In Deep - 21: Winston Gilman

Beyond the trellis lay a twisting trail of artfully arranged stone paving that meandered down a cliff-face to a trim little boathouse built amongst the rocks at the lower end of Innsmouth’s mile-long beachfront. At one time, the pretty little walkway was dotted with landscaped gardens nestled in the turns and switchbacks; now it was just choked with salt-crusted greenery. Some long-departed Gilman had built the boathouse for his private yacht, but over time it had been expanded to accept various pleasure craft for hire to hotel guests and it had been accessorised with a walled-off swimming area and poolside bar, for those inclined to bathe. I hadn’t been there in an age but I remembered that it had become a dumping-ground for old furniture and other refuse which the Hotel generated on an annual basis. However, the main feature of the locale – and one I figured would be of pertinent interest to Winston right about now – was the fact that it had a mooring berth for a seaplane.

I jogged off down the path, trying to avoid the broken pavers and sections that had turned to bog. At the second bend I stopped: below me, the lights of the boathouse blinked on and I could hear the distant throbbing of a generator as the wind turned my way. I lifted my gaze to stare out to sea: the waves dashing against Devil Reef were iron-grey and cold as judgement. The sky above started to blur about the edges as the rain began to pour down once more. I turned up my collar and picked up the pace.

As I reached the boathouse a boom rang out from above. I looked behind me to see flames rising upwards from the Gilman House Hotel’s north wing. Orange light flickered off the boathouse windows and the steadily lapping waves around me. Here, the sound of the generator was almost deafening and it could mean only one thing – Winston was fuelling the ‘plane for take-off. I hefted the Desert Eagle in my paw and tried the doorknob: it turned and I gently pushed the door open.

Inside the place smelled of damp rope and dust. The sound of the generator drowned out the roar of the rain on the roof, but not by much. About me stood piles of broken furniture stretching their broken legs and vomiting horsehair through splits and tears. Glittering darkly in the corner was a massive mirror-ball left over from the 70s. Oars and lobster pots created obstacles on the floor, while the ceiling swung with canoes and dinghies. Through the floorboards I could feel the throb and punch of slapping waves below.

I tiptoed forward to the doorway opposite. Through it I could see the long pier which constituted this side of the boathouse, stretching perpendicular to the horizon. The seaplane sat at berth against this, the gasoline tubes gurgling fuel into her side. I began to turn to survey the entrance to the building opposite when something hard smashed against my hand knocking the Desert Eagle from my grip and sending it off the edge of the pier into the water below.

‘I think I like you better unarmed,’ said Winston, dropping the boathook and stepping out of the shadows.

I rubbed my hand. ‘Well, there’s a big difference between “unarmed” and “not dangerous”,’ I said.

He hefted a loaded speargun for me to see. ‘That’s why I’m carrying this,’ he sneered. ‘Why don’t we stroll over to the ‘plane, hmm?’

I raised my hands and did as I was told. As we drew up alongside the aircraft, Winston stepped up to the gas pump and switched it off. The generator racket subsided to be replaced by the hush of the rain as he drew the pipe hose back from the ‘plane, keeping a wary eye on me all the while. Through the open door of the cockpit, I could see the bluish-grey shape of the stone, locked clumsily in place on the passenger’s side with the seat belt. On the planking below was a confused jumble of gear, hurriedly assembled for loading: a creel full of candy-bars, a six-pack of beer, two bang-sticks, a wetsuit and a pair of flippers. I rolled an aerosol can to one side with my toe: whipped cream.

‘Everything a growing boy needs, huh?’ I observed.

‘Along with a very valuable stone’ said Winston, switching the pump handle off, ‘and when I get to where I’m headed, I’ll start the bidding once more.’

‘Where are you headed, Winston?’ I fished.

He snorted derisively. ‘As if I’d tell you that,’ he sneered. ‘What do you take me for?’

I let that pass: some targets are too easy. ‘Why, Winston?’ I asked instead, ‘you’ve cut yourself off completely from your people, burnt all your bridges - is that rock worth it? Really?’

‘My People?’ He threw the words back at me venomously. ‘What has this place ever done for me? Ever since I was hatched, I’ve been locked into one role, my destiny all mapped out for me. When did I ever get the chance to do what I wanted? No, it was always “when Winston takes over the Hotel”. All my brothers and sisters got to leave; they got to see the world and try other things. Me? No, Winston has to stay home and look after the family interests...’

‘That’s not that bad a life,’ I said, ‘it’s got a lotta perks...’

‘So? It still means I’m locked into this rotten town, going nowhere...’

I changed tack. ‘All your brothers and sisters came back though, right? Ephraim and Carter? Prudence?’

‘Yeah, when they were through living their lives, they came back!’

‘It’s not like Ephraim and Carter had a choice, Winston,’ I cut in, ‘they were lucky to be up-coast when the Feds attacked. They had no choice but to get to Canada and lay low.’

‘Sure,’ Winston agreed, ‘but then they went to Europe, Ephraim got into theatre and then suddenly he’s back in California and in the movies with a stage name. He even got Carter a few on-screen roles right before he Changed. They had their choices and they took them; lived large and only came back when they had to.’

‘Prudence didn’t come back for the Change; she returned to look after your mother.’

‘Yes, but until then she was living it up in New York - high society and Manhattan skylines. She could’ve stayed if she’d wanted...’

‘...but she knew where her duty lay. Isn’t it true that, if Jezebel hadn’t sneaked you and Prudence off to Arkham, you’d have all gone through the camps too...?’

‘Yes, grateful, devoted little Prudence: what a saint she was!’ Winston snorted.

I put my hand in my pocket. Instantly, Winston trained the speargun on me.

‘Careful now,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to have to perforate you.’

I rattled my cigarette packet at him, and he relaxed a bit. Pulling a smoke out with my lips I said:

‘If your siblings were going to be such a hard act to follow, why didn’t you just eat them all in the womb?’

He sneered again. ‘Not all of us are öophagous,’ he spat.

I smiled my razor smile. Reaching once more into my pocket, I pulled out the metallic orb and showed it to him.

‘What’s that?’ Winston asked warily.

‘It’s a funky lighter I got off Rodney,’ I lied, ‘You don’t mind?’

He waved his free had at me indicating that I could continue. I brought the orb up to my face and rapidly scanned it: as before, it was irregular and constructed of many interlocking plates, in the grooves between which, an intermittent blue pulse occasionally flared. On one side was a deep blue bubble of some hard, glassy material. Alphonse had said it was a weapon and to point it carefully; the only feature about it which seemed at all worthy of pointing was this glassy eye bit, so I quickly extended my arm and pointed it at Winston.

