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From: Richard Karsmakers <[email protected]>
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Subject: Twilight World 2.5
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X-Status:
Below you will find the text of TW 2.5. Please spread it. I will send the
list of subscribers in my next message.


   /////////
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Richard Karsmakers                          "Thank God I'm an atheist."
[email protected]                      Anon (in the gutter)
Editor of "Twilight World" on-line fiction magazine
Snailmail:     Looplantsoen 50
               NL-3523 GV  Utrecht
               The Netherlands
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                        T W I L I G H T   W O R L D




                             Volume 2 Issue 5

                            September 10th 1994









This magazine may be archived,  reproduced and/or distributed provided  that
no  additions  or changes are made to it.  All stories in this  magazine  are
fiction.  No  actual  persons  are  designated  by  name  or  character.  Any
similarity is purely coincidental.
If you bought this magazine through an expensive PD library,  get it cheaper
somewhere  else next time because it's for free and not intended for  someone
else to make money with.
Please  refer  to  the  end  file  for  information  regarding  submissions,
subscriptions, donations, copyright, etc.


= LIST OF CONTENTS ==========================================================


EDITORIAL
by Richard Karsmakers

THE TROLL
by Stefan Posthuma

A PREHISTORIC TALE
by Richard Karsmakers

WADDAYA KNOW, JOE?
by Mark Knapp

OH YEAH
by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers

WIRED
by Niklas Pivic

HOWARD'S END, OR, THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR
by Richard Karsmakers


= EDITORIAL =================================================================
by Richard Karsmakers


The  summer is behind us.  Here it was hot,  though it might have been  cold
where you were.  No matter what kind of weather was,  is,  or may be, this is
the new issue of "Twilight World" and I hope you'll all like it.
Thanks to you for the massive amount of literally *zero* people who  reacted
to my request put in the previous issue's "Editorial". Because of this dismal
failure I would like to put the request to you once again.

Request:  I  am trying to establish how many people read  "Twilight  World".
You'd do me a big favour if you'd send a postcard to my regular mail  address
(see  end of file) with "Volume 2 Issue 5" and your email address written  on
it. Cheers!

Let's hope that I get plenty of reactions this time.


Richard Karsmakers
(Editor)

P.S. If you no longer want to receive "Twilight World",  *please* unsubscribe
    and  don't  let  me wait for the messages  to  bounce  instead,  totally
    flooding my email box! This especially goes for America OnLine people.


= THE TROLL =================================================================
by Stefan Posthuma


Written in an urge of inspiration. As usual, the end sucks (and won't mean a
lot to people that aren't from the Netherlands).

"Hungry", the troll growled quite stupidly.
Cronos was a bit suprised by the enormous stupidity of the immense  creature
standing  before him.  He had seen many creatures but the one now eyeing  him
with considerable interest was certainly the most unintelligent of them  all.
Somewhere in the back of his mind dawned the fact that he himself wasn't  one
of the most brilliant ones either, but he felt strangely smart in the company
of this troll.
It slowly came to the conclusion that Cronos was in fact alive, and thus had
to  be  killed because his mother always said that he could  and  should  eat
everything that lived.  It decided that it would hit the quite edible-looking
human on the head, then eat it. So it did.
Cronos  was taken aback by the agility of the huge creature as  an  enormous
fist hit him on the head. Slight feelings of confusion and pain troubled him.
He decided the time had come for some defensive actions.
The troll was surprised.  Normally,  its victims would totally disintegrate,
explode  or at least die when it hit them on the  head.  This  one,  however,
remained on its feet. Even more surprising, it hit back quite hard.
Now it was Cronos' turn to be surprised. He had just applied a move that old
Ninja  master  Hang Foy Soozooki taught him,  designed purely  to  obliterate
completely any bone structure present in any living creature.  Normally, this
move would surely kill his victims or at least render them incapable of being
any threat to his precious hearing aid.  But this troll didn't seem to  react
to it. It just looked a bit more stupid than it had done before.
The  silence  that  followed  was a painful  one.  The  two  opponents  were
pondering  over their next moves,  not very sure of what it would be  because
their first moves had always been sufficient until now.  The troll decided to
repeat the last move since it was the only one it knew.  Cronos was  prepared
now  and evaded the blow.  The troll had put considerable more force into  it
this time and not hitting Cronos severely upset its balance, causing its fist
to impact on the left tunnel wall, creating a large hole in it. The troll was
getting upset now because the tunnel was part of his home.  His mother always
said he should keep his home nice and tidy.
"Angry!",  bellowed  the  troll and fetched a piece of tree trunk  that  had
functioned  as  a support for the tunnel.  Cronos tried another  one  of  his
techniques on the troll,  resulting in an even more angry tree-trunk wielding
creature.
The troll swung the trunk in the direction of Cronos who quickly ducked  and
applied a double leg lock on the ravenous creature. He slightly misjudged the
momentum  of  the trunk;  the following chaos resulted in three  more  trunks
being  torn from their positions,  not giving the tunnel anything to lean  on
anymore.  The  tunnel,  after  having been lived in for  centuries  by  whole
generations  of trolls,  decided that its time had come and  collapsed  quite
dramatically.
Cronos  felt a slight pressure on his chest as several feet of  rubble  were
piled upon him.  Heavy breathing beside him reminded him of a very aggressive
troll  and seconds later he was standing next to a partly collapsed  hill  in
which he had only wanted to spend the night after fruitlessly searching for a
certain  renegade  general.  The  fact that the whole country  had  now  been
reduced to a pile of rubble and total anarchy ruled didn't seem to bother him
at  all.  Back  in his mind lingered some sort of uncle  but  the  connection
wasn't  really clear.  Anyway,  the troll was now busy removing  the  various
chunks of hill from itself. It probably meant having to fight again.
The troll wasn't happy.  His mother had always stressed that he should  keep
his  home  tidy  and eat any strangers.  Now he  had  failed  her.  Years  of
frustration finally came to the surface.  It started to cry.  First it was  a
bit surprised by the water coming from its eyes,  but when he got the hang of
it, tears came by the gallons.
Cronos was a tough fighter. He had survived many battles on many planets and
still  managed to keep his no-claim on his life  insurance.  Somehow,  crying
always seemed to affect him.  No matter what cried,  gorgeous young female or
ugly  troll,  the  one  piece  of his mind  he  had  always  kept  suppressed
manifested  itself.  After a few moments his eyes started to fill with  water
and after a few more moments,  he was standing besides the troll, sobbing his
heart out.
Suddenly,  Cronos  got an idea.  He started to rummage through  his  pockets
frantically,  finally  to come up with a small coin he held in front  of  the
troll enthusiastically. It beheld it with large, ignorant and watery eyes.
"Even  Apeldoorn  bellen,"  Cronos  said  and  rushed  off  to  the  nearest
phone booth.

Written late 1989 or early 1990. Rehashed slightly, September 1994.


= A PREHISTORIC TALE ========================================================
by Richard Karsmakers


When he regained consciousness, the Timetraveller shook his head and moaned.
He immediately felt a mindsmashing headache, throbbing through his head as if
it wanted the very bones of his skull to burst at every single heart's  beat.
He once more swore never ever to do it again.
As his senses focused on the sights and sounds around him,  he noticed  that
he  was indeed teleported (and even warped) to the era he was supposed to  be
teleported (and indeed warped) to:  The Jurassic era,  a massive 150  million
years ago -  there were ferns as high as three-storey flats, and all kinds of
flowers  that  were to die out at the end of the  Cretaceous  era,  about  65
million years ago.
So   this   was  where  the   Interstellar   Palaeobiological   Regeneration
Associations wanted him to work for some time to come.
The Timetraveller shook his head again, and blinked his eyes.
There  was  also  a rather enormous specimen  of  extinct  reptile  standing
directly  in  front of him,  but this he did not notice until it  opened  its
fangs  and the sun reflected on some terrifying rows of flashy white teeth  -
with spots of bloody red on them as well,  so the Timetraveller was  somewhat
startled to notice.
A  large  piece of dripping wet meat - presumably its tongue -  was  licking
them in what could only be described as quite a menacing way.
The  Timetraveller was about to swear that he would never do it  again  when
the rather enormous specimen of extinct reptile (further to be referred to as
'Allosaurus') decided it had seen enough of this pathetic human and knew only
one way to rid itself of such a minor irritation: Eating it.
A  rather tasteless word that had something to do with used food passed  the
Timetraveller's  lips  as he noticed the obviously foul intent of  the  giant
reptile.
The  Timetraveller  immediately grasped that it was of no avail to  try  and
convince  Mr.  Hungry  Allosaurus of the disgusting taste of  his  flesh.  He
pushed a couple of buttons on his portable time machine.
"See  you  in ten minutes' time!" he said before pressing  a  purple  button
labelled 'red'.

Ten minutes later.

The  Timetraveller noticed that his headache had virtually vanished when  he
opened  his  eyes  again,  a mere second after  pressing  the  purple  button
labelled 'red'.
He saw the world what it looked like 150 million years minus 10 minutes ago,
and had to admit that it hadn't particularly improved much to his liking.
But,  just  like  he had hoped,  the enormous specimen  of  extinct  reptile
(sometimes  also referred to as 'Allosaurus') had decided not to  think  long
about the mysterious vanishing that had just taken place and had wandered off
again.
A  positively deafening sound of what could not be interpreted for  anything
else  rather  than  some mega-amplified and  giga-boosted  earthquake  sounds
roared  through the trees,  and Cronos' attention was instantly drawn  to  an
enormous  specimen  of  extinct  reptile  (sometimes  also  referred  to   as
'Allosaurus') that was experiencing some quite violent spasms behind a couple
of  ferns.  It  was  balancing at the edge of a gap in the  ground  that  had
definitely not been there a mere 10 minutes ago.
And it was getting bigger as mere more seconds passed.  He blinked his  eyes
in disbelief. Was his job that urgent?
The somewhat outdated specimen of extinct reptile (which is indeed sometimes
also  referred  to as 'Allosaurus') disappeared into  the  gap,  making  some
awesome sounds of terror.
The sound of the mega-amplified and giga-boosted earthquake all of a  sudden
ceased, and the Timetraveller was even more than a bit shocked to notice that
the Allosaurus had truly vanished (and indeed died).
Holy macaroni!
The  seismic activity in this region was surely not to be fooled with -  the
guys at the Interstellar Palaeobiological Regeneration Association were  just
in  the nick of time to send him over to teleport these dinosaurs to a  safer
place.  And if he didn't do something *really* soon,  the dinosaurs would all
die out...even before these giant animals would have had the decency to  take
care  of  some more or less intelligent mammalian offspring  from  which  men
would eventually evolve!
He felt his strength already growing slightly weaker...

Written December 1989.


