The Tale

"Sit ya right down there and for a beer I'll tell ya a tale that'll turn ya hair white and leave ya sleepless for the rest of your days!" said an old, white-haired man at the Sailor's Inn. We'd been exploring the Reeperbahn district looking for a 'real' seaman's pub. What we found will turn your hair white and leave you sleepless for the rest of your life.

THe Hunt

Dust hung in the air like a superfine, dry mist. With each stepfall and turning, beams of light filtered through holes in the ceiling to take definition as near-solid, slowly-moving, columns of gold. This mosque had not been used in a long time, yet all the signs showed that our quarry had recently been here...footprints in the dust, the blood and feathers of a chicken beside a small, warm pile of ash in the corner... we were close, very close.

Max the Sheep

In a sun-drenched pool of light, breaking through the leafy canopy of a Uyghur courtyard, on a late spring morning, sat Max the Sheep. Now Max was no ordinary, everyday kind of sheep, he was a fat-tailed sheep, and he was THE proverbial black sheep. Max liked sitting in the sun at this time of year, sitting and ruminating over the morning's breakfast. Just then something changed, a shift seemed to ripple through the ground, from the direction of Luolan. It seemed to Max that the 'Smile of the Earth' was beginning to frown.

From out of nowhere

"There is nowhere you can go, that I can't find you!" yelled a short dark haired, Asian featured woman. I looked around, there was no-one else there. "Who? Me? Who are you and why would YOU want to find ME? Let's face it, this is not a bust!"

Fast Lane

Rumors percolated through the backlot like day old greywater vapors. Martian Sqeezeeasy, orange of note, writer and dramatist had been segmented. Sergent Cucumber faced a vegetable paparazzi throng as agitated as tossed salad. He took a deep breath and prepared for the oncoming crush of the press.

Greenpeace

You may not remember your Uncle Vladimir – if ever there was a person at risk of being pounced on by a “Greenpeace Rescue Team” it was him; he was huge! especially on that day when he went down to that beach, just a little north of the Gold Coast, a place well known locally for nude bathing and whale sightings. He’d just finished swimming and was lying at the water’s edge; there was a moderate swell and the waves were gently breaking over his body. Enjoying the sun and water, he’d just closed his eyes, when they came.

The Cadaver

“Six drops of the essence of terror, Five drops of sinister sauce…” As the opening theme for Milton the Monster blared out from the console, something not so cartoonish was taking place. Frankensteinian castles, exchanged for Corporate Glasshousing – white coats and Teslarian laboratories pushed aside for clean room environments and holographic computational systems. The pink and purple cadaver in the gene pool, not some stitched up bag of decayed flesh, but a Japanese nanotech robotic marvel: “The Android of the Fucia!”