Post by tractator on Feb 8, 2006 17:55:09 GMT -5
I recently spent an age doing an unofficial novelisation of "ROSE." Anyone interested in reading the rest of it?
Here is chapter 2 as a sampler:
CHAPTER 2
THE STRANGER IN THE BASEMENT
As the lift descended she began to get that horrible feeling of dread that she always got when she had to go to the basement. There was something creepy about the place. Too many shadows and dark corners. It was the place where all the broken shop fittings and unfit stock ended up, which made it a kind of sad and forlorn place. Maybe she hadn’t forgotten to take the lottery money down after all, maybe she had just been subconsciously putting it off. It was all very irrational, of course; the basement itself was innocent enough, it was just a series of store rooms and boiler rooms and whatever else you needed to keep a large department store ticking over, all lying off a meandering corridor.
And somewhere in the middle of it all was Wilson.
Wilson was officially the Chief Electrician, although in reality he did it all: electrics, plumbing, carpentry, whatever was required of him. He knew where everything was and why it was there, but more importantly, he knew how to fix it when it broke down. He seemed to spend most of his time knee-deep in waste bins or blocked toilets, but never had a cross word or a bad thought for anyone.
And he ran the lottery syndicate.
When the lift arrived, Rose stepped out and looked both ways along the corridor.
“Wilson?” she called out.
There was no reply, so she headed left towards Wilson’s office.
“Wilson, I’ve got the lottery money! Wilson?”
It wasn’t really an office, of course, just a small storeroom he had cleared out and made his own. It had a rather battered comfy chair, a small table, a radio and a kettle, and that was it, but to Wilson it was ‘his office’.
When she reached the door, which declared it to be the home of ‘H.P. Wilson C.E.O.’, she rapped on the door, before rattling the handle.
“Are you there?”
Still no reply. Obviously not then, unless he was asleep.
“Look, I can’t hang about cos they’re closing the shop,” she called through the locked door. She paused for a moment, listening for the slightest sound. “Wilson?”
Still nothing. She groaned and muttered, more to herself than the errant janitor. “Oh, come on!”
Suddenly there was a noise from somewhere behind her, the sound of someone tripping over a bucket or something, followed by what might have been hastily retreating footsteps.
“Hello?” She turned toward the sound and slowly made her way further along the corridor. “Hello, Wilson? Its Rose.”
She thought she heard another sound, a kind of shallow breathing, and quickened her pace. Perhaps he’d had an accident and needed help. By now she was heading deeper into the shadows, but the fear was gone, replaced by concern.
“Hello? Wilson?”
Further along, on her right hand side was another door, almost hidden in the shadows, and beyond it Rose thought she heard a brief dragging sound. She gave it an experimental push.
It opened onto a darkened room. In the light that was cast in from the corridor she could see very little, so she fumbled for the light switch.
As the fluorescent strip lighting hummed and flickered into life, the room extended out before her. It was one of the larger rooms and overhead pipes and cables ran away from her into the distance. The left-hand wall was hidden somewhere behind stacks of large cardboard boxes and crowds of brightly-dressed mannequins, and the right-hand wall similarly was lined with more of these plastic figures, all discarded in odd poses.
“Wilson?” she called again, as she ventured further into the room, “Wilson?”
A short distance ahead lay a red door on the right-hand wall and she went to try it. As she gripped the handle she heard the door she had entered by slam closed,
and panic set in.
She ran back to it and pulled it, but it refused to budge. Desperately she rattled it but it was clear that it wasn’t going to give. It was almost as if it had been locked. “Oh, you’re kidding me!” she groaned.
Another noise, somewhere in the farthest corner of the room made her turn suddenly.
“Is there someone muckin’ about?” she shouted. Things were starting to get decidedly creepy.
She hesitantly walked among the mannequins again, trying to precisely pinpoint the source and direction of the noise. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice starting to crack with the anxiety she felt.
