Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook . Sometimes we walk the edges of realty…

Half an hour later she was driving away, to somewhere. Anywhere. Just away. She stopped to eat the sandwich when it was starting to get dark and hunger bit, pulling off the road and into the carpark of what looked like a run-down, sea-side amusement park. Which was when she found it in the glove box. The gift from Roald. Part of her wanted to hurl it, unopened, away from the car. But instead she took it out of the colourful paper bag and lifted the lid. A necklace of silver beads, carved to resemble ammonite shells.
Throwing it out of the window, Jess swore violently and turned the key. Nothing happened. The car sat there. She tried several times, giving up only when she realised it was not going to happen. She picked up her phone to call roadside recovery, and was somehow not surprised to find there was no signal. With an odd sense of inevitability, she picked up her magnalight from the map pocket beside her. Its weight, as much as its light, gave her a sense of security, it could be a weapon at need. She pulled her walking coat on over her fleece jacket and left the car to see if there anyone around in the amusement park.
There was stiff sea breeze coming in from across the bleak scrub that lay between this place and the sea. A moon, nearly full, gave enough light that she did not need to turn on the torch, and slid it into the inside pocket of her coat. There were no other cars parked up outside what must once have been a bustling attraction. But who wanted a seaside holiday when you could go to Costa del Sunburn for not much more? There was a high wall which ran across the end of the car park and as Jess walked towards it, she could see it stretched away on either side. 
The entrance was through a turnstile gate, or should have been. Someone had broken the spokes of the turning part, so anyone could walk through, past the shattered and blinded glass eye of the pay booth, boarded-up on the inside. Jess did so and something moved beside the booth. She turned fast, her hand gripping the magnalight as a slapping sound send a sudden pulse of unwanted adrenaline into her system. She pulled the torch free and shone its powerful beam at the source of the sound.
A sign hung down, still half attached to the top of the pay-booth, its broken back clapping against the heavy door set in the side of the small brick cabin. The words were barely visible:

…COME TO ….HELL…

Somewhere an owl shrieked and, despite herself, Jess drew a sharp breath. She took a step towards the broken, flapping sign and played the torch beam over it from end to end:

WELCOME TO SHELLEY’S FUNPARK

The owl screeched again and Jess smiled. You had to love it when the atmospherics played up to the occasion. It would only take a sea mist rolling in to turn this place into something out of an old-school Hammer Horror production. The really chilling thing was not any kind of supernatural danger here, it was the realisation that this was indeed an abandoned and empty place, with no one around who might have a phone she could use to call the roadside recovery and this place was a very long walk from anywhere. Only a year ago that would have meant very little. She might even have enjoyed the bracing breeze and the countryside at night. But not now. Now she would not make it more than a mile before she was crippled with pain.
The laughter carried on the night air, coming from behind the low roofed building immediately in front of her. At a guess it had once been some kind of cafe, but now it was heavily boarded up, metal shutters pulled over the windows, like a creature retreated into its shell.
Shelley’s Funpark? Why did that sound so familiar? Jess would have given it some more thought but the laughter came again, masculine, plural and loud. It was not from someone with any thought of trying to avoid attention. Still gripping the magnalight, its beam dimmed, Jessica made her way past the cafe-building and into the open area beyond.
The shadowy figures moving vaguely on the far side, close by the enclosing wall, sprang suddenly into stark relief and were revealed, as as an orange glow flared behind them. Jess froze, hearing drunken cheers as the fire took hold and watched as, like the ritual of some strange coven of witches, the group of youths all started throwing things into the flames.

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Part 4 of Maybe will be here next week…

Be careful where you draw the line that marks out ‘us’ and ‘them’
The line that cuts those you approve from those that you condemn.
For many who you banish to the far side of that line
Will share with you more qualities than those you did define.
And every time you draw to cut out what you disapprove
You also many other great attributes thus remove
You may condemn a person, a group, a crowd, a throng
Just because one single thing they hold you see as wrong.
But others draw their lines as well and something you once said
Might make them put you on the other side of ‘us’ instead
And those you feel are on your side of your dividing line
Might think that you do not belong and even so opine
When you allow ‘us’ and ‘them’ your worldview to be
That line defines just who you are and cuts you off from ‘we’.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Iconoclast: Not To Be the latest Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook is now available in ebook and paperback.