Nothing happened. I gritted my teeth and jerked my hand again. Still nothing happened.

There was a twanging sound, followed by a meaty thunk. I groaned and sank to my knees, before slumping over sideways. The spear had gone in under my collar-bone and protruded out through the fabric of my coat in back. Oozing ichor, I let go of the metal ball: it rolled awkwardly on the planking, before emitting a blast of humming, blue-white light that blew a hole in the roofing overhead.

‘Excellent,’ I muttered.

Through a brief rain of flaming splinters and molten drops of metal roof-sheeting, Winston stepped forward, picking up one of the bang-sticks as he did so. His face was pale and expressionless, rigid with determination: I imagined that this is how he must’ve looked as he plugged Abner. With a savage kick, he consigned the alien device to the waters.

‘I could use a hand here, Winston,’ I said thickly.

‘Have you seen what one of these can do?’ he asked, I assumed rhetorically, ‘it’s loaded with a 20-gauge shell. All I have to do is touch you with the business end and – boom! You’re seven types of mincemeat on the decking. How about that Benson?’

‘Terrific,’ I grunted, trying to sit upright, ‘you do realise that most of the sharks around here are family, so we don’t really need these kinds of deterrents?’

‘Oh we don’t use them on the sharks,’ he purred closing in, ‘they have a far more recreational use on the land...’

I heaved and kicked him across the face, sending him wheeling backwards. There was a loud bang, then I threw myself back, with both hands on the spear shaft, digging the barbed point deep into the boards beneath me. Then, I snapped the shaft off short near the entry wound and stood up, drawing the spear head through me, breathing raggedly through bloodied lips. The broken spear shaft clattered to the floor.

‘Unarmed,’ I reminded Winston, ‘but definitely far from toothless.’

However, Winston was otherwise occupied.

‘No! No! No!’ he wailed. He was fumbling with something in the front of the seaplane. The seatbelt straps flopped loosely about and several jagged, fist-sized grey lumps fell out from the cockpit, plopping into the water below. Winston spun to face me, his rain-soaked face contorted in rage.

‘You made me break it!’ he screamed. ‘I hit it with the bang-stick! It’s useless now!’

I was only half-listening. From the cockpit a shining radiance shimmered forth and grew in flickering intensity. There seemed to be something small and jewel-like lying amid the remains of the stone. My interest in it must have drawn Winston’s attention, because he turned sharply, snatched at it, and lifted it up. It illuminated his face intensely echoed by the insane gleam in his eyes. He darted a look at me then fumbled on the floor beneath the ‘plane’s passenger seat. When his hand re-appeared, it held a flare gun. Which, of course, he aimed at me.

‘Obvious, now that I think of it,’ he said, half to me, mostly to himself, ‘it’s not the stone, but what’s inside it that’s so valuable! This – this shining thing! Well, this will be much easier to slip past Customs.’

‘Winston...’ I started, but he’d had enough. He raised the flare gun and shot me point-blank with it. I was immediately blinded, choked by smoke and wracked by searing pain in my chest.

‘Good-bye, chum,’ I heard Winston say and the door to the seaplane slammed shut. The engines roared into life.

Agonised, I fell to the planking and tried to roll, but my dead arm wasn’t playing. I groaned and patted the wooden boards: knowing that they ran outwards from the building to the edge of the jetty, I orientated myself and heaved myself forward on my belly. The fading sound of the ‘plane droned away as I reached the edge of the dock and rolled myself over.

Once submerged in the cool, quiet, dimness, I made short work of wrenching the flare out of my flesh; it still burned but smoke and light were mostly cancelled out by the immersion. I let go of it to one side and then kicked my legs strongly. I landed adeptly back on the jetty, standing up to see the seaplane’s taillights lifting up over the water.

I wasted no time. I kicked my way into the boathouse and made my way to the main office. There was a radio there and it represented my last chance to try and turn Winston around. I grabbed the earphones and flicked switches: through the window I could see Devil Reef and the pinpoints of light that were Winston’s farewell to Innsmouth. There was something else too: behind the seaplane and closing fast was a fiery blackness, something like smoke and something like a tear in space. It roiled and flared and inky tendrils of dark bluish-blackness stretched out towards the aircraft.

The radio blared into life in my hands. ‘I see it!’ it was Winston’s voice. panicked, terrified. ‘Coming here – hell-wind – titan blue-black wings...’ some static cut through, then, ‘...save me – the three-lobed burning eye...!’

‘Winston! Winston!’ I pressed up to the window, one hand braced against it, the other holding the earphones, and watched as the inky cloud enveloped the aeroplane completely.

Suddenly, a mountainous object breached up out of the surf beyond Devil Reef. It reared skywards, monstrous, dark and shining, writhing in the moonlight which it rapidly eclipsed. A titanic maw, impossibly huge, opened along its leading edge and engulfed both the ‘plane and its black shroud. I saw writhing tentacles; glittering teeth; then the cyclopean bulk plummeted back into the ocean sending forth a wave which tore the boathouse apart and knocked me senseless...

To Be Concluded...

Review – “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”

SHARMAN, Jim (Dir.), "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Michael White Productions, 1975.

Let me set the record straight right from the get-go: I’m not one of the “Don’t Dream It - Be It” crowd. Not for me the fishnets and suspenders, nor the bustier and eyeshadow. I’m quite happy tapping my toe along to the soundtrack, but as to being a sweet Transvestite from Transexual in Transylvania – I’m not feeling it. Not that I don’t get it: the message is clear. It’s just not mine.

With Hallowe’en around the corner, the Mount Vic. Flicks people decided to hold a special event screening of this cult favourite. Running into Don from Afternoonified – our local store for all things steampunk – he asked me if I was interested in coming along. I had a sudden flash of the last time I went to one of these back in the 80s and hesitated; but then I said “yes; yes I will”, because my new mantra is to say “yes” to things social, and since the word ‘horror’ appears in the title of the film, I thought that would make it worthy of blogging about. I downloaded my ticket and discovered from it that I was assigned the role of “Criminologist”, so I spent a day and a bit organising a costume in order to attend. The result was mixed; the hardest object to acquire was a pipe, or cigarette holder, (which I thought the role required) but I think I pulled it off.

