I spot the little man the moment the door opens. He’s nervous. He knows that he – that anyone – shouldn’t be here. I watch intently, not even blinking, as he closes the door behind him with needless care. Nobody is going to appreciate his care, nobody is going to hear him over the thumping beat of the music.
This isn’t a place that needs to be careful or quiet. We don’t even need a man on the door. Casual trade knows not to fuck with us, and if they don’t at the start of the evening, they do by the end. This means he’s either here for a reason or he’s utterly clueless. Given his care and wide-eyed fright, I’m laying my money on the first.
He moves across the floor as though it were shards of broken glass, gingerly, carefully, every sense alert. I can practically see the panicked pulse in his neck, and his eyes look dramatic in the half-light, wide whites, black holes of pupils.
He edges around the serpentine sway of the slithering dancers. He can’t help but look. Who could resist? The sisters are almost identical; they move like whips and arch and twist and writhe in a way that looks effortless and boneless. When they feel his eyes on them, they press their cheeks together, tangle their long, straight hair. As he’s drawn in, they expose their split tongues, they lap drink from each other’s mouths and wind around each other.
I smile as he stumbles back in shock from the girls, and I keep my eyes upon him. Finally, he notices me, this stumbling, bovine man. I incline my head slightly to encourage him and lift my drink. A sip of burning, bitter green, the bile I’ll need to get through talking with this man.
It’s a room of corners, the club. The people who come here don’t often like being on show. They like being tucked away, to let visitors be distracted by the sisters. Something to put their back against. Here, in one of the many nooks, I’m shielded from the loudest of the music, and I can receive this little man and conduct our sordid little business that lets me live my life.
“I need someone killed,” it’s the first thing out of his mouth, even before he sits.
“No. You don’t.”
“What?” I pull my drink closer; he’s the type who would drink it to ‘settle’ himself, and that wouldn’t be a good idea.
“If you need someone killed, you can get anyone to do that. Any sneak, footpad or thug. Or you could do it yourself. You need a problem removed, and this problem just happens to have a pulse and a name.”
“Semantics…” he growls, the cow-man has a little spine after all, it seems.
“Respect will get you a lot further than disdain,” I tell him, and I knock back the last of the bitter green liquor, swallowing the scale at the bottom of the glass. I flick my tongue against my fangs and lean forward over the table. “So, tell me about your problem…”
He’s late, but she doesn’t complain. It’s an old dance now, between the two of them. The late nights, the lost weekends, out on his work. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to know and that suits both of them just fine. He plays the role of the provider, she plays the role of the dutiful wife, they share a few words at breakfast, a few words at night, a bed, and that’s all.
He hangs his coat on the hook while she fusses in the kitchen. He hasn’t the heart to tell her that he’s already eaten. The meat sits heavy in his stomach, making him full, sluggish as he loosens his tie and sits down, ready to do his best.
While her back is turned, he picks the little bit of gristle from between his teeth and hides it. Offering her a faint, tired smile as she slides his plate in front of him and sits opposite, a smile plastered to her face, though her eyes look harassed. Some book or other she read told her to smile, and so she does.
The knife cuts the steak. He takes his time, cutting it into pieces, arranging it on his plate in the faint hope that the extra time will allow his stomach to digest the meat already in his stomach. To make room.
It doesn’t.
The steak is overdone, his fault for being late. He eats it slowly, nodding along to the few things she says. Telling her that he’s tired, that he has a few more things to do before bed. It takes him an age, and his jaw is tired by the end of it, but he finishes his meal and kisses her before he shuffles off to his office.
She doesn’t come into the office. Nobody does. It’s his one safe place. His sanctuary from the house and the world. His ‘work room’, the work she never asks about. He closes the door behind him and twists the lock shut.
It’s not a big room, this sanctuary. A desk, a small bookcase, a computer and The Wall. He stops at The Wall and brushes his fingers over the yellowing and curling paper. The heater makes the paper age faster here, but he sort of likes it; it makes things seem older and more distant. Historical.
Each article is a dead man or woman, their bodies, or parts of their bodies at least, found. Suggestions, hints, daring allusions to the fact that some might have been eaten. Other articles, items, from the Sunday papers, series on human monsters, Fish, Chikalito, Dahmer, Meiwes, arranged around these more local, more recent cases.
He stifles a belch with his fist and pats his chest, stepping across the room and pulling the little bookcase away from the wall. This is his sanctum sanctorum, his hiding place, the holiest of holies. A place he can safely keep his special things.
He kneels down and pulls out the stack of papers with care and reverence, leafing through them. Safer to have them on paper than in a computer these days. He clicks on the lamp and flips through the stack, ashamed and excited at the same time.
The top page, his favourite, a crude black and white drawing, pixelated, expanded to fill the page. A depiction of a woman impaled on a spit, impossibly still alive, a fire burning under her while a man, the ‘cook’, has his way with her helpless body.
He bites his lip, hating himself as he leafs through the stack, dozens of depictions, torture, killing, cannibalism, women being eaten by snakes, toads, monsters from mythology and from the twisted minds of the artists who have lovingly depicted a hundred, a thousand, devouring ends. Vore, Dolcett, Guro, why does he love it so? He doesn’t know, he just does. A single image fascinating him for hours and invading his dreams.
He’s aroused now, the need overcoming the shame, but he’s determined to hold out. Hurriedly, he stuffs the papers back into the hole in the wall and drags the bookcase back into place, realises there are tears on his cheeks and wipes them away self-consciously, even though he’s alone.
He sits heavily in the chair before the computer and powers it on. The flat screen lighting up and filling the room with a pale glow as the drives clatter away. He peels an old Post-it note from under the desk and opens a browser window, into a proxy, tapping in the numbers he reads off the paper, numbers he knows, but checks every time.
It’s a primitive forum, old by internet standards. No graphics, no user icons even, just text. That’s all they need. Here they share stories, fantasies, the dark and the forbidden. He scans the titles one by one, eyes flickering in the dark from one to the next.
NEW: Devoured by a demon – 1 NEW: Scalding in the pot – 1,2 NEW: Eat my tits – 1,2 NEW: Donor’s Rights? – 1,2,3,4,5 NEW: Blood Sausage – 1 NEW: What about clones? – 1 NEW: Mad Cow Disease? – 1 NEW: Cannibal Holocaust (Redux) – 1, 2, 3
Then he sees it, the little ‘x’ to mark a private message and he opens it up.
From: MeatGirl69 To: DaddyCook1971 I’ve seen you on the forums, talking. You always seem to be the voice of reason, and your intelligence and your comments shine through every time. I think, from things you’ve said, that we live near each other, and I would like to meet. Maybe I can be your donor, maybe you can be mine, maybe we can have someone who understands, in the flesh, to talk about these things.
She leaves an address and a time. Tomorrow night. She makes it so easy for him. He feels that strange combination again: fear, arousal, shame, excitement. He closes the window, shuts down the computer and shuffles up the stairs to bed. Heaving into it, he leans over, hips back so she can’t tell he’s aroused. He kisses her, once, on the neck, aching to bite, but he can’t and he won’t.
He sleeps little. The address burned into his mind, dancing before his eyes until the sun begins to crest the horizon. He shouldn’t go. Not again.
***
It’s not a hotel, it’s a house out in the suburbs. He drives, precisely because so few people do in the city. The boot is filled with his things. Plastic bags, plastic gloves, a change of clothes, all the tools, everything he might need.