From somewhere back where she had just come from, somewhere over her left shoulder, she heard an eerie creaking noise that stopped her in her tracks. She turned to look, and could see that one of the mannequins appeared to be falling forward. It didn’t seem right though. It wasn’t so much falling as leaning. And it could be her imagination, but she could almost swear it was twisting its upper body toward her, as if it was watching her.
Then, as she stared at it in disbelief, it stepped out into the open, its arms moving stiffly.
It was definitely one of the mannequins. Its shirt was open and she could the plastic torso. And its face. Its features were obviously human-like, but not finished. The eyes and nose and mouth were shaped from solid plastic, and incapable of any movement.
It slowly advanced toward her, its movements jerky but purposeful.
“Okay,” she said nervously, “You got me. Very funny.” She started to raise her hand to halt it, but changed her mind.
Behind it another mannequin stepped out and began to follow it.
Anger began to take over and she shouted at no one in particular “Right, I’ve got the joke! Whose idea was this? Is it Derek’s? Is it?”
Her mouth had started to dry and she licked her lips before trying again.
“Derek, is this you?” This was getting quite scary. All around her the mannequins were moving from their positions and starting to draw in toward her. In moments she would be completely surrounded.
She started to retreat among discarded props and window dressings, always with one eye on the steadily advancing figures. At one point she nearly stumbled into a pile of rubbish, but recovered quickly. As she continued edging back she found herself against a wall, the hot water pipe that ran along it brushing against the back of her neck.
She was surrounded.
The Mannequins stopped and for a moment she felt relieved but confused, but then several of the lead figures raised their arms in perfect unison, as if to chop her down. She cringed as she braced herself for the blows.
Suddenly she felt someone take her left hand. Looking to her side she realised a man had ducked in through a nearby door.
“Run!” he said, with something almost close to glee, and led her through the doorway. Behind her she heard a mannequin’s blow fracture the pipe with a clang, then the gush of hot steam escaping.
They ran up a deserted concrete service corridor, the stranger dragging her along as quickly as she could run, on what seemed to Rose to be almost a predetermined escape route. Several times she looked back and saw the mannequins giving chase. More disturbing was the realisation that others had pre-empted the stranger’s route and had appeared at access grilles along the corridor and were reaching through in an attempt to grab them.
At the end of the corridor were another pair of fire doors and the stranger led her through them into an underground carpark, near a waiting lift. With their inhuman pursuers gaining on them, they threw themselves inside, and the stranger thumped a button, seemingly at random.
As the doors began to close, the mannequins arrived at the lift and the lead figure thrust its arm through the narrowing gap. As Rose pressed herself back against the rear of the lift, her unnamed ally recklessly grabbed the arm and began to wrestle with it as its owner tried to grab him by the throat. He dodged the flailing hand as he tried to tug and twist at the arm, almost as if trying to pull it off.
Suddenly, and with a strange plastic sucking noise that sounded like ‘Thok!’, the arm came free and the lift doors slammed shut.
Rose grimaced in horrified disbelief. “Ugh! You pulled his arm off!”
Her rescuer gave the detached limb a cursory examination before turning to her.
“Yup!” He tossed it to her and she caught it without thinking. “Plastic!”
He crossed his arms and turned away.
“Very clever,” she said, “Nice trick. Who are they, then? Students? Is this a student thing or what?”
With arms still crossed, her rescuer turned to her and frowned, “Why would they be students?”
He turned back to face the doors, as if he was eager to get out and avoid the questions. Now that she had a moment and had gotten her breath back, Rose took in the figure before her. He was tall, slim, in his late thirties, perhaps. His hair was in a crew-cut style and he was clean-shaven. He had a friendly and open face, furnished with slightly angular features and a largish nose. His clothing was innocuous; a simple ensemble of heavy black boots, dark narrow-fitting pants, and a battered looking short leather coat over a wine-coloured sweater.
“I don’t know,” she conceded
“Well you said it,” he said, briefly turning again, “Why students?”
She shrugged. “Cos… to get that many people dressed up and being silly…they’ve gotta be students.”
He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned infectiously. “That makes sense. Well done!”