Once I was suitably in drag, I drove out to Mt. Victoria, which is the last village in the Blue Mountains as you head west. This place has enough actual scariness to make it worthy of avoiding on a dark and fogbound night, but I figured the attendees would be of significant quantity to provide the sort of herd safety that buffalo generate. Seriously: this village is the nexus of a nasty little inbred cult and once while at a cafe there, I was told without a trace of irony that they “didn’t take to that fancy EFTPOS stuff around here”, but that Bert at the pub would spot me a fifty across the bar. Brrr! Nevertheless, the Mt. Vic. Flicks people do a great job of bringing cult and arthouse movies to the public and I was keen to support their efforts with my presence and my hard-earned.

(I’m not kidding about the fog either: just before Katoomba it walloped down like a son-of-a-bitch and didn’t let up except for the hundred metres or so in front of the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Medlow Bath – I figure they must pay some excess on their rates for that kind of weather exemption.)

I got to the cinema with a quarter-hour to spare and made my way inside. Riff-Raff was handing out equipment bags and a couple of Magentas were distributing champagne-analogue. I shuffled inside and discovered that our seats were right down in front, which gave me a moment’s pause: I enjoy going to see comedians but I have learnt from experience that the front row is where most of the mayhem occurs and is best avoided. I had a presentiment that high-jinks would be the order of the day at this screening, and so I became wary. As it turned out, apart from momentary contact with rubber-encased buttocks, I was shielded by some guardian angel from the worst of the front row engagements.

The champagne-analogue was a clue. These types of events require that participants get into the swing by dropping their inhibitions and so booze is distributed largesse in order to facilitate this. Sitting, as I was, up front, I saw exactly how many bottles of this evil fruit juice were being pressed upon the gagging audience, most of whom had already been lowering their inhibitions at the local pub, and it was thoroughly sobering.

Our equipment bags were “Rocky Horror-lite” in that they covered the most obvious bases without going the whole hog. There was confetti to be divided between the opening wedding scene and the unholy wedding of Frank ‘n’ Rocky; a sheet of newspaper to be worn during the rain scene; a glowstick to wave during the “There’s a Light” number; a rubber glove to snap; a party noisemaker to blow during the “Animation Sequence”; a Party Popper™ to fire before the “Honeymoon Suite” scene; and a party hat to wear at the dinner scene. I’ve been to screenings where toast and rice and water pistols have been the order of the day, along with regimented responses to the dialogue – this was not one of those screenings. On the whole, it was preferable.

Once everyone was in situ, the film got underway. We were surrounded by some vaguely-acquainted individuals who were drunk when they arrived and drunker when the opening credits rolled. It transpired that they were all school teachers on a team-building exercise and every time someone took a photo with their ‘phone the words “I hope this never gets to the school website!” rang out en clair. Given their ensuing semi-pornographic antics, I just assumed that one of these images would be ringing down the end of someone’s career within a few days: there’s protesting and then there’s protesting too much.

The film kicked off and I was surprised at the quantity of words that I still retained in my memory. This print of the film had the words of the songs printed in sub-title, but I was able to sing along with a bare acknowledgement of their presence; usefully, I was able to clear up some minor issues I have with the text where the exact words were unknown to me. Interestingly, the versions of the words in my head were better than the actual words, so I think I’ll stick with those.

During “Sweet Transvestite” a paid performer appeared and over-sang the lyrics while parading his rubber underwear. I was kind of annoyed by this because Tim Curry simply can’t be outdone in belting out this tune, so the live performance was invasive and pointless. My attention became white-hot focussed during his rendition only because he and a tribe of Magentas converged on my vicinity: thankfully, they manhandled the school-teacher next to me and dragged him away into the ladies’ toilets: thank-you guardian angels!

After this, we snapped rubber gloves and blew party favours. At the point where Rocky is manifested in his bandages, the unfortunate school teacher re-appeared wrapped in toilet paper and was dragged through several rows of viewers who got to strip him of his coverings. He struggled back to his seat next to me clad in his own underwear (jocks and singlet), gold lamé undies stuffed to bursting with two tea towels, and a blonde wig. He complained about how cold it was for the rest of the event; I was impressed that he didn’t complain about what had been done to him by the enthusiastic organisers!

Just before the appearance of Eddie, there was an Intermission. This was a bad idea: the last act of the film is weak, weak, weak, and enthusiasm tapers off dramatically. There was a costume competition (won by a woman breast-feeding her baby and a guy Dr. Scott-ing in a wheelchair) and way more champagne-analogue: I’m wondering if anyone in the audience even remembers the second half.

Eventually, we hit the betrayal moment where Riff-raff and Magenta bite the hand that feeds them, and the house Transvestite re-appeared to perform the songs that Tim Curry was already more than adequately crooning. There was a moment when he perched himself rather uncomfortably on my lap but I’ve blanked it from my memory – obviously, my guardian angels were working overtime; I can’t fault them for letting one misdemeanour through. The Floorshow saw the unfortunate and frozen school-teacher and the breast-feeding mother dragged forward to bumble the lyrics and then it was an inevitable slide towards the end credits. I can’t say that I wasn’t happy to get out of there: seriously, I could have slapped on my DVD of this film at home and had a better time with it. It was atmospheric; I had a night out; that was it. It was a case of building life experience: there are things I’ve seen tonight that I will not forget for awhile, despite efforts to the contrary; but on balance I wouldn’t have missed it.

Now: the film itself. It’s hard to criticise this effort; the music is catchy, subversive and full of hooks, so you find yourself singing along regardless. However, the music is one of the best things about this film. As far as the plot is concerned, it’s a dog’s breakfast. This is a tent-pole script: it has a number of points that it has to attain and it gets there by the most obtuse approaches possible: get the hero and heroine to the castle; get the monster animated; get the government agent involved; get everyone compromised; get the betrayal done; wrap things up. The ludicrous ways that the actors and writers get across these anchors is what makes the film a cult classic and are the things which stick with the fans. If the music was less engaging and the performers less adept, the whole project would have fallen flat (see: “Shock Treatment”).

My interest is that the film transverses two segments: a horror-story mode and a science-fiction tale. The set-up is pure horror: the young lovers are sent out into the dark and stormy night, only to experience an accident and then back-track to the lair of the nightmare antagonist. This has the ring of urban myth to it: if Riff-raff was scraping his hook-hand on the roof of Brad’s car it couldn’t be more perfect.

