Deepsky Horizon

What force was it that made our ancestors quit the ocean? What pushed them to climb out onto the land and grow larger? Was it perhaps out of fear of the horrors down there in the depths? The things of tendril and chela and mandible. Did they flee in panic from the violence of the abyss to crawl on solid ground? The strong biting at the heels of the weak as they escaped toward the light and out of the soup.

Out on solid land there was scant respite. The parasites and the devourers followed in their hunger. The weak had to adapt, some grew larger and smarter. Eventually primates developed the neo-cortex and they learnt to fashion simple tools and emulating the tooth and claw of their predators they invented the first artificial weapons. So they quit the forest and roamed the land becoming lords of the earth. Millenia passed and eventually their children settled and planted seeds. They built walls around their enclosures and developed art and ritual and civilization.

The barbarism did not stop there. Nature always breeds new forms of warfare.The growth of cities demanded an ever growing supply of resources. Tyrants developed the mega-machines of slavery and war. Mankind spread like a plague upon the earth and their appetite could not be satisfied. There was nothing to hold the population in check and with the globalisation of humanity the cities became ever more crowded. So man came to look to the stars, seeking new sanctuary.

...

It was like a teardrop falling from the heavens. Enveloped in the glow of atmospheric re-entry the craft traced a downward arc across the alien sky. It glided down from the stratosphere and the parachutes bloomed into life, the module feathering down to the martian surface.

Settled down in the dust, the landing craft opened its mouth and extruded its tongue. A catterpillar wheeled buggy lurched out into the sand blown mesa. The three cosmonauts dwelt in silence. Before them rose the pile. The dark mountain greeted them with malignant immplacability as they angled towards it under the hostile sky.

A schism reached out from the foot of the eminence and a strange glow rose up from the scar, a shifting aurora of sickening colors. The strange hues of the auroral anomaly seemed to creep into the compartment with them as they descended into the rift. As they went deeper, they became aware of massive skeletal things reaching out from the cliff faces, as if trying to escape from the rock. Giant things like the leviathans of earth's prehistory but of too many bones, as if parts of different organisms had been fused into singular abominations. Now in front of them they were piled in their multitudes.

The cosmonauts were in sight of their destination. A piece of alien architecture broke out fom the precipice at the end of the canyon. The shape of it resembled that of a gothic cathedral, though of decidedly unholy aspect and of dimensions dwarfing anything human. The construction of the frame, somewhat eroded by the passing of the ages, was a grotesque carcass of bony scaffolding, echoing the delicti that was heaped up in front of the temple. Adding to the aura of death and decay, the alien shrine and the area surrounding it was suffocated in some kind of fossilized fungal growth. A latticework of mycelial cords that clung to everything and enormous mushroom bulbs sprouted up the sides of the towers like cancerous growths.

When the rover could get no further through the mess they abandoned it and continued on foot. They had to struggle on through remains that were now hideously regenerating flesh, pieces knitting themselves together. They bore on through the madness, scrambling through the gore, hypnotised by the call emanating from the sacellum. Its presence grew stronger with every step, crying out for communion.

Their pilgrimage was only half complete when they eventually arrived at the bottom of the enormous steps which led up to an alien god's doorway. The stairs were of stone blocks too large for human feet and they had to climb laboriously from one step to the next, crawling all the way. One man fell and his head depressurised through a crack in his helmet. The others showed no sign of noticing, they merely clambered on.

Finally they stood before the massive doors. The surface of the stone was covered in strange reliefs. Alien heiroglyphs, which as the men looked, began to change shape, morphing in a nauseating kaleidoscopic fashion. A hallucinatory slideshow of images unfolded before their eyes. Some intelligence had reached into their minds and was revealing to them its history in its terrible cosmic narrative.

It drew them back through nameless aeons and inconcievable dimensions, to the elder, outer entity. It sang of Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat with a Thousand Young. Of Him in the Gulf, Azathoth. Nyarlathotep, the Messenger, who comes down from the world of Seven Suns to mock. Of Great Cthulhu, of Tsathoggua and of Him Who is not to be Named.

It told of the elder things arrival here when the sun was young. Of their black science and the vile experiments performed in their shadow labs, the creation of their servants and their pets. It told them of the earth and how these entities had tilled the land, sowing the seeds of life as a farmer sows his crop.

But the day of harvest had been delayed. There had been wars in heaven and the elders had been weakened, almost fatally, and they had been forced to retreat into their vaults to sleep and dream, waiting for the time to rise. The presence of consciousness here had awoken them from their slumber.

Around them now the horrors were rising from their graves with the hunger of their long rest.

