mystery

François McCandle

If a nation’s culture dies, so too does the nation.

These were the words that passed through my mind as I eagerly awaited the train. The London underground was a strange place at this time; a place where the underclass crawled from their hidden tenements and stalked the night.

Nobody knew my habit; by day I was a pretty normal teenager. I generally kept myself to myself, and didn’t ruffle any feathers. By night, I was François McCandle; graffiti artist and vandal.

A wise man once said that graffiti breaks the hegemonic hold of corporate and governmental style over the urban environment, and the situations of daily life. As a form of aesthetic sabotage, it interrupts the pleasant, efficient uniformity of planned urban space and predictable urban living. For us, graffiti disrupts the lived experience of mass culture, the passivity of mediated consumption. Continue reading →

The Deadeye Murders | Part 2

Read Part 1

Fruits of the dark harvest

Oh Darren, I wish you could join me in the revelry of these meandering musings of my incorruptible mind. Tonight is a special night for both of us. It’s a night I’ve anticipated for such a long time. Tonight, we will have our most intimate moment. Tonight, you will feel closer to me than you have to anybody in your entire life. There’s one thing you’ll experience tonight Darren, it’s something only the slayers and the slain have ever experienced. You see, when I drive my knife into your flesh, and the life blood pours from your veins, when your futile attempts to fight or flee are all but extinguished, and you crumble to the floor, you will look upon me, and you will not see the face of a demon or a vengeful killer, you will see yourself, and as I hold you in my arms, you will embrace me, cling to me like an infant clings to their mother. You will look up at me, and in your dying whimpers, now void of intelligible language, you will beg for your life. In this most intimate moment, you will feel an unyielding love for me that you will have never felt since you were a helpless infant in the arms of your mother. And I will savour that moment, and indulge that illusion of destitute love -for a few precious seconds- right before I cut your throat open. Continue reading →

The Deadeye Murders | Part 1

The Harbinger

“As the violet mist ascends out of the twilight valley, the pale man’s knowing eyes gaze omniscient through narrowed slits. Eyes that have borne witness to the bloodshed of the ages and the inner peace of godliness. From his covert vantage point he sees all; how the doctrines of true faith and compulsion have been scribed in blood. He speaks with the phantoms that bestride the centuries; the ghastly imps of the perverted and the corrupt, spreading their sickness through the ages, the pitiless killer, who awaits his moment to step out of the nameless crowds of obscurity and rise into incorruptible, irrefutable history…”

A chill runs through me as the night reaches it’s blackest point. That means it’s 4am. The coldest, darkest time of the night. I inhale a lungful of cold air, and exhale softly, watching the vapour dissipate into the air, tinted by the light of the sulphur street lamps. Continue reading →

Perfume the air


Florigera rosis halo

“I perfume the air with my blossoms.”

The smell of citrus on the breeze was the only thing I liked about Attard Psychiatric Hospital. In the summer, the redolence of the flower gardens swept like a river through the cracks in the old Victorian building, flooding the yard with the bittersweet smell of lemon, and the rich flora from the gardens of San Anton Palace. Continue reading →

Descendants of Deimos

The explosion tore across the night sky; the flames were brighter and more expansive than anything I’d seen on earth; I imagined that was due to the richer oxygen levels. The noise was preceded by a shockwave, which shattered the windows of the nearby buildings and greenhouses. Continue reading →