= WADDAYA KNOW, JOE? ========================================================
by Mark Knapp


The  man  rolled  over with a grunt.  Clutching  at  her  pillow,  he  half-
consciously realized his wife had already left for work.
After  using the bathroom and opening the shades,  he headed  downstairs.  A
quick  breakfast of cinnamon toast and orange juice went down  without  being
noticed.
Remembering his schedule, he called a number from memory.
"Quentin and Associates," the receptionist said.
"Greg Quentin, please. Tell him this is Joe Brunswick."
"One moment, sir."
"Sir, Mr Quentin has no knowledge of a Mr Brunswick. You did say Brunswick?"
"Yes,  that's right," the man answered,  feeling perplexed and not a  little
bit  exasperated.  "Never  mind,  I'll call back when he's had  time  to  get
organized."
Joe hung up. Going out to get the paper to take his mind off this weirdness,
he  patted his Weimeraner,  Bully.  The news was made up of the usual  random
observations of untrained bystanders. Turning to the unpaid bills left on the
counter,  he briefly scanned the gas bill,  phone bill,  electric...all high,
but that wasn't unusual.
Wait a minute,  he thought.  The bills were addressed to Frank Salmson.  Did
the mailman get mixed up?  No,  it was the right address.  Very  strange.  Ah
well,  someone got the address wrong.  Climbing the back stairs to the second
floor,  he  tripped  over  his  daughter's  jacket;  then,  farther  up,  her
schoolbooks.  "Kiddo," he called,  "time to get up.  And could you pick  your
stuff up off the stairs?"
"OK,  Dad," came the muffled reply.  Of course,  knowing his  daughter,  Joe
thought,  she'll need to be woken up again in ten minutes.  He went into  the
master  bedroom,  laid a sportcoat,  tie,  pants,  and yesterday's shirt  (it
wasn't  all that dirty,  he told himself) on the bed,  and went next door  to
take a shower.
When he was done,  he dressed,  woke his daughter up again - making sure she
was actually out of the bed - and went downstairs.  Joe wrote a short note to
his  wife,  reminding  her  that he had a meeting  with  the  regional  Pepsi
representative and so might be a little late.  Bully wanted to play,  so  Joe
obliged him by throwing the tennis ball in the yard with him.  Then he rubbed
the big dog's belly, told him to be a good dog, and hopped in his car.
He almost took the wrong exit for his office,  but finally made it to Folsom
Street. Off the ramp to the right, into the little court, and into the lot of
his office.  It felt odd,  but he knew he was in the right place.  Gotta stop
staying up so late, he told himself. I'm not so young anymore; up til two and
I'm out of it all day.
"Hi Cindy," he said as he loped through the door and back to his office, not
noticing the receptionist's odd stare. She'd only been there three weeks, she
mused, but he'd never forgotten her name before.
Sitting  down  at  his desk,  he began to  feel  uneasy.  Someone  had  been
rummaging through his papers,  he could tell. And, oddly...wait a minute. All
the  correspondence was addressed to Frank Salmson.  What the hell was  going
on?
The  phone  rang,  startling  him.  "John Winters on  line  one,  sir,"  the
receptionist said.
He picked up the receiver. "Yeah?"
"Hey, Frankie, how's it going?"
"My name's Joe, not Frankie."
"Yeah,  right.  Listen,  I talked to Marilyn about that plastics option, but
the percentages were too high. Maybe we should shop it around a little."
"Ah...sure, sure. See what you can come up with."
"Right. See ya round, Frank."
This  was  very weird.  He rubbed his temples,  wondering if he'd  been  out
drinking last night.  Deciding he did feel a little out of it,  he called  to
the receptionist. "Hey, Cindy, could you come in here?"
"What can I get you," she said when she entered a moment later.
"Nothing,  thanks.  I  just think I need to get away from work for a  while.
It's been a long week.  Could you hold down the fort,  tell anyone  important
I'll  call them tomorrow?  And,  if you want,  go ahead and cut out a  little
early yourself. Say, around three."
"Sure,  Mr.  Salmson.  I didn't want to say anything,  but you do look a bit
piqued."
"Uh...yeah. Thanks; I'll see you tomorrow."
Hurrying to his car,  he wondered just what it was that he'd been  drinking.
Was  he hearing wrong when she called him Salmson?  Or was someone pulling  a
complicated practical joke?  He tried to think if he knew anyone who would do
something this bizarre, but couldn't come up with anyone. Oh, well, some good
food and an afternoon at the movies would take his mind off things.
He caught two matinees at the multiplex theater built where wheatfields  had
been  when he was a teenager.  By five thirty the day was all but  forgotten.
The  growling in his stomach urged him to head home.  When he got  there,  an
unfamiliar car was parked in the street outside.  Inside,  though,  he  found
only his wife,  his daughter,  and the massive dog.  The car must have been a
neighbour's new showpiece.
"Hi honey. Hungry?" his wife said.
"Boy, am I. And beat, too. Mind if I collapse on the couch?"
"No, go ahead. Dinner's almost ready."
He picked up the remote and flipped channels until he found the local  news.
Raising his voice over the TV and the noises from the kitchen,  he called out
"How was work?"
"Well,  the new wing is almost done,  so it looks like I'll be staying  late
the next few weeks moving the periodicals into it."
"Bummer. Say, hon, there's some mail on the bookshelf that got misdelivered.
Do you recognize it?"
His  wife  leaned around the corner and glanced at the  letters.  "It's  the
right address, hon."
"No, I mean the name." She walked out this time, and picked up the pile.
"Marion Salmson...Frank...Salmson family...hmm...no, it all looks right."
He sat stunned for a moment.  The doubts of the morning crept back into  his
mind.  "Uh...honey?  This is going to sound weird,  but...are you sure that's
right?"
His wife looked at him for a long moment. "Are you OK?"
"I  don't know,  I really don't know." His wife came over and began  rubbing
his shoulders.  "Something strange is happening.  I thought at first it might
be a gag, or maybe some stress-related hallucination, but... listen. All day,
everyone's  been calling me Frank Salmson.  But...it just isn't my  name.  Or
doesn't seem like, it anyway. My name's Joe Brunswick. Isn't it?"
She  looked at him again,  searchingly,  caringly.  "Honey,  you  are  Frank
Salmson. I swear it. No joking. You haven't been drinking, have you.?"
"No!  No,  dammit,  I'm completely sober. What the hell is going on here? Is
everyone going crazy? Or, am I? I just don't understand."
She came around the couch and sat in his lap. "It's OK, it's going to be OK.
Maybe  this is some kind of minor nervous breakdown,  but  that's  OK,  we'll
figure it out.  Don't worry,  I'll be here.  I love you,  you know that much,
don't you?"
"Yes...yes,  I know that.  And I love you. I'm just...not exactly sure who I
am." She kissed his forehead, and he pulled her close.
"The Channel 8 Six O'Clock News is brought to you by Kupp's Billiard Supply.
'We give you our best shot.'" "Good evening,  this is Tom Malone standing  in
for  Scott Stevens,  who's on vacation.  Our lead story tonight is a case  of
mistaken identity.  Or, make that cases. Jeannie?" "Thanks Tom. That's right.
Authorities in Lake County have received two hundred and eighteen reports  of
an unusual sort of amnesia.  The victims,  all male, appear to have forgotten
their names and those of their loved ones.  However,  the most unusual aspect
of this psychological syndrome is that they all believe they have new  names.
In fact,  they all believe they have the same name.  A cause has not yet been
determined,  however,  food, workplaces, and homes are all being examined for
possible  contaminants that might have affected the memories of the  victims.
The  phenomenon was discovered when a man,  after being refused cash  at  his
bank when he signed the wrong name to a check, began screaming at the tellers
that  he  was 'Joe Brunswick' and had to be restrained  by  security  guards.
Jamie Instrom is live at the bank right now. Jamie?" "Thanks, Jeannie. Second
Fourth bank is on a quiet corner of the Hillside district..."
The couple stared at each other with wide eyes.
                                                        Col's OH 3/16/93 MEK


= OH YEAH ===================================================================
by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers


Whistling some kind of tune between his teeth,  the man put the pedal to the
metal and had his car disappear from the fuel station in a cloud of dust  and
dead ants.
Would a camera have been aimed at this fuel station, it would have displayed
the slow appearance of the somewhat puzzled form of a man in his mid-forties,
straining to grasp something as the dust settled down around him.  He  wasn't
puzzled at the enormous amount of dead ants in the car's tracks,  nor was  he
wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with 9,000 Thanatopian credits.
He  *was* wondering,  however,  why that dude had just filled up his  Pontiac
Trans  Am with brown beer.  The thoughts of another person  exactly,  someone
dressed in white who disappeared moments later.

