Bad Moon E-Zine #1 - New Moon Read online

  Bad Moon E-Zine

  #1

  NEW MOON

  from

  Edited by Tom Laimer-Read and published by Let's Rock Publishing in 2016

  Copyright 2016 Let’s Rock Publishing

  Publishing Information

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you would like to share this book with another person,

  please purchase an additional copy for each person.

  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  double featuring

  Complete Stories:

  The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be, Change, Death Sushi

  Continuing Serials:

  The Grimm Truth, Fortress Europe, Steaming Pistons - The Chamberpot Crisis

  Editor’s Note

  Welcome to the new fantasy, sci-fi and supernatural fiction E-Zine Bad Moon #1 - New Moon. We bring you fascinating tales to enthral and amuse you every full moon that rises, writing them in between the changing phases in a flash of inspiration or the attempt to raise mild amusement, at least.

  We have stories of abstract futures and mysterious pasts, yet all pertinent to today. We will meet characters from future Tokyo, the recently-populated planet of Mars, some spectral apparitions who haunt unexpected places, reimagined Grimm Tales, amongst other mangled fairytales, myths, parables and legends.

  Enjoy the rocking ride, and hold on tight!

  The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be

  by Tom Laimer-Read

  The schematics of the Gloomsday Device lay on the metallic trestle table in front of Dr Gloom, who moodily perused the intricate designs and florid yet deadly embellishments on this seemingly innocuous contraption.

  He sighed heavily.

  He desperately wanted to get out of the super villain business. It just didn’t have the ‘zing!’ to it anymore that it had in the Good Old Bad Old Days. Back then, people respected the gravity and the ingenuity of your evil plans for world domination. Crowds shrieked in abject terror and world leaders quaked and quivered at your feet, pleading for mercy, forgiveness and a 10% cut of the profits.

  Nowadays folk didn’t give so much as a shrug or a twitch of a whisker when you revealed your latest petrifying weapon or unveiled your newest hideous plan to hold a group of spoilt brat politicians and business leaders to ransom. The big corporations had come in and priced the original bad guys out of the market with their boring suits and ties, their mawkish marketing strategies and despicable Dress Down Fridays. If wearing weekend clothes at work was seen as something to aspire to now to make the rest of the dreadful, dreary business tolerable, Dr Gloom wanted no part of this insidious game. Where was the style? The panache? The tristesse de vivre? The super villain industry was all but over.

  Dr Gloom, real name Norman Skillet, a retired dentist from Kiddiminster who had overdosed on laughing gas and could never laugh again, was thinking of jacking it all in for good and going back to the dental trade. It was a lot more stable and reliable work, without the stresses and pressures that came along with super villaining. There was just no money in being overtly evil anymore, and there were also no laughs, not that Dr Gloom could laugh, anyway. To be fair, he didn’t laugh that much before his unfortunate transformation, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch for him to assume his evil persona, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Now, now he was not so sure what route to take.

  Flaubert, the disfigured, globular yet upbeat and infinitely loyal servant of Dr Gloom, sloped up to the brooding figure to inform him of the latest daily developments in his evil empire.

  “So, good morning, Sir,” slurped Flaubert with froglike lips. “There’s been a general increase of evil in the market by around 3.7% this week. Muggings, hold ups, burglary and general street crime has risen by a moderate 4.4%, and people being nice to each other has dropped by a considerable 13.6% net.”

  “Oh, how wonderful,” sighed Dr Gloom. “Flaubert?”

  “Yes, master? What is it?”

  “Do you think that there’s any point to all this... evil palaver?”

  Flaubert looked shocked at the suggestion.

  “Of course, Dr Gloom, Sir! It is imperative that we complete our work! But we must!”

  “Why, Flaubert? Why bother? What does it all add up to, when all’s said and done?”

  “We have to work, Master, otherwise, what’s the purpose of our endeavours?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to establish, Flaubert.”

  “But that IS our purpose... isn’t it?”

  Flaubert looked sternly at Dr Gloom, quite shaken by his suggestion. It was Dr Gloom that gave him a reason to exist, had taken him in when no other employer would due to his hideous deformities. Without him, he would be very much alone in the wilderness.

  “We must carry on, Master. We’re evil. It’s what evil super villains and their servants must do!”