A sound, like a demonic chorus, vibrated through the world, signalling the opening of the gate. The doors now started to change. Not merely retracting but rather revolving, moving about an impossible axis of symmetry. The doors dissapeared to be replaced by a liquid mirror of dark matter. Something was coming through...

Past

Spoken secrets filled the air as Penny Lane walked by. No longer a mouse, no longer an image, no longer fooling around. She was on the other side of the crowd barrier at this concert, and the others viewed her as they would an apparition from their past. Was that the same smell of incense on her, the same fanciful attitude, the same curly golden mess on her head? More wrinkles on her face though, how could she have aged? She was the legendary Penny Lane.

Something in her had died though, they all agreed, was it good or bad? No-one could know.

She knew that the wildfire of her heart had been replaced, replaced by an ease of herself in the world. She no longer felt compelled to anything. The beautiful destruction of her heart, that would inspire the musicians no longer held sanctity. The songs she would sing, they heard, but they did not see her. She smiled a secret smile as she saw them whisper about her behind the stage, knowledge of an alien past, and contemplating their futures in an industry of broken hearts, which she knew too well.

The world had moved on, but she still heard the echoes from the seventies. She had a child now, named Annabelle. The little Lady who moved around the house, lighting candles and singing joyfully along with the radio, also laughed along with the wonderment of her daughter, a miracle who had come from someplace better, better than this. For this she was grateful, grateful to the tips of her toes, and it had changed her.

He never mattered anymore, none of the He's that had floated in and out of her life mattered anymore. She could put on her rugged threads, head down to the shops, and she was free to knock over a row of food for anyone cared. It was had been her choice to entrance musical men, and her choice to finally stop. She got out before they hated her, too, for she still had that impeccable sense of timing to leave when she was still wanted. Buskers on the street still gave her looks, which seemed to say, ‘I know where you've been, and I know where you're going…’, but she no longer cared. The open road was no longer paved with the souls she loved, or music that mattered to her; now it all came back to Annabelle. Annabelle was her anchor.

She learned to shake off feelings of resentment with the new girls, something she had trained herself to do when she saw the lithe-limbed newcomers back then. Being a muse was hard work, that’s what these girls did not understand. When you do view the opium of the spotlight, with others that seek it, it is hard to turn away. You are the proverbial wild animal in the headlights, faster and faster it comes, but no-one wants to slow down. Smarter people than her had died pursuing more than what she ever craved.

The deadly catch is that the wild animal is what the audience craves; the vulnerable crazed one that they can project fantasy onto. Up on stage is a different life, every movement an amplified gesture to the watchful ravished eyes. Penny Lane had understood that. The humbled woman visiting the concert today was tired, but thoughtful. She was a tourist in their world now, albeit one who had been the lead tour-guide for many years.

Annabelle would have loved this, the atmosphere; the rush of leather and feathers and hair and glittery made-up glamourous women, so different from the decade of hippies. Annabelle would tell her mother she was going to be an actress just like her when was when she was older, and Ms. Goodman would have to stroke her hair and gently remind her that she no longer did that kind of work. How could her mom not be an actress, with that dress-up box? Annabelle was enthralled by it, and Ms. Goodman knew she would discover the meaning of those clothes too soon.

She had thought of moving again, leaving this country. She didn’t want Annabelle to believe in the American Dream. William had encouraged her here tonight, a way to close off this era of her life, to see what she was leaving behind, the finality of a last hurrah. His purposeful words overrode her thoughts of Russell on a similar stage to this one, as the lights went down in the stadium.

The Humphrey Redemption

(Thanks for the comments guys. Here is the final copy!)

The stereo played only white noise. There were empty pizza boxes scattered everywhere. Oh god, the bottles, the shear amount of bottles…all fiends from down South: Jack, Jim, Gordon, Jose, and of course, everyone’s favourite Russian companion, lay emptied of their life-force, disregarded, wherever they had landed.

The heavy stench in the air was a mix of stale alcohol, cigarettes and burnt hair.
It was clear that at some point in the not too remote past, this suite had been stunning, luxurious even, with three separate king-size bedrooms, plush Missoni furnishings and floor to ceiling panel windows overlooking the East River. There was obviously something missing from the room, which would explain the TV sized hole in the north-facing window. The bridge that had looked so beautiful the night before, spanning the river and Roosevelt Island, covered in hundreds of fairy lights, was now disenchanting and drab.

Just like the bridge, the apartment now looked distinctly different in the harsh early morning sunlight. The stagnant haze was broken suddenly by a platinum blonde figure who tumbled, somehow gracefully, out of one of the oversized beds. Jenny groped around underneath the bed and pulled her boots free. While fastening them around her ankles and then manoeuvring her iPhone into action, she smirked at the moans of pain emanating from the Egyptian cotton sheets she had just removed herself from.

