Film Review: 'Wrath of the Titans'

First things first. This film really should be called Wrath of the Titan, because there really is only one titan (although Cronus does achieve a fair bit of wrath and that's still one titan more than 2010's Clash). Nonetheless, the latest installment in Sam Worthington's eternal mission to punch as much CGI as possible does feature a fair few more rock stars of Greek mythology than its predecessor, albeit divorced from their proper foes and environments. Chimera beats up a village, the Minotaur is beaten down by the Australian Demi-God Perseus in a matter of seconds and a family of Cyclops all say sorry to our heroes.

Wrath is severely unspecial. Worthington maintains he took the job because he hated himself in Clash and wanted to right his wrongs. He doesn't. Perseus has about as much presence as the elusive titans (plural) when he's not shouting at monsters or randomly snogging Rosamund Pike (equally sparse of character) and the supporting cast seems to be bizzarely made up of a plethora of sarcastic northerners. Granted Worthington's Antipodean tones are hardly accurate, but at least he's performing in his own accent. The mind boggles at the (assumedly) directorial decision to have Bill Nighy's fallen God speak in the manner of a drunk Boltonian and until I specifically learn otherwise, I will fervently maintain that Toby Kebell (nauseating as Agenor, son of Poseiden) improvised the entirety of his dialogue.

The more stellar portion of the cast are wasted and, in the case of Ralph Feinnes' Dark Lord Volde- erm, Hades, almost look like they know they shouldn't be there. Characters die off the cuff and crumble into a laughable pillar of dust while the vague shreds of a plot fizzle around them. The ending is also completely barmy, and never has the term Deus Ex Machina been more literal.

Why is Liam Neeson's Zeus so helpless? Why does Hades change sides more often than Cronus farts fire? Will the inevitable third installment actually feature more than one titan? None of these questions are raised. The 3D looks gratuitously lovely and the digitally rendered environments are occasionally impressive but these positives don't save a poor outing for Worthington and co. However this much is likely; a third Titans film looks as likely as a sudden leap in quality is unlikely.

Bring your own 3D glasses, Wrath of the Titan is definitely not worth the extra 80 pence.

Film Review: 'The Devil Inside'

Paranormal Activity, you may recall (if you have any fond inclination toward the horror genre) simultaneously marked a return to form for both atmosphere-led, suspenseful horror and the faux-realistic 'mocumentary' genre first given to us in the form of The Blair Witch Project. The film was a joy to horror afficionadoes and anyone who enjoyed being scared when it was released a couple of years ago. However, with each passing instalment (the odd exceptional shock aside) the Paranormal Activity franchise gradually began to dwindle in both quality and originality.

With this logic in place, one could be forgive for thinking The Devil Inside could very easily be Paranormal Activity VIIII, for all its lack of genuine shock, originality and rinsing of its genre's tropes. Its most effective scares -and let's not mistake 'most effective' for 'genuinely shocking'- already over-exposed from its widely viewed trailer (which mainly consist of extended periods of calm followed by gratuitous 'jump' moments that are too expected to actually work), The Devil Inside never really rises above occasionally creepy.

It begins promisingly enough, with a rather unsettling recording of a phone call to the police from Maria Rossi, protagonist Isabella's mother, confessing to the murders of three participants of an exorcism. It then cuts to vintage footage (the only real aesthetic triumph of the film) of a news report and investigation in the wake of the discovery. From then on, unfortunately, the film takes a severe dive that it never manages to recover from.

Jump to the present day, the relentlessly unlikeable Isabella (who constantly sways between helpless female cliche and hard-done-by victim demanding answers) is making a documentary about her mother's demonic possession, jetting to Vatican City where she is being held in psychiatric care. There is then a good thirty minutes, littered with some questionable acting and dialogue, before anything attempting to scare us happens again. During this time we are introduced to a pair of rogue exorcists who perform the ritual without consent of the church and would probably be more suited to their own '80s drama series than a supposedly serious documentary film, and reintroduced to the only good thing The Devil Inside has going for it, the frustratingly underused Maria Rossi, whos two brief scenes are the only genunely creepy sequences the film has to offer.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about The Devil Inside is that it continually tiptoes around a fairly interesting premise; there are hints at corrupt Vatican officials, a global conspiracy to sweep severe cases of possession under the rug and a malevolent demon that can jump from person to person, but these are all largely untouched plot elements that ammount to little or nothing. What's left is barely more than an hour of limp shocks (the biggest audience reaction came from an angry dog barking), gratuitous Exorcist riffs and oblique, futile references to what could have been. Furthermore, where even the less effective mocumentaries at least fall back on the admirable naturalism of the acting serving to maintain an authentic feel, its a shame to say that in this case, especially when the stakes are raised, the efforts fall between daytime soap opera and late '70s video nasty. The crux of the hamminess comes in the form of one of the exorcists staring straight faced at the camera and comparing himself to Superman (this actually happens).

