Intro Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Great, I get the room next to the family with the screaming kids.

Or at least one anyway. It’s late though, so maybe it’ll settle and get to sleep.
I was lucky to get a room I suppose, my brother got a fairly nice room on the other side of town but they wouldn’t let us share, full to capacity for fire safety, they said.
I can’t hear any adult voices though, not even mumbled or muffled ones. The kids sounds like a girl, that only becomes noticeable when she starts to sing to herself.

“Ring around a rosie,
A pocket full of posie,
A – tischa, a – tischa,
We all fall down.”

Nothing more creepy if you ask me. Surely she couldn’t be in there on her own?

It’s a creepy singing as well, enough to send shivers all through you. I’ll have to shake that off, there’s obviously something wrong with me if I find a child’s singing creepy. It’s the same melody over and over again. I can’t make out the words but the tune is the same all the way through and it’s familiar, so it’s easy to know what it is without hearing it. It gets quiet for a moment and then I hear sobbing.

I’m just getting pissed off now. Can I knock in next door and complain? I can’t call downstairs to complain, that crazy old bitch at reception. Fuck it, I had to put up with that when I worked in hotels, I’m complaining.

“Hello, front desshhk?”

“Hello, I’m in room 17 and there’s a small child who seems to be alone and upset. Are the parents downstairs?”

“The parentssh?”

“Yesh, I mean yes. The parents.”

“I don’t know I’ll have to check.”

“Well if you find them can you tell them to come back to their room?”

“A pleassshhe would be nisshhe.” “What’s a pleassshhe? Oh, please. Right, yes please ask the parents to come back.”

“Will do Johnny”

“Johnny? Hello?”

I’ll bet she’s got my room mixed up with someone else, It might be better if I just knocked into the room myself, just to make sure she’s ok. I grab my key and head for the door. It’s a cliche and I hate them, but I feel like there’s somebody here with me. The noise has stopped from next door, maybe she called the room or maybe the parents were there all along.
Jesus knowing my luck I’d have been caught in a strangers room with a crying girl and an angry look on my face, when all I wanted was a bit of peace and quiet to get some shut eye.

This place has the feeling that the decorator was trying to parody every single moody suspense horror flick ever made. Faded wallpaper, dodgy lampshades and a slightly brown shower curtain.
All complete with a wide selection of guests and staff to properly give a short story writer enough inspiration to be rejected by publishers. There’s a really creepy guy that actually smells like wank. He was in reception leering over the reservations book. You get weirdo’s everywhere, but when he walked past me muttering “Mmm, young ones”, that was all I needed to note to stay well out of his company. Fuck this, I might just get to bed and have a shower in the morning.

There is a deathly silence in the room since the girl has stopped crying, creepy to the point that I can actually hear my own thoughts and my mind is thinking of running away with itself. I have to get into bed. the radiator is not working and I’m not calling the front dessshhk again in case she sends up one of her inbred looking offsshhpring asshh maintanensshh.

I’m in bed, wrapped up in pyjamas, jumpers and my coat. The bed sheets smell dusty and the bed creaks. I hate this place. All I have to do is clear my mind and drift off, I’ll be out of here first thing.

The room is so dark that I can make no distinction between my eyes being open or closed, if I could I suspect the only thing I would see would be my breath in the air. There is deathly silence. The kind of silence that causes you to focus on every thing. Your breathing, your heartbeat, your eyes blinking. Everything.

“Johnny“

What the fuck was that?

I’m up and out of that bed with the lights on faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. My senses are so alert with adrenaline that I can hear silence. The blood rushing around inside and I become aware of my eyes bulging. My fists are clenched and I’m tense.
Silence.
Nothing.

Freaked, but fully aware that I’m alone I get back into bed. I must have been in that twilight state between consciousness about to drift off.
Back in bed, lights out.

I hear footsteps outside the door and thank Christ for the company, even if it is on the other side of a door. I don’t know why, but I take comfort in the fact that there are other people here. The footsteps stop.

They start again, inside the door. Instantly my heart is in my throat and I’m in a fight or flee state of mind, but I haven’t got the brainpower to move right now. Right now I’m still getting over the name Johnny being whispered in my ear moments earlier and now there’s someone in the room with me. Louder they get, closer they get and then they stop. It’s still too dark for me to see anything, but I dare not open my eyes for fear of what I might see even in my minds eye. I know there’s someone beside the bed, I can feel their presence and hear their breath. It’s not my breath because it’s out of sync. I breath out, they breath in. I’m in full panic mode now. My heart is on overdrive and adrenaline pumps in my veins like electricity, yet I can’t move.

“Please don’t”

Oh fuck off.

The girl from next door has started again. Only this time I can hear everything. She sounds concerned like she’s seen something happen before and doesn’t want it to repeat.

“Please don’t”

Don’t do what? Who’s she talking to? The breathing next to me is heavier and I can feel whatever it is leaning over me. I’d rather gouge my eyes out now than open them.

“He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it”

What didn’t I mean to do? Was she even talking about me? I feel a pressure on the bed like a hand pressing down to support someone – “Johnny” – and that’s all I can stand.
Up, out of bed. Lights on.

