Friday 24 December 2010

God Bless us, Everyone!

Well I'm signing off now so that I can finish up at work and get to my mum's house where there will be warm mince pies awaiting my arrival (cooked by my evil brother no less, so will probably contain poison)

I hope you all have a great Christmas or if you're not Christian, I hope you enjoy some time off at the expense of someone elses religious beliefs!

Good luck to all of you who get presents you don't want! I know I've been practicing all year to hide the look of utter disgust that can appear when you receive something that isn't what you wanted. I jest of course, I'm happy to get anything, even a slap in the face as long as it's wrapped, but I know some of you will be opening presents, dreading the thought that your family will be able to read the look of disappointment that will consume you when that 3D TV you asked for is actually another pair of socks, so good luck with that.

Also, remember whilst you eat your Christmas feast with all the trimmings that there are people all over the world suffering, who can't have a nice cooked roast. I always find it makes my dinner taste even sweeter!

Merry Christmas one and all

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

9
Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

I'm taking a break from writing about my pas exploits for the moment as I'm just getting to the horrible bits. So instead I'll tell you what I did today.

It's Christmas... well, at least according to the official Gray Republic Calendar it's Christmas, and it looks like it's going to be a White Christmas as it has started to snow (deadly deadly snow)

Celebrating Christmas, like any festivity, is usually not a good idea as it distracts you from all the things that are trying to kill you. I went to a wedding, and that ended stickily for all involved! But I've come to the end of my tether with the world as I know it so I figured I'd try and have as traditional a Christmas as I can get in a post apocalyptic land of death.

Of course, I'm on my own these days. The cats, my friends and my long suffering lady wife Louise (or what's left of her) aren't here with me, so I'm feeling pretty lonely. Now I know how the guy out of Mud was feeling!

Before the end, they used to say that the holidays are the most depressing time of the year. Now add to that fact that the world I now live in is depressing all year round, which makes the holidays even worse than they were before The End. But there's still a part of me that tries to add some semblance of normality to the ever confusing world that is now my day to day life.

As I don't have anyone to give presents to (they're either dead, insane, or held captive as of writing), I decided to skip that part of Christmas, and instead focus on decorating the abandoned shack that I am currently calling home. As most things that run on electricity try to kill you thanks to some strange artificial intelligence they have inexplicably developed (seriously, a toaster nearly killed me once) I didn't really fancy lighting my shack up with fairy lights, also lighting may advertise my presence to those who are after me, which wouldn't be a good thing.

Instead, I thought I'd start with getting a tree and maybe some tinsel to throw about the place, so I set off for some trees that I had passed earlier, armed with a fire-axe that I had found lodged in a friend's corpse not so long back.

Up to this point, I had thought the expression "Tree's have feelings too" was just something hippies used to say, however when I swung my axe deep into the trunk of a tree, it cried in pain and began to attack me. Not many people can say they've fought a tree to the death, but I can now add that to the ever growing list of things that I've done that should never have been. The tree didn't really have much power behind it, what with the huge gash in it's midriff, and it didn't take me much effort to finish it off with the handy fire axe.

After murdering the tree, I dragged it back to my abode and propped it's corpse against the shack's one good wall, whilst a pool of sap formed at the trunk's base. I'll be honest, the fact I had to kill the tree in cold blood kind of took away a bit of the magic of Christmas for me.

Thanks to Blue Peter (a person I met, not the old TV program) I knew how to make Tinsel from clothing, so used my last good pair of underwear (good is a great overstatement) to create some pretty dull tinsel. It looked pretty awful, so I used some broken glass for baubles and put a dead bird on the top instead of a star.

It was the worst Christmas tree in the history of Christmas trees, but it was my Christmas tree.
The tree brought me some happiness, but deep sadness at the same time. I shouldn't be alone, I should be with my friends and family, none of this should have happened, but crying about it wasn't going to help, especially as the scent of tears attracts the Darkness.

I was hungry, and no Christmas would be complete without a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Unfortunately turkey are one of the deadliest birds in the world as I know it, I mean, I've seen a Turkey take a man's arm off and then beat him to death with it. Poor old Jon.