Ultimately, all of the woes, underachieving shocks and could-have-beens are left at the back of the mind when it comes to The Devil Inside's ending. In short, there isn't one. Without giving too much away, what there actually is is a build up to the third act, that extra thirty minutes missing from the film's running time, and then the credits roll. Just as the film threatens to get interesting, with a genuinely game changing plot development the audience is quite literally told to leave it there. This may be a meagre attempt to one-up the abrupt endings of previous horrors, but it falls tragically short. The Devil Inside does little for the rather small genre of possession movies, does nothing for the horror genre and if anything damages the already waning mocumentary genre.

Avoid paying full ticket price for two thirds of a movie.

Bob's Bridge. A Ghost (?) Story

New evening, its Dad's birthday so we're in his local in Birchington, Kent. Its a nice town to visit with reasonable intervals. Sort of spooky, isolated. But I imagine quite mundane and dull if you had to be there every day. I suppose the older folks like these kinds of places.

The 'Sea View' is a pleasant enough pub. The staff are like friends when its a quiet evening, unashamedly getting involved in your discussions with interest in the manner publicans in London never would.

What a pleasant Sunday evening. Dad bought us all a pint, even though he's the birthday boy. The discussion was good, too. Even when the inevitable drunken commentary on recession, football and "the country going to shit" ran dry, things managed to remain interesting.

I imagine it was the romance of the misty, desolate coastal town he was still relatively new to, because in twenty-five years I maintain I've never heard Dad talk like this, but he quickly propelled the conversation toward the supernatural.

Its funny, the adamant fervour you give to a discussion when drunk, the hindsight with which you laugh at the seriousness you gave the rhetoric the night before, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

"I shit you not," my Dad egged on, "I wouldn't make this up"

We (being myself and my friend Jake, who was visiting because his job closed down and he had shit all to do) listened intently and with wide-eyed genuity. In hindsight it would be comical to observe. Anyway.

"I used to deliver papers in Ruislip" he carried on, "one night, I was driving (I'd just passed my test, as it goes) through Denham on my way to deliver the papers, and I promise you I clenched the steering wheel like no living person ever has before or since."

I giggled with drunken sincerity. "Why?" I laughed.

"It was the middle of fucking nowhere" he maintained, waving his pint at me for emphasis, "and I promise you all" (because there was also a nice, middle aged man called Bob at our table. We sort of commandeered him from his own misanthropic loneliness, into the conversation), "I hit a woman in the road."

We all shuddered. I know.

"My heart went", Dad said. "I can see it as clear as this pint in my hand. I hit a young woman and she went tumbling over my bonnet and hit the ground beside my car."

Dad took a slight breath, and carried on.

"Then I never saw her again."

Jake and I squinted. "In what way?' asked I.

"I mean" he said, "that she was never there. My girlfriend told me I'd just met the 'Grey Lady'."

I would be lying, and I don't lie, if I neglected to mention the quiver in my skin and the hairs on the back of my neck finding a tingle, at this sentence. What is the grey lady? Well, its not that important but supposedly she's a terrible spectre that jitters across the neglected West London suburbs, rigid fingers outstretched and a horrid, upset turn across her withered white face. Apparently her eyes are so wide you can see the back of them on a clear day. Not that she'd ever materialise on a clear day. As it stands she floats along, horrified and crooked, across woodlands and flat grounds. Supposedly she's buried near Ruislip, in a mistakenly-marked tomb that was never properly sealed.

"So what!" I exclaimed. "What about here?"

Dad smiled through drunken haziness. "You know my house is 150 years old?" He asked, playfully.

"No"

"Well," he began, "I'm not confirming anything, but you know little Lyon?"

Little Lyon (real name Lyon) was the seven year old boy that lived with his parents next door to my mum and dad. Each house on that terrace, bare in mind, was a decrepit old, converted sailors lodgings from the early eighteenth century.

"Yes" I said with coast.

"Well apparently, little Lyon's mum and dad woke up one night to hear him in his room, alone, talking. They went in and asked him what was wrong, and he turned to them, smiled, and said 'nothing.'

Apparently, Lyon's dad insists, Lyon was talking to 'the lady'. His dad went pale when he said this and asked 'what lady?' Lyon simply said 'the Lady that comes here every night. She always comes. She doesn't usually talk.'

