people of this town still be encouraged to come forward and inform me of any dreams they have so I can collect as full a picture as possible of the outbreak. I have recorded all the current ones in the town archives (http://steelheadsl.ning.com/profiles/blogs/steal-head-story-so-far-part) for people to read and make reference to.

Yours in endeavour,
Rynhold Beck (Dr.)
13 to 14 Shamian Alley,
Shanghai, Stlhd.
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To be continued…

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here and on the Steelhead Ning here.
2) A “Steal Head” Story So Far recap can be found here.

 

Mutations: Chapter 7 – The Sum of Many Things

A night of deep, dream-free sleep saw Beck wake refreshed and looking forward to his day, even if he did spend much of his breakfast touching his head to ensure it was still on his shoulders. He washed and dressed with an almost cheerful air about him, perhaps it was being away from the dark sooty skies of New Babbage that did it, or maybe it was just spending a night in his own bed, however humble, that revitalised his soul. Whatever his mood could be attributed too, it saw a distinctly happy man all but skip downstairs to his surgery to prepare for the day ahead.

As he opened the door and crossed the threshold he noticed a folded slip of paper on the floor; nothing unusual in that as many of his patients left him letters and the like in such a manner so he simply picked it up and carried it over to his desk. He was idly opening it when he noticed another letter on his desk, this time an altogether different missive than he would expect. It was a short, polite and formal note from a Miss Rhianon Jameson of Caledon expressing her regret in missing him having speculatively called by whilst he’d been away in Babbage. He knew the name yet it was a few seconds before he could recall the face… close to his… through the smoke… wanting something… someone… oh God! It was the woman in the den, the one asking about The Scientist, and he’d sent her to him! His mood wavered as he wondered what she could want with him again and, if she’d been successful in her quest, what her connection with the Scientist now was.

He put the letter down, unsure how (or even if) to reply, and turned his now distracted attention to the first note still in his hand. He read it and immediately re-read it. It was from Li Fe’s father, was dated the very day he had left and, in a shaky hand and broken English, was begging him to come and help his wife who was out of her mind with grief over the loss of their only child.
Beck felt sick as the black emptiness he tried so hard to keep at bay suddenly throbbed deep inside his gut. He grabbed his bag and all but ran out of the door and into the narrow streets and alleys of the slums.

**{}**

It was late evening when he returned. He stared at his meagre belongings in his small, rotting room and wondered, as he often did, what his wife would think of the shabby state he’d let his life tumble into. He’d lost so much getting here and had so little to show for himself that he half-feared he would vanish into the gulfs of his life.

He caught himself, chiding his pointless self-pity into remission and reminded himself where he’d been all day, what he’d seen. Li Fe’s mother, Xan, had spent the last two weeks beside herself with grief and anger, lashing out at everyone around her. Her husband had borne the brunt of it as she blamed him for allowing their child to be stolen. Her family, Christian converts Beck had learnt, had watched her every minute of the day, fearing she would do herself an injury until, but a few days ago, her mood had calmed a little. She grew less wild, less frantic and her husband began to hope the worst had passed. And then her brother had been found murdered.

A fisherman, Chi Yun had landed after a two week trip with old Captain “Pastor” Williams and was evidently walking home when someone had attacked and stabbed him, leaving him to die in the filth of a slum doorway. The family expected Xan to take this badly and braced themselves, but instead of the breakdown they feared, Xan retreated within herself and remained there ever since. She had not eaten for two days and barely slept. Beck had been unable to reach her, it was as if she had pulled a veil down and vanished from view. In the end all Beck could do was mix a sleeping draught and advise that Xan be confined to her bed until her delicate emotional state improved. Her sister, a young woman who seemed oddly familiar to Beck, was caring for her and thanked the doctor warmly for his help. Beck accepted her gratitude with grace but each of her nods and smiles was like a knife-point in his belly: he was as much use to her as he’d been to his own wife and children. He sighed, rubbing his tired eyes as he sat down heavily in his worn armchair by the small fire. Deep inside him the empty feeling grew a little bit more.

**{}**

As Beck slept, snoring away in the armchair by the still-glowing fire, someone moved outside his surgery in the night-shrouded streets below. A tall, haunted figure took a brush dripping with black tar and began to scrawl across the filthy windows, leaving a message from his Lord to His new subjects.

He was coming and they would bow to Him. Oh yes, they would bow to Him and offer their heads.

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To be continued…

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) A “Steal Head” Story So Far recap can be found here.

2) All my “Mutations” posts can be read on my blog here

3) All my “Snatched from Steelhead” posts can be read on my blog here

4) All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here and on the Steelhead Ning here.

5) All my “Creaky Gloom” posts can be read on my blog here

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Steal Head – Story So Far (Part 1)

The great thing about multi-participant RP is the sheer scope of posts and photos that people post to their blogs. Unfortunately it can mean that it’s hard to follow the ebb and flow of the tale and sometime you can miss whole chunks. To try and address that I’m going to try and gather all the links in some sort of chronological order… wish me luck!

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The tale begins…
Lucy Tornado has a terrible dream.
A strange find aboard the Blessed Fortitude.
A murder in Shamian Alley.
Dr Beck has a nightmare.