The scene in the lab is the transition moment. This is the genre side-step: horror is a body stitched together from mis-matched parts; science fiction is the re-animation of those parts by scientific means. From here on in we are in sci-fi central, where everything has an alien rationale. Generically-speaking, the movie falls into these two halves: B-grade horror followed by B-grade sci-fi. It’s right there in the title song.

Performances make this film. It’s inconceivable now that anyone else could undertake these roles; it’s a moment of perfect casting. Tim Curry is Frank’n’furter; Susan Sarandon is Janet; no-one else does any of the movie’s roles better, and I’m sorry to all those stage performers who belt it out periodically live on stage. It’s one of the things that ensures that this piece of fluff hasn’t faded into the background – perfect songs; perfect casting.

The scripting is something less stellar. As this special event tonight has shown, the third act of this movie is clunky and fudged; not sure of where it’s going. It ends, but not satisfactorily. The unsatisfactory conclusion is covered by more – counterintuitive - stellar song-writing, but it feels lazy around about this point, as if all personnel were just wanting to get home and forget the depredations of the daily grind. I think it’s an empathic thing: having seen Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon stand around for two-thirds of the film in their underwear, it seems only charitable to let them go home and get some warm clothes on.

Do I find this film enjoyable? Yes; occasionally. Do I think it’s art? No: not at all. It’s fun; that’s all. I enjoy the artistic references and the songs; the impeccable performances. It’s not “worthy” or “art”: it is what it is and I’ll probably go again next year.

Are you listening, Mt. Vic. Flicks?

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

Zombie-Fighting Strategies!

For something a bit different, I would like to focus upon the other thing upon which I waste my time: “Plants vs. Zombies”. For those of you who are clueless as to what this might be – very few of you I’m thinking – it’s a computer game where you plant all kinds of vegetation, each of which has its own specific means of inflicting mayhem, in order to repel advancing waves of ever more menacing undead shufflers, aka. zombies. I started playing this game awhile ago and was completely hooked. I’ve played the whole adventure through a couple of times and now have much of the tactical basics down pat. It’s a deceptively easy-looking game (enhanced by the cutesy characters) and you have to have cool nerves and strategic nous to win clear of an undead mauling. Explaining all of the technicalities would take weeks of blog updates so I would just like to focus on one of the mini-games that comes with the software and which are designed to hone your mad botanical combat skillz.

The mini-game in question is “ZomBotany”. This comes across as a standard frame of zombie-blasting but it has a twist: in this version, the zombies’ heads are replaced by two of the more useful plant types – an unholy blending of undead flesh and vegetable matter. In this iteration, the two types of zombies to be faced are a standard zombie with a Peashooter head and a standard zombie with a Wall-nut head. This means that one type of zombie shoots back at your plants, while the other is hugely resistant to your attacks. The Peashooter zombies are in the majority as well, forming a 4:1 ratio of encounters.

What this means in terms of strategy is that, whatever you plant, you are going to come under retaliatory fire. Your plants are going to take damage and will need to be replaced frequently. As well, every now and then, a nut-headed walker is going to stroll through your defences largely unhindered. This is bad, but not insurmountable. All you need to do is to select plants that can’t be hit by zombie artillery and direct the undead horde where you want it to go, rather than letting it choose its own path. You need to select the following plants at the start of the game:

As you can see, you need to have a handful of ‘one-shot killers’ which are useful in establishing your floral emplacement – the Potato Mine, the Squash and the Jalapeño. It goes without saying that you need Sunflowers – you can’t just rely on the energy streaming down from above! The two backbones to this strategy however are the Garlic bulb and the Spikeweed (along with its power-up version, the Spikerock). For return-fire, your best bet is the Threepeater and the Snow Pea: the Threepeater can fire on the enemy without being in their line of fire, and the Snow Pea makes your Spikeweed much more effective, although you are going to have to replace them a lot. For the last slot, take the Twin Sunflower – by the end of this engagement you will need all the sun you can get!

The game teaches you to plant all of your vegetable friends in neat vertical columns. This is something that becomes heavily inculcated in the new player, however for this mini-game, you need to break your conditioning. For this battle, you want to create ‘kill zones’ into which you will direct the undead so that you can pick them off. The best way to do this is to plant Garlic. A Garlic bulb at the start of a row will divert the oncoming zombie to the row immediately above or below the garlic-protected row. If you plant Garlic at the start of the top row, at the start of the middle row, and at the start of the bottom row, then immediately, all of the walkers have no choice but to shuffle into the two remaining rows: these are your killing fields. You will need to “double Garlic” your rows, that is plant two Garlic bulbs at the start of these rows, because zombies eventually chew past the Garlic and win free of the blockades. Double-Garlic-ing gives you time to concentrate on other aspects of the battle. Remember though, that you will need to constantly replace your Garlic; fail to do so, and the zombies will swarm!

Reserve the top and bottom rows for Sunflowers and evolve them into double-headed hybrids as the option becomes available. The Garlic will keep them safe by absorbing most of the enemy Peashooter fire and by diverting the zombies away. Leave the other end of the row clear of plants at the beginning: when it becomes available, plant a Snow Pea in the most left-hand square of these three rows. This means that any zombies who munch your Garlic will be frozen for their trouble. The middle row has another function: it too, needs two Garlics at the right-hand end, and a Snow Pea to the extreme left, but your goal here is to fill this lane with Threepeaters, working left to right. The benefit of the Threepeater is that it can cover all the killing field lanes as well as pinging any zombies who nibble its protective Garlic, without taking any return fire. Cunning, huh?

That leaves us with the killing fields. Plant these lanes entirely with Spikeweed except for the far left squares at each end. At the beginning of the encounter, you will need to plant Potato Mines on the last (left-most) square of these lanes: these guys represent your last line of defense before the lawnmowers go into action. At the start of the action, you will be using the Squash and – later – the Jalapeño to eliminate pesky undead strays who get too close to your house, but by the end, very few zombies will make it even halfway. Just remember to place your Squash right in front of the zombies that you want to take out – if you put them down too far away, the Peashooter zombie will shoot them up before they have a chance to go to work. In front of the Potato Mines, plant a Snow Pea: these guys will take a pounding and will have to be replaced regularly, but they will make your “dance floor” that much more effective.