So with that in mind, I took my hunting gear out and went in search of something to replace the deadly festive foul. After a few hours using all my hunting and tracking abilities, I was able to catch... a rat. Yeah, I'm still pretty shit at hunting to be honest. I was born without the ability to stalk and this particular rat was actually already dead.

I got home and prepared the rat, by skinning it and spinning it round over a cigarette lighter. When it came to the trimmings for my Christmas feast, Vegetables are all but inedible so I had to make do with a can of mushy peas I found. (when I say found, I mean took from a neighbouring hermit's corpse)

So there I was, sitting in front of the dead tree, eating un-dercooked rat and mushy peas, hoping the snow wouldn't gain sentience again and try to kill me like last time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of one of the glass shards I used as baubles, and realised that this was the most depressing Christmas I have had up to this point.

If anyone is reading this, I hope that you aren't alone whenever you decide to celebrate whatever festival is important to you. Life is fleeting, and you can have all the tea in what used to be China, but you've got nothing if you've got no one to share it with. Grab a friend, grab a loved one, hell... grab a stranger as long as they aren't totally deranged, and revel in companionship, because that's all the counts at the end of the day, something I painfully realise now.

If I'm alive after Christmas, I'll continue my journal, if I died, then be happy that I'm at peace and with any loved ones that I had to put out of their misery. But either way, I wish you a very merry Christmas, and I hope you're safe and well.

Thursday 16 December 2010

Class Dismissed

8
Class Dismissed

So there I was in a classroom full of dead children with their teacher, a close friend, who had no concept of reality or proper toilet etiquette, my two speaking cats and standing in the door was a creature so freakish that it would have made Pete Burns look normal!

The thing watched me from the door, as Hagley stood up from her desk and whispered into my ear.
"I know she doesn't look great but be kind, she lost Irish a while back."

My heart skipped a beat and my stomach sank as I realised that The End had somehow, like Shav, mutated another friend of mine. The creature that stood before me was Molly, one of my oldest and dearest of friends, who now looked like the result of some strange human-frog cross breeding experiment.

Of all the fates of all my friends I think that Molly had the worst of it. Sure, Hagley was "FUBAR", what happened to JP was pretty terrible, The Grays made the best of their situation and you'll be finding out soon enough about the horror that was "Panto Season", but Molly's fate was one of the worst.

Molly you see, was my Celtic friend, who'd been living in sin with her charming boyfriend Irish. He was called Irish as he was Irish, and it goes to show how un-imaginative our collective group of friends had been when it came to nicknames.

Irish and Molly had been going out for years and Molly had finally after years of trying, gotten Irish to propose to her. They were due to be wed at a large purple castle in Cork, however that was before The End, so the fact that Irish had been "lost" presumably dead, made things even more tragic for the weird purple-tinged monster that stood in the door frame.

Molly looked like she was happy to see me, but I couldn't tell if that was just how her deformed face looked normally or if it was genuine happiness, till she put her arms around me... those horrible leathery arms.

Her arms, like her neck, were elongated, and I knew then, what it would have felt like to be the victim of a boa-constrictor, as her arms wrapped round me twice and squeezed me into the small frame that was her body. I shuddered and kept my face away from hers for fear of catching something or being devoured, the same way a kid does when an aging relative wants a kiss.

"Master, what in the name of Kentucky Fried Chicken is that thing?" Professor Humperdink asked me, his voice a little shaky from fear.

Molly released me and looked down at my cats, who began to hiss when she approached them. They tried to run, but her long arms grabbed them and she began to stroke them both. I say stroke, but it was more like abuse. Their eyes nearly popping out of their skulls as her hands roughly stroked back the fur and skin on their heads.

Hagley turned to me again and whispered to me whilst Molly was distracted by the cute fluff balls that were my cats.

"After things went dark, Molly and Irish were staying with me and Myke... we tried to get out of town, but the roads were blocked by these large insects. A flying one... like a wasp... took Irish and stung Molly. She started to change... I know what she looks like, but she's the same... just... quieter. The kids here don't seem to mind her..." she looked back at the dead classroom and smiled.

