The outbreak of violence was sudden and almost gleeful. At one minute the darts match was friendly, if a little rowdy, the next second the air was full of curses, thrown punches and broken glass.
Mickey crouched down behind the bar, pulling at Charlie’s trouser leg until he too ducked under the sturdy wood.
“Get down Chas. It ain’t worth getting hurt for a few bottles of cheap hooch.”
For an instant he looked as if he was about to argue, then his shoulders slumped and he sat down. Mickey passed him a thin, black cigarette and he lit it moodily.
As they sat smoking, a bar stool flew through the air smashing into the optics ranged behind the bar. Charlie winced, and Mickey patted his shoulder. There was a further loud crash before the welcome sound of sirens split the air.
The atmosphere in the bar did another abrupt flip-flop as the navvies and stevedores who had been happily exchanging punches suddenly found lots of other places they needed to be.
Charlie stood up for a look, just a second too soon, as he was hit in the side of the neck by a shard of glass from the last salvo of broken pint mugs. He slumped back to the floor and Mickey grabbed him.
“Chas, Chas.”
By the time the police got to them, Mickey’s hands were slippery with blood, and her face was slippery with tears and snot as she cradled her dead brother to her skinny chest.

© jane jago

It was a banquet for the wealthy and jaded. Snowy napery, gleaming crystal, and dining companions as colourful and delicate as butterflies glimmered in the light of a thousand candles.

As course followed course the butterflies grew bored, and when one threw a chocolate coated strawberry the outcome was inevitable. Food became a plaything. It was thrown about as if it cost nothing, and if someone chose to eat chocolate cake from the bare bosom of his companion…

The broken meats served ten hungry families. It would have been more – save that most was stamped underfoot and spoiled beyond repair.

©️jj 2020

‘Wrathburt Sands’ by E.M. Swift-Hook is just one of over twenty Game Lit stories by as many authors in Rise and Rescue – Volume One.  All profits from the Rise and Rescue anthologies will go to support wildlife devastated by the Australian wildfires. 

Milla had lived in Wrathburnt Sands for as long as she could remember. It was a good place to live compared to some of the outpost camps like the one out at Terraraptor Gorge or the guard tower at Wraith’s Watch. Those places were dangerous, overrun by monsters and undead. Here the worst hazards were the landsharks and the sandylions, but they kept away from the village and regular hunting parties of Visitors made sure they were never a problem. 
Wrathburnt Sands was a small ryeshor community of a dozen small hovels and the rubble remains of an ancient stone monument nestled in a bay on the shores of the Silent Sea.  Most Visitors arrived by boat from one of the great cities of the lands beyond. Occasionally one would come from inland to trade such rarities as dragon scales or harpy talons before heading back out on their ventures. Milla often wished she could go on a venture, but she was a Local and only Visitors could do that. Still, it didn’t stop her dreaming of going on one as she combed the beach for small treasures with Ruffkin, a scruffy little hound who seemed to have adopted her as his owner. 
Milla had a small hut on the foreshore which she shared with Ruffkin. They shared what little she could scavenge from the beach directly, or sometimes she might find a large decorative shell, which she would trade to get fresh fish for them both from One Eye Rye.
But times had been hard recently with few Visitors coming to the village. Somedays none came at all. Which was why when she shaded her eyes against the sun, Milla was surprised to see a couple of them were already on the pier catching fish to give to One Eye. He would buy the catch of any new Visitor who needed a bit of silver, even lending them a rod to fish with, and his stall by the pier relied on their fresh catches.
As she got closer, Rufkin trotting at her heels, snatches of speech reached her from the pier, slowly coalescing into a full conversation, but little of it made much sense to Milla. Then very little of what the Visitors said and did ever made much sense to her. One Eye Rye said it was like they were from another universe.
“… been too long…came back early…need to grind WBS faction to over eighty percent…”
“…the kind of crap you get…devs nowadays.”
“Yeah. No thought for those of us who might be returning for the Expansion.”
“This fishing quest repeatable?”
“No. But there’s one to kill sandylions. Guy in the tent at the back. By the camels. Easy to solo, decent XP and a wad of faction too. It unlocks once you’ve done this one.”
“Sounds good. I’ll try that soon as I’ve caught these frigging fish.”
“Just hope the new expac is worth it.”
“Screenshots look awesome and the trailer hints at some really cool new group runs and raids.”
“And the new gear? You seen that? Shiny stats!”
You could always tell the Visitors even if they never said a word. Their weapons were all enchanted with spells and charms. They dressed in the most outlandish clothes and smothered themselves with magical rings and wristlets. Milla had just one magical item. Her hand went to touch the precious pendant. In truth, she had no idea what it did and sometimes wondered if it was just in her own mind it had any magical power at all. But it seemed to. Sometimes, at night, she was sure she could see it glow.
One Eye Rye had sniffed when she asked him about it.
“Who’s to say? You’d need to get to one of them big city mage types. Get it ‘eenalized’ as they calls it.”
And that was never going to happen. Even if she had the silver to pay a big city mage, the boats that brought Visitors wouldn’t take locals and there were no other boats she knew of heading to the cities across the Silent Sea.
Her thoughts seemed to conjure the reality and a sail appeared offshore tacking past the headland and into the bay. Then a second followed. And a third. Each carrying at least one Visitor maybe more. The dock was just past the fishing pier and she couldn’t see how many got off, but before she had finished climbing the steps from the beach to the houses, she could hear them chattering excitedly. 
One Eye Rye thanked a Visitor politely and paid them for their fish then held out a rod to another who was waiting, tipping a quick wink at Milla to show he’d seen she was there and threw a scrap to Ruffkin who snuffled it up. He would talk to her when he’d dealt with the rush of new arrivals.
There were the usual assortment of elves and dwarves, halflings, gnomes, kittafolk, wolfenfolk and even a human.

