1809: Untitled, Chapter 1

[A note of explanation before we begin: for the past few Novembers, alongside the more organised campaign NaNoWriMo, I've been indulging in creative writing projects, aiming to write somewhere in the region of 2,000 words per day for a whole month in order to end up with something that is vaguely novel-length. This November, I didn't get started in a timely manner, so I decided to wait until January to pick things up. And so, for the duration of this month, this blog will be entirely creative writing-based rather than, you know, a regular boring ol' blog.

As usual, the creative writing for this project will be unedited and unplanned, since "improvising" is the means through which I enjoy writing the most. Expect unstructured, nonsensical occasionally inconsistent stuff to happen, though I'll try to keep it to a minimum. Normal business will resume on February 1, assuming everything is neatly wrapped up by then! Let's begin.]

The night was dark and almost silent, but Magnus Thompson could not for the life of him get to sleep.

He'd tried everything. He'd tried exhausting himself to the point where he felt he could barely keep his eyes open. He'd tried lighting candles with relaxing smells. He'd tried reading. He'd even tried an app on his phone that featured a selection of sounds designed to soothe the listener off to sleep — rain on canvas, muted traffic noise, wind in the mountains, even pure white noise.

None of it worked, however. Tonight, as with every other night, he found himself, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Moments ago, he had glanced over to his bedside table to look at the aggressively glowing red digits of his distinctly retro clock-radio, and was unsurprised to discover that it was after three o' clock in the morning.

He knew that his body would eventually succumb to total exhaustion, but he could never predict when. And consequently, he could never predict at what time he'd be able to rise the following day. His worst ever day had seen him dropping off to sleep just as the dawn was starting to break around five in the morning, and him waking up just as everyone else's working day was coming to a close at five in the afternoon. That day, he'd felt particularly bad as he'd dragged his unkempt form into the convenience store across the road and had had to respond to the clerk's cheerful enquiry as to whether he'd had a "good day". He couldn't bring himself to admit that his day had only begun five minutes earlier and consequently hadn't been all that bad as yet, nor did he particularly feel like sharing his recent life story with the cashier, who was still pretty much a stranger despite how often Magnus saw him.

He'd lost track of the time since she'd gone. Days blurred into weeks and possibly even months; nothing felt like it mattered any more. He was alone, miserable and gradually sliding towards a situation where he would be unable to support himself any longer, and he did not want that to happen. He did not know what would happen should things get that far, so he tried his best to push it out of his mind whenever these dark thoughts started sneaking up on him.

But still they came, and at night they were the worst. The darkness felt oppressive, like it was a physical manifestation surrounding him, suffocating him and pulling him ever deeper into despair, making hope seem perpetually out of reach, and slipping further and further away with each passing day. He didn't know how to deal with it, so he just lay there.

At least, that's what he usually did. Tonight was different. He felt more awake, more alert than usual. His eyelids didn't feel like they had weights attached to them; his body didn't resist his brain's messages to move.

He sat up on the side of his bed and looked out of the window into the deserted street outside. There was no-one around — not even the drunken louts that occasionally staggered past at ungodly hours in the morning on the way back from an evening of drinking and clubbing — and all the lights in the other flats and houses that lined the road were extinguished. The only light came from the orange-tinted street lamps, bathing everything in a monochromatic glow and giving the vista from his window a curious, otherworldly, stylised feel.

He stood, pulled on the clothes he'd discarded before he got into bed — crumpled and worn, as he hadn't changed them for days by this point — and walked out into the hallway.

Something definitely didn't feel quite right. But what was it?

He picked up his keys from the small table by the door, stuffed them in his pocket and opened the front door of his flat. Before long, he was outside the building and on the street. The air was still, but cold. He couldn't hear a sound. But the feeling of "wrongness" was getting stronger and stronger. It almost felt like he could pinpoint the source of the disturbance, like a homing beacon in his head.

Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself following the invisible trail, walking down his street, down the middle of the narrow road. Although he'd lived here a while, he'd never really gone further than his own building, which just happened to be the first on the road. The residential buildings rose on either side of him; blocks of flats on the left, terraces of houses on the right. They made a wall against the sounds of the city around him and ensured that the street was, most of the time, pretty quiet and secluded-feeling, despite its rather central location. Tonight, of course, there was no sound at all; he could tell that even here. No cars were passing; no-one was walking down the street; not even a dog was barking. Nothing.

The curious sensation started to grow stronger as he continued to walk. He felt his skin crawling, though he didn't know what it was that he feared. There was just… something out there, and even though he suspected that it wished him ill, still he continued on his way towards it, following the beacon that was starting to throb inside his mind.

