Folding Infinity
A bundle of stories from Graeme S. Houston; they run (though not in sequence) from his very earliest works to his very latest. From Thrillers to Serial Killers, from Philosophical Speculation to Speculative Fiction, within this volume is something for everyone.
Mistaken (Thriller)
Arisa watches in horror as a dark shadowy figure swoops upon Roberto, and in the man’s hand flashes the silver of a wicked blade, brought around to where Roberto stands. She can do nothing but watch that brutal moment, while her world spins about her in a disconnected spiral of uncomprehending thoughts. At the back of her mind a little voice is screaming for her to run, for she is next, and it’s a long dark night…
A Last Wish (Literary)
Melanie is lost, and driving through the darkest and most empty reaches of Scotland trying to find a town or a village, while that stranger follows behind her in another car, and in her terror the night seems to last eons. Dark shapes flit past the windows as she drives on through the dark forests, and spooky moors. All is not as it seems and unbeknownst to Melanie her mother is ill and needs her; but fate has already set its will against her.
Chemical Therapy (Speculative)
One day you’ll wake up, and have that kind of bad day; a worst day ever, a last day ever, and your back chatting A.I. called Tanya is only going to make it worse!
Loyalty Comes at a Price (Thriller)
Katie Song drives into Star Hill in Kuala Lumpur to meet with her client, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that she is pissed off. What fool pisses off an assassin anyway? But don’t worry, as always, our darling Katie is dressed to kill.
Beside the Balcony (Literary)
Jenna is a composer, but as she is sitting at her piano, gazing out of the balcony for inspiration, a dark shape falls past. She rushes to the balcony to find a figure so far below. Shocked, she calls the police, and when they appear they find something deeply disturbing, a note that suggests it was Jenna who drove him to suicide. If that’s not bad enough, things are about to get a whole load worse…
No More Than Two (Speculative)
Humanity is under threat from an advanced alien civilisation, and only a ship left by the great explorer Yeatts can save us. Not everyone believes that ship is a blessing, and many fear it; they believe that it might not be all its made out to be, that it might be some trojan or secret weapon. Do we use it, or not? When all is nearly lost, only then will we risk it?
The House of Childhood Memories (Literary)
Sagundalah sits with her feet in that pond where she played as a child, and all the memories drift back to her. She remembers all the years of visiting her grandparents, and all the happy times. It’s both sad and joyous being here; her grandparents are gone but she sees them everywhere she looks. While she sits there, lost in the years gone by, bulldozers are making their way up the hill, to tear down her grandparents’ house.
The Whispers Before the Scream (Speculative)
Eve Astrid is the most dangerous killer in Earth’s long history, and she has escaped, walked out from the highest security prison ever built, as if it was nothing. Robert Morrow has been put on the case. She looks so innocent, barely seventeen, the kind of girl you would give your life to protect, and yet… is that the mistake they all make?
Folding Infinity (Speculative)
What if, in searching for the theory that underpins everything, we find the very thing that underpins everything…
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Excerpt
Mistaken (excerpt: scene 1) by Graeme S. Houston
Roberto, Roberto she whispered in his ear as they walked back to her apartment building. The long straight path through the grounds cut like a sword blade, silver through the dark tarmac of the carpark. She hugged close to his body, the night now seemed cool, sharp, bitterly so after the heat of the day. The change had come swiftly.
A murder of crows perched in the upper branches of the trees nearby cawing, cawing towards the blue strip where the sunset now lay long forgotten. The skeletal limbs of a dead tree pointed upwards accusingly, like fingers, at the hells-fire glow of the city lights upon the clouds.
The wind howled, a primordial scream, as it tore its way through the narrow gap between the two apartment buildings and the kids, those damn kids, played as usual up on a ladder they used to get from one building to another, and someday one of them would be hurt if someone didn’t do something.
Arisa decided to tell the warden, the second she got in, what if they got themselves blown off the roof in the strong winds, and the damn parents, where were they?
Roberto dialled his entry code and held the door open for her. She walked onwards through green flaking paint, the disfigured murmur of televisions on inside apartments, too loud, mixing into a garbled mess.
She turned around and there Roberto held the door open for someone. Dark figure, black suit, face hidden under a hat, the dim florescent lights unable to resolve his features hidden under the shadow of that thick brim.
She saw the knife, in the man’s gloved hand, and the little gasp caught in her throat. Time came to a halt, and she found herself paralysed, locked in that terrible second as it opened up into infinity, like the unfolding of an origami crane.