"Brown beer?!"
The shopkeeper had looked at Warchild with an incredulous look in his  eyes,
fingering  a  half-opened drawer for a weapon of some kind -  for  you  could
never know.
"But,  mister,"  the  incredulous-looking  man  had  continued,  "arms's  my
business,  ya know.  I wouldn't wanna go sellin' booze when people a' wantin'
arms, ya know. I'd be rippin' me own..."
Warchild had cut the man short with a pan-universal sign of a finger on  his
right hand.
"I WANT BROWN BEER."
Warchild  had repeated his demand with a kind of particular  'something'  in
his  voice;  a 'something' that would have neatly fitted on someone like  the
grim reaper.
"Mind ya,  mister,  I would be sellin' ya beer if I had any,  ya know. But I
haven't gottit. It's asimple as tha'".
He had tried to sound as if he still has confidence in himself,  but he  had
seemed to fail somewhere. He had almost started to believe that he was lying.
"I WANT BROWN BEER."
Though  it had sounded identical to Warchild's previous demand in  even  its
tiniest aspects, the shopkeeper hadn't quite thought so. And the poor man had
definitely believed he himself was lying now.
"Okay,  okay,  mister,"  the  man had said with trembling  voice  and  sweat
appearing on his forehead,  "I'll be bringin' ya a nice cool beer right away,
mister! Brown beer, yeah, in a neat li'l bo'l."
He had turned around and disappeared behind a door labeled "Private".
Cronos had scanned the shop. Quite some interesting gear had been stacked on
the shelves,  which would no doubt have enhanced his chances of surviving the
intricate enemy activities on the fourth tourist world.  Had he wanted to buy
any  of  them,  he  would have had to pay excessive  amounts  of  Thanatopian
credits.
Apart from him,  there had only been one other customer at the shop. Someone
dressed in white, carefully examining a display of hypodermic syringes.
After  about two minutes,  the shopkeeper had returned from behind the  door
labeled  "Private" with what had seemed to look like some kind of  tube  that
had  looked a bit like some kind of post-modern piece of space-age  weaponry,
unfortunately aimed at the mercenary annex hired gun.  Warchild had not  been
pleased. Not at all.
With  a  rather tricky move,  Warchild had made the shopkeeper sink  on  the
floor, suddenly weak at the knees and a whole lot of other parts of his body.
Still,  however,  Cronos hadn't got what he wanted.  Neither had he found it
when  he had headed back from the Fourth Tourist world to Earth.  So when  he
visited  the  gas station and found a fridge full of it,  he handed  the  guy
behind  the counter enough credits to buy the entire gas station -  providing
Thanatopian  had any more value than monopoly money on this planet.  He  also
found some gas.
Since Cronos Warchild was trained to fight, not to think, he absent-mindedly
put the beer in his car and drank the petrol, much to the amazement of an old
man who just happened to be sitting in a rocking-chair on the porch, watching
the  ants fullfilling their daily ritual of slaughtering enormous amounts  of
other  ants in the eternal Battle of the Scarce  Picnic  Leftovers.  Warchild
never noticed anything odd,  though he frowned at the unusual foam coming out
of the nuzzle of his car's gas tank. The beer seemed a bit off too.
So now he stood there. In the middle of nowhere.
Maybe,  'nowhere' was actually a bit of an exaggeration,  but it  definitely
doesn't  fall  into the confinements of this story's  boundaries  to  discuss
whether  a  thousand square miles of bare desert sand (with a dune  here  and
there) can be described as 'nowhere' or not.
The  car  had  seemed to run smoothly for just about as  much  time  as  was
necessary  to get him PRECISELY in the middle of this thing called  'nowhere'
and  then had quite spontaneously ceased to operate in an enormous  belch  of
fumes and a disgusting smell of rancid Brown Beer.
After he had let the synonym of an animal's solid excrements pass his lips a
great many times, he decided to get out of his burning excuse for a Pontiac.
Just  at about that moment,  a guy wearing a small,  dark,  flat hat with  a
ridiculous small erect thingy on top of it,  holding a bottle of red wine and
a lengthily shaped loaf of bread, barged onto the scene.
"Excusez moi?" the strange chap seemed to inquire.
"? Whatthe.... ?"
Completely  baffled to an extent Cronos had never before  imagined  possible
(well,  it  was  universally known that the mercenary annex hired gun  HAD  a
somewhat limited imagination - hence),  he looked around,  carefully scanning
the surroundings for someone that might be jamming his newly acquired hearing
aid.
He  failed to see anything but enormous loads of sand grains  spread  around
him on an area which he quickly estimated to be 986.54 square miles in  size.
That, and the somewhat strange chap, of course.
"Est'ce que je aider vous?" the strange chap inquired further.
Warchild was now sure that no one could possibly be jamming his hearing aid.
That  could  only mean one thing - he was being insulted in  the  rudest  way
someone from Sucatraps could possibly be. And, with a short shock that lasted
at  least  several scores of nanoseconds,  he saw that the  lengthily  shaped
thing the strange chap held under his arm looked pretty much like a tube that
had been shoved under his nose only recently.
So he did what he was trained for to do in dangerous situations such as this
one. Accompanied only by the sound of several millions of air molecules being
savagely torn from each other,  his fist rocketed through the air,  impacting
on  the  strange  chap with a rather unhealthy  speed  at  a  proportionately
unhealthy spot.
About  a quarter of an hour later,  a deafening 'boom' followed by a  softer
'thud'  was heard by the gas station owner,  who was now discussing  red  ant
picnic scavenging war strategics with the old man, after which they looked at
the  approximate centre of 986.54 square miles of sand grains  with  slightly
puzzled looks.

Note:  Please  excuse  the authors of this story for their blatant  lack  of
French  grammar.   Due  to  circumstances  that  fall  beyond  their  current
intention  to reveal,  they both flunked this subject at highschool  and  can
be safely said not to know any better.
Except  maybe  for "Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soire" - a  phrase  they
both use every time they see someone wearing a small,  dark,  flat hat with a
ridiculous small erect thingy on top of it,  holding a bottle of red wine and
a  lengthily  shaped  loaf of bread - their French  can  be  considered  non-
existent.

Cronos decided not to hang around the scene any longer.  The desert vultures
where  already  noticing a heavily mutilated body in the middle of  all  that
sand and were displaying a growing rate of interest for it.  Because he hated
all  birds of prey,  vultures particularly,  he started on a brisk  trot.  He
savagely  and  unwittingly  splattering some ants who  were  carrying  picnic
remnants  with triumphant looks on their little faces.  Instead of  to  their
nests they'd now have to take it to the Eternal Honeyjar.

Note:  Recent research by reknown biologists has revealed that ants  believe
the  world  evolves around them and that they spend their afterlives  in  the
holy and indeed incredibly sweet and plentiful Eternal Honeyjar which  floats
amidst  the remnants of the Great Picnic at the start of  their  World,  with
scores  of  decaying  animal  remains nearby to munch on  (or  to  go  to  on
posthumous honeymoons).
It  is quite a well-known fact that,  each year,  more people who happen  to
enjoy  a picnic get shocked by the ritual suicide of enormous hordes of  ants
who hurl themselves into a honeyjar carelessly left open.

Warchild  had  strolled briskly through the seemingly endless desert  for  a
whole  lot of hours when he felt a strangely nauseating feeling in his  neck.
At  about the same time,  from the shimmering air above the hot load of  sand
grains came a shape.
"Do you see those bilds, Sjau Long?" the shape said.
The  voice wasn't meant to be heard by Warchild.  Instead,  a reaction  came
from  a second shape that now appeared slowly above the  horizon,  shimmering
and uncertain.
"Yes,  honoled  mastel!  What ale they?  Alen't those vultules?" this  other
shape now replied.
Some  music  now also sounded across the many millions of billions  of  sand
grains.  It  sounded like some kind of Oriental folk music,  and  the  lyrics
seemed to go like this:

"Blackened is the nonwolthy end
 Wintel it will send
 Thlowing each nonwolthy thing we see
 Into unhonolable obsculity"

Then,  it  seemed to be cut off abruptly - as if the tape had been  damaged,
savaged by an event somewhele...eh...somewhere in its owner's past.
"See what I will do with those vultules,  noble applentice!" the first shape
now said.  It started to make strange movements, not wholly unlike those made
by someone dangling at the end of a ten foot rope without any ground support.
A  shining  piece of metal could be seen,  thrown in the air by  the  shape,
slicing  the genitals off one of the more eager vultures circling in the  air
above it.
The second shape waited several seconds, and then exclaimed:
"All nice and well,  noble mastel,  I tlust that vultule will nevel have sex
again, but I guess we will not be having soft vultule feathel filled cushions
to sleep on tonight either, will we?"
"I guess we won't," the first shape said.
Cronos  looked at the shapes in bewildered puzzlement,  and after  loads  of
long thinking (I suppose you know now how hard this is for him,  since he was
trained to...well,  you know it by now) a reluctant remembrance shuddered his
consciousness:  It was Ninja Master Hang Foy Soozooki, the guy who had taught
him  the  move  that was purely designed to completely  obliterate  any  bone
structure present in any living creature!
Staggering,  licking his dried out, crusted lips, he stumbled slowly towards
Hang Foy Soozooki and his servant annex apprentice, Sjau Long. These were now
engaged  in a tea ceremony of enormous complexity,  involving the burning  of
sand grains,  the inserting of precise quantities of honey in tea  mugs,  the
purging of some dried out leaves in water, and the fencing off of a couple of
hundred  frantically fanatic ants that seemed to have millions  of  perfectly
valid reasons to hurl themselves into the Ninja Master's honey jar.
Needless to say, each and every ant trying to do so was sent back home after
having been rendered memberless.
"Moo  Moo Moomoomooo..." Warchild tried to cry in some kind of happy  voice.
Whilst  trying to cry out the Master's name,  the mercenary annex  hired  gun
dashed (or, rather, clumsily crawled) forward.
Neither  Hang  Foy nor Sjau actually seemed to find it necessary  to  notice
him,  and quietly proceeded burning grains,  inserting honey,  purging leaves
and performing mass micro-surgery.
"Water. Please." Cronos said weakly.
Sjau Long now seemed to notice him.
"Water?" he looked at Warchild with the same kind of look that had  occupied
the  face  of  the  mercenary  annex  hired  gun  before  -  one  of  puzzled
bewilderment, that is.
"Water. Please." Cronos repeated, even more weakly.
"Oh! Watel!?", Sjau Long now enthused.
"Water."
There was now nothing left in Cronos' voice besides weakness.
"Watel!"
The  servant annex apprentice took an enormous jug in which there must  have
been gallons and gallons of crisp,  clear and cool water. He poured it gently
over Warchild's dried out-head and crust-covered lips.
The  fata  morgana disappeared,  and Cronos only felt the harsh  and  bitter
taste  of a relatively minor quantity of sand grains in his mouth as he  fell
into the desert, face down.
It  felt  to him as if someone was pouring down his aching throat  each  and
every bit of sand to be found in the desert.
It might be a wise idea, he thought to himself, to faint. So he did.

The spiralling feeling of plunging into endless voids ceased only then  when
he  impacted  on something that was quite awkward to impact  on.  Instead  of
being nastily solid and quite splattering (like,  say,  a circus tent floor),
it was very soft, and liquidish.
Cronos  opened his mouth to scream in agony,  only to have it filled with  a
large amount of the liquid.  It tasted very sweet,  and indeed very familiar,
but he couldn't quite place it yet.
Nor could he even pretend to like the fact that this liquid,  no matter  how
good it tasted,  obstructed his breathing in a rather efficient way.  He also
didn't like the slow sinking feeling he was experiencing.  He liked to be  in
control of things, which he now most certainly wasn't.
Taking  each  and  every  muscle  in his body to  the  very  limits  of  its
capabilities,  he struggled to stay alive. When he opened his eyes and looked
through  the thin layer of the thickish fluid on them,  he was  disgusted  to
notice that a couple of rather large ants were at the verge up jumping in the
fluid, too.
Were they really wearing little sandals?
They  made  a  sound that could not be mistaken  for  anything  else  rather
than...chanting, really.
One after the other, the ants started plummeting themselves into the mass of
soft, sweet, thick fluid; a vortex of many times six huge insect paws.
There were hundreds of 'em now.  Cronos tried to scream once more. His mouth
got  filled  with the soft,  sweet fluid as well as several  dozen  ants.  He
decided against screaming some more and instead just tried to  breathe.  This
on its own was already hard enough, as his nasal openings were cluttered with
ants, too.
"Cronos!  Cronos"  he seemed to hear.  The voice floated like a  mist  would
float over the endless marshes of Spargoflactic Yllozud.

