Dead City (8 page)

Jon stood on the roof of the former Public Carriage Office in Southwark, the whole of Dead City laid out before him as the sun began to set. His hat reclaimed from Dildo, his noir silhouette was etched against pink and blue clouds.

“I used to say this was my City.” he narrated, out loud. “Even though the pulse running though my veins meant I wasn't a part of it, it was a part of me. And more than I knew.” he took a deep breath. “I gave it everything I had, not knowing I had so much more to lose outside the walls. But now I knew who I was, why I'm here. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this City better.”

“You mean
we're
going to do whatever it takes.” declared a voice from behind, as Ashley joined him at the corner of the roof. “It's our city now.  And we're going to make it a place worth dying for.”
She kissed him and the two held one another close, whilst their disembodied spirits watched on.

“We're gonna get bored of this real fast” said Ashley's ghost.

“So fucking fast.” said Jon's.
The two separated liaisons held hands as they walked to the stairs, ready for the night's patrol.

“You coming?” Jon asked their spirits.

“We'll leave you two fuckbirds to walk down by yourselves...” said Ashley's spirit. “Watching all the smooching makes my stomach turn.”

“You don't have a stomach...” Ashley said to her ghost, with a giggle.

“Get to work, or we're gonna haunt the fuck out of you.” said Jon's ghost.
The couple held each other tight and as they began to descend into the building, down towards the City. The sprawl of night and neon coming closer with every step, every floor that passed them by.

They smiled at one another, knowing that they were about to make some big fucking changes.

ABAM, or 'A Book A Month', is a terrible experiment to see how long a former screenwriter can produce a original novella every month before he goes insane.

Alternating between dramatic and comedic prose, the books will be released on on the first Monday of every month in print, audiobook and as ebooks.

If you've enjoyed this book in any capacity, do please review it on
Amazon
and
Goodreads
– I read them all and will no doubt veer towards writing more of what you like.

Please visit the links below for more information and forthcoming releases.

http://amazon.com/author/leeisserow

http://ABAM.info
Thank you kindly for being an observer to my mental deterioration.

Sarah was a burn-out. A former addict trying to stay sober. When offered, she jumps at the chance to go on a clinical trial and be taken away from temptation for three months.

As the trial gets underway, the subjects become aware that they're not part of an average medical test. 

Paranoia flows as weird experiments are carried out on their waking and sleeping bodies.

They start to realise that the trial is changing them, programming them, installing false memories and taking away their emotions one by one.

If they don't do something about it before their tenure ends, when they're done, they might not be human any more.

The woman gestured for Sarah to take a seat, and introduced herself.

“Marion Whark.” she said, with a smile that was anything but genuine, the lack of lines accompanying the curvature of her lips made it seem like a rare experience for her face.

“Nice to meet you.” said Sarah, attempting to be genial and mask finding the woman off-putting.

“Could you tell me a little about yourself?” asked Whark, as she leafed through Sarah's file.

“Well, I'm 27.” said Sarah. “I work as a volunteer for a homeless shelter and asylum seeker support.”

“More specifically, about your drug use.” said Whark, not even attempting to hide her disinterest in Sarah's occupation.

“Well...” Sarah started, hesitantly “I mostly used psychedelics, or psychoactives, whatever you want to call them...”

“Which drugs specifically?” asked Whark, the  smile creeping back up her face, as if warming to the girl who's life she had only just made no bones about having no interest in.

“LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, peyote, DMT, 2CB, uh...” she struggled to recall others. “Does marijuana count? I did
Ayahuasca
once or twice --”

“You can stop there, that's a fabulous selection.” said Whark, almost sounding impressed.

“I wouldn't call it fabulous...” said Sarah.

“Oh, but it is for our requirements in this study, you're exactly the type of candidate we're after.”

“It is? I am?” said Sarah, confused.

“Very much so. And you're in great health, have you ever done a clinical trial like this before?”

“I'm sorry...” said Sarah, backtracking. “What makes me a great subject?”

“For this particular testing regime, we're after subjects that have had experience with psychoactive substances, who's neural pathways have been altered. You know that LSD was used medically for a time, to help patients with schizophrenia? We're trying something along those lines, albeit with normal patients in this round, rather than lock up a group of crazies together!”

She appeared to think she was making a joke. Sarah smiled politely.

“We have a new three-month study starting in just two weeks, is that enough time to put your affairs in order?”