Rise and Rescue – Volume One is out now, to keep reading snag your copy now and help support Australian wildlife.

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

I am old, that cannot be denied
But I’m taking it all in my stride
I know I look crumpled
My skin truly rumpled
I am still a twenty-seven inside

© jane jago

The Darkly Vampires, in Chloe Hammond‘s Darkly Dancing, aren’t the undead. They have been infected by a virus and undergone physical changes as radical as a butterfly during metamorphosis.  It’s a difficult adaption to their strange new lives. They strive to cling to their humanity and hopes, to avoid compromising away their very natures. They tumble through heartbreaks and rage as they come to terms with being monsters.

This is not your common or garden pervert: we’ve hooked ourselves a proper monster. I almost pant in anticipation, and then, horrified, remind myself that I am not supposed to be enjoying this. No matter who, or what, he is, I am about to be involved in killing a human being. I have to remember to consider what this will make me, who I could become. I must not lose myself in the thrill of the hunt. I must not let myself become a monster too.
‘Verity, I saw what you wrote. I couldn’t bear the thought of you sitting here alone believing no one understood. Verity, I understand you. I read your poems, and I know you are an old soul. Kids your age won’t understand you, but don’t blame them, they can’t help being stupid. You’re special. That’s why I came to find you, we’re the same, you and I,’ he croons to her as he squats besides her and takes her hand.
I know where this would lead if she really was a human girl sitting out here on her own at night, with no one at home caring where she was so late and no peer group to protect her. This monster would groom her until she was completely under his control, so he could do whatever he wished, and she would thank him for the privilege, and never, ever, tell. He would undermine all her other relationships, using lies and insinuation to make her doubt everyone she had left. Then, if any of her friends or siblings was tenacious enough to stick around, he would flirt outrageously with them. This would serve three purposes. It would damage her relationship with the unlucky recipient of his attention, because he would swear the flirtation was the other way around; it would chase the friend away because there would be a veiled threat in the flirting that the friend would feel; and it would break Verity’s confidence that little bit more, because she’s so ugly her friends flirt with him under her nose. She would end up feeling that he was so good to put up with her at all.
He is looking at her hand as he traces the pattern of the lace with the tip of his finger, testing, testing, to see what she will allow.
‘My name is Thierry,’ he tells her. ‘I live near here and when I read that you would be here all alone, I couldn’t bear it, I had to come to you.’ 
Liar. I don’t know how I am so sure, but my gut tells me that he’s travelled almost as far as us to get here tonight. For the same reasons. 
As he speaks, he lifts his head slightly so he can glance at her coyly through his eye lashes, so subtle, no confrontational behaviour, luring her in with his romantic gestures and promises of understanding and care. But as his eyes meet Annie’s, his head jerks up and he rears back as his instincts scream at him that he’s stumbled onto a predator more dangerous than himself. 
This is my cue; I turn my Glamour up to full blast and then sway out of the shadows.
‘Thierry!’ I coo. ‘Darling, come here.’  
I cover the distance between us deceptively quickly, keeping my gaze on his as I sway towards him. I see terror on his face, which soon dispels as the waves of my Glamour thicken around him and his pupils dilate. He stands and steps obediently towards me. He is spellbound. There is nothing he can do but comply and come with me as I lead him back towards the others. 
Over his shoulder Annie grins viciously: even her hunter has been stirred. Before we reach Elaine and Simon, I turn Thierry to face me and look deeply into his eyes. I just want to satisfy myself that right in the very depths of his soul he is still aware and screaming. 
I smile broadly at that bit of him, and can’t resist a small gnash of my pointed, shiny teeth. 

