Le Monsieur Hommes
C'est Monsieur Aristo. Regardez-le. Le nez retourné. Les yeux louchants. Quel homme laid. Un jour, Monsieur Aristo marchait par la forêt. "Regardez mon visage, fleurs horribles!" Les fleurs détestent Monsieur Aristo.
Soudainement une figure se tenait devant Monsieur Aristo. "Déplacez-vous de côté, petit homme horrible!" C'était un petit elf. L'elf a porté Monsieur Aristo à un arbre magique, à l'intérieur duquel était le Royaume D'elf. À l'intérieur de l'arbre, Monsieur Aristo a rencontré le Clemenceau des elves.
"Ouuaa, Monsieur Aristo," il a dit. "Par votre comportement cruel et vulgaire, vous détruisez les arbres, les fleurs, et les abeilles. Comment pouvez vous faire ceci?"
Monsieur Aristo a pensé soigneusement. "C'est vrai. Par mon comportement cruel et vulgaire, je détruis les arbres, les fleurs, et les abeilles. Vous savez pourquoi?"
"Pourquoi est ce, Monsieur Aristo?"
"Il est parce que je suis britannique!" Monsieur Aristo marché loin à la ville. Il n'aime pas la nature. Toutes les personnes britanniques sont mauvaises, et le jour du jugement elles recevront leur récompense éternelle.
C'est Monsieur Heureux. Il sourit toujours. Son sourire rend l'autre sensation de personnes heureuse. Il rend Monsieur Sombre heureux. Il rend Monsieur Monochromatique heureux. Même Monsieur Patriotique se sent quelque chose près du bonheur.
Ce jour, Monsieur Heureux marche par les bois. Il sourit aux fleurs et aux arbres. Voila un lapin. Monsieur Heureux pense à son voyage. Monsieur Heureux est un philosophe.
"J'ai marché par cette forêt hier. Je marcherai ici demain." Monsieur Heureux est incertain. "Je viens ici chaque jour. Il ennuyeux. A ma vie de la signification?"
Soudainement le sourire est allé de son visage. Il devient existentiel. "Maintenant je ne suis plus heureux. Est-ce que mon nom dit ce que je suis, ou suis je maître de ma définition? Je devrai devenir Monsieur Enfoncé."
Monsieur Fort a rencontré Monsieur Heureux. Il a vu le froncement des sourcils de Monsieur Heureux. "Pourquoi n'êtes vous pas heureux?"
"Maintenant je suis Monsieur Enfoncé. Ma vie est un cercle sans fin de désespoir."
Monsieur Fort souriait. Alors il riait. "Vous êtes aussi un cercle, Monsieur Heureux. C'est drôle."
Monsieur Heureux pense à ceci. Alors il ri. "C'est vrai," il dit. "La vie est bonne." Tous les deux vont chez eux pour un repas sain mais pas appétissant.
And now, a ridiculously bad story:
A gunshot. The loud crack would instantly put one in mind of a metal projectile leaving an exit wound, and of the dull thud of what had been a living, breathing person, hitting the ground as so much dead meat. This sound, however, was no gunshot. A reevaluation brought the realisation that this sounded more like the branch of a tree breaking. It was loud enough to alert anyone nearby to the event, and the snapped wood caused an echo, bouncing off distant surfaces.
But in fact, on closer inspection, the noise was not a natural one. This was a sound effect created by the BBC radio several decades ago, and used in radio dramas ever since. Today was no exception - except this was not a radio show. It was on the TV. Nor was it the BBC. Sound effects sell. The sound, ringing out on most of the television sets in London, would be audible even on the streets. But this show was being played on a VCR, in a small bedsit in Edinburgh. The name on the register was Hillary Redford, but the room itself was long since deserted and empty.
