Boneditch By Ian Bird

www.mrcarapace.co.uk bit of a cheat, this one - here's one of the greatest short stories ever written, a gorgeous cameo of sadness and beauty glimpsed and remembered forever as a blessed wound. yes yes yes, i know that blesse means wound in French, that's why I said it, damn it. Anyway, it reminds me of that sense of sadness and gratitude you get when something fleeting and essential falls into view, and the pain is worth bearing. Hope you enjoy it...

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com this week's diversion is a tete a tete with Crazy Jane, an old folk witch who we can find in a Van Morrison song, a Grant Morrison comic, in poems by W B Yeats and Amiri Baraka, in Nick Cave and Skip James murder ballads and even in modern TV series like the brilliant Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (it's a little more nuanced that that...) Crazy Jane is the subject of a portrait by a Victorian murderer locked away in a lunatic asylum for most of his life, and is a victim and a confidence trickster both, a temptress and a madwoman - Ophelia underwater and Hamlet with his sword. She's weird and strange and she's everywhere, so you've probably already met her... Hello, Jane... www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com A car crash that creates a saint. An abused child who becomes the quintessence of distrust. A playground that runs the world. The world's largest organism. The secret truth of bone disease. The witch who became a saint. The town where only psychopaths are allowed to buy homes. The literary festival at the end of the world... For twenty years Eliot Rent has been travelling the world, collecting stories about the little accidents and disastrous catastrophes that have shaped the world, divining at the epicentre a crazed apocalyptic witch.  This is the story when she finally recognises that face at ground zero, and this is the point when the competition steals ahead and gives this battered world just one more push. www.boneditch.wordpress.com

music by Ed Smith - https://soundcloud.com/ed-smith words by Ian Bird - www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com "Look over there, she said to me, passing me my drink, taking my money. I think they’re going to kill each other. "I looked where she was pointing, out in the car park, but it was too dark already – I could only see the shapes, likes bones underwater, could only hear the screams, and the punches, and the sounds of beating wings..." Thanks for this opportunity, Ed...

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com i should be writing a horror story, but instead here are twenty minutes of words about Grendel, the demon of society's mediocrity, and how he inspires Batman, who needs a great movie right now... www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com

www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com This time I’m sidestepping slightly to talk about two films I really enjoy, which I wrote about some time ago on my other website, www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com, and which I just stumbled over again – Ken Russell’s 1971 masterpiece with Oliver Reed, The Devils, and Luis Bunuel’s 1967 work of art Belle de Jour, starring Catherine Deneuve. I think both films do an incredible job of describing a strange and rebellious, erotic and devastating heart, and they’re both deeply affecting and amazing fun… www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com It's the start of the ends of the world. The madman has written a book about why everything always goes wrong, and it's going to change everything for the worse/better... Tonight’s story is the nineteenth, and also the first part of the third and final act of the story. Act I was the story of Eliot Rent and her friends and how they all fell into disaster together and then again separately, and Act II was a collection of weird tales uncovered by Eliot about the Boneditch – vengeful ghosts, recruitment agencies in Hell, weird circuses, werehouses, love songs and Murder She Wrote. But Act III is the story of what happens next, at the two ends of the world. We’re returning to Governor Spinacre, the punchline to the serial killer story Haine Reaction, to the California Ladies from A Bum In The Coven, and the fearsome Sisters Under The Skin, Bonnie, Margaret and Jessica return from Chapter Six. But this story is mainly about the life and times of Michael Breeden, Eliot’s first love