A Bite of… Chloe Hammond

Have you ever written somebody you love into a book?

Yes. The ideas for my novels came to me in nightmares, and I wanted to keep that intensely emotional feeling, with completely believable characters. So I based my clumsy, awkward, slightly maudlin main character loosely on me, and her vibrant, irrepressible, fun loving best friend on my own best friend. Some of the things we go up to together found their way into the book, and when I showed her, my friend loved it. She was so supportive through the whole writing process, from being the first person to read my first draft, to being the last person to read the final draft, she was my cheerleader every step of the way. So when she died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on father’s Day in 2017, it completely derailed my writing. The first time I realised that she was never going to know what happens, I had a physical shock from the level of grief that hit me. It took a very long time not just to feel like I could write at all, but to feel like I could attempt to capture some of her fizz on the page. 

Would you rather live in this world or the one you create in your books?

The one I have created, not just because I would still have my friend-even if she did do something stupidly dangerous out of boredom. Also because in my world there might be vampires in the shadows, but some of them relish the opportunity to even up the power imbalance a little. I have had great pleasure writing Rae and Layla’s hunting scenes as they pursued abusers, murders, pimps and rapists. And Rae’s influence is spreading, more and more vampires are coming around to her way of thinking. Who doesn’t love the idea of the dark allies holding retribution for the evil? Well, other than the evil.

Are you ticklish?

Oh God yes! So ticklish, everywhere. It’s meant to be physiologically impossible to tickle yourself, but I can, and hate it when I do. In fact, sometimes I keep myself awake at night thinking about my armpits being tickled, which tickles. Awful.

Born in Liverpool, Chloe Hammond grew up in West Wales. Without T.V, books became her favourite escape. She studied Behavioural Sciences and Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan. She always planned to write- life just got in the way. When diagnosed with anxiety and depression Chloe refused to give the depression the isolation it craves. She feared judgement, but instead found compassion and support.
She made time to write again. Darkly Dreaming came as nightmares, vivid scene at a time. She started writing them down, and quickly Rae and Layla’s characters introduced themselves and took over. 

You can find Chloe on Goodreads, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn and her own Website and Blog.

The problem with having little legs is you keep getting left behind. Shorty was so lost he just laid back his head and howled. But missis never heard him. He sat on the cold pathway shivering in the thin rain.

Then a gruff voice spoke.

“Are you lost, little chap?”

Shorty whined. 

“Ain’t passed anybody back that way…”

He picked Shorty up and his legs moved so fast they would surely catch missis soon.

When Shorty heard her voice calling desperately, the man speeded up. 