All across Steelhead, people start having nightmares…
Nish Mip
Jules Darkwatch
Softpaw Sommer
Krystine Qinan
Eladrienne Laval
Jonathon Spires
Belle Milneaux
Linus Lacombe
Mara Razor & Zaida Marie Thibideaux Gearbox
Rand Toxx
Skyler Grant
Clara Corryong
Annechen Lowey
Amarantis Belfire
Kitlalmina Quetzal Nightfire
Mara Elisabeta Hâjdău/Mary Haiku
HeadBurro Antfarm
TotalLunar Eclipse

Dr Beck writes to the Town Council for the first time…
First Letter

A vandal paints graffiti around town
Ryne’s first report
Ryne’s second report
Softpaw’s report
Rand Toxx’s report

A message is revealed and the Sentinel is on the case!
Part 1
Part 2
The Sentinel Article

Dr Beck writes to the Town Council for the second time…
Second Letter

Dr Beck writes to the Town Council for the third time & Capt Creighton delivers a photograph…
Third Letter & Photograph

Steal Head Arrives in Town!
As Dr Beck’s deals with one crisis, another is swiming towards shore
Polish Bob welcomes his new Master with a gift
Ya Yiwama starts his collection

Lunar calls for an expedition to the site of the photograph.
Lunar’s letter to Captain Creighton
Dr Beck’s report on the journey (to be added)

Dr Beck writes to the Town Council for the fourth time & Capt Creighton delivers another photograph…
Fourth Letter & Second Photograph

More from around Steelhead on the spate of vicious murders!
Softpaw Sommer surveys a murder scene and leaves Dr Beck a gift.

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All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here

All the posts tagged “Steal Head” on the Steelhead Ning can be read here.

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That’s it for now folks. I’ll post another ’round up’ like this sometime in the future

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Steal Head: To be continued…

 

The Reading – New Film from TSMGO Studios & Mysterio Productions

My mate Enjah has been working hard (very bloody hard!) on her new movie – and what a doozy! She’s leapt from 2-3 minute comic shorts to a 9 minute drama set in the gorgeous seaside village of Cowell & mighty forest of Kahruvel, places close to my heart

So, without further ado, I present the latest TSMGO Studio release of the Mysterio Production*, The Reading…

* Don’t let Enjah’s modesty fool you. This is almost entirely the product of her hard work and certainly my only input was a few discussion emails and a very dodgy East European accent ;-D

 

Steal Head: Chapter 2 – A Letter To The Town Council…

Dear Estemeed Members of the Town Council,

It is with some degree of alarm that I find myself writing to you with warning of what I fear may be the initial stages of an outbreak of mass-hysteria amongst the population of the whole city and possibly its wider environs!

As you will be aware I recently returned from my trip (upon Official City Matters) to New Babbage and it was whilst I was steaming back aboard the Clockhaven Queen that I had what can only be described as a nightmare. Now whilst I would be the first to dismiss the use of a ‘bad dream’ as a symptom were it to fall from the lips of any but the youngest visitor to my surgery (which remains, by the by, in dire need of running water I feel duty bound to add at this point), even I have to sit up and take notice when not one, not two, but many people from all over the city are reporting they too are having dreams of a very similar nature and theme: to wit, the losing of one’s head!

Now if these shared dreams are being caused by an outbreak of mass-hysteria, then I am so far at a loss as to what is causing the actual outbreak. Be it some strange air that has fallen across the city, or a foreign body that has somehow insinuated itself into the food or water we share I simply do not know. I am, of course, tracing and tracking each case but I urge you to ask the population as a whole to report any such dreams to me, along with any other activities or events of a similarly strange nature, so I can build as complete a picture as possible. Only through rigorous scientific exploration will the cause of these most disturbing of dreams be uncovered and I for one shall not rest until I have an answer.

Yours in endeavour,
Rynhold Beck (Dr.)
13 to 14 Shamian Alley,
Shanghai, Stlhd.
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p.s. You will be pleased to hear that my trip to New Babbage went smoothly. Well, as smoothly as any trip to New Babbage can go. Is it me or are the people there of a very peculiar bent? In truth, they all seem a little… Mad Hatter if you ask me.

p.p.s. Would you also be so good as to thank the kind and anonymous donor of my new microscope for me?

p.p.p.s. I nearly forgot. Please direct anyone with a dream to share to send their written description or sketch to the Ning and mark their correspondence with the tag “Steal Head” so I can sort through it easier.

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To be continued…

All my “Steal Head” posts can be read on my blog here and on the Steelhead Ning here.

 

Come on down to the Dragon’s Leap Saloon…

I was pasing through the back corridor’s of the Dragonland’s Hotel recently (you don’t need to know why, I just was) when I saw this poster for the Dragon’s Leap Saloon over in St Helens. Antfarm drinks there, keeps telling me I should stop off for a snifter after my visits to see him. Maybe I will so why not join me.