The club sits heavy in his pocket. An old-style truncheon, buried deep, a reassuring weight, familiar at his side. He sits in the car and smooths back his thinning hair, building up the courage. His hands are trembling as he forces them to obey, wrenches open the door and walks briskly to the front door through the drifting mist of autumn drizzle.
No bell, just a knocker. He clenches his fist to still the trembling and raps it three times, smartly against the door. He tastes bile, his stomach spinning with tension, his whole body rigid as the door opens, safe on its security chain. A single eye peers up through the gap at him, a quiet voice, almost lost against the wind. “Daddy?”
“Meat?”
They both nod to each other, and she fiddles with the chain.
“My real name is…”
She cuts him off, opening the door, shaking her head. “We don’t need to know, Daddy. These names are the real us anyway, right?” She’s so quiet, timid, a slip of a thing really, with close-cropped hair, neat little breasts under a white blouse, that draws his gaze immediately. Shorts, bare feet. She barely opens her mouth when she talks, a tight-lipped smile and doleful eyes, perhaps as nervous as he is.
He steps inside and closes the door, follows her, glancing down, watching her hips, watching her body, imagining her naked and… that shame and excitement hits him again, makes him giddy, dizzy, he almost stumbles.
“Do you want to talk or…?” So quiet, he has to strain to hear her; that little-girl lisp to her voice is almost endearing.
“Or,” he says emphatically.
She shivers at the way he says it. “Do you want to… eat me… or do you want to be… eaten?” Her eyes are wide, staring, is it fear, is it hunger, what is it?
“I want…” he swallows back the acid taste in his mouth as he speaks the forbidden. “I want you… to eat me.”
She takes his hand; her touch is light, but cold. She pulls him by the finger towards another room, gently urging him behind her, then ahead of her, through the door, sliding in behind him and closing it with a click.
He stops and looks around, blinking his eyes. Every wall, the floor, and even the ceiling is covered in plastic sheeting. Stapled to the moulding and the skirting board, pinned to the Artex. The room has a single furnishing. A mattress, under more plastic, an elegant and expensive set of chef’s knives lying on it in an open case.
“This is my dream room,” she says, quietly behind him. “Where I come to think about these things.”
“I have somewhere the same.”
“How do you want to…?”
He heaves a deep sigh and slides his hands into his pockets. Strangely more ashamed now than he had been in the sanctuary, or fumbling with himself over pixelated blood, imaginary flesh and bone. “I’ve changed my mind.”
She stares at him, blank incomprehension and there, beneath the little-girl-lost act, a flash of anger. Her lips are still pressed tight, but she’s no longer smiling, her hands behind her as she glowers, sneering out the words. “You can’t change your mind.”
“Meat… this is just supposed to be a fantasy, a kink. You’ve crossed a line into madness,” he raises his gaze to meet hers, but the act is entirely worn away now; she’s furious.
“You told me you wanted this. You came to me. You consented. You’re a donor,” her mouth opens now as she hisses at him, and he blanches. Her teeth are filed to points.
“And the others. I bet they were donors too. Did they change their minds? Did they really consent?” His voice is harder now. His fist winds around the truncheon and holds it tight, white knuckled.
There’s a ripping sound. A blade, hidden beneath her blouse. She bares those sharp teeth and brings it up like a dagger, a Japanese sushi knife, trailing ribbons of duct tape.
Time seems to slow down as he yanks the truncheon out of his pocket and throws up his arm to ward off the knife. She comes at him like a furie, screaming like an animal. Her blade’s so sharp he doesn’t feel the cut. A razor’s edge parting his suit, his skin, his flesh, but it doesn’t stop him. The hard length of the truncheon catches her in the throat, and she goes down, the scream abruptly cut off, replaced by choking, dropping the knife as she struggles to breathe and claws at her own neck.
He pins her, strip-binds her wrists and kneels on her. Middle-aged weight holding her down as hot, wet blood runs down his arm. Absently, he licks at the salty-copper while she gasps like a landed fish under him, and he fumbles for his mobile phone.
One call to the station and this is all over. Following a lead on the Internet. Plaudits, promotion, newspaper articles, talk shows, and interviews in magazines. He’ll be a hero.
She struggles weakly beneath him, and the taste of blood fills his mouth with metal.
Almost touching the call button, his thumb hovers.
A writing exercise in creating the most unlikable group of heroes possible, meeting in the most stereotypical way possible.
In the eastern part of Dunlunn, where the slums meet the stinking river, there’s a pub: The Toll. The Toll is a shitty place, but it belongs to the people of the river’s end, and while they haven’t got two pennies to rub together, they’re proud of the one penny they do have. The beer is piss, but it’s safer than the water and, more importantly, it’s a place where the gangs and the mobs, the brawlers, the dealers, the pimps and whores can meet without slitting each other’s throats.
There are three likely lads at the coveted corner table, slurping the pissy beer because they don’t know any better and shooting the shit as boys are wont to do.
Dinn’s a geezer, born into the river’s end and the descendant of thieves, liars, cheats, killers and bastards as far back as anyone cares to check. He’s ambitious. He’s dangerous. He’s gotten about as far as someone of his age and prospects can go, and he wants more.
Jape’s a spiv, greasier than a frying pan, slick as oil. Nothing sticks to him. He deals drugs, he scams, he cheats. He’d pimp his own sister for a thrupenny bit, and two pence of that would go to him. In fact, it has.
Bel is what might charitably be called a fucking disaster and less charitably called a ‘silly bollocks’. His dad made a bad bet with the wrong people and had to move down to River’s End after he paid his debts and lost his job. Bel tries to fit in, but he can’t hide the schooling he’s had or his soft nature, no matter how hard he tries. If it wasn’t for Dinn and Jape, he’d be dead ten times over.
“I need more.” that’s what Dinn’s saying, swirling his beer more than he’s drinking it. “Prospects is what I’m talking about. I want to move up in the world.”
“We’ve got prospects!” Jape’s trying to reassure him; he’s got his life all mapped out. “A couple of years and you’ll be a big man. Those streets’ll be your manor. You know it, and I know it. As for me? I’m going to get myself a nice little brothel and live out the rest of my life surrounded by fine women and other people’s money.”
“You guys wouldn’t get anywhere north of the river.” This is probably the only thing that Bel has any seniority on. The only thing he can talk about that the others don’t know better than he does.
Jape’s not convinced. “I can act sophistimacated. Rich people have got to fuck and snort as much as anyone else, right?”
“Yeah, but you think anyone who lives near The White Tower is going to pay out for your sister’s minge when they can rent a succubus from the Collegiate?”
“My sister’s minge,” sniffs Jape, straightening his back, “is choice mate. Choice. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“Shut up, you two. I’m fucking serious.”
“So am I.” Says Jape. “We’ve got it as good as we can hope to get it here. Why risk it?”
“There’s got to be more. Someone’s got to get out of this shithole from time to time. What about Drek Stonekiller?”
“You’re not serious, you’re mad,” Bel’s got an opinion about everything. “Drek got lucky, that’s all. You know how many people never come back from the wilderlands?”
“Ah, but those who do come back,” Dinn’s nothing if not persistent, “are rich as hell.”
“Rich alone won’t do it,” Bel knows, he’s been there. “Money can’t make your blood blue or make up for where you come from. They’re stuck-up cunts up there. Only way to win ’em over is to be a hero.”
“A hero?” Dinn’s eyes have a faraway look as he tastes the word. It’s not one you hear often in River’s End.