"Anyway, Myke decided to go after Irish whilst I took care of Molly. He told us to wait at the school... that he'd come back for us when he found out where Irish had gone... but... but that was nearly a year ago now..."

I felt that someone needed to shake Hagley out of the insane funk she was in, and as her only non-mutated friend, I felt that that someone was me.

"Hagley!" I said, as I grabbed a hold of her "Snap out of it, the children are dead, Myke and Irish probably are too, and Molly... we'll she's as good as dead. Look, I need to find my long suffering lady wife Louise, why don't the two of you come with me, you'll stand a better chance with me than you will waiting here for whatever it is you're waiting for."

"But who will teach the children...?" she cried

"I'm sorry to have to break this to you Hagley, but not even the national curriculum can help these kids now" I replied.

Hagley looked sane for a moment, just a moment, and then ran as fast as she could out of the room, barging past the freakish Molly who dropped the cats and whirled round to see where her friend was going.

In the state that she was in I was worried that she'd do something stupid, so I decided to run after her, leaving my cats in the care of the repulsive Molly. So as I stated, I ran after her, thinking that she would go for the main door to leave the school and maybe try to find Myke and I was correct on my assumption.

I found Hagley in the entrance, being held by two youths in hoodies, and the rest of the lobby was full of them. Shav's Chav's had found me! It seemed they wanted revenge for what I had done to Ray and Shav and as Hagley was with me, she'd be included in my fate...

Edward Lobe in Dead Before Dawn

Well last night Alex and I sat down and we started the editing of Lobe, which is a mammoth task! We're going to have to be very clever with some of the shots as people who aren't supposed to be in the scene are visible or the camera loses focus!

But it'll all be worth it in the end as what we've come up with for the start looks great!

Anyhoo, being a fan of Jap Horror, I cobbled another teaser together, this time in the style of said Jap Horror.

Nothing particularly scary happens, it's just the visual imagery and music have been altered to make it seem like it's not a comedy at all. My favourite bit in it is a bit with a character standing still then a split second before it cuts to black he goes to move, this is a technique I've seen in a lot of jap horrors.

Anyway, here's our youtube, take a looksee!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Addyace#p/u

Wednesday 15 December 2010

Xmas Break!

Well it's nearly Christmas and apparently I enjoy stating the obvious. I hope you're enjoying the story on the blog and sorry that there's been a lack of half arsed movie revies, but due to time I've not had chance yet.

There are only 2 more JOAPAOD's before Christmas! Then you'll have to wait till the 7th of Jan!

Also, tonight will be the beginning of the editing for the Edward Lobe remake, it's going to be tough, but hopefully the end result will be worth it all and Friday is my last Cracker FM show! 87.9 FM if you get a chance to tune in!

I'm not really in the Christmas spirit this year, well not as much as normal, but I think that will change by Christmas Eve!

This year has FLOWN by, I'll be dead before I know it! :(

On that cheery note,

Ciao for now

Adamicus the 3rd

Friday 10 December 2010

Teaching the Dead!

7
Teaching the Dead!
The classroom full of mummified children stared back at Hagley in silence.

I wont lie, it was a very awkward moment, probably in my top 10 awkward moments of all time.

Hagley however, didn't sense this awkwardness and instead believed that the children had responded to her asking them to say hello to me, the crazy bitch.

Before The End, my friend Hagley was a bit of an enigma. She was both quite posh yet at the same time quite common. I try to remember my friends as much as I can, like they were before the terrible circumstance befell them all. Hagley wasn't deformed so it was easier remembering her as she was before The End, and she didn't try to kill me after The End, which was a nice change of pace.

"Thank you class" she replied "Now, open your textbooks to page 20, today we'll be learning about..." she trailed off, and simply stared for a few moments at the children's corpses propped awkwardly up at their desks, some of them missing limbs (some didn't even have a head), but she didn't seem to mind, then her gaze returned to me.

There was something in Hagley's eyes, a pitiful look of a woman who'd lost something dear to her, it's a look I recognise in my own eyes these days when I happen to catch a glimpse of my reflection in something... reflective.