The advantage of having little legs is that big men rescue you – and missis too…

©️jj 2020

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

The scene looked more solid now, as if it had come into focus, there was a stall selling canydfloss just opposite and two children with balloons bobbing on strings ran past, groups of teens and families. There was something strange about them, most of the young men had longer hair, the girls wore a lot of ethnic look clothing and they all seemed to favour jeans with flared boot-cut legs. 
“Come.”
Jess glanced at Annis who was reinforcing her request by taking hold of Jessica’s hand and pulling on it’
“I’m not sure it’s a good – “
“Come!” Annis was frowning now. “Show you.”
Reluctant to leave the relative sense of security this enclosed place gave her, Jess found herself gripping the hand of the child quite tightly. She was not able to avoid a gasp as the huge felines slid out of the door ahead of them. Annis paused in the doorway and looked back.
“You not talk, the Old One hears you. Not hear me.”
“What is this Old One?”
Jessica recalled the cold feeling she had felt before when Annis had made her hide with the cats. Even their warmth had not stopped her shivering. 
“Old One is ancient – is Blood Eater. Come.”
Jess still resisted the tugging hand.
“Blood eater? You mean blood drinker? Like a vampire?’
And that was what Annis had called Roald. For some reason the idea fitted with him well.
“No,” Annis said, almost crossly, she was getting impatient as if driven by some urgency. “Blood Eater. It eats you.” Either the girl had no real idea of what she was saying or she lacked the vocabulary to say what she wanted, because she pulled again at Jessica’s hand. “Now come, not talk.”
Jessica gave in and followed the girl, her mind full of Bram Stoker and HP Lovecraft. It was not a very comforting state of mind to be in as they left the sanctuary of the small cabin Annis had made her home. 
This time there was no twisted tangle to clamber over, this time there was a ladder and the space above their heads was filled with looping rails, not lit up like the rest of the rides and booths around them. Annis led the way to a gated barrier and produced a key from somewhere to open it so they could get through. There was a sign on the outside of the gate which declared the roller-coaster closed for… Jessica would have read more about it, but Annis was pulling her hand again, finger to lips to remind her not to talk.
It was a dream, of course. She had fallen asleep in the car, in the carpark and was dreaming all this. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. It just felt real. But then Jess had lucid dreams sometimes, like the one where she was naked on the clifftop and –
“Jessica! Jess!”
Roald. She could not see him but his voice was close by. It did not sound like an: ‘I’ve just spotted you’ attention grabbing shout, more of a call in the hope that she might hear and answer. 
“Jessica! I know you are going to be frightened, but it’s alright. I can protect you. Come to me, my princess, I’ll keep you safe.”
It was strange though, that his voice carried over the noise of the fairground music, the sirens that wailed about the start and end of the rides, the thunder of the machinery itself and the cheerful shrieks of the crowd. But despite the noise, his voice sounded clear to her. Almost as if she was wearing an earpiece. Then he was there. Right in front of her and she froze.

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Part 9 of Maybe will be here next week…

The pathway
Back to her
Shone gold
He turned his face
For home
Ere he grew old
The route
Across the sea
Called soft and low
The way
To love. To home
Where the soft winds blow