It was like walking around with a bomb in your head.
That wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling for someone like Jazatar Baldrik who had served time in the Special Legion. There they plumbed a direct link into your brain and set it so that you had to keep connected to the data network lattice or it would fry out and kill you. Even if you made it through the five years of hell so you could qualify for release from the convict unit, as very few ever did, the device had a bad effect on the brain tissue it was implanted in and would kill you eventually anyway. Jaz had personal experience of that too. He had recently lost a friend that way. A man he had once considered as close as a brother.
But this was different.
Different because this bomb wasn’t going to go off and kill himself. When it went off, it was going to kill one of the very few people he actually cared about. Getting that news had been the most unexpected event of the day. But still only one in series of unexpected events. and that in a place where the unexpected was so rare it never happened. 
For the past two cycles Jaz had been effectively imprisoned. Initially against his will and now with a kind of grudging acceptance, he was held in a secure clinic run by the terrorist organisation known as The Legacy. It was the kind of place where today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow wouldn’t be too much changed from that. Running to its own quiet, pre-planned patterns, nothing was allowed to penetrate which might risk breaking the steady rhythm of daily life. It was the sort of protected and predictable environment Jaz had never known any time in his forty-two years of life. He had even begun to feel safe.
Which was a mistake.
When they told him he had a visitor, he’d been a bit puzzled, but mostly just curious. It wasn’t like anyone he knew had any idea he was even here. So he didn’t expect it to be the kind of visitor most of the other inmates of this place got now and then. 
It wasn’t going to be some family member who would look all concerned. Or even an awkward work colleague, checking up on how he was doing because someone had to and they had drawn the short straw at the office. Jaz had seen those kinds of people in the reception area sometimes, waiting to be taken through to see one of the inmates – or guests as the staff smilingly called them. There was even an elderly couple standing there now, the look of worried parents clear on their faces. Obviously distracted, they didn’t even notice him. He walked right in front of them and into one of the therapy rooms.
It took him a moment to realise who his visitor was and when he did, his first reaction was to turn himself around and walk right out again. He had to use some real willpower to make himself stand still and not do that.
Car Torbalen.
The man ultimately responsible for Jaz being put in this place and being taken very much out of circulation. Even thinking that was enough to make Jaz tense up all over. But, in a place where yesterday and tomorrow were both so much the same, he was curious enough about this sudden shift to see what it might be about. 
Torbalen greeted him with a slight smile, holding out his hand like some formal event.
“Jaz. I was delighted to get your message that you wanted to see me today. Let’s go for that walk you suggested, eh?”
Something was wrong. 
Jaz was more than sure he’d sent no such message. Even if he had the faintest idea on how he might have set about trying to get in touch with Torbalen, he would never have been inviting him over for a cosy one-to-one, walking in the grounds.
This man had effectively betrayed him. But the fact was Torbalen was standing there and knew that. He must also know he wasn’t going to make it on to Jaz’s link list in any conceivable future. Which made Jaz wonder enough that he didn’t deny or challenge what Torbalen had said. 
There was nothing to read in the pleasant smile, because Torbalen was an operator with a lot of skill, but there had to be something important behind this. For him to step away from his so-busy life drawing in ever more fanatics for The Legacy, there had to be something pretty big on his mind. So Jaz took the offered hand briefly in a firm grip and said nothing. Then he went through the door which Torbalen had opened and walked out into the secure grounds around the clinic.

You can keep reading by grabbing yourself a copy of Iconoclast: Not To Be

If I should find myself alone
I will not cry, nor wail, nor moan
I will not ask. Why me? Why now?
I’ll do my best to cope somehow.
For life goes on
Though hearts grow cold
And lonely
Is the pain of old
If I’m alone 
I’ll bear the dread
Though honestly 
When all is said
If I’ve a choice 
I’ll walk ahead

©️jj 2019

Unlike many octogenarians, Gran here is well up with the youf and that which is laughingly called ‘social’ media. I like to think my Twitter feed is both informative and entertaining, while my Facebook page is a fountain of wisdom and wit. I’m not going to even attempt to teach you how to become a force like me, all I can hope for is to give you some hints about internet security.

Let us consider photographs… 

Holidays: tempting it may be Do Not post photographs of your crew giving it large in Jamaica all over the web. You are only storing up trouble. For every person who enjoys your innocent joy there will be one who thinks you are an entitled bitch who deserves to be taken down a peg and another who reckons your empty house is ripe for being burgled.

Food: nobody gives a flying **** where you are eating, or what you are eating. Stop it. Now.

Selfies: unless you have managed to turn your hair green or you have climbed Everest unassisted, then one a week is more than plenty.

Children: yummies Stop Posting Endless Images of Wheatgerm and Claustrophobia. You are doing the poor little blighters a great disservice. What is cute when you are three will be nothing but an embarrassment when you are thirty-three. Unless you want one of your children to smother you in later life don’t document their lives for all the world to see.

