Midsummer's Bottom Read online

  MIDSUMMER’S BOTTOM

  by

  DARREN DASH

  ALSO BY DARREN DASH

  THE EVIL AND THE PURE

  "The book flaunts the grim panache of a London crime saga, and all the characters are engaging, no matter how despicable they are. Not for the faint of heart, but this novel’s character studies and ever shifting plot will excite fans of English noir." Kirkus. Recommended read.

  "The Evil And The Pure is a deliciously dark delight; a gritty, realistic look at the depths of human depravity. The twists and turns have you reeling with shock. A glory to read. 5/5 stars." Matthew R Bell's BookBlogBonanza.

  "A thoughtful and enthralling examination of a society that is seedy, corrupt and painfully uncompromising. Few writers can so easily and powerfully communicate the complexities of people dragged into a world of darkness and despair." Safie Maken Finlay, author.

  "I found myself brilliantly horrified and captivated as I read and was taken along on a dark journey with a range of dangerous, sick and even innocent characters." Chase That Horizon.

  ALSO BY DARREN DASH

  SUNBURN

  "A well-written and disturbing piece of fiction. The plot reads like an international horror movie, enticing the reader with a series of detailed and comedic chapters before exploding into a vision of blood-chilling gore." Books, Films & Random Lunacy.

  "This demonic masterpiece does not fail to disappoint even the biggest of horror fans." Crossing Pixies.

  "The elements of classic horror are very much present here. Sunburn held me firmly in the moment, demanding my full attention right to the very last page." Thoughts Of An Overactive Imagination.

  "Like the Hostel films, they have a lot of set up and then shizzle hits the fan... and then hits it again for good measure!" Dark Readers.

  ALSO BY DARREN DASH

  AN OTHER PLACE

  "This is, by far, the best book of 2016, possibly the best book of this decade... the bastard love child of Kafka and Rod Serling, throwing in a dash of Ray Bradbury for good measure. 5/5. Just brilliant. " Kelly Smith Reviews.

  "An Other Place sees an imaginative writer at the top of his craft. It brings to mind The Twilight Zone, yet even Rod Serling himself would have struggled to come up with an alternate world so completely off-the-wall and yet oddly meaningful as Dash has here. 9/10 stars." Starburst.

  "Its luckless hero moves from ghastly scenarios to even ghastlier scenarios with such horrid reliability that his story reads like extreme black comedy. 4/5 stars." SFX.

  "Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and Brett Easton Ellis may have written some weird stuff, but An Other Place tops all of it, both in terms of re-readability and overall scope." Dread Central.

  “This book really did blow my mind... each page turn was both chilling and thrilling in equal measure... the conclusion left me with goosebumps. 5/5!” Rachel Hobbs, author.

  "Dash’s surreal tale has its share of unsettling moments. There’s also an abundance of intriguing peculiarities. An often baffling tale, but its protagonist’s wry commentary is undeniably entertaining." Kirkus. Recommended Read.

  Midsummer’s Bottom

  by Darren Dash

  Copyright © 2018 by Home Of The Damned Ltd

  Cover design by Liam Fitzgerald. www.frequency.ie

  Edited by Zoe Markham http://markhamcorrect.com

  First electronic edition published by Home Of The Damned Ltd June 21st 2018

  First physical edition published by Home Of The Damned Ltd June 21st 2018

  The right of Darren Dash to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  www.darrendashbooks.com

  ACT ONE

  1.[I](i)

  A glade in Feyland. Enter OBERON, the king of Fairies.

  OBERON: Puck! thou vile worm, thou squat, unseemly wart!

  Hide no more! Show thy face, or I do swear –

  Enter PUCK, a Fairy.

  PUCK: Good king Oberon, hold thy royal tongue;

  Honest Puck is here: my lord, I have come.

  OBERON: At last! Where hast thou been, foul, tardy sprite?

  PUCK: Chasing the day through the dark of the night.

  OBERON: Didst thou not hear thy master’s noble call?

  PUCK: I heard it clear as a harpy’s shrill bawl.

  OBERON: Then why didst thou not come? It is the sworn

  Duty of my subjects, upon hearing

  The voice of their lord and king, to make haste!

  PUCK: But time turns only once, and Puck loathes waste.

  OBERON: Is it a waste to heed Oberon’s cry?

  PUCK: It is, my lord, when Puck is on the spy,

  All senses fixed on a young maiden fair,

  Fingers like snakes in her long golden hair,

  Slyly unknotting her fierce Viking braids,

  And then to her beau, to polish his blade;

  Like two grey shades these many months they walked,

  Marching in time, but chastely set apart;

  Tonight, pray thanks to Puck’s ministrations,

  They dance as one to love’s wild vibrations.

  OBERON: I would hear more of this another time,

  But it will have to wait. Know you the day?

  PUCK: Days are for mere mortals to weigh. I know

  Of centuries, and have seen decades flow,

  But days? How may one, immortal as sport,

  Concern himself with a timespan so short?