Note:  Many  light  years from Earth (or even from Sucatraps),  there  is  a
planet  called  Spargoflactic  Yllozud.  It is by all  means  quite  a  small
planetoid,  but  its  marshes  are  of  quite  gigantic  proportions  -  many
scientists  believe that a freakout in the space/time continuum has  actually
resulted in them being ENDLESS.
Not the kind of marsh you would be happily flollopping around in if you were
called Zem.
Also not the kind of marsh where you would like to be part of the expedition
that,  for 37 generations, has been travelling to that 'nice looking patch of
hill on yonder horizon'.

As  the  ants absorbed him,  Warchild made some rather  spastic  moves.  And
suddenly he was floating through a kind of rotating warp tunnel that provided
his retina with more different colours to absorb and interpret than the black
eye  of  a  stained Frenchman lying despirited somewhere  in  the  centre  of
hundreds  of square miles of desert sand.  He felt giddy  with  vertigo,  and
tried  to grab hold of something.  Unfortunately,  there was nothing to  grab
hold of.  With what seemed to Warchild like a deafening 'thud',  he landed on
the floor of what,  after a couple of seconds' examination,  turned out to be
some kind of bar.
Lefty  was  behind the bar serving a drink.  The girl sitting  next  to  him
wasn't extremely pretty,  but she sure had some legs down there. Cronos was a
bit  surprised  by  all  this,  since nobody  seemed  to  notice  his  sudden
appearance.  After  a few moments,  a man in some ridiculous white  polyester
clothes came out of the toilet,  carrying a remote control and a red rose. He
walked towards the bar and ordered a drink.
"Hiya," the man said to Cronos.
"Larry Laffer is the name, you look kinda strange," he said.
Cronos considered his next move.  The man didn't seem a threat in any way so
he  quickly discarded the thought of smacking the pathetic  jerk's  face.  He
*did* notice a foul odour arising from the smooth jerk's mouth.
"Hey.  Your  mouth  smells like the inside of a motorman's glove,"  a  voice
said.
Cronos looked around him in...well...puzzled bewilderment.  Or shall we  say
'bewildered puzzlement'? Yes. Good idea. Anyway.
"WHAT WAS THAT?" the mercenary annex hired gun inquired.
"Oh,  really, that's nothing out of the ordinary," the slick jerk explained,
"It's  just good ol' Al giving me some advise.  He tends to do that  now  and
again."  With a slightly embarrassed look,  he produced a small spray  bottle
from  the  inside  pocket  of his incredibly ill-fitted  suit  and  used  the
contents on his oral opening.
"It sure was about time, Larry," the omnipresent voice concluded.
Warchild looked around him again, instantly reaching for one of his recently
acquired  killer gadgets.  When he found it,  it turned out to be all  sticky
with honey or something like that.
Useless.
"Cronos! Cronos!" another voice yelled.
The jerk now also looked around him. That surely wasn't good ol' Al's voice;
it  was  a voice that would have made the sound of Jessica Rabbit  seem  like
that of an eighty-year-old-Napalm-Death-crying-grandmother in comparison. Not
heeding it,  the smooth jerk went off to the toilet,  where Warchild's  super
hearing  (aid)  noticed him talking to a bozo  about  roses,  and  afterwards
drowning himself.
There  was  one  other rather interesting door on the ground  floor  of  the
establishment.  It looked quite sturdy and there was a small peephole in  it.
After  walking  towards it,  the mercenary annex hired gun knocked  on  it  -
accidentally knocking the door completely off its hinges.
Behind  it,  a  rather fat pimp was watching a sleazy adult movie  ("John  &
Marsha take a Bath"), who suddenly wore a somewhat frightened expression upon
beholding the rather square silhouette in the door opening.
"Er...shouldn't  you  just  say 'Ken sent me' or  something?"  the  fat  man
ventured in a quite unusually subtle way.
Warchild  was planning extensive apologies,  but "GRMPF," was all  he  found
necessary to pronounce.
"Er...yeah.  Er....if you wanna,  you can go upstairs and...er...  have your
pipes cleaned...er....if you get my drift..." the pimp continued.
Cronos'  facial  expression told quite clearly that he didn't  know  nothin'
about  no  driftin'  - nor did he know anything about  cleanin'  (unless  one
was talking about toilets in an Ambulor Eight Thai Boxing School).  He walked
passed the abashed man who was very wise and decided to continue watching the
sleazy movie.
"Have a nice lay," the pimp muttered habitually.
Upon arriving upstairs, Cronos saw a rather tarty girl lying on a small bed.
She was reading the printout of some kind of on-line fiction magazine and was
apparently enthralled by the adventures of one of the characters occurring in
the introductory novella.
"He  walked towards the bed,  wondering what the rather tarty girl might  be
reading in such an unusually enthralled way," the girl read aloud to herself,
"and  he  wandered why she read aloud.  Then the girl looked up and  saw  him
standing - her squarely built Adonis, her hero of all quests..."
The girl looked up from her reading to see Cronos standing.  Her eyes opened
wildly, not entirely grasping the meaning of all that was happening. She read
the next line of the printout aloud.
"She  arose  from the bed,  screaming widly  about  male  potency,  enormous
muscles,  square  build and a desire of fourteen hours of  passionate  sexual
intercourse."
Instinctively, the mercenary annex hired gun quickly looked around him. What
to do now?
As the girl was getting up from the bed, licking her lips and taking off her
clothes,  he spotted some pills in the window frame.  He mistook them for the
explosive  eggs of the Taroglyphoxian killer wale.  He decided to  lurch  for
them. He made a run for what he considered to be his only means of saving his
life  without getting dirty hands (and without getting some kind of  somewhat
transferable  disease).  The momentum of his fear combined with her  passion,
however, caused him to actually jump clean *through* the window.
A  rather unattractive garbage container with a rather callous hammer in  it
was  coming closer to him in a fashion described centuries earlier by  a  guy
called Isaac.
He turned around many times,  and suddenly there were colours. Many colours,
indeed.  Even more colours than those present on the black eyes of a thousand
million billion Frenchmen lying spread all over many 54 square miles of  sand
grains.
He felt giddy with vertigo (as usual), and turned and turned and turned...

Independence Limited
Freedom of choice
Choice is made for you my friend
Freedom of speech
Speech is words that they will bend
Freedom no longer frees you!

The  song  was sung by a blue-haired creature with a tail and  yellow  eyes,
circling  along with Warchild in the vortex of vertiguous vehemence.  It  was
followed by about a dozen religious nuts, complexily floating within the same
vortex  and yelling sentences which mainly existed of the word  "Blasphemy!".
These,  in turn,  seemed to be followed by about two dozen large sandals that
seemed to have been lost in all the nuts' enthusiasm.
Two  seconds  later (well...give or take a couple  of  nanoseconds),  Cronos
found  himself back in the enormous honeyjar,  every (EVERY) opening  in  his
body  filled  with crawling and throbbing ants.  It seemed as  if  they  were
actually building little ant homes in his organs, and were preparing for many
posthumous honeymoons.
"Cronos! Cronos!"
A voice echoed through his subconscious consciousness as it were. He thought
he must be dreaming,  for now he even felt clear and cool water being used to
moisten his cracked lips.
Dizzy,  he tried to open his eyes. He managed to do this quite well - though
there was still a thin layer of honey obstructing his sight, at least much of
it.  There seemed to be someone sitting on top of him,  sweeping ants off his
face.  Normally,  this  would have resulted in immediate termination  of  the
creature in question, but this one was different...
His eyes had trouble in convincing his brains what they beheld.
A  woman,  wearing a white robe (on the back of which was written in  large,
red  letters  in  a font normally used  in  cheap  B-movies,  "Ambulor  Eight
Hospital for the Very,  Very Splattered") was a few inches above him.  As  he
looked  up,  he could see the loose buttons on her shirt and the  black  lace
revealing itself teasingly. Her soft roundings were pressed against his chest
and he could feel her breathing in a very special way.
She  had  a  very worried expression on her face.  The face  itself  was  so
perfectly  shaped  that Cronos almost had to avert his eyes to  prevent  them
from  being  blinded forever.  Her eyes were faintly moist  which  made  them
glitter as if they were prizeless diamonds catching the rays of the sun above
which suddenly didn't seem to burn viciously anymore,  but merely  functioned
as  a device to envelop her in an almost divine light.  When her long  fawnen
hair  fell  forwards on his face,  he was overcome by a smell  of  blossoming
roses on a warm summer afternoon in some distant and heavenly  country.  With
one sweep of her arm,  she brushed aside her hair and continued feeding small
amounts of water to him.
"Cronos",  she  whispered  in a voice so clear and so full of  emotion  that
tears welled up in his eyes, "are you all right?"
Cronos  swallowed some of the water and decided to stay still for some  more
time so he could enjoy this with every fibre of his body.
When she moved to take something from the little bag she was  carrying,  one
of  the lower buttons on her shirt gave up and the sight revealed  to  Cronos
was  enough to almost render him senseless again.  Never before had  he  seen
such finesse,  or such perfect shapes. He decided to get up now before things
really got out of hand. He didn't have any tissues handy.
When  he stood up next to her,  swallowing heavily,  he saw that it was  the
same nurse that had saved his life already once more.  And, so he was pleased
to note, she still looked like an identical twin of Gloria Estefan.
"Wooo  wooo," Warchild said,  his voice shaking,  trembling and  flollopping
with emotions of extensive gratitude.
"Hush,  hush,"  the  nurse whispered whilst holding one  of  her  delicately
shaped fingers to his lips,  "don't talk,  beloved.  It brings you naught but
pain."
He  felt  kinda insulted by the sheer mentioning of the possibility  of  him
being able to sense pain, but decided not to act and feign that he was indeed
in severe pains.  Instinctively, he seemed to know that this was not going to
be bad for him at all.
He drew her slowly towards him, repeating his exclamation of gratitude.
"Wooo wooo."
"Don't, beloved," the nurse whispered.
She  thrust her lips towards his,  unable to restrain her passion  and  love
much longer. She ripped open his black leather jacket and closed her eyes.
"Oh, Cronos!" she sighed passionately.

BEEP. BEEP.

Her lips froze in mid-thrust,  and her hands did likewise as they were about
to let the heavy leather jacket drop on the desert sand.

BEEP. BEEP.