Rose found his manner just a lit condescending, but at the same time it was like getting a gold star from teacher.
“Thanks.” She felt quietly pleased with herself.
He turned back to the lift door and then said “They’re not students.”
“Whoever they are, when Wilson finds them he’s gonna call the police.”
The stranger frowned a little “Who’s Wilson?”
“Chief electrician,” she answered.
Just then the lift door opened.
“Wilson’s dead,” he said, then stepped out.
She started to follow him, still clutching the plastic arm. “That’s just not funny. That’s sick.”
“Hold on.” He moved her to one side and produced a small pen-like device from a pocket, “Mind your eyes!”
The pen-device emitted a narrow blue beam, which he directed at the lift call button.
Rose started to protest, but was interrupted by an eruption of sparks as he fused the controls.
The stranger started to leave, and she called after him. “Who are you, then? Who’s that lot down there?” She chased after him, too many questions still unanswered. “I said who are they?”
“They’re made of plastic,” he explained, his pace barely slowing, “Living plastic creatures. They’re controlled by a relay device on the roof, which would be a great big problem if I didn’t have this!” He suddenly stopped and turned as he produced something from his pocket. It was a hodge-podge of wires, circuits and red insulation tape, roughly the size and shape of a video cassette. “So,” he set off again, “I’m gonna go upstairs and blow it up. And I might just die in the process, but don’t worry about me, no, you go home. Go on,” he opened an emergency exit and shoved her out of it, “Go and have your lovely beans on toast. Don’t tell anyone about this, cos if you do, you’ll get them killed.” He pulled the door closed, locking her out.
Stunned by the sudden and rather incredulous outpouring of information, Rose slowly turned to go, when the door suddenly opened again.
“I’m The Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?” the stranger smiled in a slightly manic fashion.
“Rose,” she answered slowly.
“Nice to meet you, Rose.” He held up the device and gestured with it, “Run for your life!”
He pulled the door closed again, and she turned to leave. The exit had brought her out in a side alley outside the store, somewhere close to the loading bays, and she paused for a moment, wondering what to do next.
Well, it seemed obvious that it was all some big joke. It had to be some sort of student prank. Plastic creatures? As if! And the Doctor or whatever he was, he had to be a part of it. He could be a mature student, maybe. Yeah! Or a geography tutor who was game enough to be a part of the whole thing. He certainly looked like one in that leather coat!
Or maybe not…
There was something that just didn’t sit right with this whole thing. Better safe than sorry…
She broke into a run, and still clutching the plastic arm, darted out of the alley and onto the street. It was sometime just after six and the traffic was still quite busy. She paused briefly to catch her breath and steady her nerves before stepping off the curb and across the road. Despite the bustling normality of it all she still felt jittery and she realised that if any of this was for real then any minute now there would be an explosion and all hell would break loose.
In her haste to put some distance between herself and Henriks she stepped into the path of an oncoming black cab and the driver braked suddenly as she froze in momentary panic. He leaned out the window and screamed obsenities at her as she forced herself to act calmly and rationally. Ignoring the driver, she continued across the road to the safety of the other side, then glanced over her shoulder at the roof of the store.
Nothing.
Oh well, she thought, maybe it was a prank after all.
She turned to walk away when suddenly-
A tremendous bang shook the ground and made her catch her breath in shock. The street seemed to light up and she turned to see a mighty bloom of flame engulf the entire roof. Seconds later another explosion ravaged the floor below as gouts of flame erupted from every window, showering glass and masonry on the confused pedestrians below. Vehicles swerved to avoid those fleeing across the street. Car and shop alarms in nearby streets went off, adding their cacophony to the ensuing chaos.
Rose watched the scene in mounting horror for a few more seconds, her mind temporarily devoid of all rational thought.
Then something in her head clicked and the image of The Doctor returned to her.
In the doorway.
Clutching that device.
Saying those words.
“Run for your life!”
She turned and ran.