  Dr Gloom surveyed his works and private army milling about on the floor of his secret evil headquarters below him. He had built this empire up from nothing, but now it all seemed so dull and tiresome to him. Like all good super villains, Dr Gloom had loved and lost. She was called Shirley, and was his former dental nurse. He had had a crush on her like yesterday’s chop suey in the trash compactor, but it was never meant to be. He could never find the right words, and she was never available when it was convenient for him. She had found solace in the arms of a confectionary salesman from Chichester, which had caused Dr Gloom to fall into a deep depression and mistakenly attempt to overdose using the laughing gas that he used to anaesthetise his patients. This excessive intake of laughing gas had left his nerves frazzled and fused them into a permanent state of misery. He already had a lot to be miserable about, what with Shirley, the confectionary salesman, being named Norman Skillet and coming from Kiddiminster, as it was, but his disenfranchisement was pushed over the edge of destruction when he inhaled the gas, and he could never fully go back to his life before that, pursuing a life of heinous crime and mayhem in recompense. He still did a bit of private dentistry on the side, to keep his hand in so to speak, and assist his employees with their medical packages, but the super villain business took up most of his time after the incident occurred, so there was scant time for romance or any other untoward hobbies like that.

  It had all been such a blast to begin with. In some cases, quite literally. It was a real wild ride. There was glamour, excitement, hostage situations, secret missions, jet planes, hovercrafts, crazed henchmen doing amazingly dangerous feats of terror... and then... somehow everything had lost its charm. It had slowly become a chore. Even evil super villains had to fill in invoices to their suppliers and keep up with their monthly accounts. The tedious trials of everyday life had taken over, and Dr Gloom was sick of them all.

  “Master, shall we test the Gloomsday Device? It might help you feel better.”

  “Hmm, I don’t know, Flaubert. Maybe.”

  Dr Gloom observed the intricate gadget before him. He had designed it himself, but got Flaubert and his engineers to develop it, since they had the expert technical knowledge in that field. He wondered if it wouldn’t have been more practical to have invested in something that might have benefitted people slightly more usefully. He mused that he could even have gotten on one of those television programmes where business leaders invest their money in your project if they thought that it was good enough, or could have done some kind of crowd funding project
over the internet. Still, things were the way that they were.

  The Gloomsday Device sparkled in the morning sun. It looked as if this escapade could be his final fling, his Swan Song, his curtain call. He had better make it a very good, or indeeed very bad, one, and make certain that it was worthwhile, if not why do it at all? He expected some kind of feeble heroic response. Word always got out when a diabolical plan was underway. There must have been leaks and infiltrators within the organisation, no doubt, but even the rescue attempts undertaken by his opponents were sloppy and underwhelming these days. Who would they send this time? His arch nemesis, Captain Saccharine, or one of the lesser lackeys to complete the fixture? Captain Saccharine’s super power was to be excessively cheerful to the extent of breaking down his foe’s will to continue. It worked extremely well. Even Captain Saccharine was finding it difficult to scrape around for work these days. He was getting past it, with rheumatism and gout taking their toll. He was sure that he would see him again, in time. Perhaps this would be their final showdown? The thrill of a spectacular entrance had really worn off a long time ago, it was all too eminently predictable these days that to Dr Gloom, it was just going through the motions. These days the new batch of heroes and villains were all gloss and image, it was a culture of hype without substance. Dr Gloom had seen many come and go in their tight spandex and rubber outfits, each one swearing to put him away for good, and each failing miserably. But it was Dr Gloom himself who was always the most miserable at the end of it, whether he succeeded or not. He had spent some time in a correctional facility, where they had tried to cheer him up, which was more like torture than anything he could have imagined or embarked upon. It had broken him down even further. He didn’t see much hope left in the future of being a criminal mastermind, or anything apart from simple dentistry. You knew where you were with people’s teeth. Still, there was this, his new invention, perhaps it would help perk him up a bit?

  The Gloomsday Device was an intriguing development. It had come to him whilst he was tinkering around in his workshop. He had inadvertently dropped a hammer on his foot, then bent over to pick it up and injured himself. This made him think that the universe was an inherently malicious place that was out to get him and everyone else within it. What Dr Gloom had considered was a way to magnify this into a wave beam that intensified the instances of calamities and cataclysms taking place, in a way that would hopefully destroy the entire world, and with any luck take Dr Gloom down with it.

  “Shall we try it then?” asked Dr Gloom.

  “Why not?” replied Flaubert. “It’s as good a time as any.”

  “NOT SO FAST!” came a call from across the hanger hallway. It was Captain Saccharine himself, and he had his assistant Candy Rock with him.

  “I wasn’t doing anything particularly fast,” replied Dr Gloom, bluntly and gloomily.

  “I didn’t mean it like that!” exclaimed Captain Saccharine. “I just want you to stop and reconsider what you’re doing!”

  Captain Saccharine’s attempts to reason calmly with the super villains was what drove many of them to insanity. His repeated attempts to ‘understand the other guy’ and ‘see it from their point of view’ were incredibly infuriating, and Dr Gloom was almost certain that he only did it to enrage his opponents. It was a highly successful technique, whatever the case.

