The Plastic Age

Schopenheur’s pessimistic view that everybody suffers has continued to hold true through the Industrial Revolution and the ensuing technology spiral of the late twentieth century - which continues at an increasing pace during the twenty-first century. It is a truism that all human beings desire, and anyone in a state of want may be said to suffer. In the past this desire was a basic need for food, shelter and warmth, as defined by Maslow’s Hierarchy. Now that we in the West have long since met these needs the current generation has more leisure time than any previous; they should only suffer only through boredom. Correspondingly, this should be a Golden Age for art, music and exploration, of freethinkers and liberal attitudes. The shackles of custom and dogma should have been torn asunder by a new breed that transcended the societal norm, freed from the tyranny of the herd mentality. This should be the age of the Übermensch, as prophesied by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.

Instead of evolution we have embraced devolution! The lowest common denominator is the yardstick by which we measure society. The current generation is not the Übermensch – they are the apathetic, poorly read stooges of the Multinationals, the inheritors of consumerist policies. Their pathetic and narrow worldview is incapable of grasping the importance of anything beyond ownership of the latest WAP phone. That the Arab and the Jew murder each other’s children in the name of religion is inconsequential to them. They are blinded by the pernicious influence of satellite television, the Internet, games consoles and the tabloid press. Why bother to hold an opinion when someone else can hold it for you? Why question your government’s domestic or foreign policies? Every time they should cry out they remain silent, disinterested, as their civil liberties are still further eroded in the name of the War On Drugs or the War On Terror. They do not worry that the government wants the right to monitor their phone calls, read their e-mails, or review which sites they have visited on the Internet. Their concern lies in having faster access and better browsers and video-streamed graphics. If a Police State is to exist, surely it will exist for their protection? It is easier for them to believe in the existence of evil unfounded than to question what motivates a human being to crash a hijacked aircraft into a building. That there might be injustice at the root of the problem is inconceivable.

Nietzsche’s burial of God may have been premature, when over a century later mankind still clings to raft of faith in the harsh light of scientific advance. However, he was correct when he warned that Christianity had weakened and impoverished the character of man. We have swapped the authority of the Church for the authority of the Multinationals. Where once the herd animal was a Christian sheep, now it is the Corporate sheep. Its purpose in life is no longer benevolence, charity or moralisation; its purpose is to consume. The military and the bio-pharmaceuticals rain down their wares on the herd, which bleats thankfully in the name of progress.

No, this is not the Golden Age; this is not the time of the Übermensch. It is the Plastic Age – the age of disposable culture! The age of the nothing, where the blind who choose not to see are crowned kings!

Of Corporate Sheep And Shepherds

The corporate shepherd leads his flock in the belief that each is a valued member of the organisation.  This deceit is necessary to foster a sense of family within the group and to aid in subsuming the individual personality.  The individual is valued only so long as he or she is deemed to be both productive and cost effective.  In short, they are a resource, and their effectiveness is always judged against the bottom line.  The profit has spoken and declared that in the face of loss, or even that of a higher margin, we are all expendable, a fact proven the expansion of foreign call centres and manufacturing plants.  The cold logic of accountancy is not subject to morals or ethics or sentimentality, simple arithmetic states that an Asian worker trained to the same competency level as their European counterpart need be paid a far lower wage.

Care, therefore, must be taken to distract the sheep from this financial Sword of Damocles through indoctrination into the corporate mindset.  Corporate identity has become increasingly important, with ready identification through logos and colours, the physical branding of property and metaphorical branding of personnel.  Communications and briefings are targeted at reinforcing the corporate identity over that of the individual.  In this particular worldview you are either a leader or a follower, it is anathema to step outside of the rigidly defined boundaries.  Intelligence is respected only when it is employed within one’s designated area of expertise.  It is an act of heresy to question the motives of higher management, a sign of deviancy, or worse, a belief in the rights of the self.

Dichotomy arises in the individual in that it is extremely difficult to function outside of the corporate sector unless one is independently wealthy, either through inheritance or via self-made means.  The majority of sheep, even the self-aware, are bound by financial responsibility to their partner, children, or simply by a perceived level of lifestyle that they wish to maintain.  Others, still, are bound by morality.  To disapprove of corporate politics and policies is reasonable enough.  However, for some the act of signing a contract behoves them to honour it, not necessarily out of loyalty to the company but for the sake of their self-respect.  Respect for the security of their fellow employees is also a powerful binding force.  To put one’s own livelihood at risk through an act of omission or rebellion is foolhardy enough; to jeopardise the security and future of others is to risk being socially ostracised.