“Ha ha, serves you right!” she teased the pile of bedding.

“Ohh, everything hurts. And where do you think you’re going?” the faceless mound questioned, while flailing in her general direction trying to come into contact with a body part sufficient to pull her back to the bed.

“You know I have the Eleanor Waldorf brunch this morning, I’m showing my own pieces this time, remember?” she said as she inched just out of his reach.

“You want me to come with you?”

“Well, I would if you didn’t smell like a bar floor…”

“I’ll shower…”

“I’ve gotta go home and pick up the outfits, I’m assuming you-“

“And you would be correct in that assumption. I haven’t even had coffee yet, it’s clearly too early for Brooklyn”

“Okay, I told Eleanor I’d be there to set up at 9am, so I’ll just meet you there later?”

“Spectacular.”

Jenny looked down at her phone and saw eight missed calls from Rufus and a few text messages from Eric. It was nothing new. In fact, eight was a relatively small number of attempts from Rufus, all things considered. He was clearly starting to get the message, and so he should after all this time.

On the upside, there were no new alerts from Gossip Girl – and as always in her case, no news was good news. Jenny piled her things into her carryall and stepped over the debris to the front door, deleting her call history as she went.

She could have called a private car. Chuck would always insist on such a thing. But today she felt like taking the subway, and she actually enjoyed the walk to the station in morning sunshine. The subway was even nicer at this time on a Saturday: quiet, comforting even. She was listening to the last half of ‘Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik’ for what must have been the millionth time and almost missed her stop. She called in at Bergen Bagels and grabbed a large, black coffee, she would need at least that to deal with Eleanor later on.

She was uncharacteristically early, and so took her time ambling towards their apartment. She poked her head around the doorframe and into the living room of their 3-bedroom loft. As far as she could see, it was empty. Only a few months ago, it would have been only natural to walk into this apartment on a Saturday morning to find Rufus, Dan, herself and any number of stragglers sitting around the breakfast bar sharing waffles and the latest gossip. But today, like the increasing number of Saturday’s before this one, the breakfast bar was bare, and Jenny was able to slip into her room, grab the dress bag and disappear completely undisturbed.

He knew he had to get up. He had lay in bed for at least an hour after Jenny had left, and would be seriously late if he didn’t get up now. Thank god he had a driver. After spending a sufficient amount of time in the shower, ridding himself of the odour of the previous evening, he dressed in a freshly dry-cleaned Hugo Boss suit and demolished a cup of black coffee. A quick call downstairs for a car and he was on his way to the Palace Hotel. He knew Jenny would already be there, and he would make his entrance fashionably late. The car pulled up outside the hotel, and he stepped confidently through the front door. The Ball Room was signed posted “Eleanor Waldorf Spring/Summer 2011 Preview Brunch”. Just as he lent in to open the door, a tall, thickset doorman stepped in front of him, “Name please?”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes sir, there is a guest list. I will need your name…”

“Me? Well, I’m Chuck Bass.”

To Trudge.

Final Copy
Thanks for all the feed back along the way. Really helped, peace out - Michael

Dawn snatched me from my sleep with an anguished howl of salty air. Alone. I am now alone. I look out across the wasted planes. From the charcoal of the burnt tree husks to the off-white the snow had assumed due to the ash diluted into it, my sight is met by a landscape painted in faded greys. "Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker - beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen."
I remember my Papa's words. He has been dead for a while now but they still couldn't bear a word more of truth. I had to keep moving, now is a time which deprives us of the rights to luxury we had taken for granted. Nesting was one of them. I had made camp on the coast, in the dunes. Not to far from what I suppose use to be a small fishing town. Its just a ghost town now, it's no longer safe but there might be food. I would follow the road down to the town today, to scavenge what I could.

Ash and sand blows through the air, stinging my eyes. The dust gets everywhere. Choking, clotting, blinding dust. I look at the ocean trying to imagine what it would have looked like before, before it had become this harsh abomination of rolling void. Papa had told me it was blue once, like the sky had once been. The morning creeping upon me when I decided enough time had been wasted off the road. I turned to my rag tag camp to collect my things.

I unassembled the makeshift bed, it would soon be on my back along with all my possessions, consisting of a knife, tarpoline, rags, odd shoes and a leather pouch which I use to keep food if scavenge in. It had been empty for weeks.

