Please
feel free to browse through some extracts from my book. Hope it gives you a
feel for the type of writer I am. Please
feel free to comment about anything you see here on the reveiws page.
Thank
you.
David
Strorm.
1. Amanda has her first strange
experience...
As
she pondered over her looks, she thought she sensed the mirror was moving. No,
not actually moving but the image within it seemed to be vibrating slightly. As
if, a far off earthquake was disturbing a glass of water. Amanda rubbed her
eyes and stared again at her reflection. Her image itself was now, definitely
distorted and a rising panic began to grip her. Nervously she put forward her
hand and as she did so, tiny effervescent bubbles began to rise from the
mirrors surface. Her first instinct was to move away. Obviously, the strain of
the last year or so was finally transforming itself into some kind of mental
illness but she felt glued to the spot and compelled to touch the mirrors
surface. As she did so, she felt a warm and calming feeling flow through her
like the rush of your first whisky on a cold night.
The
bubbles were becoming larger now and the whole surface of the mirror began to
omit them as if it were somehow a pan of boiling water, yet there was no heat.
Amanda knew that all logic had made this event next to impossible yet somehow
she also knew that there was nothing to fear from it. The shower of spherical
balls, like clear metal, began to pour from its reflective surface and she
became enveloped in its growing mass. It felt so normal yet she did not know
why and a strange pulsing began to sound in her ears. One that seemed to match
the beat of her slowing heart rate.
She
should have been surprised and terrified as the whole mirror began to omit one
huge glowing bubble, rising slowly out of it but instead she closed her eyes as
it gently kissed her face and enveloped her. It was like being within a
blue-glowing swimming pool and everything around her seemed to fade into the
background.
Amanda’s
body relaxed and she felt as if she were suspended in a soft prison, a womb
like structure. The throbbing became louder and she heard the whispering of
strange foreign voices. Clicks and sounds unlike anything she had ever heard
before. The room around her now seemed to be full of the shimmering cascading
bubbles and the noise in her ears had become all she could hear. Her body
pulsed as one with the strange anomaly louder and louder and louder until…
Suddenly
it was gone and Amanda collapsed to her knees on the soft pile carpet of her
living room floor. She was stunned yet strangely elated. A scary feeling she
could neither deny nor embrace. What had just happened, was it madness or a
vision? As she slowly raised her head, Amanda felt her gaze drawn to her
television set.
All
around her was back to normal and there seemed to be no evidence to suggest
that anything had actually happened. She looked over her shoulder at the
mirror, now as should be expected being just a mirror. Nothing in her room had
changed from earlier and she sat back on her haunches trying to make sense of
her unexplainable experience.
“Earlier today Mark Jonas, a thirty-six year
old car mechanic from Clovis, New Mexico, shot himself dead after a two mile
chase through Sigourney, Iowa. Officials have not yet ruled out the possibility
that he was part of some extremist organization and are still combing the area
for clues to his motive. Eye witnesses told us that the deceased man had
attacked forty-nine year old citizen Mervin Willis on the main street of
Sigourney thirty minutes before, stealing his gun and then firing at and
injuring two police officers who were parked across the street.”
Amanda
jumped to her feet. The news report moved on to something different and she
switched off her TV. At last, here was the break she had been looking for.
Somehow, she knew there was a connection here and she felt an overwhelming
sense of purpose that rather unnerved her. She knew that she had to get to
Iowa.
A
feeling deeper and more real than logic had gripped her being and somehow she
understood it could not be ignored. She was no longer a strong believer in god.
Her career so far in the bureau had but paid to that. Yet something had just
happened, something powerful, almost religious and Mark Jonas, as dead as he
may be, had to be the key...
2. Ivan Mihalache gets ready to meet
his god...
Ivan
Mihalache was ready. It was if he had waited all his life for this moment and
now… he was about to feel his God’s enlightening embrace.
Ivan
had grown up quickly on the streets of Bucharest. One of hundreds of street
kids scraping a living from the filth and cast-offs of others. He had, against
the odds, survived to his twenty-sixth birthday and now it was his time. It had
not been easy. Years of substance abuse and alcoholism had twisted and shaped
his spindly five foot two inch frame and his fragile demeanour told unwritten
stories about his experiences. It had been just under three months ago that he
had collapsed, almost lifeless, on the floor of ‘The Brotherhood of the well,’
church in Ferentari. At this point, the churches open doors had been just
somewhere to crash for the night.