"Damn. Dr. Hamilton wants me at the Hospital," she concluded.
"? Whatthe...?" Cronos uttered unbelievably.
Completely  baffled to an extend Cronos had never before  imagined  possible
(not  even  earlier  that day),  he looked  around,  carefully  scanning  the
surroundings  for  someone that might be jamming his newly  acquired  hearing
aid.
 Had  some honey come into this device?  Or were a couple of ants  having  a
honeymoon gang-bang orgy in there?  Unfortunately for Cronos, nothing had and
none were.
"Got to go," the nurse said, adjusting her shirt.
She  sensually  disappeared  in what seemed like a puff  of  pink  smoke.  A
commonly  used  synonym for an animal's solid  excrements  passed  Warchild's
lips.
At  that precise moment,  an alien landed RIGHT before  him.   Warchild  was
still busy being baffled with what had happened just now, so he really didn't
know what to do with this new thing happening to him.
It alighted gently on the ground,  and what little hum it had generated died
away,  as  if  lulled by the afternoon calm of many,  many  square  miles  of
desert.
A ramp extended itself.
Light streamed out.
A tall figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway.  It walked down the ramp
and stood in front of Cronos.
"You're a jerk, Warchild," it said simply.
It was alien, very alien. It had a peculiar alien tallness, a peculiar alien
flattened  head,  peculiar  slitty little alien  eyes,  extravagantly  draped
golden robes with a peculiarly alien collar design, and pale grey-green alien
skin  which had about it that lustrous sheen which most grey-green faces  can
only acquire with plenty of exercise and plenty of very expensive soap.
Cronos boggled at it.
It gazed levelly at him.
Cronos'  first  sensation  of  hope  and  trepidation  had  instantly   been
overwhelmed by astonishment,  and all sorts of thoughts were battling for the
use of his vocal chords at the moment.
"Whh...?" he said.
"Bu...hu...uh..." he added.
"Ru...ra..wah...who?"  he finally managed to say and lapsed into  a  frantic
state  of silence.  He was feeling the effect of having not said anything  to
anybody for as long as he could remember.
The  alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to  be  some
species of clipboard which he was holding in his thin and spindly alien hand.
"Cronos Warchild?" it said.
Cronos nodded helplessly.
"Cronos *Jehannum* Warchild?" pursued the alien in a kind of efficient yap.
"Er...er...yes...er...er," confirmed Cronos.
"You're a jerk," repeated the alien, "a complete asshole."
"Er..."
The creature nodded to itself,  made a peculiar alien tick on its  clipboard
and turned briskly back towards its ship.
"Er..." said Cronos desperately, "er..."
"Don't give me that," snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through the
hatchway and disappeared into its ship. The ship sealed itself. It started to
make a low throbbing hum.
"Er...er..." Cronos tried to shout, and tried to run helplessly towards it.
The  ship  made  somewhat more sound,  heaved itself  up  in  the  air,  and
disappeared in what seemed like a fata-morgasmic blur.
Totally abashed,  shaken, lovesick and (let's not forget) insulted, Warchild
stumbled  further.  The  sun  was sinking slowly behind a  couple  of  highly
unromantic  sand dunes.  If Warchild would have been in  better  spirits,  he
would have chanted something like,  "I am a poor lonesome mercenary,  and far
away from home....."
But he wasn't,  so he couldn't and therefore didn't.  In fact, he decided to
pass  out  once more,  falling down quite dramatically.  In  the  process  he
ruined the first date of two teenage scorpions that were brutally obliterated
by Cronos' bulk.
When he regained consciousness,  he found himself in a clean, cool bed. When
he looked up, he saw a very familiar face.
"Korik!!" he exclaimed full of joy.  Finally,  a trustworthy face. Would the
madness finally be over?
"Hi Cronos!" Korik said,  a load of sorros falling off his  shoulders,  "you
sure are lucky I got tired chasing all those celebrities and deciced to  take
a nice,  long walk through the desert. You were pretty much dead when I found
you."
Things  could  have  been worse,  but could have  been  better  too.  Cronos
Warchild rescued from pending death by Korik Starchaser, probably the biggest
git this side of Klaxos Nine.
Korik  had  recently  got the headlines when he finally  got  hold  of  Miss
Fragilia Franatica,  the second Princess of the Zantogian Empire. This Empire
spans  the  larger parts of the eastern spiral arm of the Galaxy  and  is  so
ginormously wealthy that their Royal Vault covers the outer three planets  of
the Zantogian system.  Since she is still single,  she is the most wanted and
also the most famous female in the Universe (even the unknown bits).  Anyway,
he  got  hold  of her in a very literal way and  her  bodyguard  had  bluntly
removed  him from her in front of approximately 600 billion viewers  watching
the  Annual Washing of her Armpits.  The humiliation was  complete  when,  in
front of those same 600 billion viewers, the princess knocked him out.
"So  I found you lying there," Korik continued,  "babbling about nurses  and
insults and ants and honey."
 "Where am I?" Cronos inquired,  glad to have regained the ability to  utter
anything other than "moo's" of various length and intonation.
"You're in the Second Desert Hospital For The Very,  Very Dried Out,"  Korik
replied.
"Oh..."

"Hungry", growled a shape in the bed next to Warchild.

After  a  lot of rummaging in the dusty parts of his  brain,  the  mercenary
annex  hired  gun recognized the phrase and remembered  vividly  wrestling  a
ghastly  creature  in a dark tunnel.  It was the sort of  creature  that  ate
innocent Hobbits and turned to stone when the sun had its rays fall upon it.
Immediately,  his reflexes took over and in a frenzy of hard-core action and
deadly  gadgets he savagely ripped the sheets from the bed where  the  sounds
originated,  ready  to  turn  the shape into something round  and  flat  that
Italians like to eat. It was quite a surprise to see him moving this fast and
agilely considering his state.
Only  barely in time did he recognize the fragile human that turned  out  to
have uttered the aforementioned phrase.  Warchild's monomolecular - and  thus
infinitely  sharp - dagger was hovering mere millimetres above the throat  of
one of the authors of this piece.
"STEFAN!!" he yelled.
"Cronos!!" Stefan muttered, his voice still uncertain if it would be wise to
mutter anything at all.
There  was a sudden movement in the bed on the other side.  Warchild  turned
sharply, observing the emerging human.
"RICHARD!!" he bellowed.
"Cronos!!" Richard exclaimed, not bothering to mutter since he didn't have a
frighteningly sharp dagger hovering above his throat.
"Uuuhhh...Cronos...could you please remove that knife?", Stefan probed.
"What??  Oh  yeah...sure." The absurdly dangerous weapon  disappeared  wityh
insane speed somewhere within Warchild's hospital outfit.  He  flinched,  his
eyes  crossed.  The  two authors looked at a stain of red that  appeared  and
increased on the meticulous white of the pyjamas.
"I told you," Stefan said, "it's no use ending a story like this."
"Maybe," Richard replied, "introducing ourselves broke a few unwritten story
conventions too many."
"And let's not forget Cronos' skin," Stefan remarked.
"And that," Richard said, in thought.
Someone  was  thinking  of inhuming the nasty person who  had  designed  the
dagger's sheath.
At that moment the door opened. Gloria Estefan walked in and started to sing
"1...2...3".  And that rhymes with "happy" so that's how the story eventually
ended.

Original  written  spring 1990,  rehashed September 1994.  Lyric  bits  used
without permission.


= WIRED =====================================================================
by Niklas Pivic


There  was  once a person called Wilma Thearson.  Wilma had worked  for  the
"National  Publicist"  for twenty years,  and was now in her  early  forties.
Wilma was the sort of person who didn't have many friends, mainly because she
wouldn't change her principles - or anything other - for anyone.  Some called
her obnoxious.  Nevertheless,  Wilma was a widow, and her husband had died an
early death, which was someone she rarely talked about. Her friends sometimes
caught her talking about him in a spiritual sense, but never dared to ask her
about him, not for any reason.
Now,  Wilma didn't have a lot of life.  But at this time everything  changed
for  her.  One  of her friends asked her if she wanted to  join  her  working
nights at the municipal greenhouse (!) with small things like mending  broken
pots,  planting flowers,  etc. Anything a greenhouse had to offer, for short,
come  good and bad.  She accepted it,  hoping it would decrease her  sadness,
which she almost always feltinside.  One night, she met Arthur. Arthur showed
to  be what Wilma called "a perfect gentleman",  who was in his late  fifties
and  made  her  feel  young again.  And happy.  They  started  going  out  to
restaurants, and suddenly Wilma smiled when she was with her friends, telling
them  of what had happened on her latest meeting with Arthur.  Her  pessimism
almost  vanished.  It almost was as if she were brought back to  her  youth's
days,  when there were no troubles at all. Then Arthur made her the proposal.
They were getting "hitched properly", as she told her friends.
There was a big ceremony,  almost all of their friends attending,  but  only
Arthur's  father - their other parents were dead - came,  leading him to  the
podium and Wilma walking by herself. They were happy, very happy.

At  the wedding night,  after a lot of  drinking,  singing,  dancing,  etc.,
Arthur  carried  Wilma over the threshold and they made  love.  Some  minutes
after,  Arthur was excited.  He was very keen on showing some kind of machine
to Wilma,  which was supposed to be "a blast".  She waited for him to  unpack
some  kind  of strange-looking case he had under the bed,  and in  some  way,
connect it *between* the phone cable which went to the phone, standing on the
bedside-table.  The machine which seemed to split the cable,  consisted of  a
box with a tube in the middle, sticking out at the edges (up and down).
"Wilma,  you know I wouldn't do anything in the world to hurt you, now would
I babe?" Arthur asked Wilma, looking at her excitedly.
"I do know that,  Arthur, but what's that machine for?" Wilma asked, looking
awkwardly at the machine which AT&T didn't put there.
"Darling,  you  know that I've been busy these few days before the  wedding,
right? I mean, except for the *normal* absence?"
"Yes?"
"Well,  I've  been  putting the finishing touches to this  little  machine,"
Arthur  said,  pointing  to the machine.  "It's going to be  our  own  little
pleasure-dome!"
"Oh yeah, how?" Wilma asked, raising a brow and a corner of her mouth.
"Well,  I'll show you," he said, putting the machine on his side of the bed,
now  sitting on the floor with the machine between him and her.  He  suddenly
inserted  his right index-finger into the tube and said "Now all you have  to
do  is to press the number I'll be telling you," at the same time as he  gave
her a machine, oblong, with a lot of digits and a button with an arrow on it.
"But what's going to happen?" Wilma asked.
"Oh, just complete pleasure," he answered, smiling wide.
He did what he instructed her to do, pressing the right buttons.
"Now,  point  the controller towards the machine," he instructed  her.  "And
press the button with the arrow on it." Wilma did so.
"All we now have to do is wait." he said,  smiling and sitting with his legs
crossed.

A minute passed. "Here it comes," he said, watching Wilma as she pulled back
a little to her side of the bed.  "No,  nothing bad is going to happen to me,
even  if it looks that way--" He was interrupted by strong  convulsions,  his
body turning straight on the spot,  having spasms like an epileptic during an
attack.  "Arthur!" was all Wilma could say.  Suddenly Arthur came to.  He sat
straight  up,  looking at Wilma as though he had slept for ten hours and  not
had seen her since. "It was terrific," he said, looking at her terrified eyes
through his calm ones.  "Nothing to be afraid of.  Mixing electrical currents
by adding my own machine to it,  suddenly changes a person's vibration level.
You  feel  like you could take over the universe or something!  Gives  you  a
*great* self-confidence, anyway. I thought you'd like to try it," he said, as
he climbed onto the bed, finally kissing Wilma on her mouth.

