Previously: While Roland and Jenny deal with a mysterious corpse at work, Roland realises something has gone wrong. Knowing his fate, he instructs Jenny to leave the room, triggering a decontamination process. The corpse transforms into a monstrous entity, engaging in a gruesome struggle with Roland, who activates a panic button, filling the room with a flammable mist. In the chaos, the creature consumes Roland, the mist system stops, and an explosive fire incinerates everything in the room.
Tone change! New readers might want to start at the beginning, so click the button below. Previous episodes are continually being redrafted, so existing readers may wish to get refreshed.
“Near-miss hearing - Case 348(b).”
Jenny is slouched into a high-backed studded chair, in an executive office straight out of the 1960s, all whiskey and cigarette smoke, but no windows. Her hair is wet from a shower, and she is exhausted and sweating.
"Jenny, I've read the prelim report. If you are still happy with it, I'll send it upstairs."
Jenny leans in to sign a declaration on Blair's desk, then sits back in the chair, “Not really a near-miss though was it, Blair.”
“Maybe not for him, no.", said Blair, “Sorry about Roland.”
“Comes with the territory." said Jen, " I need to pick up a few things from his apartment before you send in the clean-up.”
“Fine. Understandable. Add anything pertinent to your report. We’ll follow up with the next of kin. Unless that's you, is it?”
“Not even sure if he has one. We don’t, right?", said Jen.
“Well if it is you, it would make the admin a little easier.” He hits his keyboard a few more times with more long-range finger taps.
Blair, is a lean-looking monochrome salaryman, with greying hair, a grey suit, and grey skin. He takes the signed note and taps at his laptop with single index fingers, looking over his glasses while squinting at the screen and then back to the keyboard, like there’s something sticky on the keyboard.
The walls of his office are panelled in a dark wood, with bookcases lining one side, packed with ring binders and folders of no obvious order. Everything else is brown or dark green. If it wasn’t for the fact that his office sits openly within a gleaming glass and stainless steel bunker, it might just be a convincing facsimile of some cold-war era corporate hang-out.
“Was the contamination the same as before?", asks Blair.
"No. Not really. There were no issues with our suits; the air pressure and make-up were normal. Everything was normal."
"Faulty sensors?"
"Possible, but unlikely"
"The footage showed some contamination inside and outside the suit, no?"
"Sometimes there’s some juice in the room during the visits; it's more of a slip hazard than anything else. We keep it off the suits."
"Did you know that the entity revealed itself this time?"
"I didn’t stick around. We were following protocol. I haven't looked at the footage. I need some time first, Blair, sorry."
"Take your time. It doesn't make for light watching. When you are ready though, please take a look and give us your insights. It was over quickly enough. The team are filling the cell with concrete as we speak."
"Good.” Jenny gets up and leaves the room.
Roland's locker looks and smells like a teenager’s bedroom. Jen takes comfort in the view, then winces at the aroma. She fills a black binbag with the locker contents, hoisting it over her shoulder, and then makes her way toward an exit stairwell. She stops, looks at it, but walks past and to a nearby lift door, which she calls.
The lift rises a dozen floors then opens behind a yellowing, nicotine-stained curtain. She pushes it aside and steps through into a tiny, disgusting break-out room which stinks of ash and coffee grounds. A waste bin overflows with food wrappers and moulding paper coffee cups. It sits under a melamine table strewn with rolling papers, ash and cigarette burns, pen doodles, and rat or mouse droppings. A faded poster of an anonymous glamour model keeps an eye over this "set".
Jen takes a familiar exit route through the garbage, walking into an approximation of a small cellphone store. If “CELL 4 U” was a real cellphone store, it might be one you’d visit for a brittle obsolete power cable, a burner phone, or money laundering. The core customer demographic is the over 70s, and corner boys. It makes a dollar store look like Harrods. That’s exactly what the designers wanted it to look like.
Jen walks from around the back of the counter, unlocks the front door and leaves.
Bright sunshine, blue sky, and cold. It's a beautiful winter afternoon in the strip mall, Aside from "CELL 4 U", the other three retail spaces are boarded up and "under offer". Her car sits with a few others in the strip mall parking lot. The lot and the building are in the middle of fuckingnowherevilleboroughshire. The only other point of interest is a small gas station on the opposite side of the road, with a bolt-on diner.
Jenny dumps her bags in the back of her car, looks at the car, looks at the diner, looks back at the car, and gets in. She drives the few yards it is to get across the road.
The diner is empty, except for Chef Dave. This is exactly how Jenny likes it. The gold-painted lettering on the door says “Est. 1947”. Jen half smiles. She and Roland had often heard rumours of it being only 2 years old and, every time they visited, they would look for tells or errors in the creative direction, finding themselves amusingly fooled over and over again.