This is an early first draft of the first part of this story, you can find it and the rest of my neo-pulp stories in the collection Pulp Nova, available at Lulu.
Tessa groaned and wound the sheets around her head, hoping the noise would go away, but it wouldn’t, the clamorous ring of her TeleBand just keep going and going, the greenish light of its screen flashing as it strove to get her attention. She fumbled her arm out of the mummified cocoon of her sheets and groped for her glasses on the bedside fresher, fumbling them onto her face and falling with a thump onto the floor as she writhed like some bizarre linen caterpillar across the floor to the Teleband.
Cold metal and worn leather were felt against her fingertips and she sat up, the sheet falling around her slender, shirt-covered body as she hit the answer button and squinted through the thumbprint on her glasses at the tri-d, metal face that appeared, hovering, over her wristband.
“Maam.”
It was Robur, her partner, a 41st interation 124C model Metalman, not very lifelike, but an effective partner and a good ‘man’ to have on your side in a fight.
“Robur… you do understand that humans have to sleep right? I have to get eight hours natural a week rather than hypersleep or I’m no good to anyone.” Tessa pulled up the hem of her nightshirt and wiped the lens of her glasses so she could see more clearly. He was just a Metalman, he wouldn’t care about a little flashed skin.
“I am sorry maam but Captain Newton was most insistant that I contact you. We have a Code Prometheus incident at the BioVat facility on the corner of Gernsback and Capek. The proctors are containing it at the moment but they want Science Police on site as soon as possible.”
Robur’s voice became more and more annoying the longer he spoke for, that grating buzz of an artificial voicebox was especially irritating before coffee and breakfast.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can Robur. Have the proctors set up a perimeter one block around BioVat and deploy Mag Screens for containment. I’m on my way.”
Tessa slapped the TeleBand and cut him off, stepping up out of the cocoon of sheets and peeling off her nightshirt.
“Lights!”
The daybulbs glowed dimly and slowly built up to full brightness as she crossed the room to get her uniform. She paused a moment and wrinkled her nose at the sight of herself in the mirror. Short curly hair, Buddy-Holly glasses, a figure so slim and boyish that if it wasn’t for the way her hips moved everyone would think she was a man. She was strong though, despite being slight, flexible and fast and – most importantly – brilliant. They’d wanted her to go into research, her parents, but the Science Police was where it was at, safeguarding the advances of others and protecting the city from the terrors that lay beyond the dome.
Tessa pulled on her foil cap and stepped into the ion shower. There was a hum and a tingle as the electric stream and a gust of air blew away the top layer of dead skin cells and she hopped back out, pulling on her uniform. Royal blue trousers a size too big for her, a black blouse and white tie, her gunbelt with its ionic pistol and her long white lab coat. Lastly she strapped her Science Police band to her other wrist and checked herself in the mirror. It would do.
Tessa threw open the window and stepped out onto the balcony, pressing the button on her TeleBand to summon a police disk. Below her the whole of Science City Zero was laid out, a glittering panorama of lights and sounds, the shining beacons of cars, planes, disks and balloons. The spires of the banded towers, the web of their skywalks and transit tubes. Above it all the great arch of the dome, the night sky barely seen beyond it, only The Moon bright enough to compete with the scintillating, kaleidoscopic glow of the city.
The disk arrived, swooping up to her balcony on dim pencil beams of force. Tessa leapt aboard and swept down over the city, heading as fast as she dared towards the incident.
***
Tessa swept down out of the sky and jumped from the disk, leaving it to flit its way to another appointment with a sudden surge in velocity. Fishing in her pockets she popped a caffeine and a breakfast pill from her dispenser and strode purposefully up to the line of proctors, waving to Robur as she did so.
“Ah, greetings Maam.” The Metalman waved to her, his chassis gleaming beneath the daybulb streetlights, all burnished blue-steel and armoured rivets. He was surrounded by proctors in their heavy armour, lightning guns in their hands as the finished establishing their perimeter.
“Report?”
“The cordon has been thrown around as you requested, the incident appears to be contained but there is ongoing violence within the BioVat building. Spy-Ray examination reveals several unidentified hominid-like forms and several scientists inside, perhaps hostages. There’s interference from the fires and electrical shorts, so that information is only seventy-percent accurate, for which I apologise.”
Tessa turned to the proctor captain, looking up, her neck aching as she looked into his faceless helmet.
“We’ve surrounded the building with ten megawatt energy screens and have deployed three units in a cordon around the building, there to back you up should things go pear-shaped maam. Captain Newton has ordered us to cooperate fully, but we’re only to enter at your behest.”
Tessa popped another caffeine pill, she had a feeling she’d need it. As she swallowed she unbuckled her holster and hoisted out her ionic pistol, checking the charge and the settings, nodding to Robur to do the same.
“What do we know about BioVat Robur?”
“Independent biological research and development company maam. They research into synthetic life but their bread and butter is creating synth-men for biological experimentation.”
“Brainless clones for medical research… who’d attack a medical facility?” Tessa scowled and marched up to the line, gesturing the proctor on duty to take this screen down when they went through. Robur pulled his own pistol and stood beside her.
“Three, two, one…”
The crackling screen faded out with a low buzz and the two ran forward, the light slap of her All-Stars contrasting with the heavy clank-clank of Robur’s feet. He wasn’t exactly stealthy. The screen came back up behind them, sealing the area behind an impenetrable screen of force and they slammed up against the wall, either side of the door.
“Ready?”
Robur’s steely head nodded, once, the glow behind his eyes intensifying and then he stepped around, kicking the revolving door out of its housing and sending it sliding violently across the foyer to smash the reception desk to smithereens.
Inside it was chaos, full of smoke, fires burning here and there, showers of sparks as cabling burned and shorted. The ground was slippery with a pinkish goo and the cause was readily apparent. Deformed, cancerous, muscles ballooned to ridiculous proportions, the synth-men had broken free of their containers. Twisted, like hairless gorillas, veins pulsing, rage in their eyes, the handful in the entrance turned their incoherent anger on the interlopers and leapt to the attack.
“Does not compute!” Robur cried with what sounded like genuine anguish. “Synth-men have no brains… no conciousness!”
“Worry about that later!” Tessa darted inside, sliding on a slick of the pinkish goo and ducking under the tree-trunk arm of one of the synth-men. Her ionic pistol hummed in her hand as she twisted, sliding on her bottom across the chequered floor and firing, a blue beam of coherent electricity striking the synth-man and hurling him to the far wall with the stink of ozone and bacon.
The remaining synth-men bounded and leapt, roaring like jungle apes as they moved. Tessa scrambled out of the way as one landed on the spot where she had just been. Thanking blind chance that she was as small and slight as she was. Where it landed the floor cratered, muscle so dense it must have weighed twice as much as it should and been in unspeakable agony, crushed by its own muscles. Robur shot the other out of the air deftly with his pistol, playing his beam across the creature’s chest until he was sure it was still.
By then the third had gotten its meaty paw upon Tessa and had her by the ankle, hauling her upside down before it’s face, ape-like fangs bared as it roared, spattering her glasses with spittle. There was a crash nearby as Robur slammed into the remaining synth-man before he could recover, bearing him down to the ground and pounding his neanderthal brow with fists like hammers while Tessa twisted and struggled.
Blinded by the spit she felt its other hand grasp her around her head, the span of its fingers sufficient to pluck her cranium from her spine as though it were plucking a grape. She tried to calm herself, to remember her scientific boxing lessons and then she lashed out with all the strength she could muster, slamming two of her knuckles one side of the synth-man’s head and the butt of her pistol the other, just between the ear and the jaw.