"I...I..."  was all Wilma could say,  as she pressed her right hand  to  her
chest, looking into Arthur's eyes with her very opened ones.
"Trust me. It will take you to other worlds." he said, kissing her again.

Wilma lay down, the bed and other things around her carefully put away, with
her left-hand index-finger in the tube.
"Don't worry," Arthur said, pressing a lot of numbers on the controller, and
then, pointing it towards the machine, pressed the arrow.
"That  should  do  it,  my dear!  You'll feel like a queen in  a  matter  of
seconds!  Nothing's too good for my lovely!" he said,  smiling and  caressing
her  face.  Suddenly he looks into her eyes,  and doesn't look as nice as  he
previously  looked.  His shape changes,  turning into a whirl-pool of  images
from their wedding, the day they met, etc. Suddenly the pictures aren't post-
Arthur anymore.  They reach back.  Long time back.  Limitlessly.  Colours and
shades are not of any importance anymore. She knows how the Universe is built
up, and she has reached her apotheosis.

Arthur  is  no  longer of any importance.  The world is hers  any  shred  of
humanity  flows  within  her  blood.  Anything else  stands  as  a  speck  of
intelligence  within her,  the Earth itself is no longer any intelligence  to
speak of,  Time isn't any problem,  there are NO LAWS for her anymore. She is
no longer one with the universe. She Eats the Universe-.

"Hey kitten! Wake up! You've been in there for a full minute! That's enough!
Anyone can't stand that much power at first! Up!" Arthur's voice came ringing
out to her.
Wilma suddenly felt like someone had given her a  thousand-dollar-note,  and
then ripped it to pieces. She slapped Arthur.
"You idiot!  How dare you!" she howled at him,  discovering nothing but  the
way her finger still was stuck to the machine.
"Hold on! Hold on!" Arthur said, as he tried to grab her hands.
"What's this? First you show me something... Something...-"
"Yes..."  he  grabbed her hands.  "You've entered a world only we  two  know
about.  I've  been developing this for the last five- "But...  But..."  Wilma
started shaking the machine like nuts, when phone started ringing.

                                   *****

When Wilma woke,  she saw Arthur lying in a pool of blood across the  floor.
She looked at her hand and couldn't see her fingers. Or the rest of her hand.
Her ex.  hand was covered by the tube, which had increased, becoming one with
it.
What  we (the Netrunners) see at the screens everyday had become one of  her
everyday impulses.  She was connected. The net had absorbed her totally. What
she knew was the everyday fantasies coming directly from us,  The Netrunners.
Everything she had ever known became none, and her psyche became the net. She
controls us everytime we think of her and vice versa.  Her brain is no longer
one with "the universe".  It doesn't have to be "fantastic".  Look at what we
have and try to improve this instead of dreaming.  Or shall we skip the whole
idea for something new?


= HOWARD'S END, OR, THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR =================================
by Richard Karsmakers


I will not have it said that I am some kind of deranged person,  not by  the
mere  fact that I have borne witness to the events I shall relay  henceforth,
extraordinary as they are.  Even though people have been avoiding me of late,
pulling up collars and urging their offspring inside with hushed whispers and
agitated motions, I am still quite certain of my sanity. Yet I shall no doubt
acquire repeated frowns of your brow once I have disclosed to you in full the
extent of the horrors I have experienced ever since I moved into that old and
rather dilapidated house in Providence, Rhode Island.
Having  graduated  from University last summer,  I had  spent  some  initial
months hitchhiking,  breathing in the air of my first true freedom and seeing
many  quaint and sometimes truly beautiful sights.  From car to  truck,  from
truck to van I went,  stepping into worlds I had never seen, and leaving them
when the experience became either uncomfortable or somehow claustrophobic.  I
made casual acquaintance of many people, until in the end my wandering spirit
died, or at least fell asleep beyond rekindling, and I became gradually aware
of an ever keening desire in myself to settle and join the life I intended to
lead until the day of my retirement or my getting tired of it,  whichever was
likely to happen first.
Having  had  writing ambitions for as long as I remember,  I  longed  for  a
somewhat  secluded residence,  having always cherished the inspiration  often
brought  upon  me by the silence of loneliness,  the gothic quality  of  dusk
outside town,  the rustle of the wind through the woods and the eerie  sounds
of nature at night.  I sometimes think my writings saved me from a total loss
of reason, even after that one terrible night that...
But no,  allow me to relate to you the story from its very  beginning,  from
the  moment I first caught sight of my new domicile to the moment that  these
people  came to fetch me and locked me in the dreadful,  half-dark room  with
its by now familiarly damp, fungi-bespecked stone walls, leaving me only with
the few writing utensils I employ to trust to paper my story now.  There  are
still a few hours left before the lights are put out,  which will bring to me
yet  another gloomy and sleepless night pregnant with the hauntings  of  dark
memories  -  memories so penumbral I would myself not  have  considered  them
possible if it hadn't been me they were haunting.
It had been one of those almost proverbially sunny days,  one of those  days
one  which fate smiles benignly and everything happens the way it  should.  I
went to a Providence real estate agent's to enquire if perhaps there would be
any  vacant properties to let.  I had thought of purchasing,  but  decided  I
would need my scant savings for other things first.  Once writer's wealth had
found  me - if ever it would - I could always look out for something  to  one
day call my own.
As it was,  however,  there was little choice for me. There were only two or
three places to let,  of which all but one were too small and located  rather
in  the centre of town,  far away from the silence I would need to strike  my
inspiration's  light  and at too large a distance from  a  healthy  morning's
stroll  through  the forest I longed for.  The one left was  a  rather  large
house,  built  of  wood and looking all but dilapidated.  Upon  studying  the
picture in more detail a clerk came up to me - in retrospect he seemed  quite
eager  for something - to tell me that in fact the house was in  pretty  mint
condition  despite  its outer looks,  and that the last  previous  owner,  an
elderly lady,  had passed away fairly recently.  The clerk himself could have
passed for the very old woman's husband,  for he appeared haggard and ageing,
dressed stiffly,  balding,  with two patches of grey hair hiding part of  his
ears and the arms of his glasses. Something about his disposition also seemed
to imply a personal involvement, perhaps a more than casual acquaintance with
the deceased.
I imagined the place being quite deserted save six or seven cats that  would
all purr and rub my legs as I walked in, a new owner of the place. I imagined
its dank smell, the hairs on the couch, a layer of gathered dust on a dresser
the  next  of kin had forgotten to cover with linen.  I imagined  the  stairs
making  woody noises under my feet as I ascended to the top floor landing  on
my way to pick out a room where I would henceforth put myself to  sleep,  and
decide  upon  another  room  where I could  put  my  typewriter.  This  would
preferably have to be one with a hearth.
Despite the fact that the house,  perched on a small hill with a bare valley
below and dark green forests behind,  appeared much like one of those  places
where women were bloodily knifed to death in showers,  I decided to take  it.
The rent was affordable,  and as it was the horror genre I wished to  explore
and  possibly  redefine with my future writings I estimated  this  particular
house  would  be all the more inspiring for my work.  I decided to  keep  the
cats, should there be any.
When  I  nodded and asked more as to the conditions of rent  and  where  the
document  was  that I had to sign,  I could have sworn I heard the  man  sigh
profoundly.  At the time I didn't make much of it, but now I know why the man
let out that obvious sign of relief.  I wonder if he knew anything about  the
*real* horror,  anything other than the superstitions that might have  roamed
the  little  village,  preventing  any of the locals  from  wanting  to  have
anything to do with the house or its inhabitants.
That might also have explained the fact that none of the agency's  employees
seemed at all willing to show me the way to the estate and there give me  the
guided  tour I had expected came with any such agreement.  The same man  that
had  uttered  the  deep sigh handed me the key,  and I  distinctly  recall  a
lingering sense of guilt in the way he looked at me - and kept looking at  me
until I left the office and had disappeared out of sight.