He reached the end of the road. Before him was a ramp leading down into a car park that occupied the space beneath one of the blocks of flats. There was one much like it underneath his own building, but he'd never seen this particular one before. He'd had no reason to, of course, but he felt like the dark signal was drawing him inside, willing him to come closer — perhaps even daring him to venture within.

He silently accepted the challenge and walked down the ramp. The car park smelled somewhat musty, and the electric lighting inside appeared to be broken. Just beyond the entrance, a faulty fluorescent light flickered a frustratingly inconsistent rhythm, making it clear to Magnus that the car park was, at least, occupied by a few cars. On the right of the entrance, a wall. On the left, the car park continued into darkness so thick that he could barely see beyond the small, flickering pool of light created by the faulty light fitting.

Undeterred, he turned left and walked in that direction. It wasn't long before the darkness surrounded him. It was a familiar sensation; the same he felt as he tried to get to sleep. The air felt thick, and the further he went, the more effort it was to breathe. It didn't feel like there was pressure on his body, but he felt like he was starting to suffocate nonetheless. But still he proceeded onwards, ever deeper into the blackness.

After several minutes of walking in silence, during which his echoing footsteps on the concrete floor of the car park felt like they'd faded out to almost nothing, he paused. He stopped walking, and he turned around to glance behind him.

He suddenly became aware of how long he'd been walking, and of the fact that the car park couldn't possibly be that big; it was a physical impossibility, surely. By now, he should have reached the far wall, or a row of cars, or something. But he couldn't see anything in front of him, and now, it transpired, he couldn't see anything behind him, either. All trace of the flickering fluorescent light appeared to have vanished, and he was totally surrounded by black on all sides.

He felt disoriented. He couldn't tell which way he was facing any longer. He span around desperately, the calm he'd been feeling a moment ago rapidly fading and being replaced by panic as his pulse quickened and his palms became sweaty. He became dizzy, his disorientation now extending to not being sure which way was up and which way was down, too. He felt like he was falling, but at the moment he thought he should have hit the ground, he felt nothing; he just stopped. There was no pain, no sensation, nothing.

He became aware of his quickening pulse and his ragged breathing, but he didn't know how to stand up any more, if indeed he was, as he thought, lying on the ground. His body no longer appeared to be obeying his commands; he wasn't even sure he had a body any more, because he couldn't see it to make sure. The darkness was everywhere, all around him. And now it felt like it was starting to bind him, as well: holding him down, preventing him from moving, making it harder and harder to breathe. He wanted to call out, to cry for help, to scream, but no sound came out. It was hopeless. This was the end. This was how he was going to die: in a way he didn't understand.

And as he started to feel like the life was fading from him, his soul departing where he thought his body was, the strange calm returned once again. This wasn't so bad, he thought. There would be worse ways to go. And at least this would mark an end to the pain. He wouldn't have to worry any more. And, he thought grimly, no-one would have to worry about him, either.

His eyes snapped open, and he found himself gazing at the ceiling. Orange light was coming in through the window, the curtains for which he'd forgotten to close as usual.

How long had he been asleep? He didn't remember passing out, but then he never did. He always awoke the next day, not exactly feeling refreshed but at least in a state where he could get up and do things again.

He glanced over at the clock-radio once again. The first digit still read "3", but he couldn't remember what the minutes had said the last time he'd looked. Regardless, it had apparently been less than an hour that he had been asleep, but after the strange dream he felt surprisingly awake, and certainly in no hurry to close his eyes again.

He sat up in bed and shuffled over to the side, dropping his legs to the carpeted floor softly. The air had something of a chill to it: he had been trying to avoid running the expensive electric heating as much as possible, and had, by now, reached a stage where he didn't really feel the cold any more.

Clad only in his boxer shorts, he stood and stretched, then looked out of the window. The street was as deserted as it had been in his dream, but he wasn't surprised at this, given the hour. Then he turned to face the door, intending to head to his kitchen to fix himself a warm drink. Before he could start walking, though, he froze.

Emblazoned in dark letters across the wall of his bedroom was a single word: "WELCOME." It looked like it had been hastily scrawled across the wall in black or dark blue paint, completely disregarding the furniture and decorations, and the word itself, though normally a friendly utterance, seemed to radiate malice and menace. It made him more scared than he thought he'd ever been in his life, and the fear froze him to the spot, simply staring at the dark letters, for what felt like several minutes.

Then he blinked. And the word was gone.

1808: Happy New Year!

I intended to write something a little earlier (i.e. ahead of the Big Change to 2015) but, well, that didn't happen, so here I am at twenty past midnight trying to think of how to bid farewell to 2014 and welcome in 2015.

When I look back at 2014, I see a year that was somewhat mixed. It was a significant (and good!) year in that I bought my first house with Andie; it was a bad year in that it was the year I had to give up on what had previously been a lifelong dream of working in the games press.