In such a manner the corporate shepherds, like the Church before them, are able to exercise control of their flocks through guilt, fear and familial ties; through the promise not of eternal damnation but the certainty of hell on earth.

Song's For Life

For someone with no musical talent, music has played a large role in my life, particularly a host of bands that emerged from Punk and New Wave to play a part in the 1980’s Goth scene.  Suffice to say, certain singers and songs have become inextricably woven into my personal mythology.  For the record, I believe all writers are possessed of a personal mythology, composed from the myriad influences of their formative years, which forms part of their writer’s toolkit.  Now, as much as I’d like to pretend that I spent my youth consuming the works of Dickens, Hardy, Chaucer and Dostoevsky, I would be lying.  I came to read the majority of the above in my thirties, along with Orwell and Grassic Gibbons, and while they have undoubtedly left their mark, they are nowhere as deeply embedded in my psyche as Tolkien, Moorcock and, dare I mention it in yet another blog or interview, Brit Sci-Fi comic 2000 AD.

Adolescence, more than any other period, is a time when information is absorbed and assimilated, a time when patterns are set with a rigidity that will prove difficult to reshape.  Into this heady mix of hobbits, albinos, ABC war robots and Genetic Infantrymen, I found myself adding the aforementioned music, largely due to having been given free reign of my older brother’s extensive record collection.

Those of you who grew up between the 1960’s and 1980’s will probably remember the delights of listening to records on an automatic portable mono record player.  The one I fondly remember had a dark blue base and light grey cover, with a carry handle on the side and a choice of three turntable speeds - 78, 45 and 33^1/3 rpm.  The other really cool feature being that the spindle had a notch near the top on which you could stack half a dozen or so 45’s, which would proceed to drop and play one after the other.  Between this, and a mono cassette player, which was later pressed into alternate service loading games on to my Spectrum, I worked my way through the early work of Adam & The Ants, Toyah, The Cure, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie & The Banshees.

Music was, and remains a serious business for me.  This was no background noise, but something to be carefully absorbed, more often than not, in the confines of a darkened room.  Not surprisingly, for me it was more often than not about the words rather than the music.  And never was this more apparent than with the records produced my The Sisters Of Mercy.  At the impressionable age of 15 I was completely blown away by the video for This Corrosion and by subsequently reading an interview in the NME with Andrew Eldritch, who just struck me as this incredibly cool and intelligent rock star, much as I imagine David Bowie and Iggy Pop must have impressed teenagers in the 60’s and 70’s.  Suffice to say, along with my previously musical influences, it wasn’t long before I had a wardrobe full of black clothes and started dying my hair black!

I look back at the late 80’s with more than a little nostalgia - bands such as The Sisters Of Mercy, Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees were striding across the charts and appearing on television, but by the end of 1991 it had all rather come apart.  The Cult had completed their journey to Heavy Metal, FOTN had split and Eldritch was determined that the Sisters should be thought of as first and foremost a rock band, as well as going on strike in regard to record releases (a decision Eldritch stands by to this day, having continued to operate as a live band only for the last two decades).  Only The Cure seemed willing to soldier on and they were starting to sound rather twee.  Bands such as Rosetta Stone struck me as nothing more than a pale imitation of the early Sisters’ sound, and so I drifted away, content to get my lyrical fix from female singer/song writers such as Tori Amos, PJ Harvey and Heather Nova.  That said, they say if you wait long enough everything comes back into fashion sooner or later - both Toyah and Adam Ant are enjoying something of a renaissance at the moment, while bands such as Pixies and The Stooges ply the lucrative reformation market, together with a recent trend for playing classic albums live in their entirety.

I still love music, discovering new bands and going out to see them live accounts for the greater part of my socialising, and probably always will.  But it’s the music of my youth that remains the most deeply embedded and to which I still return - referencing song titles, quoting lyrics in dialogue, even snippets of old interviews.  It’s all there for those in the know to discover, while being unobtrusively passed over by those for which it has no meaning.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m not being overly self-indulgent with these references, but as I said before, it’s all part of the mythology.  And no one needs myths more than a fiction writer.

How We Lost The war On Drugs

Few things polarise public opinion as much as those substances listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.  Forty years into a war that we show no sign of winning, one might be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that prohibition isn’t working.  And yet pointing out this fact remains professional suicide for politician and police officer alike.  Calls for decriminalising or, most heinous of all, legalising certain drugs produce an inevitable knee jerk reaction.  But the salient fact remains that we are dealing with the fundamental market principle of supply and demand.  Drugs are cheaper and more freely available than at any time in the last forty years due to an increase in users.  Having failed to cut off the Black Market supply the logical option is surely to seek to reduce the demand.  Products for which there is limited or no demand disappear.  If you need further evidence of this just look at the amount of brands that have disappeared from our high streets over the last four years.