(As she fled, she failed to notice the conspicuous blue wooden box hiding in the shadows of a nearby building, the words ‘Police Public Call Box’ lit up over the narrow panelled door its front…)
Here is chapter 2 as a sampler:
CHAPTER 2
THE STRANGER IN THE BASEMENT
As the lift descended she began to get that horrible feeling of dread that she always got when she had to go to the basement. There was something creepy about the place. Too many shadows and dark corners. It was the place where all the broken shop fittings and unfit stock ended up, which made it a kind of sad and forlorn place. Maybe she hadn’t forgotten to take the lottery money down after all, maybe she had just been subconsciously putting it off. It was all very irrational, of course; the basement itself was innocent enough, it was just a series of store rooms and boiler rooms and whatever else you needed to keep a large department store ticking over, all lying off a meandering corridor.
And somewhere in the middle of it all was Wilson.
Wilson was officially the Chief Electrician, although in reality he did it all: electrics, plumbing, carpentry, whatever was required of him. He knew where everything was and why it was there, but more importantly, he knew how to fix it when it broke down. He seemed to spend most of his time knee-deep in waste bins or blocked toilets, but never had a cross word or a bad thought for anyone.
And he ran the lottery syndicate.
When the lift arrived, Rose stepped out and looked both ways along the corridor.
“Wilson?” she called out.
There was no reply, so she headed left towards Wilson’s office.
“Wilson, I’ve got the lottery money! Wilson?”
It wasn’t really an office, of course, just a small storeroom he had cleared out and made his own. It had a rather battered comfy chair, a small table, a radio and a kettle, and that was it, but to Wilson it was ‘his office’.
When she reached the door, which declared it to be the home of ‘H.P. Wilson C.E.O.’, she rapped on the door, before rattling the handle.
“Are you there?”
Still no reply. Obviously not then, unless he was asleep.
“Look, I can’t hang about cos they’re closing the shop,” she called through the locked door. She paused for a moment, listening for the slightest sound. “Wilson?”
Still nothing. She groaned and muttered, more to herself than the errant janitor. “Oh, come on!”
Suddenly there was a noise from somewhere behind her, the sound of someone tripping over a bucket or something, followed by what might have been hastily retreating footsteps.
“Hello?” She turned toward the sound and slowly made her way further along the corridor. “Hello, Wilson? Its Rose.”
She thought she heard another sound, a kind of shallow breathing, and quickened her pace. Perhaps he’d had an accident and needed help. By now she was heading deeper into the shadows, but the fear was gone, replaced by concern.
“Hello? Wilson?”
Further along, on her right hand side was another door, almost hidden in the shadows, and beyond it Rose thought she heard a brief dragging sound. She gave it an experimental push.
It opened onto a darkened room. In the light that was cast in from the corridor she could see very little, so she fumbled for the light switch.
As the fluorescent strip lighting hummed and flickered into life, the room extended out before her. It was one of the larger rooms and overhead pipes and cables ran away from her into the distance. The left-hand wall was hidden somewhere behind stacks of large cardboard boxes and crowds of brightly-dressed mannequins, and the right-hand wall similarly was lined with more of these plastic figures, all discarded in odd poses.
“Wilson?” she called again, as she ventured further into the room, “Wilson?”
A short distance ahead lay a red door on the right-hand wall and she went to try it. As she gripped the handle she heard the door she had entered by slam closed,
and panic set in.
She ran back to it and pulled it, but it refused to budge. Desperately she rattled it but it was clear that it wasn’t going to give. It was almost as if it had been locked. “Oh, you’re kidding me!” she groaned.
Another noise, somewhere in the farthest corner of the room made her turn suddenly.
“Is there someone muckin’ about?” she shouted. Things were starting to get decidedly creepy.
She hesitantly walked among the mannequins again, trying to precisely pinpoint the source and direction of the noise. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice starting to crack with the anxiety she felt.
From somewhere back where she had just come from, somewhere over her left shoulder, she heard an eerie creaking noise that stopped her in her tracks. She turned to look, and could see that one of the mannequins appeared to be falling forward. It didn’t seem right though. It wasn’t so much falling as leaning. And it could be her imagination, but she could almost swear it was twisting its upper body toward her, as if it was watching her.