If anything, the house looked even more desolate in reality than it had done
on  the picture.  It still appeared as if it was falling apart at the  seams,
though,  and  I can tell you that I was not particularly looking  forward  to
autumn,  when nocturnal darkness would fall early and hide from view the bits
that  would  be torn off if any storm dared tug at the  ancient  woodwork.  I
looked  around me.  Something was distinctly discomforting,  but  I  couldn't
quite  put my finger on it.  The sun was already setting,  and in the  valley
below  a few lights on farms and homesteads had already been switched  on.  I
estimated the nearest to be about two or three miles off,  but the  gathering
dusk made it difficult for me to estimate it more accurately.
I walked up the garden path, at which time it became apparent what seemed so
odd.  There were no sounds. Even though I saw the woods behind the house move
to and fro gently in the evening breeze, the leaves made no sound whatsoever.
All I heard was the soft wind in my ears, hardly enough to blot out all other
noises.  At the time,  however, like the unconscious knowledge of the clerk's
sigh lingering somewhere within a deep recess of my mind,  I made no more  of
it.  It was just a really quiet late summer's evening. Probably the wind took
the voice of the forest away from me, back to its own centre.
When  I  stood in front of the door I put down my  luggage,  fumbled  in  my
pockets for a while trying to find the key.  Once retrieved, I inserted it in
the  lock and turned.  There was a twist,  some resistance,  a  click.  After
opening the door I went inside and locked it again. The typically cool are of
a perpetually shuttered house embraced me.
My  premonitions about a cat had been right.  A lean black animal with  eyes
shining bright yellow in the half-dark descended the stairs and came  towards
me, rubbed my leg for a while and then lost interest.
There was quite a stench.  I couldn't quite identify whether it was just the
dank  dustiness  of a long-empty home or something else.  I  put  my  luggage
inside  and closed the door behind me.  The stench seemed to grow.  I had  to
find out where it came from.  I followed my senses,  which let me go down  an
old  and rather noisy stairway to the cellar.  I fumbled for a light  switch,
found  it,  flicked it,  and found a pale light emerging from a single  light
bulb in the middle of the cellar.  There was a boiler,  the kind that  groans
and  clanks when toiling but that currently wasn't active,  as well  as  some
half-decomposed old paper piles. The smell gathered intensity. I knew what it
was.  It  was the smell of death.  Maybe the cat had a private store of  dead
mice or rats down here.  I followed its black form around a corner in the  L-
shaped room,  suddenly to find my stomach twisting.  I had to swallow to keep
from  retching  too  violently as I saw about half a dozen  dead  cats  lying
there.  They were partly decomposed, their eyes glassy and dull in the scarse
light,  small  insects crawling over the fur and partly  exposed  innards.  I
could have sworn the cats had died of fright;  I am not quite sure what  cats
look  like when they're scared out of their skulls,  but I reckoned it  might
very well be the way these cats looked.  The teeth were visible like those of
an angry cat, the hairs on their backs raised in post-mortem.
I went back up, switching off the light as I left, resolving to clean up the
whole cellar the next day.  I was beat,  for some reason or other, and wanted
first to go to bed and have a good night's rest.  The one living cat followed
me  up  the  stairs.  It seemed to show no affection but a need  to  join  me
upstairs,  as if being all on its own was simply too bleak a prospect to  the
animal. I didn't think much of it, though, at the time.
Little did I know of length of the night ahead of me.
I am not easily frightened,  nor afraid of the dark,  but at night the house
seemed to have its own subtle means of producing inexplicable  sounds.  Never
were  they actually clear enough to be able to tell their cause.  Whenever  I
had  identified a specific sound to listen to with more attention it  ceased,
to  be  replaced  by another sound that took a while  to  isolate,  and  then
disappeared again to be replaced by another.  It was like looking intently at
a  star in the sky and suddenly seeing it disappear when looking straight  at
it. Somehow the sounds seemed to want to elude me.
At  some instants I could have sworn to hear the cellar stairs making  their
familiar creaking noise,  as if someone else,  *something* else,  was in  the
house. Surely I had locked the front door? I knew I had.
At  just  past  midnight the cat starting making a  strange  whining  noise,
something quite unlike the sounds I had ever heard cats make.  I had left  it
outside the bedroom door,  as I wasn't wont to have a cat on the  bed,  which
was where they were most likely to turn up eventually if only you'd give them
the  chance.  I had once read a book where mention was made that  cats  could
steal your breath away if they slept on your chest,  but I am quite sure that
had been no part in my decision to leave it outside.
I sat up straight,  trying to establish the reason for the cat's discomfort.
There were some sounds,  like there had been all along, again seeming to want
to  elude me.  I lit a candle and got out of bed.  The cat seemed to  startle
from  my appearance through the bedroom door and scratched viciously  at  me,
lacerating my pyjama trousers and tearing my flesh at the surface.  I  cursed
and tried to kick the cat but already it was gone.
It struck me that the cat seemed to want to evade being close to the  walls,
as if it were playing some childish game with deadly seriousness.
I touched my leg.  It might be torn but barely bled.  I probably didn't even
have to get a tetanus shot.
When my attention once more shifted from my leg to the house,  the noises  I
heard  seemed louder.  Moreover,  they seemed to come from  downstairs  quite
explicitly.  The  cellar?  Were there rats,  feasting on half a  dozen  cats'
mortal remains?
My cat suddenly stood still, tail curling and twisting strangely and somehow
significantly,  in front of a door to a room I had not yet explored.  The cat
made  a  frightful  noise,  then attacked the  door,  started  scratching  it
viciously.
I walked to the door and held the knob.  It was cold to the touch.  The  cat
retreated  when it sensed my intent of opening the door.  I could have  sworn
there was a presence in the room, but the feeling disappeared at the instance
I turned the knob and pushed it open.  There was a slight woosh of air,  cold
and unmistakable,  a draught probably. Next instant it was gone. I closed the
door behind me, feeling a perverse desire to cover my back.
The flickering flame of my candle threw strange shadows across the table and
books  that  seemed to be the prime feature of the small room.  There  was  a
window  in  one wall but its heavy curtains were drawn.  Had it  been  day  I
seriously doubted there would have been any more light.
I looked up and down the walls.  There were strangely surrealistic pictures,
some rather scary.  Some portrayed church towers around which haunting shapes
had  somehow draped themselves.  Others showed a lonely writer with  a  large
looming *something* behind him,  threatening to strike at the first opportune
moment.  The most terrible of all,  and I couldn't help but be fascinated  by
it, was a huge demonic monster stretching out its clawed forelimbs to a water
vessel,  the background filled with unnaturally large blocks,  like slabs  of
concrete,  tilting  halfway  out of the ocean as if they  had  been  recently
revealed remnants of domiciles of a frightful and oversized race of beings no
longer known to earth.
I went closer to see the writing on the bottom part of its frame.  "Cthulhu"
it  read,  simply,  but  this  simple word instilled in me  a  fear  I  would
previously have considered myself incapable of feeling.  What had happened to
me?  What had happened to the ever-present rationalisations with which I used
to drive other people out of their minds with irritation?
It  was then that I saw the diary.  It lay on the desk,  covered with  dust,
with an inkpot next to it. A quill stuck in the ink pot but the ink had dried
to a thick crust,  locking the writing utensil. Why hadn't the writer put the
lid back on the inkpot?
I  must have stared at the diary,  thinking of its implications,  for a  few
minutes  before I finally stretched out a hand to take it.  I blew  the  dust
off,  revealing  the  initials  "H.P.L." Who  was  this  mysterious  previous
occupant? The old woman they had mentioned?
I  opened  the book.  I had expected a leathery croak,  but still  the  only
sounds  I  heard  were those I assumed came from  the  cellar.  The  cat  had
developed an odd affection for my leg,  rubbing against it. It seemed totally
unaware of having scratched me mere minutes before.
I  turned  pages  to the end.  The handwriting  was  meticulously  executed,
densely written.  It was a bit archaic, using a complex vocabulary. I arrived
at the last page that was written on.  March 15th 1937.  The diary must  have
been of someone - judging by the handwriting probably a man - who lived  here
prior to the old woman, or maybe even before that. Why had the room been left
intact, untouched since as far back as 1937?
A  felt a strange morbidity take over me as I read what might have been  the
man's last writings.

"I  feel death tugging at me.  Things are getting out of control.  Should  I
notify  the authorities of...even now,  I can't get myself to write down  the
words.  Is  the ancient Mythos true after all?  And why do the cats act  thus
strangely? Yesterday night I heard the noises intensify, but now they make it
almost  completely impossible for me to think.  There are scratchings at  the
door. What creature stands there? Is it"

At that instant the man must have been distracted,  or startled mortally  by
something.  Attached to the final "t" was a long scratch,  then nothing.  Had
these words been his *very last*?  If so,  who - or *what* - had put back the
quill in the inkpot?  I leafed through the diary,  reading some further parts
that  were  all  but  horrible.  Then to the  first  page...there  was  name.
Howard...
Below,  whatever  was there didn't go through great lengths  disguising  its
sounds.  I was certain I heard steps,  but they were soft, as if made by bare
feet.  Or furry claws. My imagination was getting the better of me, but those
sounds were real.
Any  moment,  somehow,  I expected scratchings at the door like the man  had
described in his last moments.  This place was too much. Or perhaps there was
a  logical  explanation that I would discover in the morning?  That  was  it,
probably.  I had merely got what I had catered for - a house that inspired me
to write horror stories.
Behind  me there was a bookcase containing various tomes.  Like  the  diary,
they  were  covered with dust.  It was obvious that this room had  been  left
untouched completely,  almost reveredly so. The books seemed to cover various
arcane and occult topics.  There was a book about Satanism, even. Had the man
been a Satan Worshipper or had he perhaps, like me, just bought the books for
research purposes,  him being a writer perhaps?  My breath stuck in my throat
as  I saw among the books a leather-bound copy of the book of the  Mad  Arab,
"Necronomicon".  An intricately shaped pentagram was engraved on it,  in  the
colour of silver. I felt strangely elated but horrified too. I had rented the
house  previously owned by a person that had The Dread Book!  No wonder  that
this   house   seemed   to   attract   its   particularities.   My   previous
rationalisations suddenly seeming trivial.  Perhaps there was truly something
going on in,  or around,  this house.  Suddenly, I remember the clerk's sigh,
the weirdness of there being no sound when I had stood outside, surveying the
house. The total lack of people around this place.
I left the room,  cursing at myself for superstitiously scanning the hallway
to  my  bedroom  for strange  appearances.  The  sounds  continued  unabated,
crawling up the stairs as if alive. I found myself dashing to the bedroom and
slamming the door behind me. I didn't heed the cat's scratchings at the door,
frantic  almost,  that progressed until the morning when I awoke  from  about
half  a dozen short sleeps that had each been haunted by strange  noises  and
even stranger voices coming from my cellar.
When  the  pale  suns truck my face,  waking me  for  the  final  time,  the
scratching had ceased.
After  refreshing myself I left the bedroom.  The hallway  seemed  perfectly
normal now. Had I closed the mysterious room or had it somehow closed itself?
I couldn't remember, but it was closed nonetheless.
The  cat was nowhere to be seen,  and there wasn't a sound,  not even  those
that could penetrate from the outside.  I descended the stairs,  listening to
their  familiar  woody  noises.  After making myself some  breakfast  -  it's
strange how a bite to eat can change your outlook on a past night's events  -
I fetched a large bag and went down into the cellar to clean up.
When  I switched the light a hammer of fright struck up and down  my  spine,
making my ears ring quite literally.  On the floor lay the cat that had  been
alive but few hours before.  Its limbs were extended and nailed to the floor,
its  entrails spilling from a gash in its abdomen.  It hadn't been done by  a
knife, I could see. The edges of the wound were far too rough, too uneven. It
must  have been fangs.  The cat had been dead for hours,  obviously.  It  was
already going mouldy, ants and flies having been at it longer than an hour at
least.
A shiver ran through my entire being.  What had made those scratching noises
at my door up to the early morning dusk?
Struck by paranoia, I looked behind me. There was nothing save the stairs. I
took  my  hand from the light switch,  where it had remained as if  glued  of
paralyzed.
I  bolted  up  the stairs.  There was something  ghastly  about  the  house,
definitely.  I could easily have imaged the sounds or the whole mystery  room
for  that matter;  I could have had a nightmare or something.  But now I  was
wide awake and certainly I had not just imaged the dead cat, horribly cut up,
or half-eaten, or whatever.
What  to do?  Go back to the real estate agent's and claim my money back  on
claims  of there being something horrible in the house?  They would  have  me
fetched  by the men in white coats.  One card short of a full deck,  lost  my
marbles,  that kind of thing.  No, I would solve all of this myself. I was an
adult,  I  was up to it.  There was probably a very logical explanation  that
would render all superstitions and weird thoughts futile.