No substance is safer when manufactured and controlled by the Black Market.  I’m a product of the world as it is, not how I would like it to be.  The reality in the UK, Europe and the US is that there are millions of recreational drug users and labelling them as stupid or misguided doesn’t change that fact.

Many of the health issues associated with heroin addiction arise through adulteration of the product.  In its pure form heroin is less harmful to the human body than alcohol or, more importantly, methadone.  What a heroin addict needs is heroin and, in my opinion, it is far better to prescribe them that than another equally addictive substance.

While the above would help to reduce property crime, it is relatively pointless without some means of rehabilitation.  Weaning someone off a drug like heroin is all well and good, but dropping them back into the same environment they came from without support or the prospect of a job or means to build a future accomplishes little.  Rehab should be about integrating individuals back into society in order to contribute and develop self-worth.  The Swiss have been running trials with prescribed heroin for a number of years now, some of which involved cooperation with employers who allowed addicts to go for their morning fix before attending work as part of a programme to reduce their dependency.  It should be added that the injections took place in clinical environments deliberately chosen to remove any sense of ritual from the process.

While the above would help reduce some of the current problems the key to a radical rethink on drugs policy is decriminalisation of some substances and the legalisations of others.  The money saved and correspondingly raised through taxes would be sufficient to finance any amount of rehabilitation and education programmes.  Contrary to what some might think, I don’t want to see children popping down to Boots for smack.  But I’ll tell you this, I’ve never known a dealer ask for proof of age.

The truth the moral majority finds so unpalatable is that problem drug users are a minority when placed against the recreational user.  Due to the increasing divide between rich and poor in the UK there are thousands stuck either in low paid jobs or without even the prospect of work who can be forgiven for feeling the need for a little something to numb the pain.  A fact that is unlikely to change while an increasing number of children leave primary education without the fundamental ability to read or perform basic numeracy, or while we slowly slip back into a system where the right to higher education is based on wealth rather than ability.

Call me a left of centre liberal dreamer, but I happen to believe that in an industrialised nation such as ours every child should have the right to a decent standard of education and healthcare.  That affordable and good quality housing should be available to all according to their needs, particularly for the young starting out in life.

How, particularly in these dark days of recession, is this to be paid for?  Let me see, perhaps replacing Trident isn’t such a priority.  Perhaps maintaining troops in Afghanistan isn’t really making us safe in our beds at night from the bogeyman of terrorism.  Perhaps decriminalising drugs and spending the money currently used to limit supply on improving health and education might be of some help.

As alcohol, tobacco and trans fats have long proved, people like their pleasures, however bad for them they may be.  All you can do is educate them to the risks and ensure they have as clean a product as possible.  Far as I’m concerned, it’s up to the individual what he or she puts in their body.  As Aleister Crowley famously remarked, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”  Gerald Gardener, perhaps wisely, modified it for the Wiccan Rede as, “An’ it harm none, do what ye will.”  The latter of which surely includes harming yourself.

All Things White & Beautiful

The closest thing to a Christmas story you're going to get from me this year.
Taken from one of the abandoned drafts of the sequel to White Vampyre.

The bar was mournfully quiet; its lights were dimmed low, with only one remaining customer.  It was late; a time to be cuddled close with a loved one, if you had a loved one.  The barman had successfully ejected all of his customers over an hour previously with the exception of this last, lone drinker.  His full repertoire of subtle and not so subtle hints had failed to persuade this maudlin patron that it was time to leave, and the barman, who had hoped to go home early for a romantic evening with his girlfriend, had resolved himself to remaining to the bitter end.  Under law he was obliged to continue serving as long as he had customers, or until six am when all licensed premises were required to close for a minimum of two hours.

At five minutes to three in the morning the overflowing ashtray and half-completed pyramid of empty shot glasses implied the bar’s unwelcome final customer had no intention of going anywhere any time soon.  These suspicions were confirmed an instant later when he produced a credit card and slid it across the bar.

“Another shot of tequila.”

“Don’t you have a family to go home to?  I do, if you don’t.”

The man rewarded him for his pains with a dirty look.  He searched through the pockets of his overcoat and produced a battered Zippo, a pack of cigarettes and a leather wallet.  Shaking out a cigarette, he flicked open the Zippo with practised ease and lit it.  The tip of the cigarette glowed red as he took a long draw, the paper burning with a slow hiss.  As he exhaled he snapped open the wallet to reveal a SPF officer’s shield.