I stripped down so I could wash before I leave for the town. The sand was cold and unwelcoming to my bare feet. I placed my clothes down next to my rucksack, briefly catching my reflection in the blade of my knife. It brought back memories of Papa's history lessons. A flesh coloured skeleton of Auschwitz gleamed from that blade showing my mortality. I fell to my knees coughing with disgust at myself, at the wooden figure I had become. The cough that shredded my throat. Blood mixed with ash and phlegm pools in my hand. Examining it, I knew there is too much this time.

The hazed sky was beating down upon me. The world became a whole lot harsher with each burning second of daylight. I was on the road. Standing on the outskirts of the town. Watching. Searching the windows for any signs of movement. Nothing moves in the derlict remains of the town. I examine the buildings, there is a supermarket across a snow covered clearing. No trees, no rocks, nothing but 100 meters of open ground separating me from the store. I don’t think. As my stomach begins to pang with hunger pains I don't need to think. My feet take leave of the road and make their way towards the abandoned building. The snow is deep here, its well above my knee. I struggle to make ground as my feet sink deeply into the cold searching for solid ground.

Good, the harder it is to get to it means the chances of there being food increase. I think to myself as I wade through the snow that is numbing my limbs. Half way across now, the ground beneath me is slippery, like glass. I hear a creaking, like wood bending. I step forward. My foot breaks through the ground and is consumed by freezing water. My blood pumps faster, my drenched foot could only mean one thing. I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake.
That is why there were no trees or rocks. That’s why the road went around it.

Another creak as the ice beneath me started to shift again. I have to keep moving, the only alternative is to drown.
A third creak sounds, the ice gives way and cold water hits me like a sledge hammer, stealing the air from my lung in one tremendous moment. The taste of blood leaks onto my taste buds. Looking up, there is only darkness.
"Beyond Darkness".
I realized I have been left with a bleak choice; to drown in the icey depths...
"The world gets colder"
Either water in my lungs or my own blood.
"The world slowly dies."
I should have stayed on the road, or realized when there was nothing but snow.
"Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen"
Said the voice of my papa I finally understood that he meant we will never see that day.

2nd Draft

Draft 2

Dawn snatched me from my sleep with an anguished howl of salty air. Alone. I was now alone. I looked out across the wasted planes. From the charcoal of the burnt tree husks to the off-white the snow had taken due to the ash diluted into it, my sight was met by a landscape painted in faded greys. I had to keep moving, now was a time which deprived us of the rights to luxury we had taken for granted. Nesting was one of them. I had made camp on the coast, in the dunes. Not to far from what I suppose has been a small fishing town. Its just a ghost town now, it's no longer safe but there might be food.

Ash and sand blew through the air, stinging my eyes. The dust got everywhere. Choking, clotting, blinding dust. I unassembled the makeshift bed that would soon be on my back along with all my possessions, which mainly consisted of a knife, tarpoline, rags, odd shoes and a leather pouch which I used to keep food. It had been empty for weeks. I stripped down to wash before I left for the town. I caught my relfection in the blade of my knife. It brought back memories of school history lessons. A flesh coloured skeleton of Auschwitz gleamed from that blade showing my mortality. I coughed with disgust at myself. A cough that shredded my throat. Blood mixed with ash and phlem pooled in my hand. Examining it, I knew there was too much this time. I was deeply sick.

The hazed sky was beating down upon me. The world became a whole lot harsher with each burning second of daylight. I was on the road. Standing on the outskirts of the town. Watching. Searching the windows for any signs of movement. Nothing moves in the derlict remains of the town. I examine the buildings, there is a supermarket across a snow covered clearing. No trees, no rocks, nothing but 100 metres of open ground between me and it. I dont't think. As my stomach begins to pang with hunger pains I don't need to think. My feet take leave of the road and make their way towards the abandoned building. The snow is deep here, its well above my knee. I struggle to make ground as my feet sink deeply into the cold searching for solid ground.
Good, the harder it is to get to it means the chances of there being food increase. I think to myself as I wade through the snow that is numbing my limbs. Half way across now, the ground beneath me is slippery, like glass. I hear a creaking, like wood bending. I step forward. My foot breaks through the ground and is met by freezing water. My blood pumps faster, my drenched foot could only mean one thing. I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake. Another creak as the ice beneath me started to shift again. I had to keep moving, the only alternative was to drown.

Alan Wake: Shifting Sanity (polished Draft)

I wasn’t sure how long I had been in the cabin, days, weeks, months, time didn’t seem to move. There was no light outside. The inky darkness that surrounded the cabins exterior blocked out the world in which I had left, it locked me in, consumed my thoughts and dreams, took away my diminishing hope.