What’s a “dance floor”, I hear you ask? Simply put, it’s a thoroughfare covered in Spikeweed over which zombies have no other choice but to pass. I love Spikeweed – zombies can’t touch it and they kill themselves by walking on it. No muss, no fuss. Fill the rest of these lanes with the stuff and watch the walkers fall to pieces. When the option becomes available, upgrade your ‘Weed to Spikerocks and Bob’s the relative of your choice. Remember though: at the start of this mini-game, zombies cannot walk over two complete Spikeweed squares; soon however, they toughen up and it will take three squares to do them in. No Peashooter zombie can endure four Spikeweed squares. The Wall-nut Zombies are a different issue.

No matter how much Spikeweed you lay down, a Wall-nut zombie will make it all the way to your Potato Mine and blow up. You need to retaliate against them by upgrading your Spikeweed, planting Snow Peas and then planting Threepeaters. When frozen, zombies take longer to move off the Spikeweed, making it more effective, and the more projectiles you throw at these Wall-nut guys, the more of their armour you destroy. Just be prepared, in the game’s initial stages, to rely on your Squash and Jalapeño to take these guys down if they get too close for comfort.

Basically, your lawn should look like this:

If you upgrade your Spikeweed starting from the right-hand end of the lawn, you eliminate the shooter zombies more quickly: this lessens the devastation to your plants. As you can see, the Garlic bulb at I5 has been nibbled upon: they develop less of a sunny disposition as they wear out, so keep an eye on them and be ready to use the shovel to replace them (or just plant more when they’re completely eaten; personally, I try to remove and replace them rather than sending them to the Big Compost Bin in the Sky, but that’s just me). The Snow Peas at B2 and B4 are also going to take some punishment and will need to be replaced regularly. A variation you can try is to do without Snow Peas entirely and select the Tall-nut instead, planting those at these two locations: it’s amusing to watch zombies being chewed apart by Spikeweed while trying to tunnel through a stoic Tall-nut.

This is a sure-fire way to survive this evil iteration of the standard game. After trying this, you will think quite differently about the humble Garlic in future!

In Deep - 20: Tennis Anyone?

As I skipped up the stairs of the Gilman House Hotel the door swung open and I met Ned Pierce coming out. He wore a determined look on his face (marred only by the bandage on his nose) and he carried a rifle in both hands. A day or so ago I would have baulked at his sudden appearance; now I raised a hand in greeting.

‘Hey Ned,’ I remarked, ‘sorry about the nose.’

He shook his head in dismissal. ‘Had worse,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the place locked down: we saw the creep come in but he’s vanished somewhere inside.’

I looked upwards at the beetling facade of the building while I lit a cigarette. ‘He’s probably got more tunnels through this place than the termites,’ I observed. ‘Alright Ned: As long as we keep the exits pinned down he can hide as long as he wants. He’s got to surface for air at some point.’

‘Elijah Southwark is going room-to-room with some of his buddies, starting at the top. Hopefully they’ll flush him out.’

‘I hope they’re armed...’

Ned grinned. ‘Those kids? Loaded for bear and spoiling for a fight! I just hope there’ll be something left for Stan to poke at.’

‘Huh,’ I chuckled, ‘Kids these days.’ I flapped my match out and flicked it into the darkness.

Behind Ned, the glass door swung open. ‘Hey you guys!’ Sherman Sargent stuck out his head; ‘Gilman’s been spotted out on the tennis lawn!’

We hefted our weapons and raced indoors.

The lobby was a blur of dark-coated enforcers and surprised guests. Coen Bros. started to voice an objection to the blatant display of weaponry from behind the Reception Desk but I gave him a stern glare and he decided to clam up. We went straight through to the restaurant and out onto the tennis lawn beyond. Here the Gilman House revealed itself to be a three-sided structure, the two rear-extending ells containing a grey-green rectangle of struggling grass, bordered by an overgrown garden and walkway, nominally designated a tennis court. A trellis wall beyond, sagging beneath cancerously overgrown rosebushes, shielded a view out to the ocean, and we arrived to see Winston duck through a gateway set in the middle of this, lugging a cumbersome stone in both arms. Ned cocked his rifle and we swarmed after him in pursuit.

Halfway across the dying lawn, a door slammed open at the base of the wing to our left and a loud gong shattered the atmosphere, reverberating off the surrounding walls. Bustling out of the building came a score or more of short athletic men in martial arts get-up, coloured black with flourishes of red, orange and yellow. They were armed with myriad different kinds of outlandish kung-fu weaponry, which they displayed with evident eagerness. Pushing through from the centre of this throng, draped in an oversized silk robe and carrying a huge gong with its striker, I recognised the crazy, butterfly-headed form of Madame Klopp.

‘There he is!’ she shrilled, pointing at me with her gong stick, ‘The one who seeks the stone!’ She broke off, screaming in some staccato language which clearly registered as “attack!” to her surrounding buddies. They surged forward keenly and one or two of them instantly burst out of their karate gear, transforming into huge rubbery creatures with whippy, sucker-tipped fingers.

I put my face in my palm. ‘Oh my god...’ I muttered.

Then Ned was by my side. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ve got this. You go get Winston.’ I nodded and hurried away from the melee as gunfire and shrill screams rang out in my wake.

I was only a couple of paces away from the trellis gate when the air convulsed in front of me, wobbled and disgorged a hideous flying creature that leered dangerously at me. I hauled on the brakes and threw myself to one side to avoid its swiping paw. Landing heavily on the brown grass I looked upwards in time to see a second horror appear. They were vaguely insectoid and kind of like birds, with a distinctly reptilian cast; mostly though, they looked like they’d died a few weeks previous but had forgotten to lie down and be still. When they flapped their wings, a reek of something harsh, like ozone, swirled around them. They screeched evilly and began closing the gap between us.

I sneaked a glance back at the kung fu crowd and noticed that our side wasn’t doing too well: Madame Klopp had that “all my Christmases come at once” look on her face indicating that she was particularly pleased that the two beasties had shown up to swell her ranks. Ned was calling for ammo and Sherman Sargent was having trouble with a rubbery monstrosity that seemed to be trying to drain his blood though the toothy orifices on its fingertips.

I ducked a fistful of claws and stuck my hand in my pocket for my gun. Drawing forth my hand I realised I’d grabbed the wrong metallic object and held up the slightly curved, pointy stick with the flat top. The warning words of Alphonse filled my head as I rolled sharply away from a two-fisted assault.

‘Screw it,’ I said, and plunged the spike into the lawn.