Afterwards, Lyon's dad asked Greg next door but one, about the Lady, and Greg laughed and said, 'yeah, there's a lady. She walks through these walls, through all of these houses, every single night. She doesn't do any harm, because the dead can't hurt the living, but she always comes. Every night, snake-like and cold, floating through the walls of these old houses. I don't know who she is.'

I guess I've always been interested in that sort of thing" Dad continued, "but I never took it that seriously since I've moved here" I nodded, drunk and slightly intimidated. "But I maintain that Del (his dog) has funny turns every now and again."

"What?" I asked.

"Well," said Dad, "God bless your mother for steadfastly ignoring this, but I fucking promise you that one night, we were sat around the telly, I notice Del's eyes darting left and right, like he was following something. (They say animals can sense things), it startled me a bit, but I brushed it off.... until Del started barking, furiously, at the wall. Del stared intently at nothing at all and barked, his eyes transfixed.... I don't know, just a wierd moment."

We sipped our beers in silence. I stared at our new friend, Bob, and snickered silently. Although if I'm being truthful to myself I will admit that the back of my neck tingled slightly at that story.

We drank in silence for an interval, and I sat back in my chair. I then stared into an in particular corner of the pub. My relaxedness withered. I suddenly felt edgy and irritable. The particular corner consisted of a slightly narrowed section, leading to the toilets. It wasn't that anything specifically changed, but there was a certain desolation coming from that section. It was well-lit, but there was a darkness, somewhere. And it came creeping, no, scrawling, out from a forbidden corner and slowly infected the light, seeping rigidly and horribly into everything else like a malevolent spider, until it was black with shadow. I stared, tears may have welled behind my eyes and my hair may have tingled and moved as this happened. That visible corner screwed and shrank into darkness and I do believe, drunken hindsight permitting, that a set of animated, black, crooked fingers poked bleakly out of the shadow and gyrated horribly back into it.

THE BELL rang. Time at the bar, they say. We started up into reality.

Me, Dad, Jake and Bob slowly and awkwardly gathered our things. We bade a mumbled, grim farewell to the barmaid and started for the door.

It was so beautifully silent in the Kentish coastal village at night. Nothing like London. You can see stars and "hear angels fart", if they will. Bob was funny, all through the night he sneered at Dad's adamant ghost stories, being the staunch atheist he is. We strolled through the brisk, biting cold and Dad INSISTED on carrying on the ghost stories;

"she looks at you through the conservatory window"

"I couldn't sleep, yet I saw the grim, black shadow crawl across my bedroom"

"there's something in that alley just before my house"

They were all his. We were liberal in our listening, but in all seriousness we just wanted to get home.

The roads were silent. Old, detached houses and little else lined the way. The stars were so visible it was absurd. Jake had already gone home a separate way.

We came to a bridge. It passed above us, pure concrete and starkly rigid, almost accidentally art deco. It was largely in shadow and it protruded and jolted out in all sorts of bizarre places. The dim, yellow-lit road passed under it.

Bob went crooked and let out a low, ugly squeal of discomfort. "I don't want to" he groaned.

"What?" I asked in disbelief.

"I can't go under it" he cried, staring ominously at the jagged concrete of the overhanging bridge.

Dad laughed, for some reason. Bob hesitated as we each looked on in slight disbelief, and he eventually passed under.

"Do you mind me asking what that was about?" I blurted out, with regards to the bridge.

Bob said nothing. He simply looked up to the starry sky and sighed.

"Look." he said. "You can see all of the bright universe in the sky at night."

I think me and Dad both smiled amicably at this.

Then Bob slowly, eerily arched his head toward the ground. His expression blinked abruptly to a blank, unhappy one as he stared at the concrete.

"And you can see the grimness of hell beneath us, all the same", Bob hissed. He didn't sound himself, at all.

Dad was undeniably drunk, but all the same he turned bravely to Bob and said "Go home, mate." We all three of us stood awkwardly on the spot for a moment. Bob stared into nothing beyond us, looking like he was dead. Nothing my Dad had just said even registered, although he quickly turned and left all the same.

Dad and I staggered home. The evening was indeed weird, and obviously my first instinct was to take to the home computer and type it all up, before I forgot any detail.

Ghost stories are always creepy when you combine them with intoxication and mistaken interest in such an environment, and I know that human beings are eternally susceptible to unexplainable things when its interesting.