 

Steal Head: Chapter 1 – All young gentle dreams drowning…

The Queen steamed through the afternoon and evening, her engines driving me inexorably towards my adopted home and away from New Babbage, city of sooty intrigue and shrouded nobility. As the paddles pulled me to Steelhead, I dozed in my chair and mulled over the fate of my recent ward now in the stern grip of Madam Justice. The past weeks working at the hospital with Dr Mason and Director Harvey had aroused within me a curious mix of emotions that, as I journeyed back to my single, lonely room in the stinking slums of Shanghai, I found exhausted me to examine.

The jolt of the steamer’s engine going into reverse woke me from a deep slumber, the Queen was pulling into a fog-bound Steelhead and I groggily gathered my belongings and prepared to disembark. A short while later I was gazing out across the mist-shrouded bay as the pride of New Babbage’s fleet sailed away.

Night had fallen and the chill air was thick and grey, the city as cold and quiet as the grave. Not a soul did I see as I passed through the empty streets, only the occasional street lamp to ward off the dread fog. The alleyways and cut-throughs seemed even more unfriendly and loathsome as the think night fog swirled in them. More than once I found myself glancing over my shoulder convinced I was being watched…

The approach to the slums of Shamian Alley took me through the deserted heart of the city. Nary a light did I see in any windows, no footsteps or voices did I hear. It was as if the entire population of the city had simply vanished leaving behind the shell of their lives to be filled by this accursed fog.

The closer I got to home, the stronger the feeling I was being watched became. Each window was a black eye watching my every move, every doorway and alley a shadowed threat of ambush.

Until at last, and with no small measure of relief, I climbed the rickety steps up to my darkened room and unlocked the door. The fog curled around me and seeped into the room, its tendrils only vanishing once I closed the door, severing them from the night outside. The room was as I had left it before my sudden departure, newspaper and books lay where they left them, half-drunk tea growing mould in my mug. I threw my hat over to the table and shrugged off my winter coat, the chill of the night not quite surpassing the cold sweat the eeriness of the deserted, foggy city streets had sent down my back. I was tired and I needed bed. I walked over to the night stand to see what water remained in the jug and that’s when I saw it…

In horror, unable to comprehend what I saw, my hands reached for my face, desperately groping in fear of what I would, or rather would not, find…

I stared at my reflection in the small mirror. My reflection, I realised with the hand of dread terror around my heart, was missing my head!

With a start I awoke, sitting in my chair aboard the Clockhaven Queen as she steamed towards Steelhead. My hands shot upwards and I almost cried out with joy as I found my head exactly where it should be. It had been a dream, just a dream…

**{}**

A few hours later, as the sun set across a bustling and decidedly fog-free city, I stared out to sea, at the wake of the departing steamer, and shivered as I tried my damnedest to put the terrible nightmare out of my mind. I had patients and a practice to get back to, I didn’t have time for silly dreams…

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To be continued…

All my “Steal Head” posts can be read here and all my “Snatched From Steelhead” posts can be read on my blog here.

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) Steal Head’s first appearance was recorded by Nurse Lucy Tornado here.

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Steal Head: Prologue Part 2 – Sometimes they blow trumpets…

In his filthy hovel on the edges of the slums, Polish Bob took the carved whale’s tooth from his lips. No matter how hard he blew or which holes he covered with his fingers, he couldn’t get the damn thing to sound a single note, not even a simple croak. It just sat in his hands mutely refusing to be played. He hated it, loathed it if he was honest, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. Part of him wanted to toss it back into the sea, to be rid of the ugly thing, but far more of him could not let go of it. He pawed at it all day, stroking it, gazing at it, into it. At night he slept fitfully, waking often to check it was safe and then falling back to a nightmare-filled sleep gazing at it under the light of the moon.

One thing puzzled him though. He knew he hadn’t eaten for days and that could make a man’s mind see and hear strange things, and his sleep was disturbed by terrible dreams he only half-remembered upon waking, but looking at the head carved into the whale-thing’s mouth (which he knew for sure had always been there) he found himself wondering quite how he had never noticed, despite his constant attention to every detail of the tooth and its strange carvings, that the face on that head was, in actual fact, his?

**{}**

The tides had turned It this way and that. It had risen and fallen with the swells of the universe’s oceans. It had winked in and out of existence according the the whims of Its prey, drifting on the fickle currents of unreality, cosseted only by the memories of collections long lost. For hundreds of years It had barely existed at all, forgotten after the fall of Its faithful, naught more than a smear of blood in an endless charnel house of timesless horror.

Until now.

Now the Hearld had been sounded. Ancient and evil, unaddressed and terrible to bear witness to. A siren call echoing down into the Stygian depths of the world’s nightmares, reaching out with formless fingers and voiceless mouth to pull at It, to tease It from Its dreaming slumber, to wake It and send It spinning and falling and swimming once more into the world.

And wake It did.

And fall and spin and swim It did.

Upwards, through the walls of time and reality towards the call. Towards the Hearld. Upwards towards the light and the city and Its prey.

It was returned and It was very, very hungry.

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To be continued…

All my “Steal Head” posts can be read here and all my “Snatched From Steelhead” posts can be read on my blog here.

Links to other blogs and stories:
1) Steal Head’s first appearance was recorded by Nurse Lucy Tornado here.

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