For a while the cabin was empty, I existed alone, the writer, the man who dared to rewrite destiny. I had written the manuscript to save the only person to ever matter to me, my wife, my muse.

I battled through plot twists, drama, and horror, fought against creatures of the night; I called them Taken, the empty shells of those dominated by the dark presence. I had sacrificed myself and many others to save her; I took on the darkness with a childhood myth, the clicker. I then ended the story with a metaphor.

I thought with the story over I could leave, but I kept writing. I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t Departure anymore, not even the sequel, my writing had lost rhythm, it no longer flowed like it used to when I had motivation, words were disjointed, jumbled and lacking any sense. Alice was saved but the story had died. Did I die?

At some point I noticed a change in the small house, a presence, one of dark twisted insanity. When I was completely alone, everything seemed calm; I still seemed to have my sanity intact somehow. Then he appeared. The man that existed outside of logic, I wasn’t sure if my manuscript had brought him here or if my sanity had slowly started to disintegrate, either way he was here. But why?

He would smile at me, maniacally like a psychopath restrained. His eyes were wide and bloodshot; they never lost contact with my own, as if he only existed in my gaze. He spoke in mutters, never directed to anyone, insane whispers about no escape.

His features were identical to those of my own, like a clone or an evil twin, his clothes were copies of my own, the same tweed jacket and black hoodie combination, that 5 o’clock shadow, even the same plaster I had received after the car accident, he looked so real but was he. Was I real?

It was unsettling. Zane had called him Mr. Scratch, he told me not to worry about him, he would meet my friends when I was gone. But I was worried. Why was he here? What had happened to my friends?

Sometimes my mind would shift outside of the cabin, into a world of my own twisted imagination, a world fighting me, dragging me deeper into insanity; its surroundings were familiar yet strange, like something out of a demented dream. The landscape was cracked and broken, shifting every time I slipped deeper into the dark void. Zane tried to help me through these times, told me to follow the signal to safety, he gave me tools to aid me through the darkness but they were not the only things that helped me. It had been the memories of times long forgotten that had kept me going the most, memories of Alice, of our times together before I lost my creativity, memories of Barry Wheeler my literary agent and sheriff Sarah Breaker who had aided me on my mission to save my wife who was trapped beneath the black waters of Cauldron lake.

Unfortunately Scratch had followed me into the nightmares too, he watched me suffer through the TV, tried to drag me back under into the darkness that I was trying to escape. He had dictated the horrors that came at every turn; created a new breed of Taken which were both stronger and faster than anything I had faced up in the real world, if that had been the real world. He forced me to fight, forced me to use up my short supply of batteries and bullets. He spoke like a demented storyteller, as if being trapped within the four walls of Bird Leg Cabin had driven him insane. If what Zane had said was true, if he really was so harmless, then why was he trying to kill me?

I’m trying to escape the cabin now, hunting through the scattered pages of the manuscript for a loophole, insurance, the key to escaping the nightmare that I have locked myself in. There has to be one here. I need to discover the truth about the dark presence and the power of Cauldron Lake, stop this from ever happening again, I need to finish what Thomas Zane started.

How did I get here…?

There’s no way out, no way out of here, I need to get out of here, get out of here, how do I get out!


…

Almost Famous fanfic draft....name suggestions??

Spoken secrets filled the air as Penny Lane walked by. No longer a mouse, no longer an image, no longer fooling around. She was on the other side of the barrier now, and the others viewed her as they would an apparition from their past. Was that the same smell of incense on her, the same fanciful attitude, the same curly golden mess of mop? Something had died in her though, they all believed, whether it was good or bad, no-one could know. The wildfire of her heart had been replaced by an ease of herself, of where she was in the world. She no longer felt compelled to anything anymore, to the beautiful destruction of her heart that had been there for all to see. There, in a song. She heard it in her head one day as she was walking home and had smiled a secret smile, knowledge of an alien past. The world had moved on now, but she still heard it, those songs. She had a child now, named Annabelle, who thought the world of her mother. The little Lady who moved around the house, lighting candles and singing her songs, also laughed along with the wonderment of her daughter, a miracle who had come from someplace better than this. For this she was grateful, grateful to the tips of her toes, and it changed her. HE never mattered anymore, none of the HE's that floated in and out of her life mattered anymore. She could put on her rugged threads, head down to the shops, and she was free. It was her choice to entrance them, a choice to stop. The buskers on the street still gave her a look, a look that seemed to say I know where you've been, and I know where you're going, but she no longer cared. The open road no longer was paved with souls she loved, it all came back to Annabelle. Annabelle was her anchor.

More to come on Russel and William methinks...
Sorry for the EXTREME lateness guys, let me know what you think :)