I'm not saying I believe any of those silly stories, or take Bob's odd actions very seriously, although, if I'm honest, when I sit here at this desk late at night, in this long, cold living room, and think of that dark thing that just drifted by me in the distant shadow (knowing that everyone in the house is upstairs, asleep) not a minute ago, and slithered shakily into the darkness, the hair on my head tingles and a slight tear forms behind the eye. I've always been a bit rational, but I can't ignore that.

I dread the trip upstairs to bed.

The Great Detectives - Sherlock Holmes/Batman Comparison

While the two seem culturally worlds apart, it is easy to forget that Bob Kane's 'Batman', the phenomenal 'great detective' began barely a decade after the final story in the canon of 'Sherlock Holmes', Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own 'Great Detective'. While few hold these two popular characters in close regard as equivalents, with some simple scrutiny it becomes clear that, despite their many differences, 'Batman' and 'Sherlock Holmes' have more in common than it appears. Personally I regard Batman as the American, 20th Century Holmes (although popular perception loses sight of the caped crusader as a detective first and foremost, he is NOT a super-hero. A cape and mask do not grant you super-hero status), and through a character comparison, my reasons will become clear.

Batman/Holmes

The protagonist is the most obvious. Both are detectives with cognitive skills far outmatching their contemporaries, both have prominent psychological defects (Bruce Wayne derives his strict moral code from the witness of his parents' murders at a young age and is constantly traumatised by these events long into his adult life, while Holmes' remarkable skills come at the expense of a near-complete lack of human emotion, allowing every living being to be viewed as a puzzle to be solved, and every crime a game that he thrives in and even enjoys, regardless of the seriousness.) Each character operates at the behest of the law, despite the law's reluctant pleasure that they do so, and the exploits of each see them rise to fame in their respective cities. Despite being famously lauded as heroes, both Holmes and Batman possess a somewhat dubious morality. Holmes has little interest in personal justice for the victims of the crimes he investigates, each factor is just a puzzle piece. He shows, for example, no remorse for inadvertedly causing the death of the antagonist in 'The Speckled Band', and on occasion withholds evidence from the police and takes the law into his own hands. He allows the thief in 'The Blue Carbuncle' to go free, simply because it is Christmas. Batman, while holding a strict sense of right and wrong and vowing never to kill, is hubristic in regarding himself above the law and exacting justice without the consent or approval of the police. His methods of apprehending criminals, meanwhile, are somewhat hypocritical in their brutality.

Robin/Dr. Watson

Not immediately equivalent; a Holmes story would be almost unthinkable without the presence and perspective of Dr. Watson, (although they do exist), whereas a Batman story without Robin is not only reasonable but increasingly common, especially among writers that view the character as detrimental to the franchise's darker, adult tone (Robin has not appeared in a 'Batman' movie in fourteen years). However, in each case, the character's initial purpose was to align the story with the reader where the main protagonist is to abstract or austere a character to immediately identify with. As a comic with a strong child readership, Robin makes for an invaluable audience-identifier in the earlier Batman stories, while Watson in the Holmes canon allows for the reader to see Sherlock with the same admiration and awe that he does. Furthermore, each character expands on the protagonist's remarkable abilities by bringing their own to the table. Dick Grayson is a phenomenal acrobat, able to spring Batman from traps and tackle enemies with agility and speed, while John Watson is an accomplished army doctor, often identifying medical anomalies that even Holmes occasionally misses.

Alfred Pennyworth/Mrs. Hudson


An obvious comparison to those familiar with both franchises. Alfred is the butler, seldom seen outside of Wayne Manor in the comics, whilst Mrs. Hudson is the landlady, seldom seen outside of 221b Baker Street in the stories. Each character acts as an iconic piece of living furniture in their respective famous addresses, but they are not merely sympathetic drink-dispensers to their protagonists. While Alfred and Mrs. Hudson often remain separate to the principle story, they are always on hand to aid in their own way. Mrs. Hudson tends to Holmes in 'The Dying Detective' and even assists in his scheme in 'The Empty House', moving the wax dummy of Holmes in the window in order to portray it as living and trick the assailant. Alfred, meanwhile, often assists Batman from the confines of Wayne Manor, conducting extra research and mending damaged gadgets when the protagonist can not. Above all else, each character is the spiritual parent of the franchise, a human signifier of comfort and safety. As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock remarked in the most recent episode of the BBC series, echoing the sentiment of Holmes buffs throughout history, 'If Mrs. Hudson left Baker Street, England would fall.'