Then, as she stared at it in disbelief, it stepped out into the open, its arms moving stiffly.
It was definitely one of the mannequins. Its shirt was open and she could the plastic torso. And its face. Its features were obviously human-like, but not finished. The eyes and nose and mouth were shaped from solid plastic, and incapable of any movement.
It slowly advanced toward her, its movements jerky but purposeful.
“Okay,” she said nervously, “You got me. Very funny.” She started to raise her hand to halt it, but changed her mind.
Behind it another mannequin stepped out and began to follow it.
Anger began to take over and she shouted at no one in particular “Right, I’ve got the joke! Whose idea was this? Is it Derek’s? Is it?”
Her mouth had started to dry and she licked her lips before trying again.
“Derek, is this you?” This was getting quite scary. All around her the mannequins were moving from their positions and starting to draw in toward her. In moments she would be completely surrounded.
She started to retreat among discarded props and window dressings, always with one eye on the steadily advancing figures. At one point she nearly stumbled into a pile of rubbish, but recovered quickly. As she continued edging back she found herself against a wall, the hot water pipe that ran along it brushing against the back of her neck.
She was surrounded.
The Mannequins stopped and for a moment she felt relieved but confused, but then several of the lead figures raised their arms in perfect unison, as if to chop her down. She cringed as she braced herself for the blows.
Suddenly she felt someone take her left hand. Looking to her side she realised a man had ducked in through a nearby door.
“Run!” he said, with something almost close to glee, and led her through the doorway. Behind her she heard a mannequin’s blow fracture the pipe with a clang, then the gush of hot steam escaping.
They ran up a deserted concrete service corridor, the stranger dragging her along as quickly as she could run, on what seemed to Rose to be almost a predetermined escape route. Several times she looked back and saw the mannequins giving chase. More disturbing was the realisation that others had pre-empted the stranger’s route and had appeared at access grilles along the corridor and were reaching through in an attempt to grab them.
At the end of the corridor were another pair of fire doors and the stranger led her through them into an underground carpark, near a waiting lift. With their inhuman pursuers gaining on them, they threw themselves inside, and the stranger thumped a button, seemingly at random.
As the doors began to close, the mannequins arrived at the lift and the lead figure thrust its arm through the narrowing gap. As Rose pressed herself back against the rear of the lift, her unnamed ally recklessly grabbed the arm and began to wrestle with it as its owner tried to grab him by the throat. He dodged the flailing hand as he tried to tug and twist at the arm, almost as if trying to pull it off.
Suddenly, and with a strange plastic sucking noise that sounded like ‘Thok!’, the arm came free and the lift doors slammed shut.
Rose grimaced in horrified disbelief. “Ugh! You pulled his arm off!”
Her rescuer gave the detached limb a cursory examination before turning to her.
“Yup!” He tossed it to her and she caught it without thinking. “Plastic!”
He crossed his arms and turned away.
“Very clever,” she said, “Nice trick. Who are they, then? Students? Is this a student thing or what?”
With arms still crossed, her rescuer turned to her and frowned, “Why would they be students?”
He turned back to face the doors, as if he was eager to get out and avoid the questions. Now that she had a moment and had gotten her breath back, Rose took in the figure before her. He was tall, slim, in his late thirties, perhaps. His hair was in a crew-cut style and he was clean-shaven. He had a friendly and open face, furnished with slightly angular features and a largish nose. His clothing was innocuous; a simple ensemble of heavy black boots, dark narrow-fitting pants, and a battered looking short leather coat over a wine-coloured sweater.
“I don’t know,” she conceded
“Well you said it,” he said, briefly turning again, “Why students?”
She shrugged. “Cos… to get that many people dressed up and being silly…they’ve gotta be students.”
He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned infectiously. “That makes sense. Well done!”
Rose found his manner just a lit condescending, but at the same time it was like getting a gold star from teacher.
