Barnaby Taylor Author, Fiction, Horror, Writing

Terminal Transit – Irish, Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Horror Novel

Synopsis

A brilliant research student discovers a plot fulminated by demons from another dimension and kills himself in the process. The fate of the world is left in the hands of an elderly academic and a mysterious orphan.

Using the facts surrounding Ireland’s economic collapse in 2008 as its starting point, Terminal Transit is an apocalyptic adventure dealing with death and destruction in a Dublin slowly devastated by demonic intervention.

Can the end of the world be avoided?

Or is this planet simply scheduled for Terminal Transit?

Terminal Transit,

Chapter I ‘The Song of the NotBeSpeak,’

Verse 10

Inteachán woke to find the dressing room in darkness. She slowly got to her feet, all the while waiting for her eyes to adjust. Inteachán moved towards the door and tried the handle. The door was locked.

‘You never know,’ Inteachán said to herself. ‘In all the excitement he could easily have forgotten.’ Inteachán turned on the light and looked around.

The room was almost the same and the rock star’s aftershave still hung in the air like an unwelcome guest. The chicken and chips were left on the table and one of the bottles of cola was half-empty. Above the table, half-hidden by a tobacco-stained curtain, was a small broken window. Inteachán climbed up on to the table and as she did so she nearly slipped on a piece of fried chicken skin. The window was rusted and the hinges were broken and it took very little time for Inteachán to work the window free sufficiently for her to be able to squeeze through the frame.

Working her hips and stretching her hands out and down in front of her Inteachán carefully slipped through the window and fell two metres into a filthy alleyway. Inteachán found herself behind the main stage. Cables and boxes were scattered everywhere. The band had just started their set and the noise where Inteachán stood was deafening. She felt momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the sound waves that crashed upon her like an angry sonic sea. Inteachán gathered herself and looked around.

To one side of the alley stood the base of a control tower and as Inteachán approached she saw a thin ladder that led straight up into the lighting rigs high above her. With no other obvious options currently available Inteachán began to climb the ladder. As she did so Inteachán noticed that the she was also behind the giant back of plasma screens that formed the backdrop to the stage show. A complicated nest of cables and leads hang down like so many tangled digital vines. This was when the full extent of the difficulties Inteachán faced in her bid to somehow disrupt the show and bring it to a halt before the climax revealed themselves to her.

Bart was enjoying the gig of his life. He wore a t-shirt beneath a leather waistcoat that read ‘#TheFive’ and each note he sang reached deep down inside the heart of every member of the crowd gathered in Croke Park. Bart felt connected with them in a way that he could only feel and not ever explain. The band behind him played with a verve and alignment that they had hitherto only ever dreamed of achieving but had never yet fully realised. Every move they made was simply immaculate.

‘They are coming,’ Bart ad-libbed. ‘They are here,’ he sang as he artlessly changed the words to every one of their hits to accommodate his excitement at what was about to unfold.

‘You won’t believe your wondering eyes.’

Bart trilled.

‘If only you knew what I knew.’

The unsuspecting crowd went wild and greeted every ad-lib with a cheer. For them it was all part of the show. The only person not fooled by the performance was watching high up from her perch in the gantry above the back of the stage. As the next song came to end Bart raised his arms and stretched them out wide.

‘Hush!’ he whispered. ‘Hush, my special children.’

The crowd fell silent. Inteachán marvelled as the countless tiny lights of thousands and thousands of phones and cameras taking photographs punctured the darkness in the stadium. The night sky sparkled and danced, shimmering with a digital haze.

‘Welcome everyone,’ whispered Bart into his microphone. He removed his waistcoat so that everyone could see the message on his shirt. The crowd roared.

‘We have a real treat for you all tonight.’

The crowd roared again.

‘Something so amazing that it is going to change the world.’

The crowd roared once more.

‘Forever!’

Barnaby Taylor Author, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, The Entry Word, Writing

The Entry Word (2018) – Flash Fiction

glitch 1

Not you too, Paul Hewson, I said to myself.  The images were grainy. The glasses gave him away. It was snowing in the footage. The garage forecourt was empty.

Bono was talking on what looked like a Mobira Cityman 900. 183 x 43 x 79 mm. Those things have a total weight of 760g. They were nicknamed ‘Gorba’ in Finland because Mikhail Gorbachev used one during a press conference in 1987.

Who would be on the other end of a phone like that? And what would be said? I could only imagine.

Barnaby Taylor Fiction, Flash

‘Not you too, Paul Hewson’, I said to myself.

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Not you too, Paul Hewson, I said to myself. But it was. The images were grainy. The glasses gave him away. It was snowing in the footage. The garage forecourt was empty. Where was Catherine Deneuve?

Bono was talking on what looked like a Mobira Cityman 900. 183 x 43 x 79 mm. Those things have a total weight of 760g. They are nicknamed ‘Gorba’ in Finland because Mikhail Gorbachev used one during a press conference in 1987.

Who would be on the other end of a phone like that? And what would they be saying? I could only imagine.

The enormity of my task fell upon me like wealth fell hard on Charles Foster Kane.