Commissioner James Gordon/Inspector Lestrade

The reluctant professional admirer of the protagonist, and by and large the sole link between law and vigilante. Gordon and Lestrade are almost identical in that they serve as the only sympathetic member of the police force and recognise the benefit of Batman/Holmes in crime solving. Lestrade is perhaps treated with less sympathy in that Holmes and Watson continually mock his pedestrian abilities when compared to Sherlock's remarkable skills, but like Gordon, he is unafraid to express his occasional frustration with the protagonist's unorthodox methods of detection. They are dwarfed by the titular heroes, yet Gordon and Lestrade are continually alluded to being the best of their kind. Gordon shines through in a force of corrupt and ineffective police officers, while Lestrade is remarked as being the most competent detective amidst Scotland Yard's bumbling elite.

Catwoman/Irene Adler

The most popular female character of each series (even Dr. Watson's wife Mary is largely absent beyond her first appearance), and both antagonists that are nevertheless held in a light of respect by their respective protagonists. Adler possesses an intelligence equal to that of Holmes, and remains the only character in the canon to successfully outwit him, while Selina Kyle's athletic, stealth and combat skills are an easy match for Batman's. Both characters cause conflict in the morality of the central character by possessing a trait that completely conflicts with them (the painfully mysoginistic Holmes admires 'the woman' Adler despite her sex, judicially-minded Bruce Wayne enters into a romantic relationship with Selina Kyle despite her proffession as a criminal). While Holmes has no truck with romance, there is proffessional admiration for Irene in place of Batman's actual romantic feelings for Catwoman.

The Joker/Proffessor Moriarty

The iconic foil. Neither Holmes nor Batman would be complete without their ultimate adversary. Both serve as the opposite side of the same coin, and both utterly match the abilities of the hero. They operate ominously from off stage, testing the limits of the hero, then finally reveal themselves for a physical showdown with devestating consequences. While the Joker is a constant presence in 'Batman', Moriarty only actually appears in one Holmes story, although Doyle later retroactively made him a presence in the shadows, orchestrating crimes from afar in 'The Valley of Fear', a story set before but written after Moriarty's defeat. Clearly Doyle recognised the character's impact as arch enemy enough to increase the prolificacy of his crimes. Furthermore, Moriarty's absence from the later stories is as keenly felt as his presence in the earlier, and Holmes makes numerous references to his departed foe right up until the very last story, 'His Last Bow'. There is a keen reversal of roles in that, while the Joker recognises how much he enjoys his conflicts with Batman, it is Holmes that continually remarks how much he misses the thrill of the chase with Moriarty, remarking that crime in London has become uninteresting since his death.

There are also some comparisons to be made among the lesser recurring characters;

Bane/Colonel Sebastian Moran

Both criminals that arrive on the scene with the express intention of murdering the protagonist. Moran wants to exact revenge upon Holmes for the death of his boss, Moriarty, while Bane wishes to kill Batman to remove Gotham's overwhelming fear of the Dark Knight. Each possess violent skills that cause the hero to fear for their life (Bane is stronger than Batman, Moran is an expert marksman).

Tim Drake/Stanley Hopkins

Tim Drake, as successor to Dick Grayson's Robin, shares similarities with minor 'Sherlock Holmes' character Stanley Hopkins, who is mentioned as being a young police officer with keen detective skills. Hopkins appears in later stories, where Watson spends increasing amounts of time away from Holmes, and is vaguely alluded to being a possible successor to Sherlock Holmes.

Gotham/London

It would be wrong not to mention the respective cities in which the great detectives solve their crimes. Each city is vivdly realised in the fiction, thriving and complex to the point of being something of a character itself. The reader is immersed in this artificial world (while London has the obvious advantage of being a real place, the London of 'Sherlock Holmes' is unique in its stark descriptions of gas-lit, foggy alleyways, rolling hansom cabs and ominous shadows. It is as exclusive to Sherlock Holmes in that respect as the fictional Gotham City is to Batman). Each character is completed, given a degree of dimension, by the city they live in.

An Exercise in Self-Deprecation

I am depressed, self-centred, unmotivated and underhanded. I make snide comments at respectable people to gage reactions which I in turn can not deal with.

I am an alcoholic, and despite knowing this I feel no need to make an effort to tackle this.

I am extremely arrogant and cynical to the point of hubris, and hold the natural assumption that everyone should be party to my opinions, yet I will simultaneously chide opinions I do not agree with while lambasting those that state opinion as fact, a habit I'm guilty of more than most.

I feel anger and resent at those who are professionally more successful than me, and try to internally justify my own lack of success with self-righteous, stock ideologies that, if I am honest with myself, I only profess to believe in.

I scold myself for not progressing professionally, yet I make no effort to set the ball in motion for this progression.

In my free time, whilst boasting to others that I am a writer, I seldom participate in anything productive. I would sooner watch television for hours on end than pursue my claims.