“No, I don’t have a family waiting for me.  I had a girl once - she asked me to choose between my career and her.  I’m still police - figure it out for yourself.”  He took a sip of his tequila and grimaced.

The barman decided to try and reason with him one more time.  “I’m sorry to hear that.  But I do have a girl waiting for me.  Y’know what I mean?”

“Well hooray for you!”  A dangerous glint shone in the officer’s eyes.  “Let me tell you what I have.  I’ve got a big fucking H&K scattergun in my patrol car that’d shred your little dive real quick.  So why don’t you just cut it with the mouth and serve me my drinks?  Does that sound fair to you?”

The barman had not survived his many years in Europa City by not knowing when to back-pedal.  “Hey, no need for that, man.  A tequila, wasn’t it?”

The officer nodded.  “Yeah, make it a double.”

The barman poured the shot, the faintest of nerves shaking his hand, though his fear was moderated by self-righteous indignation.  He cursed his misfortune.  Of all the bars in the city, of all the nights of the year, this psycho-cop burnout case had to choose his bar to drown his sorrows in.  His one solace was that the evening was unlikely to get any worse.

A polite cough made Sykes look up from the pitted surface of the bar.  The woman was dressed in an ankle length white fox fur coat, with a matching astrakhan hat.  Here and there, melting drops of snow added highlights to the coat’s luxuriant pelt.  Her skin was almost as pale as the fur, it contrasted sharply with the ebony black plait of hair that curled around her right shoulder and breast.  The only other colour about her was her lips and eyes, carnelian and sapphire respectively.  It was the eyes that captivated; sucked the soul from your body and the spirit from your heart.

The SPF officer froze, the colour draining from his face.  It was the only emotion, other than maudlin regret, he had felt all night.

“I know you.  I know you!”

The woman sniffed.  “Of course you do, Edward.  You stopped me for a traffic violation about a year ago.”

“No.  You can’t be her.  It’s not possible.”

“All things are possible, Edward, with a little faith.  Now, how about buying a lady a drink for old time’s sake?”

“What are you drinking?” Sykes asked, not so much surprised by the sound of his voice as by the question asked.  It was certainly not the one foremost in his mind.

“Cognac,” the woman whispered.

“Cognac it is then, a large one.”

The barman gave Sykes a sidelong glance as he picked up a balloon glass and pressed its rim against the optic.  He repeated the procedure and set the glass in front of Sykes before retreating to the far side of the bar.

With the barman a discrete distance away, Sykes managed to voice the question that had haunted him these long months.  “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why show up now?  Why humiliate me in the way that you did?”

The woman shrugged.  “I didn’t realise you felt humiliated by our meeting.”

“No?  How’d you expect me to feel after being found stark bollock naked in the back seat of my own patrol car?  Christ, I was lucky not to be chucked off the force.  As it was I spent a month undergoing psychiatric evaluation and another three months on probation.  Shit, lady, you all but trashed my career.  If Guyon Sajer hadn’t taken a personal interest in me I’d have been royally fucked.  And that was only because a woman matching your description was linked to the death of one of his officers.  Not that they found any record of a ‘Meledy Raindeth’ in the city of course.  So the question remains - who the hell are you and what do you want?”

The woman who had called herself Meledy Raindeth shrugged.  “What does anyone want in this god-forsaken city, Eddie?  Something to keep them from hunger.  Something to keep them from the cold.  Someone to love.  You ask what do I want, but the real question is what are you searching for at the bottom of a bottle?  Your humanity?  Some lingering shred of decency?  A sign that there’s more than a brass badge separating you from the scum out there?”

The colour, which had been steadily draining from Sykes’ face suddenly returned in a flush of anger.  “Fuck you, bitch!  I don’t know what you think you know about me,” he exploded, spraying flecks of spit across the bar, “and I don’t care how you came by it.  I was acquitted.  It wasn’t my fault.  She ran out in front of the car.”  He wiped a string of saliva from his chin and tossed back his tequila.  “Barman - another.  Better still, just leave the bottle.”

The barman, who had been listening intently to a sports cast, jumped.  “What?  Shit.  Sure.  But let’s see some credit first.”

Sykes tossed him his card.  The woman slid on to the barstool next to him.  She crossed her legs, causing the fox-fur to fall open, exposing a milky-white expanse of thigh.  She picked his cigarettes up from the bar and took one.  Her eyes bored into him as she picked up his lighter and snapped it open.  Exhaling, she replaced the lighter and said, “You can scream it wasn’t your fault as loud and often as you like but deep down inside you we both know you don’t believe that for a minute.”