The diner had been built and designed as "lived-in" like a period movie set, with decor straight from a Frankie & Benny's restaurant. The detail is extraordinary, fake shadow marks on faux sun-bleached wallpaper pretending that photos of golden age movie stars used to hang there. Hundreds of sellotape marks, and old thumb tack holes (even entire thumb tacks) pretending to have pinned up a long history of birthday party bunting, popped balloons, and European soccer pendants.
The radio plays local news and chatter, and the chef turns it down to a dull hum.
"Jennifer, right? You're early. Coffee yeah?"
"Yes, thank you, Dave. Whipped cream today."
"Amma gonna wait for your pal?"
"No. No, don't. I'll have it to go."
"Sure lady, hey have somma pie on the hous…"
Dave gurgles at the end of his sentence as dark oil starts filling up his throat. His mouth starts bubbling with it. Unreadable words and letters dance on top, floating and washing around. He speaks on, oblivious, with the patterned liquid washing out and pouring down his neck, onto his whites, his scarf, and over his checkered apron. Still, he talks. The volume of the liquid increases, and turns from a dribble to a pour, to a torrent, like turning on a tap, spewing gallons of cursive liquor over the grill, the counter, and the floor. The liquid moves upwards, creeping up and over Dave's head, consuming him, while he continues to talk, bubbling mouthfuls of fluid instead of words. The outline of his open eyes and his mouth move under this stream of darkness, and his arms enthusiastically gesture, flicking the oil. Jen recoils when a whip of the tattooed liquid is flicked across her face.
"There ya go. I've putta fork in th’box for you. Coffee’s on the house too.” Says Dave. “Y’look like you need a friendly face today. See ya both soon yeah."
There is no dark fluid, there are no symbols. Jenny stares a blank through Dave's kindness, and mumbles a "thank you". She wakes up and leaves, picking up her coffee, pie, and purse, and stumbling over a stool, knocking a table of condiments flying.
She falls back into her car seat and shuts the door. She draws the seatbelt over, starts the car and pulls off. Her rearview mirror turns from cool blue skies into darker shadowed hues. Remote open roads branch into low-rise suburban developments, then into tight city streets, with red brick filling up the sky.
Jenny double parks in front of a minimart puts her hazards on and then walks inside. She picks up a huge bar of chocolate, a litre of milk, and some pet food, puts cash down on the counter, and heads out without waiting for change. The owner half recognises her, and gives her a wave, lowering his hand in disappointment.
Further into the city, Jen pulls up outside a four-story apartment building. A former pre-war industrial block converted decades ago. She pops the trunk, rummages through the black bag dumped in there earlier, pulls out a jacket, and digs out a door key.
"Okay Roly Poly, let's have a look then."
Thank you for reading!
Adjacent to the underground location of Last Reminiscence, I’ve been sitting on an archived group of documents listing underground military bases and cities in the USA. Not using it for reference, but if I ever need to pop on my tin foil hat, the bookmark is there.
More adjacent nonsense is that heard that Chris Ecclestone is in True Detective Series 4. If it couldn’t get any more exciting. And yes, I loved S2 and 3. So fuck you. Roll on January. Helps me to forget about Konami shitting all over the second greatest videogame of all time.
As more characters drop in, and because my brain can’t retain any more than the last 15 seconds of life tourism, the drafts have moved to Obsidian
After the last post, I started using Grammarly (free version) because there were so many childlike spelling and grammatical mistakes in a final draft which I’d scanned what seemed like 1000 times. And boy it speeds things up a little. Also gives me a little less of a heart attack every time I press “publish and send to all”.
Reading an article about James Joyce spending 17 years writing 680 pages of Finnegans Wake, and taking a 4-year break in the middle of it. The dude would have loved Grammarly. Might have shaved off a year.
And in case you think I’m a complete psychopath, Wifey and I are binging all series of Hallmark TV’s Good Witch. The most underrated TV in existence. Fuck you again.
Author notes
I found out who Dave was after all, maybe. This short story is kinds coming together like an old-fashioned serial, with a little cliffhanger at each end. Which is cute.
The framework of this story is super simple, like four lines long. twenty words. The scenes just flopped out: There’s no method.
What would happen next? There would probably be some beaurocrasy, and some personal goal or task. How would Jenny react to losing a colleague? We don’t know how long she and Roland have been working together. Also what sort of people do the company hire? How do they manage when things go wrong? Is this story about a project going wrong for the company, or is it just part of their brutal process? Do the employees know this? And back around we go.
All this fleshes out a character who just started with a name 3000 words previously. Accidental symbolism and themes just flop out and become slightly more coherent as we go, there is no plan.
The locations are total cliche, and I love them. Born of hours of prepping the same locations for tabletop roleplaying games over and over.
But most of what makes sense comes out of the redraft and edit. The first draft is chaos and notes.
If you know someone who might enjoy Between The Cracks (or if you would like to collaborate on projects), then do share on them there socials, or email.
I thought Dave was done for, got me good