“Thanks.” She felt quietly pleased with herself.
He turned back to the lift door and then said “They’re not students.”
“Whoever they are, when Wilson finds them he’s gonna call the police.”
The stranger frowned a little “Who’s Wilson?”
“Chief electrician,” she answered.
Just then the lift door opened.
“Wilson’s dead,” he said, then stepped out.
She started to follow him, still clutching the plastic arm. “That’s just not funny. That’s sick.”
“Hold on.” He moved her to one side and produced a small pen-like device from a pocket, “Mind your eyes!”
The pen-device emitted a narrow blue beam, which he directed at the lift call button.
Rose started to protest, but was interrupted by an eruption of sparks as he fused the controls.
The stranger started to leave, and she called after him. “Who are you, then? Who’s that lot down there?” She chased after him, too many questions still unanswered. “I said who are they?”
“They’re made of plastic,” he explained, his pace barely slowing, “Living plastic creatures. They’re controlled by a relay device on the roof, which would be a great big problem if I didn’t have this!” He suddenly stopped and turned as he produced something from his pocket. It was a hodge-podge of wires, circuits and red insulation tape, roughly the size and shape of a video cassette. “So,” he set off again, “I’m gonna go upstairs and blow it up. And I might just die in the process, but don’t worry about me, no, you go home. Go on,” he opened an emergency exit and shoved her out of it, “Go and have your lovely beans on toast. Don’t tell anyone about this, cos if you do, you’ll get them killed.” He pulled the door closed, locking her out.
Stunned by the sudden and rather incredulous outpouring of information, Rose slowly turned to go, when the door suddenly opened again.
“I’m The Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?” the stranger smiled in a slightly manic fashion.
“Rose,” she answered slowly.
“Nice to meet you, Rose.” He held up the device and gestured with it, “Run for your life!”
He pulled the door closed again, and she turned to leave. The exit had brought her out in a side alley outside the store, somewhere close to the loading bays, and she paused for a moment, wondering what to do next.
Well, it seemed obvious that it was all some big joke. It had to be some sort of student prank. Plastic creatures? As if! And the Doctor or whatever he was, he had to be a part of it. He could be a mature student, maybe. Yeah! Or a geography tutor who was game enough to be a part of the whole thing. He certainly looked like one in that leather coat!
Or maybe not…
There was something that just didn’t sit right with this whole thing. Better safe than sorry…
She broke into a run, and still clutching the plastic arm, darted out of the alley and onto the street. It was sometime just after six and the traffic was still quite busy. She paused briefly to catch her breath and steady her nerves before stepping off the curb and across the road. Despite the bustling normality of it all she still felt jittery and she realised that if any of this was for real then any minute now there would be an explosion and all hell would break loose.
In her haste to put some distance between herself and Henriks she stepped into the path of an oncoming black cab and the driver braked suddenly as she froze in momentary panic. He leaned out the window and screamed obsenities at her as she forced herself to act calmly and rationally. Ignoring the driver, she continued across the road to the safety of the other side, then glanced over her shoulder at the roof of the store.
Nothing.
Oh well, she thought, maybe it was a prank after all.
She turned to walk away when suddenly-
A tremendous bang shook the ground and made her catch her breath in shock. The street seemed to light up and she turned to see a mighty bloom of flame engulf the entire roof. Seconds later another explosion ravaged the floor below as gouts of flame erupted from every window, showering glass and masonry on the confused pedestrians below. Vehicles swerved to avoid those fleeing across the street. Car and shop alarms in nearby streets went off, adding their cacophony to the ensuing chaos.
Rose watched the scene in mounting horror for a few more seconds, her mind temporarily devoid of all rational thought.
Then something in her head clicked and the image of The Doctor returned to her.
In the doorway.
Clutching that device.
Saying those words.
“Run for your life!”
She turned and ran.
(As she fled, she failed to notice the conspicuous blue wooden box hiding in the shadows of a nearby building, the words ‘Police Public Call Box’ lit up over the narrow panelled door its front…)