©️jj 2019

He heard the whispers as he strode the echoing corridors of that grey, weed-choked castle perched on the very edge of the sea
“A hero,” the sibilant voices declared. “A hero.”
The young man preened himself and puffed out his chest. It was always nice to be recognised, even if it was only by the ghosts in a backwater like this. His steel-clad feet rung on the stone floors and rattled on the worn and slippery steps of a spiral staircase. As he walked, he wondered what the assignment would be. Perhaps there would be a sleeping maiden, or a crone at her spinning wheel, or a queen labouring under a geas, or a dragon. He enjoyed dragons. One killed dragons and moved on. Women tended to be needier. If one kissed a maiden she rather expected one to stick around, and the tears and tantrums when it became apparent that wasn’t happening wore on the nerves more than somewhat. Then he became aware that he had reached the apex of the staircase and pulled his awareness back to the work in hand.
Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he laid his hand on the huge wrought iron latch.
The room at the top of the tower was a fantastical octagon, with pointed stained glass windows in every wall, and delicate flying buttresses made of carved white marble. For a moment the hero thought himself alone in that place, then his ears caught the sound of slow breathing. He lifted his eyes and saw her, seated on a plain wooden chair on a mezzanine high above him, wrapped in velvet so black it seemed to leach the light from the room and with burnished auburn hair falling to the floor. She might have been beautiful but it was impossible to see as her eyes and the top half of her face were wrapped in gauzy bandages.
‘Aha,’ he thought, ‘a geas’.
“Who comes?” The voice was low, musical and pleasing.
“One who will break whatever enchantment holds you lady.”
She laughed, a sound like the chimes of silver bells and rose from her chair. “Come hither. And we shall speak of this…”
He all but ran up the intricately carved and smoothly polished wood drawn by the excitement of the quest, and by somewhat else. By an undefinable pull to the very centre of his being. By the elusive perfume that he somehow knew came from her velvet skirts. And by a furtive fantasy involving a rope of red-gold hair.
When he reached the head of the final staircase, he was surprised and a little embarrassed to find himself breathless and flushed of cheek. He felt anger that a mere female should so disturb the composure of on so far above her and he frowned direfully. The lady appeared not to notice, moving to a side table on whose mirror bright surface reposed a silver wine jug and a tray of long-stemmed glasses so finely blown as to look like bubbles on twisted stalks.
“Wine, good sir?” The lady’s voice was mild and he felt himself relax in the face of such politeness.
The lady poured wine the colour of blood and brought glasses for herself and her visitor.
“Will you not sit?”
He sunk into the cushioned comfort of a chair that the cold analytical side of his brain insisted hadn’t been there a moment before. For a brief scintilla of time he stayed his hand regarding the glass in his hand with deep suspicion. The lady raised her own glass and drank and he watched the movements in the white column of her throat with an emotion any other man might have recognised as lust. She laughed, low and intimate, and he raised his eyes to the gauzy veil that enwrapped the top half of her face. To his surprise he found it was dissolving as he looked; he was enraptured and forgot his misgivings as his blood rushes unbidden to his loins. He raised his glass and drank, noticing as he did so that the lady’s eyes were the colour of rain-washed violets. The wine flowed down his throat as sensuously as a caress and he wondered what rare and fine vintage it might be. When it’s syrupy sweetness hit his stomach he dropped the glass from suddenly nerveless fingers. The sound of it shattering into a million shards was the last thing he was to hear for some time.
When the hero awoke, his first thought was that he was naked and cold, and then it came to him that he could not move. For the first time in his life he knew the meaning of fear. He opened his mouth to cry for aid but no sound would come.
“He is with us.”
The voice was familiar and he managed to swivel his eyes to where the lady stood regarding him with a peculiar expression in her eyes.
“He is,” she said musingly, “passing fair. Perhaps it would amuse me to keep him for a while.”
Someone laughed and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Domina. Do not be so cruel.”
The lady came over and leaned down into the hero’s face. She moved suddenly and he thought she might have been going to kiss him. But she did not. Instead she bit the fullness of his lower lip, licking the blood away in a manner that made him think of a kitten lapping milk. He closed his eyes, unaccountably distressed and unable to understand what was happening to him. He was a hero. Invulnerable. Undefeatable. Fearless. And yet…
While his befuddled mind was struggling to process this strangeness the sound of sliding silk alerted him to who knew what and he opened his eyes to see the now naked lady climbing onto the bier where he lay. She straddled him and he thought there was mocking laughter in the back of the eyes that studied him.
She leaned forwards until her breasts all but touched his face.
“I’ve never had a pretty hero before.”
Then she leaned back and he saw the dark glimmer of the obsidian blade she held in her hands. He saw it and knew it for what it was only a second before it slashed his throat from ear to ear and his eyes grew dark. He never felt the priests rip his still beating heart from his chest, nor did he smell the disconcertingly edible aroma as they threw it onto a fiercely hot brazier…
A hero died. A lady laughed. And somewhere a dark god smiled.

©️jane jago 2018

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
She’d long lost its partner, so what could she do?
She didn’t have money to buy her another
She didn’t have family, sister or brother.
She lived all alone and slept under a bridge
And ate what she could from the soup kitchen fridge
Because she was never there to get her food hot
She had no one to care if she ate or did not.
She was found, I heard say, on a bench in the park
She’d been sitting all day – but had died in the dark.

E.M. Swift-Hook