It sounded to Sarah like Whark was implying she wouldn't be coming out of the experiment alive – but she quashed those feelings – this was a multinational corporation after all, they wouldn't advertise on the tube and then kill subjects. Probably.

Sarah told her it was plenty of time, it wasn't like she had any actual life waiting for her when she returned. Whark made her sign a consent form and an initial Non Disclosure Agreement before giving her more information about the study. It would be taking place just outside of Dundee, they'd provide her with a ticket for the train and collect her from the station. She only needed clothes for arrival and departure, they'd be providing her things to wear whilst she was there – albeit unflattering cuts – which seemed important to Whark. She was to be reimbursed with twelve thousand pounds for her time, which would be deposited on the final day of the trial.

Sarah feigned interest in the information that was being imparted, caring less for the cash lump sum, and more focused on imagining the final day of her emergence from the depths of the APEX machine.

* * * *

Seventeen weeks and one day ago, Sarah didn't know or care much about APEX, other than it being the company her parents had worked for before their deaths. She had been gallivanting around their old house in a mushroom daze, and other than having relocated their books, it was pretty much exactly as they had left it. She had recently taking to tripping there amongst their belongings, it was giving her a feeling of closeness to them she hadn't had for a long time.

Whilst going through her father's desk, she came across a USB pen drive which she put in her laptop, hoping it wasn't a secret stash of porn. As she started going through the thousands of documents on the drive, the visuals of her trip dissipated, the high diminished, and for the first time in ten years she felt something close to sober.

She would sign up to NA later that day to keep that feeling, keep her focus for the task ahead. What she had in front of her was blowing her mind, and making her question whether her parents' death was an accident as she had been led to believe. There were confessions from her mother and father, and files upon files to back up their claims.

They had been inspired by the young girl who blew the lid off APEX's exchange of personal information, backdoors, passwords and metadata unanimously shared with the government in exchange for tax relief. They were going to whistleblow on their employers, take their stash of documents stolen from the company and hand it over to WikiLeaks. There was proof of hidden accounts, illegal experiments, arms deals, black budgets and more. She had thought about sending their data off and wrapping up their mission, but it was all at least a decade old now and would likely be shrugged off by the multinational demon, blamed on former executives and disgraced employees. This trial, however, might make that data worth something. She'd be in the belly of the beast. A testing facility probably had records of patients past, and if the current experiment wasn't above board, it might implicate the company with recent proof that would only emphasise the content in the archive her parents had amassed.

She wished she had been more industrious ten years ago. That would have been the perfect time to strike, but now she had a chance to finish what her parents started.
Sarah thought again of Whark's question about “putting her affairs in order”, and recalled an experiment in which the paperwork declared all the subjects were deemed '
unsuitable for return to society
'. The account of the trial continued to talk about the results of the experiment itself, with no explanation of what happened to the subjects, and they weren't spoken of in any of the other documentation. She tried to put it out of her mind, concentrating on her task ahead and the day, three months and two weeks away, when she'd emerge from their testing facility with a smoking gun and complete what her parents didn't have a chance to before their unceremonious 'departure' from the company.

Sarah tried to shrug off the fact that she didn't have a plan beyond sending the documents to WikiLeaks, and knew her quest for vengeance was a tall order, and possibly out of a sense of psychedelically enhanced Batman-style justice, but she had literally nothing else do dedicate her life to, so why not this.

* * * *

NLI-10
will be available from
ABAM.Info
and
Amazon
from March 7
th
2016.

Lee Isserow is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, with over fifteen years spent trawling the back streets and dark alleys of the entertainment industry.
He's pretty sure he has some traits of autism, because he's been constantly working and obscenely prolific for the entire duration, writing over a hundred screenplays, many of which he's adapting into forthcoming ABAMs, because very few people are willing to turn them into movies.  For now.
He lives in Liverpool, England because he accidentally bought a house there.  He's not quite sure how that happened – but assumes part of that is because he used to drink a lot.
If you'd like to watch the pretty things he makes, you may find them at
LeeIsserow.com
.
You may also interact, call him names, and read his awful jokes and observations on Twitter;
@Lee_Isserow
.

At 21, Cassie’s life sucks. So on a whim, she starts farming her decisions out to Twitter.
Before she knows it, the lives of her family and friends hang in the balance, and she’s racing against the clock to discover who’s pulling her strings.