The creature roared and dropped her, she landed awkwardly on her shoulders and back, upside down, lifting the ionic pistol and blindly firing between the creature’s legs. The roar became a howl, high pitched almost beyond hearing and this time the ozone stink was mixed with burning hair as the thing dropped like a felled tree.
The bone-crunching noises of Robur’s fight also came to a halt and he strode over to help her up.
“Are you alright maam?”
“No thanks to you. Why didn’t you attack the one that had me?”
“I knew you could handle it maam, within a ninety-three percent probability anyway. Taking the remaining problem out of the equation seemed the best course of action.”
“There’ll be others, we need to get to the lab where the spy-ray saw the scientists.”
They nodded to each other and ascended the stairs two and three at a time, heading back through the offices, blasting left and right as more of the synth-men emerged from the side rooms, blinded by pain and rage there was nothing they could do but put them down.
“This is monstrous, whoever did this is a sociopath.” Tessa growled as they stood back to back, blasting away at the tide of muscle that dogged their every step, climbing over the bodies of dead office workers and the remnants of destroyed desks as they finally got back to the factory doors.
They burst through and slammed the metal doors shut behind them, standing on the gantry that lead to the control chamber, beneath them a sea of tubes, many of them broken, filled with the pink plasm that supported the synth-men growth, but there was only one inside. A brute bigger than any other they had seen, towering over the cowering scientists in the control room.
“Hold the fort Robur, I’m going to get the scientists.”
The Metalman nodded and slid his arms through the handles, bracing back against the door as it rang like a bell, massive fists hammering from the other side, roars and snarls of frustrated as the iron and steel of robot and door refused to give, though it began to dent.
The hulking synth-man turned, one eye massive and yellow, larger than the other, one whole side of its body larger than the other. Clumsily it turned and loped towards her as she marched towards it, ionic pistol raised.
“Science Police, surrender to impartial justice!” She gave the warning, even though she knew it couldn’t understand. The body of a monster and the mind of a newborn.
Predictably, it ignored her and began to run, a lopsided lope towards her.
Behind her Robur channelled his own power into his chassis, electrifying himself and the door, shocking the synth-men hammering on the other side to death, his whole body arched and glowing, heating up from the power coursing through him.
For her part Tessa kept marching on the giant synth-man, depressing the firing stud on her pistol, the blue coruscating light struck the creature full in the chest, burning its flesh, charring its skin, but still it kept on coming, teeth bared, marching into the ravening beam as though walking into the wind.
Tessa stared, disbelieving as the massive creature came closer, closer, closer and reached into the beam, burning off one of its own fingers to snatch the pistol from her hand. It grinned in triumph as it crushing it like a drinks can in its maimed fist but Tessa didn’t miss a beat, swinging her leg back, then forward and planting the very toe of her boot into the mass of dangling flesh between the things legs. It grunted and she grasped, and pivoted, using its own off-centre weight to hurl it from the gantry to plummet to its broken-necked doom amongst the shattered tubes below.
The fight was over, the scientists in shock and useless as witnesses. They called in the proctors to guide them out and put out the fires, that left them free to look over the control room without interference. It was a wreck, a mess, evidence was hard to come by in such a disruption of blood and wreckage, but they divided it up into sections and went through it methodically, despite Tessa’s aches and pains. This was where a Metalman came into his own, they couldn’t experience boredom and his mechanical precision was an inspiration.
It was Tessa that found it though, breaking open the feeder mechanism to the MONOVAC she ran her fingers down the mass of punch-cards and felt the hard edges of newer cards inserted into the sequence.
“What do you make of these Robur?” She plucked the newer cards out of the feeder, tucking torn pieces from her notebook into the gaps to mark the spaces.
The Metalman took the cards and fed them into his universal slot, shuffling them like a stage magician as they flew into his slot and his tubes and switches cogitated with a noisy flickering, digesting the information.
“They’re plasm codes maam. I am no expert but according to my interior library these sequences relate to muscle, bone and nerve tissue growth, including brain tissue. I conjecture that…”
“…someone introduced a little Mr Hyde into our mindless Doctor Jeckylls.”
“Indeed maam.”
“So then, there’s no question.”
“None at all maam.”
Tessa tossed the remaining punch cards angrily onto the floor, spilling them everywhere, kicking the pile so it fell between the slats in the gantry and turning back to Robur, stabbig her finger into his impassive face.
John was startled awake by the sound of screaming. His eyes jumped open, and for a momen,t he was blinded by the light. Then things began to swim into view. A hospital room, no surprise there, a smell of blood and antiseptic in his nostrils and then he realised it was him who was screaming.
It sounded wrong.
This was not his aged, croaking, earthy voice; it sounded like a cat or a girl. He wasn’t screaming though; he was startled, upset, but he was not making his mouth open or his lungs empty in that shrieking cacophony. He tried to lift his arms to stifle his mouth, and they would not obey him; nothing would.
He felt himself lifted, as though he weighed nothing. The nurse seemed like a giantess, cartoonishly enormous, but even his eyes wouldn’t obey him as the world span and twisted about him. All was confusion, fear, and vertigo as he tried to fathom what had happened to him. Had he become paralysed? Was he hallucinating? Were these the tortures of some hell that he had never believed in? The visions of a dying man.
The room span and twisted again, and the vision changed. A young woman, holding him in her arms, but who was she? It took him a moment, a long moment, racking his memory until he recognised his mother. Not as the old woman, light as a bird in his arms as she gave her final breath, not as the fierce matron who had raised him after his father died, no. This was his mother as he’d never seen her, young, pretty, red-faced and sweaty, eyes out of focus from pain and drugs, cradling his tiny body against her bosom.
He was an infant again.
Or was he?
He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move. All he could do was watch mutely from behind his own eyes through the cringing embarrassment of sucking his own mother’s teat, of shitting and pissing himself helplessly. He was trapped, imprisoned in his own body, and he went mad.
He screamed against the walls of his consciousness, metaphorically tearing with his nails at the fleshy coffin in which he found himself, looking for a word, a twitch, anything that showed he was having any impact at all upon this body, this new and old life.
When the madness passed, he tried to think. Was this a reincarnation? Then why was he himself again? He’d been an artist, not a scientist, not a priest, not a philosopher. He’d heard people talk about space curving back in upon itself and space and time being one. Was that what had happened? Had time curved back upon itself as well? Was he some ghost of his former life playing back over itself again, an echo? There was nobody he could ask; he couldn’t speak. All he could do was stare out through his own eyes and listen through his own ears when something was seen or said that had some bearing on his situation, though that was still limited to the things known in his lifetime.
There were no answers to be had.
A black depression descended as his life unfolded before him. Every mistake, every glory coming into being with relentless predictability. Every mistake he’d ever regretted, every triumph he’d ever had. The missteps anticipated and dreaded, the wonders dulled by repetition.
He felt the tarmac under his knees as, broken-hearted, he cried in the street.
He cursed himself as a clumsy fool as his fumbling teenage self haltingly tried to make love.
He scowled from behind his own face at the mawkish grins and self-congratulation at the birth of his son, who would later hate him.
He shook his head in resignation as he saw his marriage collapse through his own, ill-considered affairs, dulled by drink and mediocrity as he sought sensation and freedom.
