The Book of Orphans
Extract from 'Nestor 33 And The Uncertain Destiny of The One-Eyed Dog'
Content that the scene appears to be clear, Nestor disengages the engine and opens the door, heavy safety boots stepping carefully to concrete. He slides open a tall panel just behind the cab and unclips a short metal baton, gripping it tightly in a metal hand.
Then, just as he quietly lowers the panel in place, he hears it. A twisted, barely audible cry for help, followed by a terrible mix of gasping, groaning, then silence again.
Trembling at the sound, Nestor creeps towards the abandoned vehicle. Staring through the cab window and noticing the door on the other side is wide open. Holding the baton in front, Nestor moves round the front of the vehicle, following the sound of horribly laboured breathing.
As he turns, the full sight is revealed. A motionless body slumped against the side of the vehicle. Legs spreadeagled, arms hanging limply at the side, hands resting open on blood splattered concrete. Clothes ripped and punctured, with blood draining from terrible wounds underneath. Eyes narrowing then widening, peering from a horribly swollen, blood-stained face, pleading as Nestor approaches.
“Help…”
The Book of Orphans contains the following tales: The Mysterious Heroism of Archibald Crane, Ashes, The Barton Doghouse, The Tunnels of St Mary's, Mia Cartwright and the Beginning of Her End and The End of Her Beginning, Ewan's Fortune, Happy Birthday Love Alice, David Crominous, The Night Shop, XY and The Suicide Companion, Nestor 33 and The Uncertain Destiny of The One-Eyed Dog.
Book Releases
Published September 2023, The Book of Orphans is a collection of eleven new stories written across 2022.
Do you enjoy bizarre fiction and tripping through recognisable, yet strangely grotesque worlds? Perhaps shot with frequent - but delicate - splashes of dark humour? If so, step inside. You'll find that trail of under-your-skin-unsettling stories you've been searching for. Ideal for older children and beyond.
Paperback:
Last Days on Swan Street
The #1
Need to move, to get back to the apartment. Now. One foot. Next foot. Back up Swan Street. Not safe to be out after curfew, everyone knows that.
I stagger through bleak darkness. Outlines only. Dull ivory illumination and shots of red. Colder now too, drawing my coat together. I'm walking. Feels like I'm walking. Boots moving forward. Guts turning sideways.
Just as the movement of my feet becomes fluid, I hear a scream somewhere in the black ahead. A sharp and twisted tear through cold. Not the usual sound, some familiar street atrocity like a breaker, or a steal, gang rape or pay murder. No. Something else. Something wretched and painful, like a disease. A long, swirling moaning, cut with illness. For a tick, even my stomach stops turning.
Through gentle blur, I notice a crumpled shape crawling along the side of the road ahead. A ragged, piteous lump, shuffling towards me like moving wreckage.
I rub my eyes. Damn blur of the #10. Can't take a chance.
Another slice. Cutting the darkness wide open. Wrapping around me, sharpening me up through my nausea. I stagger sideways off the treadle, at least for a second. I'm out here and I shouldn't be. But this thing over there, if it doesn't stop, it'll get us all killed.
My debut novel, Last Days on Swan Street, follows late 2024/early 2025.
Last Days on Swan Street is a paranoid, bizarre and surreal modern fantasy, set in a far away distant world. The novel recounts the final days and seeming memories of an unknown painter, called Solomon Frank. Waking from his 'nightly treadle' finally, after so many lost years, he is reborn to embrace the end and the utter madness of his last days on the street.
For older children and beyond.
"I saw them, like everything we've heard, like a dream. I don't know, they absorbed him. All I could see were the colours. I thought they would take me but, no. Not then."
From Last Days on Swan Street, The #3.