I get murky and angry at my friends when they appear to not show me any support, yet in truth I know that if this is the case, it is most likely due to my chronic inability to make any kind of effort on their behalf. Despite knowledge of this irony, I remain too self righteous to relent and pity my friends.

I rarely visit my family, even those that live close to me.

I am extremely vocal about my heroes, be they living, dead, fictional or factual, yet I never attempt to emulate their ideals and deeds, with the exception of Charles Dickens, who I most arrogantly consider myself to be his literary successor despite having nothing remotely credible to my name.

I seek undeserved sympathy for my misery that is derived from my selfishness and rash actions.

I feel self-deprecation is a form of entertainment and that my own cynicism should be enjoyed by my blog readers.

I start far too many sentences with 'I', a much frowned-upon grammatical flaw.

Whenever things don't go my way, or when the good people in my life criticise my actions or opinions, I run away and descend into anger and jealousy that lasts for days.

My bad feelings are often internal and I seldom vent healthily, which makes matters worse.

Although I do make a pretty awesome cappuccino.

Every cloud has a silver lining, Merry Christmas! xxxx

Coppervid Dafield (abridged)

I'm a quarter of a century old today. This is that quarter. Although some events may be out of sequence.

Whether or not I am being the hero of my own life, I should have paid more attention. When I was twenty-five my novel, 'The Life and Loves of Jet Tea', was more or less finished. I became prolific in writing almost at the cost of my own well being. My typed-up tantrums and rants were the product of constant alcohol abuse as I would drink constantly and turn to Facebook or my blog to vent what would be my bottled-up sober thoughts in libellous, spiteful yet somewhat comical outbursts. These were always at either the amusement or annoyance of my friends.

I took residence in what is essentially the attic of a Soho pub after eventually leaving and becoming a successful writer, and I preceded to use what little free time I had to try and become a writer. My days (and nights) were spent dispensing beer to tourists, actors, perverts and businessmen and whenever I could fit it in, I would write my blog. This would continue unchanged until I eventually opened the blog.

Having acquired the job in the Soho pub, I eventually moved out of the flat in Finchley, North London, where I lived with my girlfriend and her chum from university. It was a lovely place, newly built only some years before and sitting pleasantly in one of those rare pockets of suburban London that can be walked around in at all hours without need to feel fear. Here I lived for two years, strolling the alleys and woodlands of Highgate and Barnet in my free time and keeping track of my thoughts in a little notebook I always kept on my person.

During this time, I found myself not yet having started the job in Soho and on the dole. This was a most depressing time for me and, despite always having been supportive of the work-shy (I was myself more creative when unemployed so I always assumed the benefit classes are prolific purveyors of fine art and literature), I did everything in my power to end it.

The inevitability of being on the dole came from my ill-advised decision to leave my job in Uxbridge, West London due to the painfully-long daily commute I had to put up with to get back to Finchley. Daily I would travel upwards of two hours on the Metropolitan and Northern lines just to get to and from work. Although as the old adage attests, every cloud has a silver lining and during these journeys I found myself able to read more than ever before. I worked in Uxbridge for almost three long, dull years and in the second of those years I moved into the flat in Finchley with my girlfriend and started working on a novel, tentatively titled 'The Life and Loves of Jet Tea'. It was to be about my best friend, who has a tendency to fall in love with every girl he meets.

My welcome home party, upon my return from New York, was cut short when an airborne, drunk teenager accidentally kicked my girlfriend in the face. She lost the feeling in her head and received a scar above her eye. I accompanied her to the hospital, during which time the attending doctor shot me funny look after funny look, silently accusing me of domestic violence.

Before long, I graduated from university with a 2:1 in English literature and film studies. By now my girlfriend was, for all intents and purposes, living with me in my parents' house in Hayes. Shortly before that, I met my girlfriend while playing guitar in a friend's band. We spent many evenings drinking various spirits from my parents' cupboard and watching obscure sci fi programmes and films until the small hours of the morning. She was brought in as a session violinist and we found the two of us had myriad common interests in uncommon things. The band, being the roster of musicians it was during my involvement, existed for, I suppose, a year and a half. We played lots of fun gigs all around London, many of which had hilarious drunken consequences, and I joined shortly after moving out of my house in Reading due to a nasty falling out with my friend and housemate.

University was a strange time for me. Shortly before the commencement of my third year, I broke up with my girlfriend of four years and towards the end of the second year we were spending less and less time together, despite living in the same town and both being students. Once upon a time, when I was older and worked full time, I used to realise how lucky I would have it when I was a student, complaining about having to be at school from 9am until 11am and spending the remainder of the afternoon in bed watching illegally-downloaded 'Robot Chicken' episodes until the evening when I would go into town with my friends and make short work of a bottle of After-Shock.

