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Go visit that patient
with your shit home-made mask
but just dare ask for better
and we'll take you to task

Go empty those bedpans
as you wander the wards
to the hollow applause
of the whole House of Lords

Go comfort the dying
by best at arm's reach
Last rites by iPad
to the scent of fresh bleach

And pray to your God
it's not COVID you catch
but in case you were worried,
we've got you a badge.

The Virus of Penzance

"I am the very model of a modern major malady,

Thriving in your respiratory tract via nasal or oral cavity

Know that you should wash your hands, It’s proven immunological

From pathogen from me to you, in order pathological."

Scenes of Mild Peril - An Evolution

The original pre-publisher prototype cover

for "Scenes of Mild Peril".  I'm rather fond of this

design, and might use it for another project.

Back in September of 2018, Scenes of Mild Peril was released. It was a culmination of several years of work, being a collection of thirty stories both new and reprinted from elsewhere (where the rights had reverted to me, at any rate).

As I've mentioned elsewhere, it was a bit of a disaster. I was incredibly proud of the book, but the publishers were trying a new distribution model and I ended up falling foul of being the guinea pig for this experiment. Ultimately, the formatting was shot - each page had non-existent inner margins, meaning that you couldn't physically open the book wide enough to read the stories.

As a result of this - and the laborious process of sorting it out - I became disheartened. Despite an amazing review in Issue #51 of Scream Magazine, and a lot of positive buzz, I couldn't summon up any enthusiasm for marketing it. Despite the fact that there was an electronic edition out there which read perfectly well, it didn't feel worthy of promotion until there was an actual readable physical copy that I could be proud of. Something I was proud to put my name to. I was having to warn my friends not to actually buy any physical copies of it, which wasn't exactly the kind of promotion I'd envisaged.

Version 1 of Scenes of Mild Peril - now 

with Ultrathin(tm) inner margins!

Eventually the issues were sorted out - brilliantly, in fact - but it took a long, long time and by then it was too late. Any enthusiasm I'd had, had atrophied away. Reviews limped in - and really good reviews, at that - but it felt as though the time for Scenes of Mild Peril had come and gone.

This was devastating, as I feel as though this book contains some of the best stories I've ever written. The whole experience almost put me off writing for good, feeling that there little point in working on things that weren't being read.

But then, the rights reverted back to me. And with it under my total control again, I felt as though it was worth a final push. So, it's been re-released, is a good couple of quid cheaper, and is finally the book I wanted to release all along.

So, if you haven't picked up a copy yet, I'd love you to. I really want this out there and read, as it's something that I'm particularly proud of.

Like "The Shadow Cast by the World" and "Forever and Ever, Armageddon" before it, it's a collection of short science-fiction and horror stories, with a few poems thrown in for good measure. And it's thick - boy, is it thick. At around 338 pages, you could easily use it to disarm an assailant or to shield yourself from the explosion from a fragmentation grenade.

If you're after a copy, the new printing can be found here. Whatever your flavour of Amazon, it's the cheaper of the two paperback formats available. If you're after a signed copy, pop your £7.99 to my PayPal at davidjcourt at googlemail.com, and I'll happily get a copy sent to you.

And if you already own Scenes of Mild Peril and would like to help, spread the word by leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or anywhere that readers visit. The most important part of how well a book does is how many positive reviews it has, and if you leave me one you are directly helping me continue on this journey as a writer.

With love and genuine thanks,
David

And if that's not enough to convince you to get a copy, how about a word from this handsome awkward brute?

Dot

Frayed dried twig fingers knead lumps of pink matter,
Into a bloodied straw mass that grows fatter and fatter.

The donor, a victim that life has eschewed,

Her cold flesh as scarlet as her ruby red shoes.

A needle, a thread – open straw scars are sewed,

as blood drips to the bricks of the long amber road.

Then the murderer sings, with a cheery refrain

‘"If I Only" No longer, now that I have my brain.’

The Thing from Another World

Toppling towards Earth,
the place of our birth,
is something burning bright like a furnace.
It’s an alien vessel,
which at a rough guess will
plummet out of control to the surface.

There are few places parkier
than the depths of Antarctica,
where the landscape is nothing but snow.
But then something of note, a
loud helicopter rotor
of a chopper that’s hovering low.

They’re in hot pursuit
of a stray Malamute
but keep failing to hit with their gun.
The Norwegians are frustrated
and get quite agitated when
it reaches Outpost thirty-one.

The chopper lands on a verge as
the gunner emerges
and pulls out a grenade which he’d stowed.
The throw’s fucked up a treat
and it lands at his feet
and the pilot and chopper explode.

With reckless abandon
He keeps shooting at random,
gibbering, clearly off his head.
As stray bullets fly by,
Bennings is caught in the thigh,
and Garry shoots the Norwegian stone dead.

MacReady and Doc. Copper
head off in their chopper
and find that the Norwegian base is
just a charred shell that’s filled
with dead bodies, as well
as a humanoid corpse with two faces.

They bring it from there
for their biologist, Blair.
“This thing isn’t human,” he proposes.
and meanwhile the mutt
confirms somethings afoot,
as the bloody thing metamorphoses.