Thinking about it, these two things are probably the two single most significant things that happened in 2014 to me, so let's contemplate them in turn.

First, the good, then. After renting places to live ever since I left home for university in 1999 (with the exception of a return to my childhood home for a few months in 2010 after Bad Things happened), finally owning my own place (well, sharing it, anyway) is a good feeling. It's one of those things I felt like would never, ever happen, and I couldn't see how anyone could ever do it. But fortunately a combination of circumstances saw both Andie and I in a position to be able to pool our collective resources and acquire a very nice house that isn't falling to pieces or anything.

There's a lot of work for us still to do — both the front and back garden need some significant "sorting out", for example, and neither of us quite know where to start with that, so I'm still extremely tempred to just "get a man in" — but we're in a position where our house is not only habitable, but actually (I feel, anyway) rather pleasant. We've hosted several guests, both for day visits and for lengthier stays — we have a spare room, which is a pleasant novelty after only ever renting two-bedroom places in the past, and we also have a sofa-bed downstairs to host further guests if required — and none of them went away with ebola or smallpox or anything, and they still talk to us, so it must have been all right for them.

In 2015 I don't know if anything significant will happen with the house. I'd like to get the garden sorted so it can be a space we can enjoy rather than feel faintly embarrassed about whenever we look out of the back window. I hasten to add that we didn't let the garden get into a bad state; the previous occupants obviously hadn't paid it much attention, so it was already a bit of a shambles when we moved in, and we haven't really done anything with it to sort that out. That's a job for this year, then.

So that's the house.

What about the other thing: the giving up of a lifelong dream? Well, it's sad to think about, but as I've noted on these very pages before, the games press of the 21st century is not the games press that I fell in love with as a youngster. Websites are not magazines, and the art of writing for the Web is very different to the art of writing for magazines. It's been a significant shift, particularly in the last few years, and I don't feel it's a shift for the better, either; I used to love getting in a variety of game magazines each month, reading them from cover to cover and then looking forward to what might be in the next issue. Each magazine had its own distinctive identity, and everyone covered different things in different ways, because they all only had limited space and thus had to prioritise what they were going to allocate pages to.

Nowadays, the games press is much more homogeneous. Certain sites do still have distinctive identities, but it's a far cry from the uniqueness of magazines. Clickbait rules supreme, with provocative articles making increasingly regular appearances in an attempt to get eyes on pages and ad revenue rolling in, and long-form, experimental or simply humorous work is on the way out. That's not to say it doesn't exist at all any more, of course, but it tends to be more on the enthusiast side of things rather than the professional press.

Then there's the growth of YouTube. This has been happening for a few years, but I feel that 2014 is the year that YouTube really became a significant threat (and yes, I use that specific word deliberately) to the written word. YouTube, or so Google says, is one of the world's top search engines, despite not really actually being a search engine. People are increasingly turning to video instead of the written word for all manner of things — help and advice, criticism, first looks at upcoming products, comedy — and the narrative that is constantly being pushed is that If You're Not Doing Video, You're Doing It Wrong. I disagree fundamentally with this, but that's something to discuss another day, I feel.

As for my own career, then, well, I just burned out. Being unceremoniously informed by email that I no longer had a job just before my birthday and right as Andie and I had finalised arrangements to buy our house was the last straw: I was sick of being jerked around by a cynical, unstable, manipulative, bullshit industry that treats its employees like shit unless you're one of the few people lucky enough to become a recognisable "personality". I was sick of having jobs that I enjoyed but which I was in a perpetual state of wondering if I'd still be in work each morning. I was sick of the feeling of being "gagged" from writing about interesting and unique things in favour of the necessary clickbait bullshit. I was sick of seeing the increasing number of games journalists and critics who appeared to genuinely loathe their audience, and of being criticised for being enthusiastic about the things I was passionate about. And I was sick of a "career" which had seemingly no structure for progression, training, growth, advancement, whatever you want to call it. So when I was shown the door, I didn't even try and find a new position in the games press. That was it. I haven't looked back. And while I won't say I'm exactly in a dream position right now, the stability of a regular paycheque sure is nice.

So what will happen on that front in 2015? Who knows? There are many different paths I could follow from here. I mentioned the other day that I've been taking the time to train up my own skills and make myself a more attractive proposition for any potential positions that might appear in the future. And I intend to keep doing that; I enjoy learning, training, bettering myself — it's just finding the appropriate opportunities to 1) keep the things I've learned in practice and 2) being able to apply them in a professional situation.

But that's something to worry about another day. For now, it's New Year's Day, and it's time to relax and chill out for a bit. I hope the end of 2014 was good to you, and that 2015 is better still to you.

Happy new year.