Then the worst came. He felt his body grow feeble, ill, old. He felt the tremors come, the cough and the blood. His eighty years had come and gone for the second time while he watched it fly past, a mute and imprisoned spectator. Now he could barely see, barely hear; his prison was beginning to crumble around him as the sound of the softly beeping machines and the flicker of the fluorescent lights faded out.
Perhaps now, perhaps this time, he’d finally be free.
Cyber: Involving, using, or relating to computers, especially the internet. Cyborg: In science fiction stories, a creature that is part human and part machine. URL: Uniform Resource Locators, a website address. Borgerlig: The Swedish term for the bourgeois, the middle class. Bourgeois: Belonging to or characteristic of the middle class, typically concerning its perceived materialistic values or conventional moral attitudes.
This book is a cluster of ideas and inspirations for playing a (forbidden) corporate focussed game or campaign of Cy_Borg by Stockholm Kartel. Here you will find corporate character classes, character generation alternatives, a modified mission generator, and other odds and sods.
The Blodrak Corporation knows that reality is a simulation and has injected operatives into the simulation. They’re trying to find a way to save the world (the world is where they keep all their money, after all) by running a repeat simulation at many times normal speed. The trouble is that the simulated populace, government, corporations and cyberpunk keep fucking it up.
You’re there to try new things, troubleshoot and guide the simulation to an eventual positive outcome.
And no, you only get paid per hour that takes place in reality.
If reality is even reality…
This is a RAPID PROTOTYPE made using AI input and art, albeit with human oversight and touch-up. If it proves popular enough, it will be expanded, and more human art and creativity will go into a larger edition.
Wightchester is a ‘city crawl’ adventure book for 5e D&D, Grimdark 5e, Mork Borg and OSR roleplaying games. Set in an alternative 17th century England where the dead have risen from the grave and one city, completely overrun, has been turned into a hellish prison for the dregs of the Kingdom’s society. Dark, bleak, challenging horror fantasy in a setting of almost unrivalled detail.
500 pages of an Early Modern walled city, packed with intrigue, mystery, horror and death.
A fantastical horror comic in the style of the old EC horror comics, schlock, sleaze and shock. In this issue a drug turns out to be more than you bargained for, a meteor ends the life of a city and an alien world is not what it seems.
Ramshackle buildings of wood dominate the space of the square, skeletal and blackened, ripe for demolition and rebuilding even before the dead rose. It is like a hangover from the early half of the century, before the great fires turned people to the favour of stone and brick. It is a choked tangle of alleys, loose cobbles and filth-strangled gutters. Even if you were amongst the rotting dead, you do not think you would choose this place to spend your days. The rookeries that were once crowded with workers are now home to true rooks and crows, that put up a squawing clatter at sight of you, which brings a returning moan from the dead.
The Shambles
The whole of the square is dominated by the great wooden buildings that once housed the destitute and the poor. They are crumbling, broken and rotting wood littering the streets, the oiled paper windows of most of these verminous rookeries have long fallen away, admitting the elements to the interior and washing the detritis of people’s lives out into the gutter. A pair of rusted scissors here, a faggot of twigs there, a crudely carved doll with a mop of soggy wool for her hair, tugged by a rat along the dirty cobbles.
Rome House
Two floors high, this house seems to be amongst the smallest dwellings here, though it is squat and broad – like a trunk or crate. At some point the wood was whitewashed, but this is now stained brown and grey and peeling away in great flakes that flutter in the slightest breeze. The door hangs open, mouldering wicker and rotting scraps of leather scattered down the bowing wooden steps.
A simple hall, with steps running up one side to the upper floor, drives through the house from one end to the other. Four doors mark it, two sets of two opposite each other down its length. All their doors open. Black mould climbs the walls and the floorboards creak ominously, soft, damp and pliable under your feet.
The woodden steps are on the brink of collapse, anyone entering by the steps at the front or rear of the house must make a Dexterity Save against a DC of 10 or have them splinter and break, suffering 1d4 piercing damage.
The floorboards throughout the building are also rotten, and will give way under heavy weight or vigorous action one time out of six (Roll 1d6, it collapses under the people fighting or very heavy individuals, with a 3/6 chance of breaking through the floor below as well, suffering 1d4 damage for each floor – since the sodden wood breaks their fall).
Ground Floor: Reception
This room seems to have been a place for taking off and leaving one’s outer clothing, and the muck of hard work. The floor is board, but it could be mistaken for a dirt floor, so caked in the mix of plaster, paint and mud. A half dozen pairs of shoes – curling from damp and flowering with blue mould – are lined up in front of two wooden benches, and there are hooks on the walls as well, hanging with smocks and tunics. A rusty iron heating stove stands in the middle of the room, the dirt around it stained orange and red.
Loot:
[ ]One day’s worth of coal.
[ ] None of the clothing or leather is recoverable, lost to mould and rot.
Ground Floor: Parlour
The wet wooden door is hanging off its hinges and crawling with woodlice. Past it you see a simple room, clean but soaking floorboards, two tables – a card table and a larger, square table set with bowls and spoons of wood. The parchment windows are long torn away and the damp has dissolved the deck of cards on the table into wet, swollen pieces. They’re only recognisible from the disembodied heads of the paper royalty.
A stone-lined fireplace hasn’t protected its ashes from being washed out into the room – a thin grey muck that stretches halfway across the room. The firewood teems with insects, like the door, broken down into wet splinters.
Loot:
Inside the bend of the flue is a missing brick, wherein is stashed a small bag of 5 silver pieces and 9 copper coins. A tiny key also nestles amongst the coins.
Ground Floor: Room 1 (Force the door DC10)
The next door is open but a crack, the wood has swollen with the damp, tight into the frame, though it was already open, giving plenty or purchase. A nest of twigs is tangled against the door, fragments and pieces of wickerwork.
Once you make your way inside there isn’t that much to see. A small bench with rusted tools, bundles of wet wicker, a few unfinished baskets. It seems that the person who lived here – sleeping on a rotten pallet of straw and blankets – used it as their workshop as well as their living space. Many of the people here may have been doing the same.
Orpheum Lofts is one of our system-agnostic Giallo settings, these books are collections of characters and circumstances, adventure kits rather than out-and-out adventures. Here’s a bonus adventure by the author – Miguel Ribeiro. Buy our Giallo RPG books HERE. They are more directly useful with Actual Fucking Monsters, but easily adaptable to any system.
HER HEART WAS A LOCKED ROOM AND NOBODY HAD THE KEY
This is a short scenario to be combined with Postmortem Giallo: Orpheum Lofts, or even played without it. It’s a clichéd giallo story, which features several of the tropes associated with the genre and starts with the murder of a Loft’s resident, the jazz singer Stephanie Armitage. The players can choose among a list of pre-generated characters or come up with their own. By default, the scenario uses Actual Fucking Monsters mechanics,but it’s easy to adapt it to any other contemporary horror role-playing game system.
THE LOFTS
The Orpheum Lofts were built in the 1920s and, long ago, they were upper-middle-class dwellings. Over time, there has been an enormous change in the surrounding area, which led to extreme property devaluation. Consequently, the building has decayed, the beautiful Art Déco façade is now in shambles, the lift rarely works, the sewage pipes, old-fashioned and rotten, taint the air with the foetid odour of waste and, in the basement, a deepening sinkhole will probably cause structural damage to the whole building. It’s not a nice place to live anymore.
