All right, luvvies? Matt here with the Ready edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
The Ready edition is all about the things we've made that are ready for you to enjoy right now.
If you signed up to this newsletter at the Skipton Business Expo last week, thank you and welcome! I hope you like what you find.
Many more thanks also to everyone who lined up a talk for our Learning Zone.
In the end, turnout at the Expo was low overall, and that was the case for the Learning Zone as well. That was obviously disappointing, after all the work we and the contributors put in, and after all the buzz on Linkedin in the weeks leading up to the event. But we’re already starting conversations about the future; we want to keep collaborating with the brilliant Learning Zone contributors and Expo organisers any way we can!
I Need A Miracle episode 2, To understand Porphyra, stars Harry Myers both as a lonely man praying not to be heartbroken, and as the man’s pet, which is … some form of snake-dragon-cat? (Credit also to Sarah Buchynski for transforming Harry’s various mewls and hisses into something truly otherworldly.)
If you can’t wait for more I Need A Miracle, you can get all 12 episodes of season 1 right now when you become an Apollo+ subscriber. Subscribe for $9.99 a month through the Apollo Fiction Podcasts mobile app or at apollopods.com.
Merely Roleplayers: Labyrinth Untold, Act 4 of 5, throws our Labyrinth dwellers into the mean streets of the goblin city, where they have to quickly adapt to the local laws and customs - and make their way to the castle before the clock strikes 13.
The Supernatural Tabletop Roleplaying Game bundle on itch.io gets you more than 60 spooky-scary-cosy digital games and game-related bits for $20. Among those 60+ items are all 5 issues of The Sherrydown Enquirer, each of which combines:
a mystery scenario for the roleplaying game Monster of the Week, based on one of the first 5 Merely Roleplayers: Vigil productions
bonus lore for Vigil and inspiration for playing Monster of the Week games set in England, instead of the default shootin’-tootin’ US setting
All 5 Sherrydown Enquirers would normally set you back $20; for the next couple of weeks, the same $20 gets you all 5 Enquirers plus 60+ other games, collectively worth more than $300. Get the bundle before it’s gone and help 50 small creators (including me!) hit their goal!
September is Swordtember, and that makes this the ideal time to revisit Of The Sword, a sword-themed micro-fiction anthology podcast that aired every day throughout September 2023, and which included my story Driving The Point Home, about a spellsmith who really messes up teaching their friend a lesson.
And now, our feature presentation:
A Net Too Wide to Break His Fall
13. Ghost stories
“Lisaveta,” said Vivian Hithercombe, beckoning her into the study, “this is a nice surprise.”
The study was what Lisaveta had learned to recognise as upper-class tacky. The curtains and the rug had both been garish a couple of hundred years ago, in ways that did not match, and had been allowed to fade and fray. This was one of Vivian Hithercombe’s inherited properties, not one she’d bought herself, and her tone made it clear that nice surprises were the last thing she welcomed here.
“I won’t keep you long, ma’am,” said Lisaveta, approaching along the threadbare desire path down the middle of the rug, towards the desk where Vivian Hithercombe sat, frowning at paperwork. “I’m afraid my business couldn’t wait, and it isn’t suitable for email or the phones.”
“Shut the door behind you then,” said Vivian.
By the time Lisaveta had paused to change direction, someone outside had carried out the order. She approached the desk and waited, standing, for her invitation to speak.
“There is something I’ve been meaning to speak with you about, actually, Lisaveta,” said Vivian, “so perhaps let’s make the best of this interruption and cover everything at once, hmm?”
“I think I know what you’re talking about,” said Lisaveta, “so before you take any action, I want you to know that Anton is lying to you.”
Vivian Hithercombe looked up from her paperwork. The corner of her left eyebrow twitched upwards ever so slightly.
“Anton tells us all your invisible boy, Callum, has jumped ship,” Lisaveta went on. “And that naturlly casts doubt on Callum’s assessment of my loyalty to you. But Anton is full of shit.” She let a calculated measure of real feeling bleed into the words: hurt and anger at Big Anton, fear of losing the boss’s hard-won trust. Selling it. “He killed your invisible boy, along with the rat at the southside packaging operation. I know because I had to clean his mess.”
Vivian Hithercombe’s brows lowered as imperceptibly as the one had raised. Lisaveta resisted the urge to babble into the silence. If the boss wanted details, she’d ask for them.
“If Anton has begun acting on his own initiative,” said Vivian at length, “that would pose a considerable hazard to this operation.”
This was what Lisaveta had learned to recognise as an order.
“Of course you’re right, ma’am,” she said, now tightly shutting off the valve between her real feelings and her words. “Consider it taken care of.”
Enjoying the story? How about you buy me a cuppa while I write the next chapter?