She sat on her table, which had a thick layer of dust on it "I can't believe you came to see me, shouldn't you be at work?" Hagley asked, her eyes focused on me intently

"Um, somehow I don't think they'll mind" I replied, remembering what my father had told me on my wedding night about never telling a woman that she's crazy. That was good advice.

Hagley smiled at me, a smile that went from comforting to sinister in a matter of seconds "Hey, actually would you mind watching my class whilst I go to the toilet?" she asked me.

I simply nodded, and waited for her to leave. She didn't leave the room: instead I heard a dripping noise and realised that she was indeed going to the toilet right in front of me, on the desk, all the while her eyes were fixed on me. I stepped back as the pooling liquid approached me.

As I backed away I glanced down at where Professor Humperdink had been standing, he was now up on a bookshelf giving me a look that signalled he thought she wasn't just one sandwich short of a picnic, but she'd forgotten the whole picnic hamper and just turned up for a picnic with a plastic bag full of dead babies.

"So..." I began "how's your fella Myke, these days?"

Myke was Hagley's better half, and he liked two things. Cooking and Quantum Physics. Two things that go in hand in hand. He'd trained to be an archaeologist, like most people who got sucked in by archaeology's poster boy Indiana Jones. Myke had dreamed of discovering ancient treasures, fighting off Nazi's and wearing a fedora indoors, however it didn't work out as planned and instead he worked as a manager for Dynamite, a logistics company that if you asked him, he wouldn't be able to tell you what they actually did, as it bored him that much.

Out of everyone I knew, he was the most likely to survive due to a vast knowledge of survival techniques, that unlike me, he hadn't learn off of Fallout 3. (A computer game for the un-initiated)

As I asked her about him however, her smile disappeared almost instantly, and tears began streaming from her eyes that I realised hadn't blinked once the whole time I was there. She was all kinds of wrong.

"Myke will... be back any minute now. He'll meet me after class"

Another awkward silence, the kind you'd get if you farted really loud in a lift full of strangers.

It was obvious at that time, that something horrendous had happened to Myke. I wondered if he had gone the way of Shav and turned into a gluttonous mass or if he, like Hagley, had slipped into a mental minefield of wrongness. He was one of the only people I've met so far who had blossomed due to The End, but that's another story for another entry.

Suddenly, Simba (sans sick) rushed into the room in a panicked fashion. "Guv'na" he panted in his high pitched cockney voice "I just saw something coming down the apple and pears, and it doesn't look friendly"

Amazing, not only could my cat talk, but he had some concept of cockney rhyming slang, something he didn't pick up from me that's for sure. The doorway that he had ran from was suddenly masked by the monstrosity that Simba had just ran from.

Whatever it was it had a regular sized body for an eight year old girl, but it's neck was elongated ending in a very large head with bulging eyes and a mouth the size of a baby deer. The face had a tint of purple to it and the creature's skin was wrinkled like some kind of hairless cat. All in all the, creature looked like what I expected Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy's demonic offspring would look like.

I expected that this was the end for me and my two cats, that I would never see my long suffering lady wife Louise again (with what happened to her sometimes I wish I never had) I waited for the inevitable. 

Friday 3 December 2010

School Daze

6
School Daze
Sleeping isn't the same as it was before The End; for one thing I now sleep very lightly due to being worried that something is creeping up on me waiting to kill me and use my skull as a urine cup. Also, since The End people don't tend to dream.

I heard somewhere that dreams keep us sane... oh who am I fooling? I heard it off an episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation! A TV show from my past that my long suffering lady wife Louise used to say was "Boring, as it's just people talking in front of a screen". So was there any truth in dreams keeping us sane or was it just something they said on a TV program for shits and giggles? I doubt I'll ever get a definitive answer, but if the TV show was right, the next person I met was proof that no dreams add to craziness!

I miss TV, now if you see a TV set, you'd better start running (They're fast). I'd say I miss theatre, but theatre after The End has left a bad taste in my mouth, especially what was known as "Panto Season"... sorry, spoiler alert!