However,
as the Brothers there had bathed his aching body and fed his starving bones, he
had seen the light of salvation in their welcoming arms and whispering voices.
They
have told him of a great well, deep within the earth. A place where the lost
and hopeless, the worthless and most reproached, the aimless and self-hated,
could finally find peace and Ivan wanted peace. Ivan whose name meant ‘God is
gracious,’ wanted his repugnant life to be redeemed. From here, he was taken by
plane to Tau-Tona, to the inner sanctum of the church, where he trained day and
night, deep beneath the earth. Day and night with little sustenance or rest.
The brotherhood of the Well his constant companions, always there, always
whispering their words of encouragement to him. After a month of preparation, a
month of sitting alone in the darkness of his cell. Cleansing his body of all
impurities, guided, of course, always by the selfless support of the brothers.
A month of relinquishing all worldly bonds and minimal amounts of food and
sleep, it finally came to him in a feverish dream. The hand of god touched his
soul and he was ready. Today he would converse with the maker of all things and
he, who is the creator of all life, would decide Ivan’s future.
Ivan
Mihalache wept as he journeyed into the tunnel of blue light. He wept tears of
joy, which spilled onto his white cassock and spread across the rough cloth as
testament to his pilgrimage. In front of him walked the Guardian of the well. He
was dressed in black as where the two brothers behind him. The four men entered
the cavern. The beauty of its majesty hit Ivan like a blow to the stomach and
he gasped for air as his eyes were transfixed by the giant spherical cathedral.
It
was as if he were walking across an ocean floor and he marvelled as the strange
thick air rippled around him. As he
crossed its hallowed ground, he saw with joy, the well ahead of him and it was
all he could do to stop himself running towards its emancipating silver-blue
glow. Off to his left he caught sight of a rectangular metal cage about eight
feet square. Three monks guarded the tubular steel enclosure, which rested on
robust pneumatic wheels. All of them carried rifles loaded with anaesthetic
darts and they gripped them tightly as the procession approached. However, Ivan
did not dwell on this abstract sideshow and stared feverishly ahead at his
goal.
The
keeper of the well stood aside for him and Ivan stood at the well’s rim. The
pool of thick liquid was still and strange clear images began to form on its
surface. He saw a motel car park bathed in the orange glow of sodium lighting
and in the distance, a red haired woman seemed to be retrieving a drink from
the belly of a vending machine. Confused, he looked towards the keeper.
“It
is for you to find your own enlightenment my son. It is to only you that God
will reveal himself. For you are the chosen of many and this time is your time
Ivan.”
Ivan
smiled and knew what he must do. As the others backed off, he stood over the
well and closing his eyes, dipped his right hand into the strange fluid.
3. Roy Cummins dispenses with
Curtis...
It
was about 6.20am when Curtis awoke and almost choked on the dirty rag that
filled his mouth. He tried to shout but the silver duct tape that held his head
tight to the tree behind him was also tight across his face and his efforts
soon moved to breathing heavily through his nose. He tried to move as he saw
the unmistakable frame of Roy Cummins standing, watching him from ten feet or
so away but more duct tape held his chest, legs and feet firmly to his wooden
tether. As he approached, Curtis saw the glimpse of a small shiny axe hanging
loosely from Roy’s right hand and he froze with terror. He already knew what
this was about and his eyes grew wide as if to shout his protest at the looming
figure in front of him.
Roy
Cummins could barely hold his excitement in. This little prick was responsible
for the rest of them having to work overtime again. He had warned Hines that
the target was not to be harmed yet the target now laid, his chest full of
Curtis’s bullets, dead on the basement floor in Sigourney. These were the
moments Roy lived for.
He
had experienced its powerful additive qualities first when he had watched the
bastard that was his father, before he burned. Watched the fear that gripped
him as he saw the flaming rag drop to his groin. It transmitted itself through
his eyes and Roy had revelled in it. Many times over his army career, he had
satisfied his craving. He had known from a young man that being a soldier would
give him what he most desired. Fuck, they would pin medals on him for it and he
adored its power.
Roy
stared deep into Curtis’s eyes, both of them wide and doe like, his pupils
almost filling their welling sockets. He leaned forward and studied the flecks
and dark strands that ran across the yanks irises, watching the blood pulse
along the intricate array of capillaries that traversed the eyeballs surfaces.
Roy smiled and raised the axe slightly; glancing down towards Curtis’s right
hand, which was struggling from below the tape that held it there, then back at
his now even wider eyes. He sensed that Curtis had guessed his next move and he
held on to the moment, so as to gain the maximum pleasure from the Yanks panic.