  OBERON: You speak the truth of Feyland; but you lie.

  PUCK: Lord, how can acknowledged truth be a lie?

  Your logic is absurd, even to I.

  OBERON: In the depth of summer, Goodfellow, truth

  Is a jester dressed in shrouds of madness.

  PUCK: You do not mean… it cannot be… oh gods!

  OBERON: ’Tis true, Puck: Midsummer has come again.

  PUCK: Curse the forces which measure time like dust,

  Impris’ning us in this temporal crust.

  OBERON: Yet, even in Feyland there must be law.

  We cannot choose Time and then draw it from

  Our scabbards only when we so desire.

  PUCK: I swore we should not make a pact with Time;

  We sold our souls when we dotted that line.

  OBERON: As I recall, you were instrumental

  In aligning our fate with Time’s champion.

  “It will afford good sport,” you said in jest,

  And urged us to regale Will with our tales.

  PUCK: I was mad. My lord, you should hate poor Puck,

  Yet you stand, smiling, as though I brought luck.

  OBERON: My hatred of you has oft’ known no bounds,

  But today I harbour more hope than hate.

  My queen and I have hatched a cunning plan.

  PUCK: To free us from the tyranny of Man?

  OBERON: Of all men, no, our destinies are tied,

  But from those of the glade we might slide free.

  PUCK: My lord, in truth, I’ve always held you high,

  But if this works, I swear to paint the sky

  In overlapping shades of green and red;

  Across the horizon I’ll etch your head!

&n
bsp; OBERON: Rejoice not yet, good Robin of the night,

  For much must be done to win the good fight.

  My lady and I boast two fine, wise heads,

  But wickedness makes for a sharper threat.

  We have need of you, impish, roguish Puck,

  To shake loose our chains and unpick the lock.

  PUCK: I sense devilment in my lord’s fine words,

  There’s a timbre to your voice, long unheard.

  Shall we raise hell again, my noble king,

  As we once did before Time reined us in?

  OBERON: If your wits have not been softened by Time,

  Perhaps we’ll again shine as in our prime

  And cause havoc. Come now, we must away.

  This night slips all too quickly towards day.

  Time is passing. We have much to discuss.

  Exeunt.

  1.[I](ii)

  Del Chapman’s finger paused deliciously over the ENTER key. To either side, men and women were drearily tapping away their lives, chained to keyboards like slaves, faces illuminated by the sickly bright glare of soul-sucking computer screens.

  Del pitied his colleagues, for this would be their life’s lot. They’d sit here, or in similar pits, until death or retirement, counting the minutes in every slow-passing hour, dreaming of weekends, a week’s holiday at Christmas, a fortnight in the summer, scrimping and saving for an annual trip abroad that would largely involve sheltering from a merciless sun and drinking watered-down cocktails.

  Del had been here a mere three months but it felt like a decade. How could people move so docilely towards old age and dotage? They should be fighting the advance of time, not embracing it. It was one thing to accept defeat, but to never raise a fist in anger or test the walls of the cage…

  Three months! He’d only accepted the job to experience work first-hand. He had often spoken with scorn of the rat race. In pubs he would mock his friends and implore them to broaden their horizons, until one had responded with a tetchy, “You can’t knock our way till you’ve tried it.”

  And since Del always liked to acknowledge a good point well made, he decided that he would try it. After ten years of blessed idleness, living off the good will of his friends and scamming the gullible or picking pockets (only ever from those who could afford the loss), he’d put his talents to good use and sold his soul – temporarily! – to the horned devil of paid employment.

  A week had been more than enough – shaving and showering every morning, dressing in clean clothes and making sure his shoes were polished, soporific daytime radio humming in the background as the drones bitched about how they were underappreciated and underpaid – but he’d persevered, so that no one could claim he hadn’t given it ample time. He was young and could afford to waste a few months of his precious life.

  But the day had come to move on. A quarter of a year had passed while he decayed in this timeless, meaningless subworld. Summer was upon Limerick – not that you’d know it by the grey skies – and to stay longer would mean emerging in autumn or winter, and that thought was too depressing to countenance. Del wanted to run free through the city streets – naked if he wished – and not have to worry about frostbite.

  It was time.

  He hadn’t handed in notice or told anybody of his decision. It was easier this way and more fun. He’d impressed during his time here and been granted increased responsibilities – his boss said he had a magnificent future with the company – so his sudden departure would create a satisfying measure of chaos.

  He’d put in a lot of overtime these past few weeks, working on a personal project. Del was a wizard with computers, and viruses were his speciality. He bred them like a mad scientist breeding destructive bacterial strains. Few things in life afforded him more pleasure than setting loose a virulent bug on a neatly ordered digital universe — Go, baby, go!

  He’d been decently treated by his employers. He liked his co-workers and didn’t want to cause them harm. But they needed help. Del Chapman was no Spartacus, but in his own way he was a freedom fighter, constantly pressing for the rights of the individual.