  “I have considered it and reconsidered it at length, Saccharine. It seems like the only sensible course of action to take. At least, the only course of action to help this horrific, insipid planet.”

  “How can you say that, Gloom? You’re just down in the dumps and mopey! C’mon, cheer up mate! It might never happen!”

  Gloom looked over at Saccharine and then at the Gloomsday Device. With enemies like that, who needed friends, or anyone for that matter? Time to end the whole sorry escapade. He reached forwards.

  “Wait!” cried Saccharine’s assistant, Candy Rock. “I know why you’re doing this!”

  “Why?” said Gloom. “Because I’m sick of it all, that’s why!”

  “Yes, but why did this all start, hey? Because of your dental assistant leaving you, that’s why!”

  “What? B-b-but... how did you know?!”

  Candy Rock stepped forwards and unveiled herself.

  “Because that dental nurse... WAS ME!”

  “Shirley! It was you all this time!”

  “Yes, Norman. I’m sorry. I should’ve said. I thought that you would’ve realised. I mean, it was fairly obvious, wasn’t it?”

  “Now you come to mention it, it was something of an oversight.”

  “Anyway, I’m sick of this droning goiter! He’s so optimistic all of the time, it’s really annoying. I’ve had enough of it all! I want to join you!”

  “Really?”

  Dr Gloom had not foreseen this turn of events. He had to be careful though. Perhaps it was a trap. After all, he’d been stung before, all those many years ago.

  Captain Saccharine stepped forwards too, visibly hobbling and having trouble with his movements.

  “I’m sorry, Norman. It was my fault, really. You just weren’t quick enough off the mark, as usual, so I had to step in and take a chance where and when I saw it.”

  “What do you mean... oh, you’re the confectionary salesman from Chichester, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Shortly after Shirley and I eloped, I fell into a vat of hazardous confectionary products, and they changed me into Captain Saccharine, causing me to always utter syrupy, sugar sweet sentimental twaddle. It’s driven me to distraction, but super heroing is all I can really do under such conditions.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m tired of all this, aren’t you?”

  “Completely.”

  “Do you want to test the Gloomsday Device then?”

  “It could result in the end of humanity as we know it...”

  “Hmm, sounds like a laugh...”

  Dr Gloom looked again at the device on the tressle table in front of him. If you looked closely, you could almost see the ends of his mouth twitch and turn up slightly. Then he began to emit a low, croaking sound. It was a laugh. He began laughing steadily, then let it take over, his tone rising, his body convulsing. Then he abruptly stopped, reached forwards and pressed the button. Nothing changed.

  - - -

  Change

  by Tricia Cicatrix

  At quarter past eight, the man gets up from the bench where he has slept. A train has just arrived, and people are coming up the stairs from the platforms. They walk past him, some giving him quick looks, some not noticing him at all.

  He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. He picks up the plastic bag with his belongings. He goes and washes his face; then he starts doing what he does every day.

  'Have you got some spare change please?' he asks people. Most of them just don't react. Some shake their heads or say no. A few hand him pennies. Whatever they do, he says thank you each time.

  'Have you got some spare change please?'

  'Clear off.'

  'Thank you.'

  Those who look rich rarely give anything, and those who are in a hurry don't stop for the likes of him. He asks people who walk about slowly, people who are ambling around waiting for a train to arrive.

  The man from the hot drinks stand comes over and gives him a free cup of tea, as he often does. It is sweet and strong, scalds the man's tongue and wakes him up. Today the hot drinks man brings a cheese roll as well. It might be a good day.

  Chewing, the man walks along the track and stops to check the timetables, as he does every day. There is no point because his train (no, not his train, the train that he wanted to catch all those years ago…) is not on there anymore and even if it was, he wouldn't be able to afford the ticket. The money he makes is never enough.

  'Have you got some spare change please?'

  'Hang on… yeah, there you go.'

  'Thank you.'

  Many years ago, he meant to take the 22.14 train. He was on his way to
a new city; he was about to start a new job and live a different life, but he lost the bag with his ticket and money. He was stranded here. Without the ticket, he couldn't get out through the turnstile. He couldn't afford a new ticket, and he couldn't make the officials listen to him. He didn't know anyone to turn to, and in the end he gave up and stayed here.

  Now he just tries to get by. The days are blurry and uncertain. He still dreams of buying a new ticket, catching that train, that train he was destined for, but he can't afford it and doesn't have the energy to do much. He goes around asking people for money every day, but it never seems to be enough. He loses it, or it is stolen, or he has to buy food and drink. It is never enough.