In my second year I moved into a house in Reading with eight other students. I wasn't there long, and before that I spent my first summer back home in Hayes crawling around London with my friends Maurice, Jet Tea and Wilhelm Neuf. It was a blurry affair, and both the passage of time and consumption of alcohol have left me with only snippets of recollection. We would trawl across London, attending gigs and open mic nights and watching each other get into various kinds of trouble with promoters, members of the audience and occasionally the police.

Eventually I began university. I moved away from Hayes, West London, for the first time in my life at the age of twenty and settled quickly into a grotty halls of residence in a rather remote part of Reading, Berkshire. I began studying English and soon decided that I'd like to be a writer of fiction. The nights out in Reading were, at that time of my life, the most incredible and intense I had ever experienced. We drank like good and true students and danced like charlatans with no self awareness.

University was preceded by a gap year, part of which I spent travelling by myself around Western Europe and gradually beginning to shape the person I was when I lived in Soho at the age of twenty-five. The reflective, mood-swinging alcoholic scribbler who enjoys his own company. I finished my travels in Paris, and prior to that travelled through Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Holland, Belgium and eventually started in France, full circle.

Before leaving for Europe I began a relationship my first girlfriend in sixth form. I had known her for seven years before this. My school years were more-or-less par for the course of any teenage English boy. My small group of friends existed outside of school social circles and we would roam the school grounds looking for ghosts, getting into mild trouble with teachers and musing upon and observing our experiences with attitudes far beyond our years. I no longer wished to be a writer, instead I wanted to be an illustrator and I missed out on many a better grade for the multitude of cartoons and comics I would draw of my teachers and friends, safe in the modest knowledge that they weren't lifelike enough for them to notice.

We played gigs after school at a local youth centre to a crowd of alternative teenagers who hated us and threw chairs at us. In their defence we were terrible. I joined my first band. I began learning guitar. My mum bought me my first guitar for my fifteenth birthday.

I began feeling a funny change during my early teens in which I would feel awkward around the opposite sex and think about them more and more. This didn't last much longer and eventually I didn't really care and was just happy playing with toys and computer games.

I grew smaller and began wanting everything and being unwilling to contribute or realise how fortunate I was. I could care less about how hard my parents would have to work to give me the comfortable childhood I had. Even so, I still wrote. I would spend all my time sitting at the dining table with piles of blank paper, writing stories and comics until my hand was sore.

One summer afternoon I was climbing a tree outside my house when suddenly the branch I clung to snapped off and I fell hard onto the concrete, breaking my nose and tearing my upper lip apart. The scar would be there forevermore.

Eventually I lost the ability to write and draw. Before long I could no longer even spell my own name. All I had were vague traces of what would be my voice, and then that was gone.

I found myself invalided, scared of the world and completely unaware of what was going on. I cried all the time and lost control of my bodily functions entirely. I couldn't move, I couldn't tell anyone what I needed. Everything seemed so big, so scary and yet still it intrigued me. I wanted to learn about everything. Despite the despair I was constantly enduring, I knew this cold, bright place was a place to be explored and I'm sure I will have a lot of great adventures here.

Today I was born.

"When Can You Start?"