  These slaves were probably beyond help but Del was determined to at least open their eyes to the possibility of freedom. Every computer in the building was networked. His virus would speed through them and crash the entire system in a matter of hours. There would be no way to retrieve lost information. The company would recover (and maybe pay for some decent anti-virus software next time round) but it would reel from the blow for several weeks. Employees would be laid-off or rested. With so much free time on their hands, perhaps one or two of the braver souls might lift their nostrils and sniff the air of true freedom.

  Del’s finger descended and the virus sprang from the traps, its fangs glinting, tearing from one terminal to the next, spreading its deadly disease at the speed of communication.

  “Run free,” Del muttered, both to the virus and his career-shackled colleagues.

  He rose and tapped his neighbour’s shoulder. “Call of nature. Back in a minute.” His unwitting victim nodded without looking up from his screen, terrified of missing some magical electronic symbol. Del smiled as he considered the consternation in the man’s face when the computer began creating psychedelic mazes from which there was no escape.

  He left his coat and personal belongings behind, including the keys to his flat. He wouldn’t need them. It was a warm day and the world was full of belongings. He could accumulate more if he wished. The world was always quick to offer its gifts to those who had no genuine yearning for them.

  *

  At a hundred and forty-eight kilometres an hour and rising, Del streaked through the night, headlights slicing a path through the darkness, Metallica exploding from the car’s state-of-the-art speakers. Behind, a police car trailed him, siren blaring. The officers had tried cutting him off but now were content to tail him, sure that he’d eventually take a bend too fast and skid or overturn.

  Del had borrowed the car, a sporty BMW, taking a set of keys from a manager’s coat on his way out. He’d driven round the outskirts of the city, making an entire circuit, bidding it adieu. The world was enormous and it was time to explore. He’d had his fill of soggy, boggy Limerick. Time to bow out and head in the general direction of… away.

  A couple of officers in a patrol car had clocked him breaking the speed limit during his farewell lap and he’d been playing a merry game of chase with them ever since. He didn’t know how the game would end but he was sure he wouldn’t be caught. Almost every rogue falls foul of the law in the end, and Del had resigned himself to an eventual spin on the prison wheel, but he felt in his bones that the day of paying his dues wasn’t yet upon him.

  Del’s zigzagging course through Limerick’s countryside warren of minor roads hadn’t taken him far from the city, regardless of his speed. A glimpse of a road sign told him he was a mere eleven kilometres distant.

  “Time to lose these suckers,” he growled, checking his rear-view mirror. The pubs would be closing soon and Del was thirsty.

  Del trained his gaze on the zipping-past scenery. After a while he spotted the outlying trees of a forest and slowed while looking for an entrance. Finding one, he took the corner neatly, then accelerated viciously. He sped down a twisting road for a kilometre before spotting a small dirt road on his left. Hastily reducing speed, he backed into cover, then cut the lights and rolled down the windows.

  For a few seconds there was quiet. Then the wail of the approaching cop car. His stomach tensed – could his gut feeling have been wrong? – but relaxed again as the car roared by and continued on into the depths of the forest.

  They’d never find him now.

  Del switched off the engine, leant back, shut his eyes and sighed happily. He’d wait a few minutes, then bomb it to a pub in time for last call. A few pints, then he’d be far away by dawn, leaving everything behind — his job, his past, even his name.

  He didn’t react when the passenger door clicked op
en, thinking that the noise was just the cooling of the engine or a low-hanging branch brushing against the roof. But when he looked over a minute later, he was stunned to notice a small figure in the seat next to him.

  “Who the hell are you?” Del gasped.

  “A friend I am, for all that I may seem;” came the unexpected response.

  “Have you never espied me in a dream?”

  “What?” Del asked stupidly, confused by his guest’s cryptic answer.

  “Full explanations will, in time, unreel;

  For now, I would advise you take the wheel.”

  “Listen, weirdo,” Del began, “I don’t know who you are or why you’re talking that way, but this is my car and –”

  The engine roared to life and the car lurched into reverse. Del cringed away from the wheel, then grabbed on for dear life. He slammed a foot down on the brake — no response.

  The figure to Del’s left spoke again.

  “The time has come to lay control aside.

  Sit back. Relax. Unwind. Enjoy the ride.”

  “Who are you?” Del yelled, jerking on the wheel. “How are you doing this?” The car didn’t react to his savage jerks, and instead of careening wildly into the bushes, the BMW stormed back along the dirt road, picking up speed.

  “My name and purpose will in time be dealt;

  Till then you would do well to fix your belt.”

  Del stared at the small man – still shaded by the dark forest night, impossible to identify – then at the road in the mirror. He hadn’t strapped on a belt since he was a child – anarchists have no time for safety constraints – but now he gulped, reached behind and drew the strap across.

  Del watched the speedometer climb to a hundred. One-twenty. One-fifty. He couldn’t understand how they were making such headway on so poor a track, or how a connecting dirt-road could be so long.