Curtis’s breathing now came in short bursts and he struggled wildly to free
himself from his duct tape bonds.
The
axe came down on his wrist and cut through to wood… and a bloody hand fell to
the forest floor. The screams of Curtis Hines were muffled by the tape and rag
as he stared at his open wrist now spewing blood in regular fountains on to the
leaf litter below it. The eyes of Curtis met Roy’s and he saw his madness
within their glare. Curtis listened intently, listened as Roy whispered into
his ear.
“And if thy right hand offend thee,
cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of
thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell... Mathew 5:30.”
Roy then stood back, smoked a cigarette and
watched the fear in the New Yorkers eyes grow and grow as he thought about his
approaching death. He had seen and enjoyed the same look as he had stood over
Janice Strong; blood pouring from her wrists before dispersing into the
swirling eddies of the hot bath water. After the last drop of Hines’s lifeblood
had ebbed away. Roy Cummins turned and slowly returned to his vehicle...
4. Abassi comes to a shocking
conclusion...
As
they made their way forward, he noticed the many flat roofs and sand-brick
buildings that stretched out around them. The buildings seemed architecturally
random and this only added to the dusty chaotic scene that surrounded him. They
were travelling down a main street from which many smaller ones ran. Some were
wide and donkey-drawn carts, bikes and old vehicles travelled along them, to
and from the main market road. Some were not much more than alleyways, where
rag-tag children stared out from doorways and washing criss-crossed from window
to window. The streets shop fronts and houses that lined their route, carried
the scars of bullet fire across them and burnt out cars along the curbs added
to the battlefield-like landscape, yet life seemed oblivious to the scenes of
conflict around it.
Women
in brightly coloured full-length dresses and headscarves carried wood and
water, babies and food, up and down the street. They laughed and chatted while
children ran in and out of their legs immersed in play. Young men argued and
bartered with their elders and their equals at the stalls and stores along the
roads edge. The waving fingers, nodding and shaking of heads and final
handshakes of agreement were instantly recognisable as the bit parts in the
worldwide and universal language of trade.
In the distance, the sun sat red and heavy in the evening sky and
throughout, what Abassi had realized was a large city, people were being called
to evening prayer.
The
trucks turned left into a wider and more traffic-laden carriageway. All along
its route men stood staring at the passing trucks, most of them as well armed
as the soldiers onboard. Some sat in groups around tables along the roadside,
sipping tall glasses of tea and coffee and playing cards or talking. Others stood
on the level rooftops that also lined the route, outsize machine guns and
rocket launches at their sides. Others still, paraded past the trucks in
overcrowded and ancient pickups. All of them had one thing in common, a vast
array of weaponry, from small arms and clean bladed machetes to Kalashnikovs
and M16’s. Some of the guns seemed to dwarf even the young hands that held
them. Abassi became unnerved by the colossal presence of firepower and sat back
down on the bed of the truck.
The
other passengers that accompanied him had largely forgotten his little episode
and it seemed as if they were no longer aware of his presence at all. Abassi
stared down to a small plastic covered card that hung round his neck on a thin
chord and pulled it around to view its detail.
It
was then he froze where he sat… He stared deeply at the details across its
front and a sense of dread slowly filtered through his being. It had not been
until this point that he had realized that apart from his colleague who had
called him Abassi, this obviously being his first name, he could not remember
anything else about himself.
Abassi
read the ID card to himself for the third time and stared at his outstretched
hands. His fingers were long and slender and his skin was the colour of Wenege
bark. As panic gripped him, he felt across his chest and along his legs as if
he knew nothing about even his appearance. He wore as did most of the men a
thin cotton shirt, its arms rolled up neatly to just above his elbows. His feet
lay stretched out in front of him, enclosed in soft leather sandals and the
beige cotton trousers he wore were creased and laced with sand. He ran his
fingers across his front and splayed them out across his own face, rubbing it
gently up and down as a blind man might do when explore his partner’s features.
He felt a stubbly beard and the coarse locks of his short hair across his head.
Terrified, he looked back at his ID card and read it back to himself for the
fourth time.
Abassi
Osman Daar. UN relief operative. Mogadishu. 12/11/75
The
tiny passport size photo revealed to him that he seemed to be an African but he
did not recognize the face that was his own picture. It was as if someone else,
round faced with short bumpy locks and dazzling blue eyes was staring back at
him.