www.boneditch.wordpress.com The war ended, so Margaret had no choice but to come home... She's been away for at least a decade, living a life of danger and significance, but now she's on her way home and these days she might just be another divorcee, another orphan. Summoned by her stepmother, Margaret steps into a world that means nothing to her, the world created by her family and the skeletons in their closet. Margaret has a skeleton of her own. www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com While I finish writing the next story, here are some words that came out of the panic attack I experienced reading Daphne du Maurier's wonderful novel My Cousin Rachel, and how they both reminded me of the amazing Alice Bradley Sheldon, who wrote one of the scariest short stories ever... For more excitable words about stuff I love to read please visit my other website at www.mrcarapace.wordpress.com - I'll have the next Boneditch story finished soon... Thanks for listening... www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com Another short story from the Boneditch collection... "Have you ever been struck by lightning?" "No." "I Have." "What happened?" "I struck it back." His heart has been broken, and he doesn't think that's right. So then he meets God, the way people used to meet God, and suddenly he's inspired. Now he knows how to connect with the people he loves. Don't look shocked: of course love is a thunderbolt. (c) Ian Bird www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com (c) Ian Bird 2018 Jessica is thirteen and all but lives in the local library. It's 1938 and the library is her only sanctuary from the responsibilities that are waiting for her around the next corner like she owes them money. But late one night she hears a scream from somewhere in her beloved library and now there are rumours that a killer has stashed their victim somewhere among the stacks... A smart girl would go and find a policeman, and then grow up to be a responsible young woman who everyone thinks very highly of... but a ferocious and fierce and utterly brilliant girl would scowl into the shadows and breathe in that fetid air of mystery and murder and put things right. There's a body in the library... www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com -a new standalone short story in the Boneditch project- Walker Took is a French speaking, English born, California beach bum, on the run from a marauding horde for a crime he probably committed. He's just fallen in love with a witch called Belinda Pain, who is going to traumatise some catastrophic awakening into him, over mushrooms, song, a discussion on the nature of alphabets and the end of the world. For a spell or two, no one seems forlorn... to be continued... (c) Ian Bird 2018 www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com (c) Ian Bird 2018 a short story from the Boneditch anthology... Jon Tennant had never been so cold in his life. It was mid-December at midnight, and the rain that tore against him had in it slivers of ice and bone. His clothes had been rags before the storm started – now they were a sodden shroud. He would never be this cold again. This was the end. The boy stumbled to the ground. All around him were houses and flats, lights burning in the windows, curtains drawn against the storm. He was going to die in this city, surrounded by civilisation. It clearly just wasn’t his civilisation. It was the end of the world, but no one had noticed. He tried to crouch down against a short wall, trying to hide from the storm. It still found him, lit as he was by all the lights in all the windows. He closed his eyes, and he stopped shivering, and he stopped bracing himself against the wind and the knives that it hid within it. Jon didn’t realise that he had stopped breathing. www.boneditch.w

www.boneditch.wordpress.com "You took a mystery and made me want it..." A little girl with a butcher's shop in her brain and what her mad dog told her on a hot summer day. A happy-go-lucky vagrant living a carefree life on the road, a friend to everyone... an Emperor to everyone. God, I'm hungry, is it lunchtime yet? Who's for something off the bone? A standalone horror story about the things we have in common. "I'm on a journey for the inspiration (Inspiration) To anywhere and there ain't no salvation (Don't make me cry) I need you to get me nearer to you So you can set me free We talk about love love love We talk about love We talk about love love love We talk about love..."

www.boneditch.wordpress.com As acrobats slowly unfolded themselves from the deep shadows of stage, turning then falling and leaping and flying faster and faster, around and around the ring, the Ring Mistress finally appeared before us, smiling broadly. They were all smiling broadly, as were we, but they had no faces, just bleached skulls whose rictus grins seemed to flicker and smirk in the twisting light. A third eye socket caught the shadows, embedded in the foreheads of each of the skulls. “Okay, those are pretty cool masks,” admitted Jude. “Welcome to the Circus Siliquastrum,” smiled the Ring Mistress. “Thank you for calling to us and inviting us to be with you here tonight…” The performance, long awaited, had begun at last. www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com "Beneath her raven-black hair, which rolled in waves like the bastard sea at night, was a bleached white skull. Deep within her three eye sockets I could make out the tiniest flecks of fire but otherwise all that was there was something that must have been dead for over a hundred years… Staring at me and smiling. I was still hallucinating wildly, but what else is life? Her voice was music, played backwards at midnight. 'Sorry to wake you. I'm a head hunter.'" www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com Welcome to my podcast: a series of horror, fantasy, thriller, romance short stories... Boneditch is my new novel – a weird anthology of kitsch mysteries and eldritch secrets about someone who’s perfect in every sense. It’s the post-mortem of my exquisite corpse of short stories stitched together into a patchwork monster: some are horror stories, some are fairy tales, some are odd family dramas and some are heartfelt romances... All of them have to be weird, though, and have at least five jokes. Thank you for listening - speak to you again in a week or so... www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com A standalone horror short story from the mysterious case files of Eliot Rent... "I have a friend who has assured me, credibly so, that the traces I left behind do not meet the legal definition of evidence. My friend is a good source on these matters. He sees things the way an enemy would, but he is always on my side..." Meet the Patron Saint of Being Correct - the most tyrannical and despicable monster you can imagine. How he hates the Boneditch... www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com "I don't think he appreciates exactly how prehistoric the insides of me are. It's not a crib down there, is it?" This is the story of how our hero, Kathryn Eliopoulos, picked a flower from her mother's garden and became something profane and potent. Why work for failed saints and grubby devils, when you can be a monster? Never miss the chance to pick up a new name... www.boneditch.wordpress.com

www.boneditch.wordpress.com Another short story from the life of Kathryn Eliopoulos, who found a part of herself in a graveyard - something romantic and soulful and raging with a demented loathing for her boss and her life. Her boss wants her to close a deal, her boyfriend wants her to leave her job, Kathryn wants to understand that raging buzzing in her head... www.boneditch.wordpress.com