A pulse shot through the atmosphere, as if the sky had just rippled. In its wake a momentary silence hovered and the light grew pale like the first light of dawn; things seemed to move in slow motion around me. Then everything slapped back into place: thunder boomed, wind roared and the ground beneath me began to heave strongly upwards.

I rolled beneath the flapping horrors and threw my back against the trellis, which was sagging more than ever beneath the thrashing rosebushes. A huge split rent the tennis lawn and massive tentacles oozed upwards from out of the dirt below. Tapering and twirling, they started thin like garden hoses but quickly grew to the heft of tree trunks. Rising ever upwards, these coiling members met finally at ropey body which still rose up out of the earth: many hideous fanged maws appeared, snapping and drooling, and I realised that I had seen one of these things before, at Rodney’s shack. It stood almost as tall as the Hotel’s sixth floor. The assembled combatants had all thrown themselves out of the way during this emergence and now stood goggling at the behemoth before them.

Suddenly, Madame Klopp screamed angrily in her alien pidgin and pointed her gong striker at the terror; in response, the newcomer roared in equal rage and then some, bellowing from multiple monstrous throats, and it shuffled massively over to join combat.

The flying dead things swooped, were caught in circling tentacles, crushed and then chewed to nothing in toothy maws; the kung fu crew fired guns and threw spears, but beat a hasty retreat back into the Hotel. Undeterred, the juggernaut slammed straight into the side of the building and burst through it in an explosion of timber and stonework. In its wake the Gilman House’s north wing slumped down into rubble.

Ned and the rest of our team quickly gathered themselves together, reloading, recovering and slicing Sherman free of the slug-thing that wanted his ichor. I straightened my hat and helped myself to a smoke.

‘Well,’ I said to no-one in particular, ‘that seemed to work.’

I turned and kicked open the trellis door. Time to find Winston.

To Be Continued...

Review - "Jurassic World"

TREVORROW, Colin (Dir.), “Jurassic World”, Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment/Legendary Pictures Inc., 2015.

“Beware the second head of Science, Arthur – it bites!”

-The Tick vs. Dinosaur Neil

The way I remember all the movies in this franchise goes something like this: there’s the one with the two annoying brats; the one with the irritating (yet strangely effective) brat (in which Richard Schiff gets unfairly disposed of); and the one with the brat with the even more annoying parents. It seems that, Ourobouros-like, we’ve arrived back at the beginning, and I will now have to think of this instalment as “the other one with the two annoying brats”. Irritating, poorly-behaved children, it seems, is what Spielberg does best, and the only point on which I’d cut these infants any slack is that their adult mentors are no better behaved.

It’s a truism on either Isla Nublar, or Isla Sorna, that if someone says “do as I say”, or “do as you’re told”, the imperative is to do the exact opposite. In any other franchise, the moment someone disobeys a direct order, that’s when they pay the piper. Not in this series. Here, bad behaviour pays dividends. It’s a crap lesson and it bugs the hell out of me.

The two brats in this show are a case in point. One of them – you’ll be devastated to know – is the little upstart urchin from “Iron Man 3” and unbelievably, between that show and this, no-one has bothered to give him a haircut. Is it just me? This fellow is the oddest-looking moppet I’ve seen on film in recent years. Every time he’s required to plaster on an expression of wonder or amazement, I have Mythos flashbacks: seriously, the next time he mugs for the camera in this way, freeze-frame and pull out your copy of Chaosium’s “The Complete Dreamlands”. Compare and contrast the kid with Geier’s illustration of the Haemophore with its odd, W-shaped mouth - you’ll see what I mean.

His brother, the social butterfly Zach, is hardly better. Seriously, did we learn nothing after Freddy Prinze Jr.? This child is a sleazy, lacklustre, wannabe-Lothario who, we’re explicitly told, indulges in acts of emotional cruelty against his younger brother, Gray (the afore-mentioned moppet). It’s hardly surprising that he takes the movie’s implicit championing of the ill-behaved and runs a mile with it. Unfortunately, he gets away with everything. Moving on.

Our heroes for this instalment (because, as we’ll see, there’s always a conflict of ideals versus expediency in these flicks and both sides need advocates) are the brats’ aunt Claire and her potential new boyfriend Owen “Dances with Raptors” Grady. She’s the Executive Officer on deck at Jurassic World, wheeling and dealing with Big Industry for endorsement of the latest attractions and managing the daily throughput of over 20,000 visitors to the toothy theme park. He is a touchy-feely ex-Navy Velociraptor handler trying to communicate with a pod of these carnivores – a “Dinosaur Whisperer” if you will. She calls the monsters “assets”; he champions their right to be treated with respect as living beings. We’re told early on that these two went out on a date at one point but clearly things did not work out. It’s easy to see why.

Claire (no last name – there’s a reason) is presented to us visually as an unearthly being. This is partly because Bryce Dallas Howard is a somewhat elfin-looking woman anyway, but she spends the entirety of this film doing battle with wardrobe and makeup to try and appear halfway normal. In most of the scenes her face looks weirdly skull-like, or flushed, which – along with the helmet-hair – makes her look like another botched side project of Hydra’s super-soldier efforts. The rest of the time she vaguely resembles the robot lady from “Metropolis”. Don’t even get me started on the fact that, in Costa Rica, she’s wearing hosiery for the entire film. In previous instalments, the lead women have all been practical and no-nonsense; this character is a glaring exception to that rule.

Which brings us to Chris Pratt. I’ve tried to like this guy; I’ve not seen his televisual efforts, but I genuinely tried to like him in “Guardians of the Galaxy” - I found him wanting. Every time he walks on stage I hear Jimmy Buffett playing “Margaritaville” in the background. No matter what he’s overtly wearing, he’s always got an implicit Hawaiian shirt and a pair of boardies on underneath. It’s not that he’s ineffective in his roles, it’s just that he’s not credible. No matter how ‘Clint Eastwood squinty’ he gets, he’s still a stoner goofball. And, like Claire, his character in this film is a departure from the template which the other films established.

In the previous movies, tough guys with guns get nowhere; victory comes to the brainy dudes who can think their way around the obstacles. Here we see the opposite of that: both Claire and Owen win through by grabbing big guns and turning to the ‘kill switch’ technology. Owen, as Zach notes, is a “badass”, and this makes him the hero. Our brainy tech characters are relegated to second-string (if they aren’t active baddies) whereas before, they were lovable saints. I wonder, with Spielberg the Executive Producer of these movies, why the template has been allowed to buckle so dramatically? After all, if it isn’t broken, as they say – and these films are serious bread-and-butter rent-payers for Spielberg – why mess with it? Peculiar.