I spent most of the day preparing myself for the night. I did not have a gun
but I had found a crowbar in a shack in the garden.  Whatever it was that ate
cats at night, I would surely be able to handle it. I took a short nap in the
afternoon so it wouldn't be too hard to stay awake the whole night.
The nap took longer than I had intended.  It was already darkening  outside,
and there was wind tugging at the ancient walls and roof.  It rained  softly,
but  there wasn't a doubt in my mind that the rain would get  heavier  during
the night. There were a few lightning flashes outside, but the thunder itself
was too far to reach me - yet.
I  pulled on my sturdiest set of trousers,  the working trousers that I  had
done  some  fruitpicking  labour in,  last summer  somewhere.  I  hefted  the
crowbar, tapping it on the palm of my other hand.
I didn't light a candle when I went down.  The darkness was almost  complete
now,  and the sounds were already occurring again. There was no moon outside,
and  had  there been any I doubt if it would have been full.  I  knew  I  had
resolved  to get whatever was in my house in the very cellar,  but  my  knees
felt weak as I touched the cellar door's knob.  It was cold, like that of the
mysterious room the other night.
"What the hell," I thought to myself, "I had better get it over with."
I threw open the cellar door,  feeling like a hero for an instant. There was
no  applause,  however,  which tore me back to reality.  The sounds were  not
actually  deafening,  but already they were beyond the  comfortably  audible,
distorting slightly.
I could see nothing but darkness in which I fancied shadows moving. I put my
hand on the light switch,  at which moment there was an angrily hissing noise
coming from the far side of the cellar, where the half dozen dead cats lay. I
could  have  sworn  there was a munching sound,  but it ceased  at  the  very
instant  I flicked the switch.  There was no light though.  One moment  later
something  was thrown through the cellar - I caught a very brief  glimpse  of
something  metallic in a ray of light that was emitted  from  somewhere.  The
next instant I felt it crashing at my feet.
The light bulb. Whatever was with me in this cellar, had some sentience. The
thought  of  an intelligent monster scared me witless.  As if *it*  had  some
immaculate sense of drama, it chose this moment to reveal to me two bloodshot
eyes at about 10 feet distance from me. I froze to the spot, suddenly finding
the cellar very warm.  I felt my forehead suddenly moist,  and as I regripped
the crowbar I felt the perspiration in my hands making it slightly  slippery.
I swung the bar,  but the creature's eyes didn't even blink. It was still too
far off for it to be hit by me, but already it was far too close to my taste.
I got a strange urge to start yelling at the beast,  cursing, hollering, but
thought better of it. People did that in cheap horror B films. This was class
A reality, as bad as it ever gets.
The beast closed its eyes. I heard a faint hint of a shuffle, then it opened
its eyes again.  A bit closer.  It was homing in on me.  I saw before me  the
morning's slaughter,  the cat, its guts spilled on the floor, the odd lack of
blood. Lack of blood? I had never really liked cats but I didn't want to suck
them dry either.  Outside I heard a rolling sound of thunder that belonged to
a flash of lightning I hadn't seen.
I  turned around and ran up the stairs.  This seemed exactly the moment  the
beast,  animal,  monster,  abdomination,  had  been waiting for.  I  felt  is
speaking in my head.  It spoke in vivid images,  black and red all over.  Its
tongue I did now know, but it mustz have been a universal language dormant in
all living beings.  I knew it was speaking of death,  impending death.  And I
was the one going to be it.
All of this had taken an instant, a precious instant, in which my run up the
stairs had slowed down. It had been sufficient for the horribly vile creature
to gain on me and grab an ankle.  Mortal dread hurled itself over me,  and  I
think I cried in panic,  begging for someone,  someone,  please,  someone, to
help me.  But I knew there would be nobody to hear.  There was a thunderstorm
outside, and nobody liked to go here anyway.
Frantically I kicked.  When the grip loosened and I got to run up  again,  I
couldn't get rid of the impression that I had escaped only because it  wanted
me to.  It wanted to play with me,  not just kill me,  eat me, do whatever it
wanted with me. It seemed pointless the slam the cellar door behind me, but I
did so anyway.
As  I  retreated in the ground floor hallway,  towards  the  front  door,  I
rediscovered the crowbar in my hand.  Why hadn't I used it on the beast?  Had
it  had some psychological hold on me?  I heard the sound  of  feet,  *clawed
furry fangs*,  on the cellar stairs.  My eyes opened wide, but I suppressed a
cry of fear. I could handle this. I hefted the crowbar again. I was an adult.
I could handle this, sure I could. There was some fumbled at the cellar door,
after which it opened slowly.  Its hinges made no noise whatsoever.  Then the
eyes  came,  amid  a silhouette humpy and horrible,  with limbs  where  there
shouldn't  be any.  And fangs.  There was some light,  from  somewhere,  that
caught the fangs, long and white-yellowish, dripping with saliva.
For a moment it seemed as if the house rode the lightning. Horribly explicit
the  beast became as it crawled forth from the cellar door opening.  I  fell,
the way dumb women in films fall,  cursing at my own stupidity. I clung on to
the crowbar as if it was my life insurance.  I *was*.  Not a good one, but it
was all I had.
"Come on," I said, trying to sound threatening but probably failing. I could
have  sworn  the  monster  grinned  as it  poised  itself  to  leap,  like  a
grotesquely misformed, many-limbed large cat. I clambered back, eye to horrid
eye  with certain death.  It spoke to me again,  spoke of charred  flesh  and
blood  pouring  from  wounds  shaped  like  serrated  edges,   fangs,  white,
yellowish, dripping.
There was a violent knocking behind me, suddenly, and I could have sworn the
beast's grin widened. I cried in dismay, causing the knocking, the *slamming*
on  the front door,  to increase.  The monster must have warned a  previously
invisible  partner  outside.  I was cornered.  Why had I not thought  of  the
possibility?  Monsters  came individually in class B horror films.  This  was
class A reality. Here they came in twos. At least.
I  yanked open the front door,  at the precise instant of which a  flash  of
lightning  almost  directly atop my flashed  mercilessly,  the  sound  coming
within the same moment,  obliterating my hearing. I had my back to the cellar
creature,  and now faced a squat threat, appearing hideously misformed in the
bolt  of  lightning  as it sped through the sky.  I  swung  the  crowbar.  It
impacted  something hard that gave way.  I swung  again,  hacked,  until  the
wretched creature fell down,  and then I hit some more until the crowbar came
back gleaming red with bits of hair clinging to it.
Something laughed behind me,  the disturbed,  loud laugh of the irredeemably
insane.  I swirled around,  where one more lightning flash revealed to me the
form of the impure creature as it retreated down to the cellar,  like it  had
successfully performed its task.
I looked down on the dead shape lying on my doorstep. The rain lashed at its
remains.  As  the throes of half-madness left me be,  I recognized in it  the
clerk  that  had arranged this house for me.  Why had he come  here  at  this
ungodly hour?  Why? Why had the vile creature downstairs projected in my mind
visions of an evil accomplice, of death upon me instantly?
I sank to my knees,  no longer able to suppress my sobbing.  In the  morning
men came to take my numb self away.

Maybe I should never have opened the maddeningly explicit diary after I  had
read  its  former owner's name.  Maybe I should simply have  left,  never  to
return,  when  I discovered I had moved into a house previously  occupied  by
Howard  Phillips Lovecraft,  a house that no doubt gave birth to many of  his
horror stories.
But now it's too late.

Written during a few sessions in early summer,  finished July 23rd  1994.  I
think the Lovecraft inspiration is pretty obvious...


= SOON COMING ===============================================================


The next issue of "Twilight World",  Volume 2 Issue 6, is to be released mid
November this year.  Please refer to the 'subscription' section,  below,  for
details about automatically getting it in case you're interested.
Please  refer to the section on 'submitting',  below,  for more  details  on
submitting your own material.
The next issue will probably contain the following items...

INTERGALACTIC SEX FANTASY
by Bryan Kennerley

NEBULUS
by Richard Karsmakers

FIRE & BRIMSTONE
by Richard Karsmakers

TORVAK THE WARRIOR
by Stefan Posthuma

AND MORE


= SOME GENERAL REMARKS ======================================================


DESCRIPTION

"Twilight World" is an on-line magazine aimed at everybody who is interested
in any sort of fiction - although it usually tends to concentrate on fantasy-
and science-fiction.
One of its sources is an Atari ST/TT/Falcon disk magazine by the name of "ST
NEWS" which publishes computer-related articles as well as fiction. "Twilight
World" principally consists of the best fiction featured in "ST NEWS" so far,
with added stories submitted by dedicated "Twilight World" readers.

SUBMISSIONS

If you've written some good fiction and you wouldn't mind it being published
world-wide,  you can mail it to me either electronically or by standard mail.
At all times do I reserve the right not to publish submissions.  Do note that
submissions  on  disk  will have to use the  MS-DOS/Atari  ST/TT/Falcon  disk
format on 3.5" Double-or High-Density floppy disk.  Provided sufficient  IRCs
are  supplied  (see below),  you will get your disk back with  the  issue  of
"Twilight World" on it that features your fiction. Electronic submittees will
get an electronic subscription automatically.
At all times, please submit straight ASCII texts without any special control
codes whatsoever, nor right justify or ASCII characters above 128. Please use
*asterisks* to emphasise text if needed, start each paragraph with one space,
don't include empty lines between each paragraph and use "-" instead of "--".
Also remember the difference between possessives and contractions,  only  use
multiple  question marks when absolutely necessary (!!) and never  use  other
than one (.) or three (...) periods in sequence.

COPYRIGHT

Unless  specified along with the individual stories,  all  "Twilight  World"
stories are copyrighted by the individual authors but may be spread wholly or
separately  to  any  place - and indeed into any other  magazine  -  provided
credit is given both to the original author and "Twilight World".

CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS

I prefer electronic correspondence,  but regular stuff (such as  postcards!)
can  be sent to my regular address.  If you expect a reply please supply  one
International Reply Coupon (available at your post office), *two* if you live
outside Europe.  If you want your disk(s) returned, add 2 International Reply
Coupons per disk (and one extra if you live outside  Europe).  Correspondence
failing these guidelines will be read (and perused) but not replied to.
The address (valid at least up to summer 1995):

Richard Karsmakers
Looplantsoen 50
NL-3523 GV Utrecht
The Netherlands
Email [email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Subscriptions  (electronic ones only!) can be requested by sending email  to
the  address mentioned above.  "Twilight World" is only available  as  ASCII.
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message to check if your email address is still valid.  If a message bounces,
your subscription terminates.
Back  issues of "Twilight World" may be FTP'd  from  atari.archive.umich.edu
and etext.archive.umich.edu.  It is also posted to rec.arts.prose,  alt.zines
and  alt.prose  and is on Gopher somewhere as well.  Thanks to Gard  for  all
this!

PHILANTROPY

If  you like "Twilight World",  a spontaneous burst of philantropy aimed  at
the  postal address mentioned above would be very  much  appreciated!  Please
send cash only;  any regular currency will do.  Apart from keeping  "Twilight
World" happily afloat,  it will also help me to keep my head above water as a
student  of  English at Utrecht University.  If  donations  reach  sufficient
height  they will secure the existence of "Twilight World" after  my  studies
have been concluded. If not...then all I can do is hope for the best.
Thanks!

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authors are the ones you should sue in case of copyright infringements!

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