Sykes’ jaw dropped.  He snapped his mouth shut and stared at his nemesis, trying to organise his thoughts.  Then he said, “You’re beginning to bore me, lady.  I don’t know what your purpose in coming here tonight is, whether you just want to bust my balls, or what, but I’m about two seconds away from arresting you.”

She smiled.  “For what?  Speaking truths in a public place?  I know it’s unfashionable but I wasn’t aware it had been made a crime.”  She swallowed some of her cognac and smiled.  “So much pain.  It’s eating you up like a cancer, and yet you could let it go just like that if you chose to.”

Sykes shook his head, bemused.  “Just who the hell are you?  You’re one scary lady, that’s for sure.  They used to burn women like you at the stake.”  He grabbed himself another cigarette and picked up his Zippo.  He stared at the SPF shield and lightning flash engraved into its case - it had been a graduation gift.  Back then, fresh from the academy, things had seemed so much simpler.  He had been young and hot, a rising star in the department.  He and three other officers from his graduating class had formed their own cadre within the SPF.  Faced with a rising tide of vehicular crime, the Council had given them carte blanche on the roads.  As long as their reports were clean they were free to take whatever steps they deemed necessary to police the city’s autobahns.

Playing games of terminal chicken with the biker crazies and car-jackers, they had blazed their own brand of justice across the city.  But administrations and their attendant politics change, and one by one they had fallen as quickly as they had risen.  Shiltz was doing ten for vehicular homicide; Voigt would never walk again and Connors - there had barely been enough of her left to fill an ashtray.  If Sykes had not been undergoing psych while on probation at that time the odds were that he would have finished up dead as well.

“You can’t go back, Eddie.  Times change.  You either adapt or you die.”

He lit his cigarette.  “Yeah, and sometimes you do both.”  He picked up the tequila bottle and took a slug.  “So, come on, lady, what are you really here for?  You got a purpose in raking up the past, or are you just out to push my buttons?”

“I came here to save your soul.  To show you the error of your ways, if you will.”

“No shit.  It’s a little late for ‘A Christmas Carol’ isn’t it?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth or tenderness in her eyes, they remained icy, impassive.  “That’s right.  I’m the ghost of Christmas Fast.  C’mon, Eddie, let’s go for a ride in that big black phallic symbol of yours.”

Sykes sat back on his stool and regarded her thoughtfully.  He pushed the bottle away from himself and stood up.  Swaying slightly, he said, “Hell, why not.  You’re probably the best offer I’ll get all night.  And you’re certainly a looker.”

“Try not to confuse that with hooker.”

“Sure, sister.  Whatever you say.”

Sykes’ car was parked a hundred metres from the bar.  They trudged arm in arm through the falling snow, their feet slipping in the slush.

“That barman was certainly glad to see the back of us.  Couldn’t shut the place up quick enough.”

“Unfortunately he won’t live happy ever after.  When he arrives home he’s going to discover his next door neighbour mid-coitus with his girlfriend.  Never a good scene to begin with, this sordid little affair becomes even more tragic.  He murders them both in a fit of passion and then, stricken by remorse, takes his own life.”

“How?  No don’t answer that.  I don’t want to know.”

Sykes transmitted the security code to the car’s onboard system and opened the passenger door.  Raindeth ignored him and walked around the vehicle in a slow circle.  She caressed the bodywork, brushing away the melting snow.  “Almost frictionless.”

Sykes shrugged.  “Some sort of carbon bonded polymer.”  He sighed wistfully.  “It’s not a patch on the old Mk III.  Those supercharged babies were the best.  These electric beasts just don’t have the same feel.  I never saw the point in banning internal combustion engines.  The damage was already done decades ago.  Why do they think half of Europe’s underwater now?  In case nobody’s noticed, it’s too fucking late to save the ozone layer.”

“Everything changes.”

“You told me that already.  So where are we going?”

“The Netherlands quarter.  A little place called the Paradiso over in the Amsterdam sector.”

“Why?”

Meledy shrugged.  “Nostalgia, continuity, take your pick, it’s all one and the same to me.”

Sykes set the auto-routing system and engaged the drive.  There was a soft, purring whine as the turbines powered up and the car slipped into the flow of traffic.  He sat back and closed his eyes.  “God, I feel lousy.  Think I’ll try an’ sleep it off.  Wake me when we get there.”  He opened one eye.  “And don’t touch nothing.  Full security protocols are active.  Reaching for the cigarette lighter could put you on the receiving end of a forty thousand volt stun charge, and that’s guaranteed to put a crimp in anyone’s day.”