CAST
The cast is divided among Playable and Non-Playable Characters. They all have attached giallo tropes. If you would like to connect the clichés to game mechanics, there are penalties which can be used attached to certain tropes. For instance, an Outsider character should have increased difficulty when dealing with authorities and in most social rolls. The Prime Suspects’ relation with the police should also be rather strained. The same holds true for other Suspects and Unreliable Witness; but, as Witness only, a failure shouldn’t get a character detained, more likely moved up to Suspect level. Possible Victims should have increased difficulties when dealing with tense situations, or when being pursued by aggressors. Lesbians may have a hard time dealing with male characters, especially if they are authority figures or conservatives. Unwilling Investigators may even get a downgraded difficulty when gathering clues, but this will lead them to become either Possible Victims or Suspects. Maybe even both. Weirdoes should have high penalties to all social rolls and are on their way to become Prime Suspects at the first failure. These trope mechanics could work also in a similar way as Consequences do in Actual Fucking Monsters (p. 63).
PLAYABLE CHARACTERS:
BILLY BRUBAKER: he’s a small-town boy recently arrived in New York. Young, handsome and athletic, at first he wanted to be a model, an actor, a singer or some other kind of star. Then he watched Midnight Cowboy, in a late night movie screening, got scarred, and found a job at the Stardust Café, waiting tables. He has worked there for little more than a month and he’s in lust with Stephanie Armitage, a jazz musician who plays at the Café every Friday night. She doesn’t give him the time of day but, luckily, he found a vacant apartment near her place. He watches her undress at night and dress in the morning. She doesn’t seem to care about being watched by the neighbours, her bedroom curtains are always open, so jerking-off to Stephie has become his nightly ritual. He’s an Outsider, a Voyeur and the Unreliable Crime Witness. He could become a Suspect too. He lives in the 8th floor of a building with a view over the Orpheum Lofts.
OLIVIA WATSON: a year ago, Olivia Watson was a name to be reckoned with, a shining star in New York’s journalistic milieu. An investigative reporter for the NY Times, she had a reputation for being absolutely ruthless and sharp. In other words, she’s the worst kind of bitch. For two years, Olivia managed to deliver the most sensationalist news articles. Amoral and ambitious, Olivia is capable of anything for a good story. A well-placed lover in the Mayor’s office passed her exclusive and confidential information about the city’s affairs, a mutually beneficial relation that did wonders for Watson’s career. However, she wasn’t content to publish only the dirt that suited the Mayor’s political agenda. Olivia wanted more. Everything! Perhaps she was blinded by ambition… Olivia began to dig deeper than she was allowed to and, when she tried to write about the web of corruption in New York City, all doors slammed in her face. Her blazing career crumbled in seconds. Now, she works for a sleazy tabloid and had to move to the decaying Orpheum Lofts building. That’s how she met Tracy Cates, an Anthropologist. Olivia was following up a story about sadomasochist nightclubs and had – what was expected to be – a one night affair with the Columbia University assistant professor. It turned up to be more than that; they are engaged in a relationship and Tracy almost moved to her flat. She’s an Outsider. At 30-something, she’s still beautiful enough to be a Victim, but probably too old to be the giallo star. She’s also a Lesbian Lover. Olivia lives in the 7th floor.
JOE DOBBS AND/ OR MURIEL DOBBS: the Dobbs couple owns the Stardust Café. Joe and Muriel’s dream is opening a bigger place, located in a better and busier part of town. For now, they have to make do with what they have and cater to their clientele, consisting mainly of students and intellectuals, who enjoy Tribeca’s nightlife. Joe is a sensible guy and most of his clients see him as a friend and a confidant. Muriel helps her husband managing the Stardust Café, and waits at tables. She isn’t as solicitous and charismatic as her husband, but the male clientele loves her. Joe and Muriel are very close to the first victim, so they are potential Unwilling Investigators and, most likely, Murder Suspects. Muriel could also be one of the next Victims, especially if she’s a non-player character. They live both in Tribeca, but not that close to the Lofts.
PETER STONE: though he hasn’t lived in Orpheum Lofts for several years, he occasionally calls Andy, the janitor, to talk about life in the old neighbourhood. That’s how he comes to know about Stephanie’s death. Peter, a retired NYPD detective, hasn’t seen her for more than three years, but still has a certain fondness for the girl. Not the kind of grandfatherly affection, but something carnal. He maintains a connection to the NYPD, but he’s too old to be of use and there are rumours that he’s lately becoming senile. He lives in Jersey now, and will stay at a fleabag hotel to help with the investigation, so he’s an Outsider. If Peter gets too involved in the story he may become a Murder Witness, and his old age and nosey attitude will turn Pete into an Unreliable Witness.
STEPHANIE ARMITAGE: red-haired, green eyed, dresses in an exceptionally elegant way, has a melodious voice and a seductive, hypnotising look. She is a gorgeous and alluring woman. She also dies right at the beginning of the scenario and all that will mean very little then. Stephanie was a jazz singer and acted frequently at the Stardust Café. The first victim lived on the 7th floor.
KARL HUGHES: an intellectual type, who studies at a local university and majors in Art History and Music. To pay for his studies he does bartender work and gigs with his jazz group in some bars, including the Stardust Café. He lives in the Orpheum Lofts and has a kind of relationship with a jobless actress, Julia Lowell. He doesn’t like her that much, though. In fact, he was in love with Stephanie, but the singer never cared for him, though they had a short affair in the past. Karl’s the Prime Suspect. The fact that he looks like Jeffrey Dahmer doesn’t help a bit. Karl lives on the 6th floor.
KARL HUGHES
Mind: d8 Body: d8 Spirit: d8 Mask: University Student d4 Skill: Art History d8 Skill: Music Theory d8 Skill: Musician d8 Initiative: d8+d4
TRACY CATES: a 30-something Anthropologist who works at Columbia University, where she’s an Assistant Professor. Tracy is preparing her PhD thesis on the cultural relevance of alternative sexual practices, such as bondage and sadomasochism. She’s bisexual and fell in love with Olivia Watson a couple of months ago. The strange thing is Olivia moved to the same building where Tracy used to live with her former boyfriend, George, a weird fellow fascinated with Coney Island amusement parks, who mysteriously vanished a while ago. She’s a Lesbian Lover, too old and not attractive enough to be a giallo star. Perhaps not even a Victim. She lives in Chelsea, but spends a lot of time in Olivia’s apartment, on the 7th floor.
THE MYSTERY TENANT: Tall, slim, always wearing a black Mackintosh, a dark fedora and sunglasses. No one at the Lofts has seen his face yet. He appears from time to time in his flat and stays there for only a few days. No one knows his real name, how old he is or what’s his job. He rented the apartment almost three years ago, but he rarely goes there. The neighbours gossip about him and spread imagined stories about the man’s true identity. The local kids are also rather curious (and frightened) about the Mystery Tenant and call him The Living Vampire. They fantasize he’s a rare type of bloodsucker, who’s still alive, but has monstrous powers and can even walk in sunlight, but still has to take special precautions, like wearing a hat and sunglasses. He may become a Prime Suspect if the characters convince the detectives of that. Or else, later in the scenario, when Karl is arrested. He has rented an apartment on the 9th floor.
ANDY MCDUFF, THE JANITOR: Andy is bearded, out of shape, has short thinning hair, rarely talks to the tenants – just casual conversation –, and spends most of his time reading horror novels or staring at the lobby walls, sitting by his desk. He looks kind of creepy and he was known to have a fixation on Stephanie. The singer surely didn’t feed his interest; she avoided him like the plague. He’s a widower and some of the tenants suspect he murdered his late wife or that he has an unhealthy relationship with his teenage daughter, Charlie. He’s a Weirdo, not very likely to be a Prime Suspect. Andy lives in the ground floor, at the janitor’s flat.