'And this is the office.'
Derrick peered through the door window. It was most definitely the smallest office he'd seen. Not that pub offices were particularly renowned for being roomy. He nodded meekly.
'If you want to have a look inside I'll just run back upstairs and grab your paperwork' said Derrick's new manager, before bounding back down the corridor and up the stairs.
Derrick sat down. He hated being shown round a new place of work. He never really knew what to say or what questions to ask, if any. Although the job was in the bag, Derrick still felt as though he was in the interview stage until he properly began work.
Staring at nothing in particular, Derrick slowly swivveled and turned on the office chair waiting for his new manager to return. He turned over appropriate questions and comments in his mind, and decided against all of them. It didn't matter.
Then Derrick noticed the screen on his right. The CCTV screen that showed all possible angles in the pub. He stood up out of his chair and looked at it.
Boredom and curiosity curdled in Derrick's idle brain as he decided to grab the mouse and select a single screen for closer view. He selected the small, jittery image of the main bar and clicked. The image enlarged and filled the screen instantly. Then Derrick noticed the first odd thing he'd notice that evening.
The pub was empty.
How strange, he thought. It was more than plausible that the solitary bartender who greeted him when he arrived had just nipped out the back for a moment (as a long time bar manager Derrick was all too familiar with that most irritating habit), but there were at least thirty customers in the space that this CCTV camera was covering before he left. There was no way that they'd all leave at the same moment.
Then Derrick felt silly. Of course, he thought, it must be old footage. The time and date begged to differ. The footage of the deserted pub was completely live. He wondered where his manager had gotten to.
Then the second odd thing happened.
He didn't immediately notice what it was about the footage that was wrong, but after a moment of scrutiny Derrick saw it. The empty pint glass that stood on the bar had moved. No, was moving. As clear as these words are to you, Derrick would swear, that glass moved. It slid unsettlingly slowly across the bar. Painfully slowly, almost like it knew it shouldn't be allowed to do that. The jumpy, jittery pixelated footage occasionally distorted its journey and at times the glass appeared to jump suddenly upon its route. Then it reached the edge of the bar. And it kept going.
Derrick was rigid with morbid amazement as he watched the animated glass tumble over the edge of the bar and off the screen. The next odd thing made him jump.
With unbelievable coincidence, a loud smash startled Derrick into a chill and broke his gaze. He darted over to the office door and opened it.
There was a broken pint glass at his feet.
All manner of dread and foreboding lined Derrick's stomach as he considered the impossible. He slammed the door shut and went back to the CCTV screen, his heart pounding.
'Christ' he failed not to say aloud.
He wished he could see the whereabouts of the wayward glass on screen, just to put his mind at ease. The screen was no barer of relief.
The fourth odd thing happened. A door swung open, and nobody emerged. The fifth. Another glass tumbled off the bar. The sixth, the seventh. Eighth. Ninth. Beer pumps turned on by themselves, the beer flowing onto the ground and causing rapidly spreading puddles. That blasted door did not relent in its animation. Things flew by, too blurred by the mediocre camera quality for Derrick to work out what they were. Shadows. Large, ominous things that allowed for no quality or clarity. Something stood in the centre of all the chaos, the smashing glasses and swinging doors, it stood and it stared at Derrick. It stared malevolently. It wasn't actually there, but Derrick could feel it, staring and grinning. Grinning like it wanted to do evil things, grinning like it wanted Derrick to be there when it did them. Its invisible stare was more horrible and more intense than could be achieved by any worldly eyes.
Derrick gasped for breath and stumbled back, almost tripping over the chair as he did. He did not feel safe in the lonely office. He headed for the door.
It was open. Derrick thought he'd closed it, but he wasn't exactly at the height of concentration at this moment in time. He wanted to run away back down the corridor that he and his boss (where had he gotten to?) had came from, but the corridor was no longer there. How could that be? There was a wall in its place, a grey brick wall that looked like it had been there for decades, yet Derrick stepped freely through the space that wall now occupied just minutes before. On the opposing wall there was a door. The only door now, save for the one into the office, that Derrick could escape through. He took it without hesitation.
Breathing heavily and shaking like a dog in the snow, Derrick found himself in the pub. It should have been upstairs. The office was in the basement and Derrick had climbed no stairs. He had taken the door out of the office and somehow he was upstairs. The windows revealing the street outside attested to that. He was horrified and for a moment he shut his eyes tight, unwilling to see in front of him what the CCTV screen had shown.
He opened his eyes.
No activity was to be beheld. The bar remained empty, like it shouldn't have been, but there was no swinging door, no chaotic glasswear and no puddles of beer flowing out from behind the bar.
It wasn't a relief.
As Derrick slowly gazed around the cold, empty pub, taking in the dusty, abandoned wooden tables and old weathered chairs that should have been the carriers of cheer and liveliness but instead acted as a terrible display of isolation and darkness, Derrick still didn't feel alone. He felt as though that thing that he sensed in the middle of the room from the CCTV was still there. He sensed it pacing gleefully around its domain, he felt it staring accusingly at Derrick's intrusion. He didn't know what it wanted but he knew it was close. Facing him. Approaching him. Next to him. Those eyes! They weren't there, but, those eyes!
Derrick breathed deeply and started to move. The pub was so dark, so empty. He realised how big it seemed when uninhabited and the front door felt like it was a world away. He trod with caution slowly toward it. He would not look behind him, for Derrick had convinced himself that the invisible thing had taken form and trod in his shadow, claws outstretched, waiting for him to turn around and see the most horrific face he would ever see again.
Derrick reached the front door. He placed his hands on the cold wood and pushed. The door swung open and he rushed outside into the cold. He was out. It was as dark and lonely outside as it was in the pub but it felt safe and good. Derrick let the double doors swing behind him as he breathed a sigh of relief.
Then a voice from behind him said