“Johnny?”, I say “Who the fuck is Johnny?” “If there’s anyone in here and acting the bollox then you can kiss my arse cause I’ve nearly pissed myself”.

There was no one around though. I did all the usual checking under the bed, behind the curtains and in the bathroom. Nothing.
I’m going back to bed, but the fucking light is staying on.

I’m shaken after that, it has to be my mind playing tricks on me, what with this being Halloween and everything in a strange and creepy place. I suppose I just scared myself.

“AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!”

A blood curdling shriek from the little girl that I will never forget. Just as I’m in mid flight out of the bed, the lights shut out. I’m disoriented in the pitch black but shaking with fear. It’s silence again, apart from a soft sobbing from the other side of the wall next door. I can’t see where I am, but at least I’m not in bed. The footsteps start again, I hear them down the corridor. Heavy, big footsteps and once again they stop outside the door. I’m getting ready for them to come this side of the door, just like last time but they don’t.
The foot steps don’t begin again, but the heavy breathing by my ear does. I start to sob myself I’m so frightened and out of place that my mind packs in and reverts to that of a child. The breathing continues and I can feel it on the back of my head. I have no in cling of what to do, I actually want my mother.

BANG

What the fuck?
The breathing, still.

BANG

Fuck.
I can smell the breath.

BANG
BANG

Stale roll up tobacco.

BANG
BANG
BANG BANG

“AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH Please don’t do it. He didn’t know. He didn’t do it.”

The lights come on and back out again just as quick. In that brief moment I catch a vision of the person behind, breathing on me. He’s big and in dark clothing. It wasn’t long enough to see exactly what he looked like, but I did notice he was looking at me through the mirror instead of directly at me.

Stunned but with a little notion of where I was in the room I try to run towards the door, but stub my toe on the bed and come crashing to the floor in a clumsy lump. The breathing has stopped, as well as the banging and the little girl. There’s a flicker of light on the mirror. Another flicker and then a few short bursts of light and image. I’m beyond caring about logic at this stage I want out, but before I can formulate a plan, the whole mirror lights up. It looks like a TV screen, it has a grainy picture on it. The picture begins to move. It’s a video camera and the voice of the little girl comes from the mirror:

“Johnny”

The picture moved around to show a pair of feet and as it moved away I could see that they belonged to a man who was lying on the ground. He wasn’t moving.

“Johnny likes to hug me”

The picture moved so show that the man was bleeding from the crotch.

“Johnny likes to kiss me”

The man’s arm was twitching as the picture zoomed into his eyes. His scared and bulging eyes that must have been what I looked like as I watched this. The sound accompanying the picture was the heavy breathing that had been terrorizing me.

“Johnny likes me to call him Daddy”

I could see his face, it was that pervy dude from reception.

“Johnny won’t be making me do things anymore”

With that, the camera hit the floor and I heard Johnny take a last laboured breath as the picture fell on the image of a young pair of bare feet walking away and as she sang, the mirror followed her.

“He won’t be watching anymore”

She stopped in the corner, a single hand that dangled a shabby teddy bear hung in frame.

“Ring around a rosie,
A pocket full of posie,
A – tishca, a – tischa,
We all fall down.”

There are some things you must do before you die. Hurl water balloons filled with camel piss at Tommy Teirnan would be on my list, but that’s just because I don’t like smug, unfunny arsebiscuits. Call me old fashioned.

But that’s not what I’m here to give out about.

Some people have lists of things that they want to do before they croak it and they usually include things like places to go, albums to listen to and “comedians” to urinealise.

One of the lists that always comes up is “The best movies to see before you die” list.

Instantly if you haven’t seen one of the movies on the list you are branded some kind of hermit pervert who fiddles the kids of lepered midgets. Interrupting the conversation with lines like, “I’ve never seen that” will usually result in the entire world saying:

“Oh My Gawd, I just like can’t believe that you haven’t seen it yet, I simply have to give you the DVD.”

Piss off.

Here’s a list of stuff that I haven’t seen and it’s because of the people who have a shit fit when I say I haven’t seen them that my desire to ever do so will forever shrink. So, cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it.
You freakcake.

• Godfather – any of them
• Star Wars – new and old and every other line of media that George “one trick pony” can muster up out of the franchise
• Lord of the Rings – any of them. Although I have seen the adult version “Lord of the rims”
• Platoon – “We like trained in a real boot camp for months to get inside the characters”. Snore.
• The Wizard of Oz – I was made to play the munchkin king when I was in a school play, so I vowed never to watch it. The Pink Floyd alleged link up has me curious though. I might have to be stoned.
• Any Monty Python movie – over rated sketch shows, I can only imagine the “hilarity” of the films.
• Apocalypse Now – No reason, just never saw it.
• The Shawshank Redemption – I know he crawls through shit at some stage, so why bother?
• It’s a Wonderful Life – It’s in black and white, isn’t it?
• Schindler’s list – What’s he doing, shopping?
• Four Weddings and a Funeral – Hugh Grant? Not on your knob.
• E.T. – “I cried for hours after”. For a plastic alien?
• Taxi Driver – From what people tell me, I wouldn’t get it.
• Gone with the Wind – see “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
• Any James Bond film – I’ve heard the names, the gadgets and the plots. Mike Myers didn’t have to work all that hard to make a laugh out of them for Austin Powers.