ANDY MCDUFF
Mind: d10 Body: d8 Spirit: d6 Mask: English Teacher d4 Skill: Teaching d6 Skill: English Lit d6 Skill: English Language d6 Mask: Janitor d4 Skill: Cleaning d8 Skill: Plumber d8 Skill: Electrician d8 Initiative: d10+d4
LOUIS BROWN: nobody knows where he works, or even if he works at all. Since the man is black, his neighbours assume he’s a drug dealer. The strange visitors who regularly come by his apartment seem to confirm everybody’s suspicions. His trope is the Weirdo. In another genre, he would be the Token Black Man, and that put him among the first victims, but that’s not giallish at all. Louis Lives on the 9th floor.
JOHN BURTON: tall, dark, rough looking, he looks about 40 years old and is in very good shape. John is an ex-military, who currently works as a security guard. He has no ties to the other tenants. Sometimes, when he’s drunk, he gets aggressive. John may become a Suspect and he lives on the 7th floor.
DETECTIVE ALBERT TORELLO: an old and rough Homicide detective, Torello is nearing the age of retirement. He thinks he’s wise and clever, but he was never a competent cop. The years on the force turned him into a bitter man, twice divorced, no kids, with just an ulcer and an old dog to keep him company. He makes up his mind about guilty parties rather quickly and, since he’s a veteran, partners usually indulge him. But that gets innocent people in trouble. He’s the Veteran Cop and the Incompetent Detective.
DETECTIVE TONY DELGADO: unlike Torello, Delgado is a family man. He likes his job, but would rather spend more time with his beautiful wife, Rosie, who is a very busy nurse in a Brooklyn Hospital, and their daughter, young Iris. Tony tends to be more careful about handling investigations, but Torello is the senior detective and, most of the times, Delgado just gives up. He’s a Family Man.
As it often happens, Billy Brubaker is by the window at 2.30 AM, with the lights off, waiting for the “show”, the time when Stephanie comes home and undresses in her bedroom. She’s late, though, and he peaks at another one of the 7th floor windows. He notices two women having rough sex, not close enough to the window for him to have a good peak, but still. He may as well watch them while he waits…
Things get quite wild and steamy in Olivia’s bedroom; there are whips, nipple clamps, huge dildos, among other fun toys. Twenty minutes later, at 2.50 AM, Olivia closes the curtains on that particular show. Billy will probably look back at Stephanie’s window. If not, have him do a perception related check. The lights go on the singer’s flat and Stephanie appears by the window, preparing to take off her blouse. Meanwhile, someone, apparently a man, wearing a dark hat, a black Mackintosh and sunglasses, is about to attack her with a knife, from behind. She suffers multiple stabbings and dies at 3.15 AM.
AND THE GIALLO KILLER IS…
Julia Lowell, the wannabe actress, madly in love with Karl Hughes – who mistreats her frequently –, went insane with jealousy and killed Stephanie, for whom Karl was obsessed. She had been planning the murder for long. Julia isn’t as vapid, nice and harmless as everybody thinks, there’s an evil streak in that small-town girl. And after starring in so many slasher flicks, gore fests and erotic thrillers, she has a few tricks up her sleeve.
A week ago, Julia found Stephanie’s apartment keys on the lobby and she knew it was her chance. She entered the apartment disguised in an old Mackintosh and fedora she stole from a neighbour’s closet (retired movie star Dorothy McLane). The leather gloves and the sunglasses are Karl’s. The knife is new; she bought it in a small store in Chinatown. Julia has heard the neighbourhood kids blabbering about the Living Vampire and the way he dresses, and she is trying to pin the guilt on that enigmatic figure who, allegedly, rents a flat on the Orpheum. Meanwhile, she also has noticed that several men on the opposite building – not just Billy Brubeck – have the habit of staring into 7th floor’s windows. When she murdered Stephanie, Julia made sure she would be seen in disguise through the bedroom window. And, indeed, she was.
What happens next?
No matter what Billy does, Stephanie dies.
If he just stares, he will see the killer calmly stabbing Stephanie, while holding her mouth shut with a gloved hand. He will stab her repeatedly and violently after the first cut.
The lift in the Orpheum Lofts is working tonight. The lobby and hallways lights are on, but they are flickering.
Billy will not see anyone on the building’s lobby or stairs. The killer may still be inside the Orpheum.
If he runs up to her flat, he will find her already dead, lying in a pool of blood, with a look of agony on her pale, dead face.
If he alerts the neighbours, some will come: Ben Harker, an old, retired History professor who lives on the same floor, will rush to help; John Burton may open the door, but will get right back inside; Ron Taylor, an handsome former athlete, runs up the stairs from the 6th floor; Karl, who is (apparently) entering the building at the time hears the noise and goes straight up to the 7th floor; Tracy Cates might come at the door, but unless Olivia is a player character, she won’t care about what’s happening; Alice White, the religious freak who lives on the 8th floor, comes outside to praise the Lord and sing some hymns when she learns the harlot was killed. If Olivia isn’t a player character, she will come to the hallway alone, Tracy will stay inside. Eventually the janitor will come up, but not for several minutes. Given time, most people in the building will be on alert.
Meanwhile…
In New Jersey, Peter Stone was sleeping and had a nightmare about a beautiful woman being murdered by a disguised person. It could be a premonition, or just a retired Homicide cop who still dreams about murder. If he decides to call Andy, have him be informed by the janitor that Stephanie was killed. He may drive to New York as soon as he wants. He is a widower and no one cares about what he does with his time.
While closing shop, Joe and Muriel notice that Stephanie forgot her wallet, or some jewellery. Anything relevant enough for them to call her. She will not answer, by that time she will already be dead. If they decide heading for the Orpheum Lofts, they may arrive before or after the cops, game master’s choice.
THE COPS ARRIVE
Either summoned by a character or an NPC, the cops will show up soon enough. First the boys in blue, then the two detectives, Delgado and Torello. Some of the clues the detectives will uncover the characters may also want to investigate. Almost all of them will be available for regular citizens, but Peter Stone can lend a hand with some of the more difficult clues to obtain.
No one in the building seems to have heard strange noises. Most people were sound asleep. Olivia and Tracy were wide awake, but they had been doing their own strange noises for some time. The reporter claims she fell asleep around 3 AM. Tracy says she was showering around that time.
No one saw a person in a fedora and a dark Mackintosh enter or leave the building that night. There were no strangers dressed in any other way spotted inside the building either.
Andy McDuff went to bed around 11 PM. The lobby was unattended for a long time, but the door was kept closed, and the lock is intact.
There were no fingerprints in Stephanie’s bedroom other than the victim’s and Ron Taylor’s. The man claims he was there two nights ago. They slept together once in a while, though they had no steady relationship.
When lab results show up later, there will be record of some fibres in the body. They are from the killer’s Mackintosh, but for now there are no other clues. The lab report will probably arrive too late to be of use, but the Mackintosh was a relic from the 1930s. It was worn by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in Beijing Express (1930), a movie co-starred by Dorothy McLane, an ageing Silent Era star who lives in the Loft’s 4th floor. The Mackintosh and fedora had been hanging for decades inside her closet and were stolen by Julia days ago. Dorothy would never notice it; her house is like a movie museum. Stephanie wasn’t raped; all of the blood and other body fluids found were hers. The door lock wasn’t forced. No clues at all at the murder scene.
