Laudus Himself

PART ONE HERE Part 2 The boys, these jokers, looked back bemused. Or was it baffled? With hindsight, that look grabbed Daniel by the throat. It was terror. The crowd, already at capacity swelled towards the back, trying to evade whatever was eating away at its front ranks. As the crush briefly receded like the tide; ebb and flow, he could see there was nowhere to go. The danger upfront, thrashing it's way into the crowd, high concrete walls on two sides, and outward opening doors on the school side meant the weight of the rush just crushed into cold, unsympathetic inanimate brickwork and concrete. The back was last to be hit. Bodies under bodies. Grabbing Alan and Matthew, and screaming something he'd never repeat correctly again, they rushed just ahead of the back of the panic. People began falling and pushing, the fight had become larger it seemed, a squall of fists and anger. A sea of blue became a melee, as the three boys pushed their way towards what Danie...

All in blue blazers, the class were subdued. Hunched over desks, dulled as beings now, no light fell on the poor souls in this hardest of winters. A sea of disinterest. Skies outside were grey, but the radiators were blazing, fighting the oppressive cold; unusually accurate timing by the school. This peculiar warmth was making the boys sleepy. Sleepier. This class were less interested than normal. Not only was the country gripped in fear of African Flu, but they were stuck in history class, which was far worse. Through the window a few trees moved, slowly, and a lot of concrete didn't move at all; as Daniel remembered. A disinterested sky. The heavens don't care, whatever they told you at school. Particularly this school. Daniel could see down the hill, he thought, over the school buildings which stuck together like concrete cancer. A sterile landscape, robbed of personality. Maybe a man staggered by, maybe he didn't. It was hard to be sure now, his view hadn...

The Dead Are Coming John and Stephen Prologue / Simone (parts one) Two men stalked the side of the semi detached house, like burglars on the prowl. Fat, wrapped against the cold, unlikely burglars. It is daylight in the city, hardly burglary hour. Their method is similar to that of a thief, stay quiet and do not get caught. Although they are looking to take, it is not from the living. Quite what “living” is, these days, is open to debate. Depending on your disposition. The only conventional living people they have met are boarded up and shoo them off hurriedly; they’ve been meeting less of these people of late. The other “alive” housing occupants wander their halls, decaying and trying to get out, bouncing angrily off their old life. Life. These houses should be treated with caution. Empty houses are better. Or houses with corpses which aren’t animate. There are dead outside the houses, too, walking. This is why they work at day. Danger from an animate assailant is anoth...

(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...