There’s another way to read this movie too, which is probably incidental, but I found it interesting. Those people who have only one name are the “good guys”, in that they are single-focus beings with no hidden agendas; those whose single name is a surname are baddies with an overt negative agenda. Thus we have “Claire” and “Zach” and “Gray” and their parents (“Karen” and “Thingummy”) as the dyed-in-the-wool innocents and Vincent d’Onofrio’s “Hoskins” as the ‘let’s breed dinosaurs for military purposes’ bad guy - did he not watch the “Aliens” movies? “Barry”, Owen’s partner in ‘raptor-training is also a good guy (although every time he said “merde!” and the sub-titles translated this as “[speaks French]” I had an inadvertent chuckle). Those characters with two names are compromised and cross over the moral boundaries: thus “Owen Grady” is compromised because his Velociraptor project is funded by Hoskins’ InGen cronies with military financing; “Frank Lowery” the goofy tech-head is cynically wise to Jurassic World’s deep issues and must be prodded to rise to heroism; “Simon Masrani”, the billionaire owner of the park and inheritor of Hammond’s vision, shoots himself in the foot by asking for “thrills” in dino-development rather than being content with “wonder”; and “Henry Wu” (B.D. Wong, whom I always fondly remember from the X-Files’ “Hell Money”) is the geneticist who compromises safety with expediency in the race to create more exciting monsters. This pattern falls down in spots (“Zara” the British P.A. for instance), but it’s concrete enough to give a sense that this signalling system is what they’re going for.

This entire franchise has been – for me at least – a kind of Chinese puzzle in terms of screenplay writing. It feels as if there were so many good ideas that were thrown into the writing of the first film that no-one was willing to cut anything out, or to truly let anything go. It feels as if the intention all along was to make sequels, and that anything that couldn’t be squeezed into one film would fall handily into the next. Thus, we couldn’t have a Pteranodon encounter in the first film along with all the rest of the mayhem, despite the fact that there’s that shot of a flock of them flying away from the island at the end. Don’t worry, their presence is explained in film three. In film two, Julianne Moore’s character has a “lucky backpack” which serves no coherent purpose; never mind, it’s a crucial prop in film three and there’s an echo of it in the fourth instalment too, as Gray has a “dork bag” with him, stuffed full of all sorts of useful things, like matches. On a writing level, it seems that nothing is ever really cut from the scripts which these screenwriters come up with – it all just gets relegated to the next blockbuster. I wonder if there are any more McGuffins, plotlines, set pieces, or favourite dinosaurs left in the tool-box? Personally I was grateful to see the Ankylosaurs at last – a favourite dino of mine.

Echoes are a big part of this film: every so often we get a spoken reference or a visual cue to previous episodes, in particular a set piece in the abandoned original visitors’ centre from the first movie. Unlike Peter Jackson’s heavy-handed “Hobbit” hark-backs, these are elegantly handled and work fairly well, although I still feel that they short-change an inexperienced audience. Maybe this old set was still standing somewhere and needed to be trashed, kind of like King Kong’s wall getting burnt down as part of Atlanta in “Gone with the Wind”? Perhaps the presence of such material signals the end of the goodies in the Jurassic tool-box?
 

The premise of this film is that, in order to secure more funding and thrills for paying attendees, new dinosaurs are being cobbled together through hybridisation and gene-splicing. The ethics of this work is discussed at length, as is the decision to treat such creatures as commodities rather than as entities. Again, we learn the price of “playing God” when the fabricated Indominus Rex gets loose and goes on a rampage. It’s a T-Rex/Velociraptor mash-up built with chameleon genes - to allow it to camouflage itself – and tree frog DNA – which allows it to thermo-regulate, thus bypassing infrared detection. I found suspension of disbelief being somewhat stretched as these revelations fell into place: who would’ve thought that any of this was a Good Idea? And having built this horror, how would it be remotely possible to put it on display for the punters? Obviously the boffins at Jurassic World are clever, just not very smart.

Towards the end of the flick the dino-aviary gets trashed (again!) and the Birdie-saurs all get loose. I had to wonder why – once the glass cage broke – did all of these beasties go on a rampage, chewing up the tourists (for other than the obvious reasons)? I mean, if they were so hungry, wouldn’t they just have eaten each other while still in their gilded cage? Hmmm. It’s hard to get too worked up about the logic blips though – these films are here for one purpose and the movie adequately lives up to its raison-d’être. With the Mosasaurus getting a moment in the spotlight however – ticking off the box of aquatic dinosaurs that the Spinosaurus aegypticus only inadequately accomplished – I’m left wondering if there will be a “Jurassic Park V”.

At the end of the film, as in all of the others, we are shown that dinosaurs cannot be effectively put in a box and displayed to a paying public. It is demonstrated adequately that ethical science is the only way forward and that we mustn’t traffic with hubris in our grand designs. Most of all, in the final analysis, it’s good to bask in the power that dinosaurs have to heal family rifts, to strengthen bonds of human feeling, and to make better people of us all.

(Puke now.)

Two-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

In Deep - 19: Ms Hepplethwaite

After these revelations, to say that my feelings were somewhat mixed would be a huge understatement. I was relieved that I was off the hook as far as the Order was concerned; then again, Abner Gilman was still dead by a treacherous hand, and – now that I had the luxury - I took that hard. I helped shoulder the casket with the other Temple Elders and we made our slow, mournful way down to the sea.

There were some initial prayers and responses – which I won’t go into – and then we hauled the coffin down to the water’s edge. The fitful rain let up momentarily as we waded out beyond the breakers, floating the body between us. The slate grey of the sky and the black cold water suited our collective mood. Stan croaked out a word of welcome and it was answered faintly from beyond the spray. With a final heave we pushed the casket over the breaking edge of an incoming wave and it rolled away towards the distant Reef.

Suddenly, Barney began to yawp once more, but there was an urgency to it this time, a different note. Initially, we thought that he was just having one of his turns, but then he began ripping off his mourner’s black and stripping down to his scales, uttering a constant barrage of croaks and barks as he did so. Then he sprang over the next wave and plunged into the ocean. The last we saw of him was his head and arm steering Abner’s coffin out to Devil Reef, accompanied by distant croaking.

‘Well, I’ll be,’ said Stan shaking his head, ‘I knew he was about ready, but I didn’t figger it’d be today. At least Abner has a steady hand at the helm.’