Whilst their dogs buy the farm,
MacReady pulls the alarm
and Childs turns the dogs into toast
Blair checks out the corpse
“This is alien, of course,
and can perfectly mimic its host”.

“It’s from an alien race
come from deep outer space
and we can’t let it get out of here.
If it reaches civilization,
It’ll mean all our damnation.
Earth’ll be assimilated in just a few years.”

Bennings dies by cremation,
caught mid-transformation,
and they’re forced to lock Blair in the shed.
With an axe he went crazy, Oh,
and chopped up the radio
and killed all the sled dogs stone dead.

Copper says “With our blood,
a simple test should
reveal the alien now rather than later.”
But the blood stores are trashed,
al the samples left smashed.
It’s clear now that there is a traitor.

The biologist Fuchs
says that he’ll take a look,
and that he’ll continue Blair’s studies.
But later that night
of him there’s no sight
so venture outside, do his buddies.

They find Fuch’s corpse burnt black,
and so Windows heads back
in order to go raise the alert.
Nauls too, is deflated
fearing his friend assimilated
when he finds a scrap of MacReady’s torn shirt.

As the team congregate
to debate MacReady’s fate,
he appears with explosives, quite stressed.
“I’ll blow you to bits,
If you attack me, you shits.”
(Norris suffers a cardiac arrest).

Without hesitation, they try
defibrillation
The outcome for Norris looks bleak
but to their disbelief
his stomach sprouts teeth
and teaches Copper a hands-off technique.

The mutated fellow
is toasted like a marshmallow
although one you wouldn’t dare digest
“Windows, gather everyone round
and tie them all down.
We’re going to try out a test.”

Clark, who fears for his life,
goes for him with a knife,
and MacReady just shoots the man dead.
They’re all stunned into silence
by this act of violence
having seen their friend shot in the head.

“Guys” said MacReady,
“I think I’ve got a theory.
The alien just wants to survive.
if we can just determine,
who’s a host to this vermin,
then we might just stay alive.”

Everyone tied and seated,
a copper wire’s heated
and placed into samples of blood.
But when the wire tip was probin’
Palmer’s Haemoglobin
it leapt off as far as it could.

With little advance warning,
Palmer’s now transforming
as tentacles sprout from his head
Windows hesitates to flame him,
and death comes to claim him
and MacReady has to burn them both dead.

Garry’s been through the wringer,
He feels loathe to linger, so
it’s only fair that he seems a grouch.
“You’ve been through a lot,
but I would rather not
spend Winter tied to this fucking couch”

With Childs left to guard,
the others head to the yard
in order to go and test Blair.
They open his shed
and find they’ve all been misled.
The alien has tunnelled out of there.

Though they thought him Mammalian,
turns out Blair is an alien
and the blighter’s given them the slip
He’s been scavenging equipment
which is for his ship meant,
and has part-built a makeshift space ship.

Garry looks all forlorn.
“The Generator’s gone”
“Is there any way we can fix it?”,
MacReady asks with a frown.
Garry stares at the ground,
“No, I meant as in somebodies nicked it”

“Oh, bugger, shit and damn,
I know the things plan.”
MacReady states, with some consternation.
“We’ll all freeze to death,
and we’ll breathe our last breath –
it’ll be safe whilst it’s in hibernation”

The most hopeful prognosis
was to lay the explosives
agreed the remaining three guys
The dynamite was placed
(and Blair melts Garry’s face)
but then came the biggest surprise.

A vast tentacled Blair
bursts out into the air
popping open like some vile haemorrhoid
But with some dynamite (the last),
MacReady triggers the blast
And the base and the beast are destroyed.

As the flames all burn higher,
MacReady sits by the fire
as Childs reappears with a wry smile.
They can do nothing but watch
as they both share some Scotch.
“Why don’t we both just wait here a while.”

You put the Fun in Funeral

Image courtesy of Bizarro Comics

On the morning of your funeral,
it felt odd to dress in black.
The mood was celebratory –
You weren’t ever coming back.

"It's nice to see so many here,"
the chirpy vicar said.
Little did she know that we were there
to make sure you were dead.

I look round at all the faces there,
at your only legacy.
The hurt, betrayed, the cheated -
All combinations of those three.

Your family stand there all serene
and eulogize some lies
about a warm honourable soul -
It’s nobody we recognise.

My florist, she refused to make
a wreath out of nightshade
so in the end Forget-me-nots
were at your graveside laid.

You would have seen the irony
had you had any sense.
We'd love to forget all about you
and all you represent.

The only tears we shed that day
were strictly crocodilian,
All hoping it was true what the eulogy said, that
you were one in a million.

I wish you were a zombie,
so you could die again.
Although it'd be a tricky shot,
to shoot you in the brain.

If only you'd been cremated,
we could have robbed the Urn.
We'd queue to piss into it -

Everyone could have a turn.

The worlds a better place with you gone,
your loss feels like a win.
Whenever you left a party,
It was like someone nice walked in.

The grievers leave now, still aggrieved,
all thinking what no-one said.
"You were a cunt when you were living,
you're still a cunt - just dead."

David Court, January 2017