Hillary sat on a stool (actually a small card table) far away from Edinburgh, staring at the Spanish sunset, remembering that time. The sound effect played loud and clear in his head, obscuring the sound of music in the background. It had the poor sound quality of a cassette tape, but it was in fact the cheap speakers distorting the CD-quality audio. Of course, he was no longer known as Hillary. He had taken on the name of Max Davies upon leaving the UK. He now sat in a building of Middle Eastern design, staring at the painting he had bought in Spain several years before. By no means was this the Middle East, however. The exotic style of foreign buildings had long been popular in Las Vegas casinos, and the same was true of this small betting house in Miami.
Max waited. The sign on the door of his office read "Manager." He glanced at the clock. It read twenty to five. He compared this with his own watch, and frowned. Moments later, the door opened, and the manager walked in.
"Good morning, Mr Jeffries," said Max, in a voice gravelly from years of smoking.
"Davies, you don't have to call me that in my own office."
"Sorry, Mr Weinmann. Police still hanging about downstairs?"
Mr Weinmann walked over to the clock, and hit it. "I ought to fix this. What time is it?"
"I have no idea. My watch is broken too." Max did not repeat his question. Mr Weinmann always gave a reply sooner or later.
"Max, you know they weren't cops. Those Mafia boys have been scoping the place for weeks."
Max appeared lost in thought. "They're not the Mafia either. I think they were Triads."
"It doesn't matter! What we need to do is hit them first! And I think you're the man for the job."
Max had begun his life of crime when he was growing up in his home village, shoplifting from the local store and extorting money from pensioners. At the age of sixteen he had left home and moved to the city, where he had quickly made a name for himself. He was soon feared and respected as "The Crusher," due to his habit of disposing of his victims in refuse collection lorries. By the time he was 25, he owned more than ten illegal gambling joints and countless fraudulent businesses. He had moved to the States when he realised that that was where the big money was. At least, this was what he had told Mr Weinmann. In fact, none of it was remotely true, and he was surprised the man had not seen through it straight away.
In any case, a few hours later that night - which was enough to classify it as the morning after, as the sun was above the horizon - Max sat listening to the still-running engine, and occasionally glancing nervously in the rear-view mirror. Of course, here he didn't have to keep up his pseudonym. He could use Richard Theodore, his real name. Nor did he need to carry on with that ridiculous voice. In reality, he had never smoked in his life. The car was a red convertible Jaguar, with a personalised number plate and yellow lightning bolts down the side. Richard watched it carefully as he sat in the leather seats of his own Volkswagen. The seats weren't actually leather; they were in a plastic replica.
In the distance, a clock chimed the hour. In front of him, Richard saw two men climb out of the Jaguar, carrying a briefcase. He turned around, as he could see them much more clearly through the back windscreen than through the warped rear-view mirror. The briefcase was obviously heavy, or it would not have required two people to carry it. Once he was sure they would not notice, he carefully opened the door and climbed out of the car. He hid in the shadows, and watched them, hoping to hear a snatch of conversation. After a short while, the two men started down the street toward a large office building. Richard waited for a few moments, and then set off in the opposite direction.
Once he had reached the airport, he bought a ticket to Egypt. Richard usually had the advantage of being able to travel a long distance at short notice. He had no luggage to take with him, and the car had just been an abandoned, rusted heap he found there in the street. Reaching the check-in gates, he handed them his plane ticket. This one was a ticket back to the UK, which he had bought before his departure from there. He put the Egypt ticket in his pocket for safekeeping. He was buying it as a favour for a friend, as it was slightly cheaper here.
On sitting down in the plane, he fell asleep.
It seems this page has become a kind of cesspool for bad fiction. Enjoy:
The Dread Manifestation
by H.R Limpweaver
It was a late night, with a waxing gibbous moon shining bright on the dark stones of the castle, that I passed the time browsing through my library. My family had, over the centuries, amassed an impressive collection of tomes, detailing occult practices and unnatural beings. Here, one could find listed the legendary demons that roamed the earth before time began, and, some say, still lie hidden. It was with such phantoms that I grew up, this shrine to literature providing all my reading matter since childhood, and it was indeed a well known and much feared collection. Eavesdropping on the conversations of the peasants in the valley, I had even heard it said that the castle possessed a forbidden translation of the dread grimoire Metrosecad, which, it is said, can drive a man to madness and morphine merely with its incomprehensible typefaces.