There are more, but I’m sensing that some of you may be wondering how I’ve survived this long without them.

But that’s exactly my point.

It’s happening again.

After the success of THIS we just had to do it again. So we’re going to.

There are a few changes to the writers group this time around – English Mum and Thrifty are both busy doing gay stuff, so that pretty much leaves it up to us with a few more people, although something tells me they haven’t gotten away completely!

I won’t reveal who the new writers are, you’ll just have to follow the links when we publish, which will be when the clock above reaches zero.

If you haven’t already seen our first go at linking 7 different writers into a story and are curious as to how it will work, start the last one “Another Saturday…” off HERE and follow the links. I think you’ll agree it’s a mega read. Alternatively you can just follow the links from the sidebar on the right there.

One event.
8 points of view.

Only this time it’s a scary as shite Halloween special. So set your watch, turn out the lights, bolt the door and prepare for -

The Blogosfear.

UPDATE:

It all starts here:

Intro Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

I hate bank holidays, nothing boils my piss more. First of all, banks open late and close early, they (mostly) don’t work Saturdays, not even the obligatory one a month and then they take an extra Monday off whenever the fancy takes them.

It’s not that that really gets me, it’s the fact that the rest of the fucking population has to jump on the bandwagon and take the day off too. I doubt that ordinary offices and businesses would crumble if they had to work when the banks were closed.

Maybe it’s my hospitality background coming through, I’ve never had the luxury or concept of a bank holiday until recently, but it fucks me right off.

I usually do my shopping on a Monday because I have very little work at the start of the week and every one else is usually back in their offices. Today I made the mistake of leaving my house having forgotten it was a “bank” holiday.

Bank holidays translate into the following for all who work 9 – 5:

• “Pile the kids into the car and drive to places we didn’t need to” holiday
• “Clog up car parks everywhere just because we HAVE to have the mother and child space, holding everyone else up” holiday
• “Drive like Miss Daisy is cracking the whip at you” holiday
• “Allow the kids to take 37 minutes at the checkout to pick sweets out, just this once” holiday
• “Huff and puff when they receive dirty looks from normal considerate people like me for being held up on the road, in the car park, at the checkout and then on the way home again” holiday

I swear to Lucifer, if I die on a bank holiday I’ll have to wait til Tuesday to get to Saint Peter ahead of all the absentee parents trying to make up for a lost week on my time.
I figured I’d find a bit of peace in the service station as I filled up on gold petrol. But no, there was a family surrounding the customary 46 seater troop transporter that goes for a vehicle these days and the kid, not kids, was filling the tank. This little whingemeister couldn’t have been any older than my last set of toe nail clippings and here she was, unsupervised and handling a very dangerous piece of equipment.

The parents?

Admiring the selection of hanging baskets the garage was selling.

I’m not one for promoting a Walton style of living, but this wasn’t even a happy middle ground.

I’ve complained about bad parenting before so I’m conscious not to go on about it here, but bank holidays just emphasise everything that is wrong with too many people not having enough to do.
People who work “office hours” create a week long rat race:

• Morning rush hour
• Lunch time rush hour
• Evening rush hour
• Dinner rush hour
• Weekend rush hours

It’s enough to send me back to working in hotels and restaurants. I mean when was the last time you heard of there being a traffic jam at 1am when the city’s waiters were on their way home?
Bollocks, I thought I’d be leaving people behind with my old career, but it’s put me smack bang in the middle of it and I’d rather have my scrotum gnawed on by a zombified hamster.

And as for normality on Tuesday morning?

Yep, because the entire “normal” population will be out in force again dropping the kids off in the 4×4′s despite living within spunking distance of the school and the lollipop people who are a law upon themselves will be creating traffic jams with that smug grin on their faces as they plot to kidnap all and sundry.

This all creates traffic that will last until lunch time when the whole thing starts off again in turn lasting until the evening rush hour where many souls are lost and spirits crushed.

The other thing that annoys me about bank holidays and weekends in general?

Nobody reads blogs. “Oh boo hoo” I hear you cry, “poor Maxi”. Poor fucking me is right, I have to wait until people return to work before they’ll click on here and other blogs are the same. Which only proves that even after you’ve jizzed your free time away do you actually get around to doing what free time is for – fucking about.

It’s not just blogs either, newspapers fill themselves with shite on the weekends just to keep the sales up, because despite having free time when not working people don’t want to read. They’d rather do that on company time.

You whinge that you work too hard, but you work office hours. Then when you should be working you’re reading me.

Guaranteed, you’ve checked your emails, phone messages, missed calls and now you’re doing the rounds on your fave blogs. You should be working, but you spend the first half of the morning wanking about, the nest half debating what you’ll have for lunch and then the after noon “slump” hits after you’ve checked back at your pc.

You’re all shams and I’m onto every single one of you.

Go ahead and tell me I’m wrong, I fucking dare you.