Other content…

Inspirational quotes: just don’t…

Cute memes: these are okay as long as they are reasonably fresh. If you are gonna be the three millionth one to share – don’t 

Internet ‘chain letters’: nobody wants to copy and paste stuff no matter how worthy you think it is. Neither do most people want to share unamusingly PC perorations. And as for ‘I think I know which of my friends will share this’ – just send it to them ones then.

And finally…

Remember the internet is the twenty-first century incarnation of the saloon bar. The difference is that saloon bar trolls generally got their clocks cleaned by those they offended. Internet trolls hide behind keyboards and avatars and the like and are probably sitting in their bedrooms dressed only in crunchy underpants and mismatched socks while they criticise your sartorial efforts.

It’s a jungle out there kids, and sometimes even a Kardashian backside ain’t wide enough to deflect the bullets….

I had always thought myself fearless. Walking the forest in the dead of night held no terrors for me. The anger of my father, with his hard hands and his leather belt caused me not a tremor.  Even the sound of battle and the smell of blood left me unmoved. So why was I frightened now?

He was just a man like any other man. So why did the lightless blackness of his eyes cause my knees to tremble and my voice to clot in my throat?

I stood facing him and he saw my fear. 

It pleased his soul….

©jane jago

“Man up,” I said briskly. “We need to know all you know about your little friend.” I threw him a wad of paper tissues and waited for him to get his stuff together.
“I met him about six months ago. At a wine tasting in the Napa Valley. He was the only other person there who didn’t talk like he had a stick up his ass. We had dinner.” Weaver’s voice was thready but he had himself in hand. “Wasn’t until we had met up a few times that I even found out he worked for Blue Ess. He’s only ever been here once other than today. That time we went to the guest house over by the western border of the property, so he has never been in the main house.”
“He ever ask you any stuff about the boss?”
“No. Never. We never talked about his work. Or mine.”
“Any other way he could’ve gotten info from you? Codes or the like?” Cyrus was less tactful than I maybe would have been but the question had to be asked.
Weaver shook his head. “No. I carry my codes in my head. And I don’t see how he could have got them from there.”
Cyrus grunted. “So why’d he pick you up then. Or was it just coincidence?”
Weaver looked truly miserable. “I don’t see how it can have been. I’m not a great believer in coincidence.”
I was thinking as hard as I had in a very long time.
“Lab,” I said curtly, “and we need to be quick.”
Cyrus fairly sprinted. Weaver was half a pace behind. And I kept pace as best as I could. Both men seemed to have caught my urgency as they had me in the computer lab with the doors locked behind us quicker than I would have thought possible. I went to a familiar tool chest and, swallowing a burst of nausea as I worried about the good, kind man in whose house I stood, I grabbed a handful of items.
“Weaver. Gimme your phone. Now.”
He was too surprised to do anything but accede, handing over a brand-new Galaxy. I opened the back and he paled.
“Don’t be a wuss Weaver,” Cyrus growled at him. “If she effs your phone up, I’ll buy you a new one.”
I showed them my teeth. “If I do break it, I’ll buy you a new one. Now shut up and let me work.”

From ‘Vicious Reality’ by Jane Jago published in Challenge Accepted 

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

I am old, of which there’s no debate
Being wrinkly and rumpled’s my fate
Lost control of my bits 
And the left of my tits
Now hangs down twice as low as its mate

© jane jago

…. or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

azamon (noun) – unfriendly elf, purveyor of all the things you never know you needed 

delte (adjective) – geographical, of rivers, having a small muddy estuary but big aspirations

dismissibve (adverb) – of mansplaining the action of flapping a hand at any raised objections

flestive (adjective) – of Christmas decorations being old and mildly mouldy

moced (verb) – past  participle of the verb to moce – to move slightly awkwardly as if one has a stone in one’s left shoe

mucter (noun) – small Caledonian gentleman with a large ginger moustache and galloping halitosis

out to fo (compound idea) – of hen parties looking for fast food, a fight or a f***

relaly 1. (noun) – special race for clumsy people who keep dropping the baton.
2. (adverb) – of relationships, describes the moment in an argument when you want to poke his eyes out with a knitting needle

suoth (adjective) – directionally challenged

Ther Elet (proper noun) – Miss Universe contestant from the planet Thrab, notable for her rendition of Mull of Kintyre on the Appalachian Nose Flute

trpuble (adjective) – of pubic hair being inexpertly barbered

virhin (noun) – female who last had sex a very long time ago

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

The goddess came to me in a dream. All silver and blue she was and shining like the moon. 

“Oh my child,” she said and her voice was like the touch of a lover’s hand. Then she showed me the devastation and the horsemen riding through the sky.

I awoke with the certainty that our world was approaching the end of days and I went out among the people with ashes in my hair.

They stoned me for my words, but I wouldn’t stop speaking.

Today they will kill me. 

But at least I shall die before the world ends.

©jane jago