I had sheltered in the staff room of a school, one that I was not familiar with, as the sky had decided to rain fire (one of the nicer things it decides to rain these days) It had been a good nights sleep after the events that had happened on Monday, and when I awoke I had that glorious 5 seconds of blissful ignorance where I presumed the world was how it should be, but that soon departed when the unfamiliar surroundings of the staff room and the smell of stale coffee seeped into reality.

Professor Humperdink was feeling a little worse for wears thanks to all the punch he'd consumed at Ray's house, and was throwing up all over the place. I felt a pang of guilt remembering what had happened to Ray and Shav, but quickly swept that aside when I remembered they tried to eat me.

Simba was holding Professor Humperdink's hair back for him, as he vomited into a makeshift toilet that to my horror I realised was what used to be me left shoe. The combination of stale coffee and cat sick started to make me queasy.

I couldn't stand the stench, so walked out the staff room to escape it. As I did, the school bell rang out, echoing through the empty corridors, making me jump which was not a good thing to happen when I was standing in the middle of a door frame.

This had happened to me at school once before, and I'd gotten a scar from it. But this time, there was no Mrs. Jackson to apply first aid: this time the blood that had begun pouring from a gash on the top of my head would have to be stopped by me and my first aid training, which incidentally had run out two years prior.

I grabbed hold of the wound and felt the warm claret flowing through my matted hair, and tried to think back to my first aid training. My first aid training was useless in this situation however, as all the training consisted of was making sure your "patient" was comfortable and safe, then you'd call an ambulance. This was a post-apocalyptic world where I couldn't get safe or comfortable and there were no emergency services, so icks-nay on the first aid front... I was on my own... well I had two cats.

Coming back into the staff room, the smell of stale coffee mixed with cat vomit and the shock of the blood gushing out of my cranium, finally sent me over the edge and I emptied the contents of my stomach over Simba.

He didn't look impressed, especially after I said whilst looking at him covered in my puke "I don't remember eating that." Despite my pathetic joke, Simba and Professor Humperdink noticed the blood and came to my aid.

"Quickly" Professor Humperdink cried out to his sick covered buddy, "Master is injured, we must act post haste to remedy this situation" and with that, he sped out the room, followed by me, followed by a skulking Simba.

It took us a while to find a first aid kit, but when we did Professor Humperdink sprang into action. Don't ask me how he did it, but somehow that cat was able to bandage me up. I mean, it's actually impossible for a cat to do that isn't it, well it was before what with them not having opposable thumbs, but now anythings possible it seems.

I recall that I began to think I'd hit my head harder than I thought, when I heard a distant woman's voice speaking. But Simba had heard it too, as had Professor Humperdink. There was someone else here! Without thinking, I sped off down the corridor towards the voice, with Humperink closely behind me. Simba, had stayed behind to clean himself up as when I next saw him, you couldn't tell I'd thrown up all over him.

The voice was getting louder as I skidded down the highly buffed corridors, Professor Humperdink was sliding all over the place, his claws not quite getting traction. (A little fact for you, some schools are now used as impromptu bowling alleys, but the balls are usually people's skulls, and the pins children. )

The voice was coming from classroom 2C and sounded more than familiar. It was the voice of my dear friend Hagley, who had been a teacher before The End. Maybe I was in her school... which was a bit odd as she was based in a town a long long way from where I'd started. However, travelling after The End is a lot quicker, and I had gone for longer than I had thought. I was indeed in Hagley's school.

So, hoping to see a friendly face that WASN'T trying to kill me, I opened the door to classroom 2C and indeed there she was.

Hagely had seen better days, her hair was a mess, her makeup was smudged and her clothes were filthy. This was totally unlike my friend as before The End she was usually a well turned out pretty lass. The End had not been kind however, as I was about to find out.

She looked up from the class she was teaching and her eyes widened at the sight of me, then she turned to look at her class.

"Class, we have a very special visitor. This is Adamicus, he's a friend of mine. Everybody say 'hello Adamicus'"

Silence.

I looked, for the first time at the room, and was horrified by the sight of the class she was teaching.