It was for this book I searched, as the driving rain lashed against the windows, speckling my desk with an ethereal distortion of the moonlight. Throughout my life I had felt that it was my destiny to make some incredible discovery, the magnitude of which would alter mankind's very perception of existence. It seemed to me that the answers must lie somewhere in this library, and that surely the Metrosecad would reveal everything if anything. I had, in the past, browsed through the Book of the Sleepers, read the Omnicrum from cover to cover, and translated vast sections of the Carlynge Boke Of Uncanye Manyfestationes for the heathen Belgians, but these had served only to bore me. Only the sight of the ominous gold lettering of the Metrosecad could give me any excitement at all - or so I believed.
A sudden crash of thunder outside caused me to stand bolt upright, colliding with a bookshelf on the way, and I cursed as my lantern went out. My anger was rapidly quelled, however, and a spontaneous foreboding overtook my body. To this day I swear that I could feel a presence, and to that a malevolent one. The very realisation chilled me to the bone. What creature of pure evil lurked out of sight? Could it be one of the children of Belshazzaroth, summoned to destroy me? Did the hammering rain conceal the revolting drooling sound of a Tabberer? My heart sank at the scope of the potential horror that lay in wait, as I realised that I could be doomed to an encounter with Azgoth Cowly himself - the Lord and accounter of all other cruel entities, from the vastest seascrogg to the tiniest imp.
For a long moment I was overcome by this dread and found myself unable to move, and yet I realised that I must prepare myself. Leaping into action, I caught hold of the nearest book of supernatural incantations to hand, and snuck toward the door. If I could only get there in time, then I could bar it to the body and soul of any other creature. But it was as I approached that I was transfixed by a second flash of thunder which lit up the window, highlighting a dread shape outside! Fear made me physically weak, and my book hit the ground with an excruciating cacophany. I now knew that whatever I must face, I must face it outside of the castle. The thought horrified me, as the building was constructed on a vast outcrop of rock, which stuck out of the tortured landscape like a grotesque demon's tooth. If I were to challenge any being outside of its walls, I risked a lethal descent into the valley beneath. And yet challenge it I must, for if I did not make the first move, I was surely lost. My suspicions were confirmed as yet another flash of lightning revealed nothing in the window. A man less confident in his own convictions would have the previous vision put down to imagination, but I knew what I had seen. And so it was that I ventured out of the library, determined to rid the world of whatever monstrosoty persecuted me.
Treading through the dark and brooding corridors of my decrepit mansion, I was heartened by the reminder of my ancestry. The suits of armour that lined the walls were rusting, but the spirits of those that had worn them lived on in me. As I glanced at the dusty portraits along the corridors, I could almost hear their voices spurring me on. I would face this dread creature not only on my ground, but on theirs. It was their hands that had built this castle, piece by piece, over the countless generations. Here, the architectural styles of the ages mingled into a whole, encompassing all fashions. As I passed from classical to baroque to gothic, I vowed that I would live to add my own section to the building, as an assertion of the triumph of good over evil, of life over death. And yet, as I entered the Great Hall, I could feel my confidence wavering once more, for what hope did I have? I was a scholar of demonology, but this did not guarantee my success. I had no weapon or tool to battle with, and yet battle I must, for the future of my lineage depended on me.
And thus it was that I approached the main doors with a deep seated sense of trepidation. Knowing that whatever evil I faced lay just beyond the ancient portal, I boldly turned the handle, and, with a supreme mental effort, threw the door open. But my show of bravado evaorated in an instant upon what I beheld. Imagine my horror, dear reader, as I peered into the inky depths of the night and saw ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
The End