The Paradiso had slipped a little further from respectability and a little closer to depravity in recent years.  The decor remained predominantly black and the floor was characteristically tacky underfoot.  Clouds of dry-ice shrouded the patrons, refracting and diffusing the flickering strobes and lasers on the dancefloor, where tripped-out dancers worked to the low slung bass and pounding rhythms.  Fuelled by a combination of alcohol and stimulants they formed small tribes as they worshipped the beats in a manner barely removed from their pagan ancestors.

Meledy Raindeth, or whatever her name was, seemed to drink in the narcoleptic atmosphere.  To Sykes she appeared suddenly more vital and alive.  Like the difference between an animal in a cage and one free in its natural environment.  It made him shudder.

She took him by the arm and steered him towards a booth in the corner.  He was not surprised to find a bottle of cognac and two glasses waiting there.  Without waiting to be asked, he pulled out the stopper and splashed the liquor into each glass.

“Well?  Are you going to save my soul now?”

The woman swirled the amber liquid round in her glass.  “If you like.  Do you want the Frank Capra bit - where I show you your life if you hadn’t pulled me over?  Or would you prefer a version that doesn’t involve killing little Louise?”

He shook his head emphatically.  “No.  I don’t want to hear any of your pointless lies.  What’s done is done.”

“As you will.  But believe me, I did you a favour that day.  After the ECPD took control of Tessler there was a lot of ‘house cleaning’.  How many skags did you and Schiltz run off the road?  Fifty?  A hundred?  Yet suddenly he’s taking the fall for it.  Why?  Where was Voigt’s backup?  Was it really just pure coincidence that a petroleum tanker crashed into Connor’s bike?  Hardly.  Baby, your little cadre was set up to take the fall.  The Council decided an example had to be made.  If you had not already been disgraced you would have been Judas Goat number four.  Think about it.”

Sykes licked suddenly dry lips as he stared into the darkness.  Somewhere inside him a little, worrying voice was telling him that it was true.  As much as he wanted to deny it, the only real question left in his mind was how in the hell it had taken him so long to figure it out.  The facts were blatantly obvious.

“Why us?  There were a hundred others dirtier than we were.  Officers on the take, running their own shakedowns.  Sure, we dispensed rough justice but we were…” he paused; his next word was barely a whisper as realisation dawned, “honest.”

“Too honest for your superiors’ comfort.  You were all young idealists with romantic notions of heroism.  The sort who might take to asking awkward questions.”

Sykes thumped the table.  “Shit!  No, it still doesn’t scan.  Doesn’t add up right.”

The woman leaned in close across the table, her breasts, barely restrained by her leather camisole, brushed lightly against Sykes’ arm.  The SPF officer appeared not to notice her invitation as he stared at the gyrating dancers.

She followed his line of sight.  “Look at them, tell me what you see.”  Her breath was warm in his ear, quickening his pulse.

“See?  Just the usual lowlifes.  A bunch of pierced, branded, tattooed and drugged up nobodies.  The city’s full of them now.”

“Modern primitives.  Mankind reverting back to it’s earlier tribalism.  Using drugs and drumbeats to enter altered states of consciousness like the ancient shamans.  Only they’ve merged it with technology.

“Homicide, rape and other crimes of violence are rising daily.  The city has become a melting pot of racial chaos, one that your beleaguered police force cannot hope to control.  Five years from now, maybe less, it will be a police state.  Martial Law will govern the citizens.  It became inevitable from the moment the department seized control of Tessler.  The SWAT and TAC teams have already taken advantage of the corporation’s cyber-ware.  Hardwired nervous systems, smart-guns, optical implants that see beyond the white light spectrum, cloned, genetically enhanced organ replacements, all these things and more besides.  The Council’s designing human machines to police the city.”

“Yeah, right.  Well good luck to them.  Somebody’s got to take care of the mess.  Lady, you’re really boring me now.  I was in the middle of working up a major drunk, now I’m in a club full of deviants on the opposite side of town from my apartment.  If you’ve got a point now is the time to make it, otherwise - blow.  I don’t need you raking up the past.  Yeah, I’ve made mistakes, but I paid for them.  So leave me alone and go and spoil some other fucker’s evening.”

She curled her lip in a sneer.  “All because little Louise Gilchrist is never going to be twelve years old.”

“An’ what the fuck would you know about how I feel.  Nothing.  Zero.  You don’t know shit about me, lady.”  He suddenly felt smothered by her close proximity; the warmth of her body was sickly, her flesh over-ripe.  He got to his feet with a drunken lurch and started backing away from the table.  “I don’t know what sort of witch you are,’ he spat, pointing a finger at her, “but keep your skanky whore’s ass away from me.  Whatever it is you’re selling, I ain’t buying.  I must be crazy.”