I didn’t say anything; I was too choked up. Instead, I clapped Stan on the shoulder and started wading back to shore, dragging my trenchcoat through the foam.

We gathered on the sand, wringing seawater out of our jackets and pants, shaking hands and offering condolences. Stan extended an invitation to re-convene at his house, where the women-folk had prepared something to eat. As the rain started to fall once more, I thanked him but begged off: I had to square things with Winston.

‘What I need, Stan,’ I said, ‘is a look at what’s inside the Temple Vault.’

Stan blinked at me; that should tell you how shocked he was. ‘But, I ain’t got the key,’ he said, ‘When we first found Abner, it was the first thing I looked fer...’

‘Even money says that Winston took it,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter that you don’t have it: I just need to see the Vault.’

Stan considered this. ‘Well sure,’ he said, ‘I can take you there, but then I have to get to this wake...’

‘I’d be mighty obliged, Stan’

He spent some time seeing off his buddies and reassuring them that he wouldn’t be long. Then we started up the beach, heading toward the centre of town – spiritual if not actual.

The Temple is an unprepossessing structure. It used to be an old Masonic hall back in the day, but time and Obed Marsh put paid to that. The fundamental architecture is still the same, but the needs of the future have had their way. The original structure is a typical Palladian confection with a dome and columns, but new administration offices of smart sandstone now wrap around the outside. On the outside, the building reflects the typical Innsmouth tendency towards decay; inside, the accoutrements of worship are top-shelf, with the finest of design and technological augmentation. We’ve had folk who’ve pillaged the Temple a few times; let’s just say that they lived to regret it.

The offices are strictly pedestrian: as mild and bureaucratic as you’d expect. The main part of the structure houses a massive safe wherein are kept all of the vestments used in the Temple services and those valuables I mentioned earlier, taken from those busy-bodies who stuck their noses in where they were unwelcome. I had seen the Vault only a couple of times before; I’d never seen it open.

Stan rushed forward when he saw the gaping door: he deftly grabbed the key from the lock and slipped it in his pocket. By that time I was flashing my torch through the doorway, looking at the mess within. The floor was covered with banknotes and golden jewellery, highlighted by SLR cameras and iPads. There were more substantial things further in but nothing resembling what I would expect by way of The Stone.

‘Godsdamnit!’ spat Stan, ‘what a frickin’ mess!’

‘You kiss your wife with that mouth Stan?’

He looked a bit sheepish and was about to say something, but the sound of a shotgun loading cut him short.

We turned slowly to see Remora approaching from behind, aiming her shotgun low and blowing a pink balloon with her bubble-gum. She oiled her way forward until she stood in the light of a curved window. Her aviator sunglasses made reading her intentions tricky. Her gum popped.

‘Stick ‘em up shamus,’ she purred.

I chose to do as ordered, nudging Stan to do likewise. ‘Remora,’ I said, drawing fire, ‘still pushing all of the wrong buttons I see.’

She waggled the shotgun. ‘That’s why I chose the direct approach this time,’ she snarled, ‘solid shot; no soft pedal.’

‘I stand corrected’ I said. ‘I suppose Winston is making off with the stone while we twiddle our thumbs here. What’s your angle on this? What do you get out of it?’

‘What else, shamus?’ She smirked, ‘cash: cold and hard and lots of it. ‘Got my eye on a coastal farm up in Newfoundland, where I can lay my clutch and bring them up right.’

‘I see,’ I winced, ‘the logic of pregnancy. Can’t you see that Winston’s playing you sweetheart?’

‘Don’t call me that!’ she spat, raising the gun, ‘You don’t know anything about me or what I need.’

‘I know that you’re the kind of talent that the Order would bankroll to Hell and beyond, if you’d just ask. Whatever Winston’s offering, you could get from us with no hassle. Am I right, Stan?’

Stan nodded furiously; I was hoping he wasn’t about to have any camp flashbacks.

She looked momentarily confused. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Winston said that you were opposed to us exotics; that you would force us out; that we weren’t mainstream enough for you...’

‘Remora! He killed his own grandpa! The pillar of our community! What sort of guy do you think he really is? Do you think he really cares about you and your brood?’

She pulled the sunglasses from her face; what I could see was still unreadable.

‘I can’t...’ she choked, ‘My spawn...I have to...it’s what I have to do...’ the sunglasses clattered to the ground and she raised the gun.

‘Get behind me, Stan’ I said, pulling him against my back.

The window shattered: a muscled arm, big around as a beer barrel flashed into the room, accompanied by ringing glass and the hand on the end of it enfolded Remora in a death grip. The shotgun burst and showed red; Remora screamed; then she was dragged out into the rainy beyond. I covered Stan as screams and yells erupted from outside: I heard horrible pounding and the sickening pop of a bursting swim bladder. Then all was still.

I scrambled up, showering broken glass everywhere. Stan nodded that he was okay, so I walked hesitantly across to the window. Outside, Remora lay still across a patch of well-trimmed lawn; a hulking figure moved back from her and turned her face up to me.

‘Pah-loo-kah?’ she said.

‘I’m fine, Doreen’ I said. My heart swelled deep in my chest. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

‘Miss you,’ she breathed through bloodied teeth.

I held out my hand and her monstrous paw enfolded mine. ‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Haff...to go,’ she said, her lower lip quivering.

‘Baby, you do what you need to,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there before you know it.’

‘Haff..to.’

‘I know.’

‘Wait...for you.’

I teared up. I sniffled over her claws like a love-struck kid: she was my everything and I was hers. Our gift was an eternity of life and she was promising me an unending life with her. It was what I wanted; all I wished for. How could I refuse?

Her hand pulled away from mine. She looked back once as she walked away: she took a bee-line to the beach.

I picked up the shotgun that lay next to Remora’s cooling corpse. There was an unspent round within.

Stan stepped up behind me. ‘I always thought you two would get together eventually,’ he said.

‘We weren’t ever apart, Stan,’ I said, ‘It’s just the timing that was wrong.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ he said.

‘Me and Winston have to have a conversation,’ I said.

Stan’s non-existent jaw clenched and he gave me a hard look. ‘You be careful ‘round that piranha,’ he said, ‘he had us all fooled about what he was up to, and I figger he ain’t gonna give up without a fight.’

I leaned in close and showed my teeth. ‘Stan, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

I turned and strode away, lighting up a cigarette as I did so...

To Be Continued...