Roberto’s handsome face lay locked between the happiness of two seconds ago and the surprise of the coming moment. That terrible blade, curved like the claw of a raptor with the blade in the inside edge and a wicked point. The stranger held it so surely it seemed part of him. Held loosely, shining in the light against the blackness of his coat, the blade like some primordial form, some ancient symbol of a long lost god, and then time came unknotted and the blade swung.
One slice across Roberto’s throat, a cut of such violence that her love’s throat lay open like the grinning smile of satan himself and she screamed and the blood flowed.
Though she could not see the face of the murderer before her, she knew then that his full contemplation lay solely upon her, laced with – not hate – but undirected malice. Those unseen eyes piercing her from behind the shadows. Robert slumped back against the wooden frame of a doorway and began to slowly slide down the doorframe, his eyes affixed to distant points, perhaps stars shining through the ether of infinity to guide him – but his attacker would not let him rest.
Viciously he grasped Roberto by the shoulder. Again and again the knife stabbed at him, and then suddenly it all stopped and the man turned to her once more.
She turned to flee and found that her legs leaden, her limbs barely responding, and it felt like the air around her felt thick and heavy and weighing her down. Forward, struggling, up the staircase, falling pulling herself up and all the while the backward glances showed the man whoever he was, following, as steadily as death himself.
She grasped at the rail and pulled herself up, step by step, her legs pounding and the moment frozen, and she ran just like in her nightmares, but barely moving at all.
The step tripped her and she stumbled onto the next floor up and scrambled to her feet. A backwards glance showed him gaining upon her, black shadow almost upon her, she ran up the steps towards the next floor.
The dagger flashed as the figure moved. His heavy coat moving like some sinister cloak, like a dreadful, disfigured, demonic shadow chasing her to her death.
The next floor passed, and she clutched desperately at a bin while pulling herself up until in her scrambling flight it toppled. She tumbled past it and watched as it rattled down the steps spewing litter and ash and cigarette buts. Her pursuer delayed, she ran upwards, faster, her breath ragged and her heart thumping against her chest, her muscles felt like grain inside hessian sacks, her body like a ton of lead, her mind like that lead flowing down into the troughs and gathering in pools.
Reality had fled. This wasn’t real, how could this be real?
But he still held his position there behind her, matching her step for step, never wavering, as she stumbled up the stairs, and the floors tumbled past in panic stricken wave after wave. Then she threw herself out of the door and onto the black tarred rooftop, towards the precarious ladder, towards safety, towards freedom.
She ran, and the image of Roberto, knife in his solar plexus, blood running down his clothes had carved itself in her mind, burned itself in like a paused computer game on a plasma television.
Then there a sharp pain bored into her, and she felt agony pounce upon her, shooting like lightening up her nervous system like ragged claws raking her from the inside and she fell down and slid across the rough surface of the roof, in a pool of murky water that had gathered and then the pain resolved itself and she became aware of the knife in her back.
Never before had she experienced such twisted pain, the knife inside her body. It felt as if someone had turned her inside out and wrapped her organ by organ starting with her intestines around a white hot poker while nerves that she had never before known she had burned and raged, on fire with the knowledge that the knife pierced her, lay inside of her and she was going to die.
She lay still, silent, shock washing through her.
Oh my god… and her thoughts locked in the unimaginable loop of self reflection, realizing that beyond that the black vacuum of nothingness lay inches away, and then the sound of him kicking the ladder off the roof snapped her from such thoughts.
Instantly she scrambled up, the pain ignored, and ran at the edge throwing herself off, her mind lit with the one thought that if she should die then it would be at her own hands, it would be her neighbours that found her, it would be on her own terms.
She fell.
Suddenly a cable rose up and caught her about the solar plexus and she reached instinctively for it and the slumped around it so that she dangled, holding on. She felt her mind leaving her body, but she could not make her hands let go. The cable jerked. Above her the moon hung like the sinister skull of an ancient being. She suddenly found her head drooping forwards, and like a chasm, six story’s of the buildings on either side of her stretched out below her. They converged beside the narrow alley which seemed to shake menacingly below as she bounced unsteadily every time the cable jerked – as it struggled loose under her weight. It snapped.
She fell.
She looked up and there he stood, his face lit in the golden light of a a cigarette lighter as he casually lit his cigarette, while watching her fall to her death. His face, in the golden light, hellish, demonic, white eyes wide with the pleasurable show of death unfolding below him.
Darkness….
Copyright © Graeme S. Houston 2006 - all rights reserved.