“You must be,” she said, “or else you wouldn’t have come here.  That’s a quote by the way.”

“Yeah?  Well you know where you can stick your quote.”

“Tsk, tsk.  We’re a little uptight, aren’t we, officer Sykes?”

Sykes spat on the floor and turned to walk away.

“Wait!  Don’t you want to know why I sought you tonight?  Surely you haven’t come this far just to walk away now?”

The SPF officer sighed and returned to the table.  “I just know I’m going to live to regret this.”  He helped himself to another drink and looked expectantly at his host.

“That’s better.  Kick back and relax and we’ll get down to business.  You’re sick, tired, coming apart at the seams. All that pent up guilt and hatred is burning you up from the inside.  If you don’t get a handle on your feelings shortly they’ll rip you apart.”

“So?  What the hell do you care?”

“I don’t.  Whether or not you destroy yourself is of no consequence to me.  At least not ultimately.  However, our past contact affords me a tenuous link through you to the outside world, and through that link I would have you serve me.”

Sykes looked her directly in the eye and laughed.  “Now I know who’s crazy.  Jesus, lady, do you really think I’m going to help you after what you did to me?  Christ, I only agreed to follow you in the hope that I might get laid.  A little community good will as it were.”

“My favours are not for you.  You have not yet crossed that barrier, and if you have any last vestige of hope left in your soul you should pray that you never know my love, for it is a deadly and destructive lust that has been the ruin of many.  That said, I would still have your assistance in a little matter that continues to trouble me.  And, truly, by helping me you will be helping yourself.”

“Say I don’t want to help myself, what then?”

“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your fallen comrades.  Don’t you owe Schiltz, Voigt and Connors that much?  You and Emma were particularly close were you not?  Don’t you want to avenge her death?”

Sykes paled so much that his skin rivalled that of his host.  His hand trembled, splashing cognac on the table.  “Nobody knew about us.  Nobody.  Fraternisation between officers is strictly forbidden.  You get emotionally close to someone on the job like that and it comprises your reasoning.  You’ll go out of your way to protect them.  At the cost of your colleagues, civilians or yourself.  If anyone had discovered we were lovers one of us would have been reassigned.  But there’s no hiding anything from you, is there?”

“No.  There is not.  I cast my nets far and wide and the barbs on my hooks are cruel and bite deeply.”

“Well, you’ve won.  What I won’t do for money or in the name of self-redemption, I’ll do in the name of love.  Cliché, I know.  Yeah, for Emma I’ll take care of your little problem.  God knows it can’t damn me any more than I already am.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic.  All I want you to do is go and talk to a man.  And after you have heard what he has to say, well, that shall be entirely up to yourself.”

Sykes gave her a suspicious frown.  “That’s it?  Talk to one man?  There must be a catch somewhere.”

“No catch, Eddie.  Just cause and effect.  The ripples of your conversation will spread across the city and in doing so, serve my purpose.  But believe me or not, you will go and see Guyon Sajer and tell him that I sent you.”

“Sajer?  I guess I owe the old bastard a visit after he helped me.  I haven’t seen him since.  Yeah, lady, I’ll go and see Sajer for you.  Though what good it will do you I can’t imagine.”

He stood up, grabbed the cognac bottle and shoved passed her.  She grabbed his arm and restrained him.  Sykes stared into her eyes and felt his soul being drawn down inside them.  Suddenly he knew there was nothing he would not do for her love, but the moment passed as quickly as it had arrived.  A little dizzy and fearful, he stepped back from her.

The woman smiled wistfully.  “Eddie, have yourself a Merry little Christmas.”

He turned his back on her.  “Yeah.  You too,” he remarked caustically.

'Tis The Season...

To paraphrase Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Christmas, love it or loathe it, you can’t ignore it.  They say it’s all about the children, but not being a parent I can’t vouch for that.  Much as I might complain about crass commercialism and greed, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the ritual of breaking bread with friends and family.  There’s something primal about eating together - probably a throwback to the tribe sharing their bounty.  Socialism with a small “s”.  Something, regardless of the season, that I think we all need more of in these uncertain times.