Big Anton liked an audience, and that meant he was rarely alone. When he had company, the air was always thick with words, his and theirs, and the words inside his mind had no room to interrupt. Not like now. Lightweights, all of them; only Big Anton had the staying power to keep pace with Big Anton. This was his tragedy. And so as the bar emptied, the words inside his mind grew louder. Yes, the ghost is taken care of, but what is the next obstacle, the next threat? What window of opportunity might be closing even now, as he ordered the bartender away to find a fresh bottle? Vivi will take care of Lisaveta now without his intervention – or will she; could he do more to guarantee the outcome? What avenue might he have left unguarded?
“Anton…”
It took him too long to disentangle the voice from his own thoughts. The bartender wasn’t back. Maybe slunk away home. It was long past closing time but Anton had made sure the lights stayed low and the drink kept coming. He swayed to his feet, steadied himself on the bar.
“Remember all those questions you asked me, Anton? All those questions and you missed the most important one.”
The bar was modern, chic, the kind of place Big Anton liked to imagine himself being at home in, all sharp corners and hard, mirrored surfaces. The voice echoed. Maybe there was movement or maybe it was his own reflection.
“Anton, Anton. You learned the secret to seeing and hearing me and thought you knew it all. Did you really think killing me would be that simple?”
Anton wrestled his gun out from his waistband and fired a couple of shots into the ceiling. Falling glass fragments pricked at his scalp.
“I’ve got a gun,” he added.
Callum’s laughter rebounded and snapped off the polished surfaces.
“What good is a gun,” he said, “against a ghost?”
Anton did what he always did to drown out unwanted voices: drowned it with his own. He roared.
Callum rose from behind the bar and pushed a taser into the nape of Anton’s neck.
Craft fairs were Autumn Wray Benjamin’s natural habitat, but they moved through this one like a stranger, missing waves from old acquaintances, barely noticing rare and beautiful finds.
By now, Autumn was accustomed to lying, to appearing to be one thing and belong to one world while knowing themself to be and belong to something else. Or so they had thought. That feeling of ease with their double life, it now turned out, was predicated on their knowing all the facts, on being in control. Autumn Wray Benjamin was not in control right now. They had no idea who the note had come from, how it had got into their flat, or what this meeting was about. And the not knowing was so destabilising, they were apparently reverting back to the nervous wreck they’d been back when they were first recruited.
The toilets at the back of the exhibition hall were gender neutral, thank fuck. One less thing to have to factor into the constant calculation of how best to not die today. There was a yellow folding sign in the doorway saying ‘Cleaning in progress’, just like it said there would be in the note Autumn had read and then eaten the night before. They ignored it and shut the door behind them.
“Who’s here?” they said to the corridor of cubicles. “What do you want?”
“Hello, Autumn Benjamin,” said a voice from the open door of the far cubicle. Feminine, slightly accented. Lisaveta, one of Vivian Hithercombe’s lieutenants, though not quite inner circle. This could be very bad. Autumn stayed by the exit.
“What we want is to join your side,” Lisaveta went on, “but would like some assurances first.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Autumn. “I’m not aware that I’m on a side.”
“We want free of Vivian Hithercombe,” said Lisaveta, as if Autumn hadn’t spoken. “We think helping you is the best way. And we can help you. But we want guarantees. Protection.”
“Who is this ‘we’?” said Autumn. “I know you, Lisaveta. So if you want me to listen to you, instead of going straight to Vivian and telling her all about this conversation, you’d better stop being so cryptic and come out here and say what you mean.”
Lisaveta half-emerged into the corridor.
“‘We’ is me and someone else just like you,” she said. “Another one of Vivian Hithercombe’s pets, who would rather run wild. He won’t deal with you directly, though he hasn’t given me a very good reason why yet–”
She stopped talking as if cut off, though Autumn hadn’t said anything, and seemed to be listening. Wearing an earpiece? Had to be.
“We can both go to the boss and make problems for each other,” she went on. “You know I made this offer, and we know who you really work for. We know this the same way we were able to get a note to you under your minders’ noses. You didn’t take that note straight to the boss, so you know an opportunity when you smell one. You should assess this one properly.”
It was true. Autumn had been searching for a chance like this for years. And seizing it put them back in control.
They smoothed their layered skirts and took a step towards Lisaveta.
“Protection might be doable. But only if you’ve got something worthwhile to offer.”
“We came prepared.”
Lisaveta bent down and slid something along the floor towards Autumn. It jingled. Car keys.
“Go to Vivian with this if that’s your decision,” said Lisaveta. “If you don’t, we’ll contact you again to talk about how we can help each other.”
In the car park under the exhibition centre, Autumn clicked the key and followed the bleep and the flash of headlights. In the boot, sedated, trussed and in possession of a gun linked to a recent murder in a southside basement, they found Big Anton.
See you in two weeks for the Waiting edition: all the things we're getting ready for you behind the scenes.