Stephanie Armitage lost her apartment keys a week before. She mentioned it to the janitor and other people in the building. It very likely the killer used them (and she did).
Everybody knows Karl Hughes was obsessed with Stephanie since their brief affair. The night of the murder, Karl was bartending in Greenwich Village. His alibi can be confirmed until around 2.30 PM. From then on, his word is all that’s left. Though he sometimes sleeps with his girlfriend, the wannabe actress Julia Lowell (who lives on the 4th floor, with roommate Monica Ashton Greene, a former socialite, turned into call girl), she dozed off in her own sofa while watching a Honeymooners marathon. Torello immediately identifies the prime suspect. Even though Delgado has reservations, Karl Hughes will be detained for further interrogation.
The killer’s description will bring to mind the tall tales of the Living Vampire, aka Mystery Tenant, who is supposed to show up at the Orpheum Lofts once in a while, carrying strange packages. The kids swear he carries parts of human bodies, maybe internal organs. Torello thinks it’s all a load of crap, but he will still contact Paul Abramowitz, the building’s owner. Abramowitz isn’t good at record keeping, but he has some documents signed by a certain M. Tenant. “M.” is for Michael, Abramowitz thinks. But it could also be for Murder. As Torello wants to frame Karl with homicide, he will simply connect the two things: Hughes has been planning this for long, rented the apartment on the 9th floor and sometimes carries around grocery bags, while disguised. The kids and the old gossips imagine there’s a spooky undead on the building and Karl can get away with murder, literally. No, he won’t! Torello is smarter than any musician.
If someone checks the apartment on the 9th floor, where the Living Vampire is supposed to live, he isn’t there. It’s just an empty flat.
The missing tenant’s story about sociopathic accountant George Wesley, can be introduced here as a red-herring. Perhaps George was, after all, the first victim? Or maybe he is hiding somewhere, even inside the Lofts, and he’s the real killer?
THE FOLLOWING DAY (SATURDAY)
Since there’s no incriminating evidence, the cops must let Karl go. Back in the Lofts people don’t trust him anymore. He was never loved, now he is despised. Tracy still believes his innocence, though, but she’s one of the few remaining. Julia, of course, knows he didn’t do it, and shows her support.
Any red-herrings should be introduced at this point, before Karl is incriminated. Louis Brown and Andy McDuff, the two Weirdoes, may become suspects. Someone will mention the Mystery Tenant, and the kids will tell their creepy stories. One of the neighbours may recall that John Burton was infatuated by Stephanie, or any other suspicious thing that happened in the past. You can use all that later, but for now the cops still need to listen to the characters; later, not so much.
This could be the end of the story, Julia feels relieved, now that her rival is gone, but while she is trying to cheer her boyfriend up, he slaps her and tells her it’s all over. This time, Julia really snaps. Now she will kill someone just to frame Karl and have her sweet revenge. There’s one easy and obvious target, Monica. Karl hates her, and the call girl hates him back. She’s Julia’s roommate, so it will be easy. Allow some time for the players to try following up on the clues and then…
THE SECOND MURDER (MONDAY)
Monica gets home by 2 AM, after attending to a client in a nearby hotel in Tribeca. While she is showering, Julia stabs her with a knife. It could be the same knife and she could be disguised, even if she isn’t expecting to be seen this time. She stashed the murder weapon and the disguise in the basement before the cops arrived on the scene, while everybody was still in shock. Nothing was found. She can stash it again in the same place, following the second murder.
After killing Monica (2.15 AM), Julia plants some compromising evidence: a piece of cloth ripped from one of Karl’s shirts and some of his hairs. Then she quietly goes to the basement, hides a bag with the murder weapon and the disguise, returns to her flat, bangs her head against the living room cupboard (to appear she was beaten), and calls the cops. Julia claims that someone entered the flat that night. She heard noises, Monica was in the shower, and she thought it might have been her. Suddenly, she was shoved against the cupboard and lay there, almost unconscious, for a while. She heard a muffled cry and someone left, in a hurry. She swears it was a man in a fedora and a Mackintosh, wearing sunglasses and black leather gloves.
THE COPS ARRIVE, AGAIN
This time there are no surprises; Torello and Delgado immediately detain Karl, as suspect of both homicides. If the characters have clues that point elsewhere, the detectives will give them a couple of minutes, but Torello’s mind is made up. Karl was home that night; he worked an early shift at a restaurant in Tribeca. He’s angry and shouts a lot when arrested. After all, he’s a creep, but still innocent of these crimes… The compromising evidence in the bathroom, though too obvious, is corroborative and that’s more than enough for Torello. Even Delgado is starting to agree with the older detective. Monica Ashton Green had a terrible relationship with Karl. She may have found out something about the Stephanie killing, or she was just pestering the Jeffrey Dahmer lookalike. Whatever it was, he killed her. For the cops, that’s final.
Again, no one saw the Mystery Tenant (who isn’t at home, by the way).
In fact, no one saw anything out of the ordinary, except for… Clayton Cox, a punk everybody in the building hates, thinks he saw a blonde woman going to the basement. He was coming home after a gig with his band, The Cunts, around 2.20 AM. He really saw Julia, but he will not say anything about it, unless questioned.
Julia’s version seems accurate.
Karl has no alibi; he was already sleeping when the murder occurred.
NEXT WEEK ON…
From this point on any unavoidable event will probably fail, appear silly or look a lot like railroading. So, let’s stick to optional events. If you’re in a hurry, just plant seeds of suspicion about someone else’s involvement in the crimes, and wait for the characters to dig up more clues, or find a fault in Julia’s plan.
If they get too close to the truth she may try to kill again, this time perhaps one of the player characters. Maybe the Janitor (or his daughter, Charlie) finds the stash in the basement. The Mackintosh, the fedora or the knife will certainly have some DNA material capable of identifying the real killer. Or perhaps Dorothy McLane decides to rearrange her closet and notices the Mackintosh and fedora of her beloved Doug are missing. Andy and Dorothy may come public with the clues, or they may be murdered by Julia before having the chance to talk about it.
If you want to prolong this, add another killer, the Mystery Tenant. There’s no reason for Julia to keep killing after Karl is arrested. She got rid of her rival and framed her unloving boyfriend. Even Monica was only collateral damage, they were friends. The only motive for the wannabe actress to kill again is to avoid being found. But the Mystery Tenant may have his own reasons. Among the possible victims of the deranged Giallo Killer are:
Julia Lowell herself, an obvious choice if the characters suspect she had something to do with the murders.
Have Andy and Louis Brown been prowling around the Lofts? Kill them now!
Olivia Watson, especially if the reporter is digging too deep into the murder investigation.
Peter Stone, for the exact same reason as Olivia. But it’s much less sexy to kill a retired detective, so keep him for later.
Muriel Dobbs, whatever she’s been doing, Joe’s wife is rather good looking and will turn into a beautiful corpse.
Joe Dobbs, the ex-military can be a dangerous man to cross, and the Giallo Killer may target him just to make sure he will not turn into a menace.
Tracy Cates, she is a sadomasochist, the Giallo Killer can make her killing a work of art.
The two detectives and the player characters may become victims, but not too soon.
If you own Postmortem Giallo: Orpheum Lofts you have a fuller cast of possible Victims for your Giallo Killer.
Postmortem Studios 