So what else is Christmas good for?  Songs and films, of course, and I don’t mean the ubiquitous Bond repeats.  Music, for those of you who don’t know or haven’t yet guessed, is something of a passion of mine.  Regrettably, I have very little sense of timing or rhythm and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but I don’t let that stop me from appreciating the work of others.  Of the many Christmas songs out there it probably won’t surprise you to learn that Fairy Tale Of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl is my favourite.  Who can argue with the lyrics, “You scumbag, you maggot, You cheap lousy faggot, Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last”?  But as great as that scans, it’s the structure and tone of the lyrics overall that make this song a classic.  I’ve always been drawn to songs with a strong narrative, of which the above is a classic example.  We get MacGowan’s drunken optimism, followed by MacColl’s bitterness at having wasted her life with him, which sends MacGowan into maudlin self-pity.  As Christmas songs go, they don’t come much more grounded in reality than this.  Christmas, the time when families are supposed to come together but more often than not end up fighting.

But when it comes to telling a story in song, few can rival Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave.  I’ve never really understood why people find Cohen depressing.  The vocals are somewhat lugubrious and the song arrangements often sparse, but when you actually listen to the words there’s a lot of humour and irony there, as well as erudition.  I remember reading an interview with Cohen a number of years back in which he stated he would no longer use a reference such as Abraham and Isaac in his writing as the majority of people would no longer comprehend it.  Whatever your views of religion, the stories of the Old Testament resonate with the power of myth - something a storyteller can always use in his or her arsenal.  Abraham, who waited many years for God to bestow a child upon him, is asked by that same God to make a burnt offering of his only son.  It’s the ultimate illustration of faith.  And yet, as Kierkegaard points out in Fear And Trembling, if he is so certain why does he not tell Isaac?  If you’re familiar with the story, a reference to Abraham and Isaac provides instant shorthand to powerful emotional themes.  Some might say that while this is fine in song or poetry, in prose it is the crutch of a lazy writer.  But as Oscar Wilde pointed out, “Talent borrows, genius steals.”  Genius, it appears, is in short supply these days.

Back to Christmas.  Your gut is bursting.  You’ve watched the Doctor Who Christmas special and reached the point where if you hear Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody one more time someone is going to get hurt.  What’s left?  Only the greatest Christmas film ever made in the form of Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.  In a modern and cynical age, one could be forgiven for thinking that a man such as George Bailey could never exist outside of Hollywood, even in the 1940’s.  A man who consistently put doing the “right thing” above his own hopes, dreams and ambitions, sometimes at terrible personal cost.  And yet surely only the most jaded of souls can watch IAWL and not wish they were a little more like Bailey?  Of course, those of us who find ourselves standing on a bridge contemplating suicide aren’t fortunate enough to have the intervention of a guardian angel, second class or otherwise, let alone be given the gift of seeing the world how it would be if we’d never existed.  In Bailey’s case, thanks to his kindness and compassion, it all comes good and he passes through his darkness and come to appreciate the life he has.  Sentimental, perhaps, but if you can’t indulge in a little sentimentality at Christmas when can you?

What Leon Did Next

Time for a quick progress report.  As announced previously, the eBook version of “White Vampyre” will be published simultaneously by Amazon and Smashwords on Monday December 12.

Those who can’t wait that long will find a teaser over at Jenn Nixon’s blog: http://jennafern.blogspot.com/2011/11/teaser-tuesday-with-leon-steelgrave.html

To coincide with the release the author has answered a Q&A session with Brit grit writer Julie Morrigan, which should be posted on her blog over the weekend:

http://www.juliemorrigan.co.uk/blog.html .  In case you’re wondering, no, I don’t quite manage to eschew political discussion.

For those unaware of Julie’s work, I recommend the excellent “Heartbreaker” and the short story collection “Gone Bad”.  While I’m plugging other people’s work, Julie has also contributed to “Off The Record - A Charity Anthology”.  Not only do you get cutting edge crime fiction from some of the most exciting talent writing today, by purchasing the book you contribute to the following:

In the UK, National Literacy Trust.  http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/

In the US, Children's Literacy Initiative.  http://www.cliontheweb.org/

Of the fundamental education we provide children, the ability to read and write is undoubtedly the most powerful.  Through fiction we are transported to other worlds and get to live other lives.  Sometimes, we even create our own.  Doesn’t get any better than that.

At £2.23 for the Kindle edition, it’s less than the cost of a pint of ale or a fine malt whisky in most licensed establishments.  Don’t tell me you can’t afford that.

With “White Vampyre” in the bag what’s next for yours truly?  The answer is a police procedural set in Inverness titled “A Pauper’s Shroud”.  As I’m currently in the process of completing the final edit, I hope to have the book out by the end of February.  Those of you who can’t wait that long will find an excerpt at the end of “White Vampyre”.  If APS runs a little slower than WV, it compensates by being darker and remains steeped in the same wry humour.