Laudus Himself

Rancid, swollen, images of the dead she’d seen flashed at Simone through unconsciousness. Worse was those eyes. Piercing her every blink. Eyes suggesting life but full of death. Broadcasting the afterlife. The desperate, pleading eyes of her son. Asking her not to kill him. If there was a choice she wouldn’t have done. Simone cried herself awake. Linus was making food. It was dizzying bouncing from extreme to extreme. Although this routine she could get used to. How was it that this weird little man seemed so at home in the apocalypse. It’s so hard to look to the future when the past is ripping your heart out. This man had a plan. She didn’t have time to answer her own thought before he spoke. “Hi. Did you sleep well?” She half lied out of politeness, in the way English people do. “Yes thank you. I needed that.”

Simone Parts 1 & 2 & 3   found on the numbers! The two settled down in the main room. Linus prepared a simple meal for them of rice with mushrooms and herbs from the wood, salt and pepper. It was by far the best food Simone had eaten in days. Chocolate bars and crisps may last but they’ll only keep you going so long. Though he had those in abundance, too. He’d an air rifle which he hunted with, he said, so occasionally he’d eat rabbit or pigeon, maybe squirrel. Although he wasn’t too fond of squirrel, and he refused to shoot the red ones on an ethical basis which seemed out of place to Simone in the new world. The air gun was quiet, he explained, and the leftovers and innards the dogs would eat. Food was an issue for him, he had been hiding for a month or so, which was almost as long as the world had been in this shit. Another safety precaution. Simone wanted to know what drove him to such extreme safety. “Oh come on. We all knew.”

(The Dead Are Coming: Simone, will be back soon, as the story needs more work done in the next section. Believe it or not I have some standards. My Top Ten Horror Films will also be within the next week). The Large Man is a short story from The Dead Are Coming , a sprawling novel (in Utero) about the living and the dead. Over the radio, two male voices competed at being annoying. “Yes, yes! And we’re back! That was the latest from Jizzy Jeff, big tune!” “Love it bruv! Love it! My man and I are spinning until the sun comes up. Don’t go nowhere.” “We ain’t going nowhere and I am GLUED I mean GLUED to this mic all night. We’ve plenty more coming, too. Hold tight.” Music with a limited target audience continued to blare from the radio signal unendingly. If only. Everything ends. Static. Mostly static. Dead air. Hoarse and whispering. “Please help us. We have a child. We know this is going out. Please, please help us.” “It’s too late. It’s too late. They’r...

If you’ve taken the time to read my writing, you’ve probably worked out I love horror. You may also (I hope) love it too. I’m not great at top ten lists, in that I’m a person for whom scoring a subjective thing such as film tends to know my opinion will change, and just isn’t regiment enough to stick at it. This is not a list of what I think the best made, most wonderful, genre altering horror films of all time are. It is not a history lesson in the genre either, it is personal. This is my list, picked entirely emotively, I can’t guarantee that this list would be the same in a few years, but then isn’t that the brilliance of film? I’ve tried to explain my reasons for each film. Effectiveness, influence and longevity are, I suppose, my criteria. As well as what each film means to me. In the twenty five years since I would scan the back of horror VHS boxes in the video store for grisly images, my love of gore remains intact, but an appreciation of the more subtle stuff has evolv...