2020TOO Book Three: Twisted Stories/Unhinged Poems

By Matthew Tonks

You hold in your hands a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know. For scrawled in blood upon the pages are stories twisted twenty in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to wonder, five minutes to dance, five minutes to do almost anything. A winner, a loser, a sex toy, a fake. A thrust, a kick, a butcher, a snake. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Tonks
• Release date: Apr 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005415945

Matthew Tonks

Together we ride the steed of madness, along a road long foretold. Do not let the dire consequences scare you from this journey, for it is written, so it must be. We traveller. We explorers of otherworldly things. Let us share our providence, so we may all prosper.Hidden in the depths of it all, you will find your utopia, and it will be a beautiful sight to witness.For I may walk beside you, and I may carry your umbrella in the sun, just don’t expect me to dig you up, when the zombie apocalypse comes...

Book preview

The Stories

The Quiet Life

Foretold in the archives of forever was your coming, waited here for eons have I, missed so many moments, but knew the longer I waited the sooner you would come, Reginald slurs through dry lips.

H-How long have you sat here?

I counted lost many moons ago, three centuries or more, I’m sure. B-But time eventually become a band of decaying rubber that has relevance to none, or nothing.

Y-You waited that long to meet me?

I would wait longer, have already done that I think, or am, I forget to remember, or is it remembering to forget, he lets out a chuckle that originates somewhere deep in his stomach. Confusion is regular with these conversations, or at least I think it is.

You’ve had them before?

With you? he says as his sleepy eyes suddenly find focus and a new lease on life as he gazes upon Clark. I am unsure, but this conversation I have had many times, with others who profess to be you.

Then how can you be sure of anything? Am I the one you’ve been waiting for?

He smiles softly, Are you, you?

What? How does that answer my question?

He laughs, Your question is irrelevant to fact, while mine is all. Now answer it, are you, you?

Clark lets out a chiselled sigh. Yes, I am me.

Then you are he who I have waited for, until you are not.

What the FUCK does ‘until I am not’ mean?

Exactly what it is intended to mean. There is no argument from either me or you, that you are indeed you, and you are without question the one who has found me, so in definition of all the facts before us, you are indeed he who is expected to be. But, if you do not survive the temptations that follow, then you are not he, and I, meaning me, will continue to wait.

T-The temptations?

Yes, the final part of your quest, that which you have started this journey to achieve, that which has brought you to me.

Clark rummages through his hair with a claw like grip, scratching layers of dried dead skin from his scalp. Look, if I’m to be honest, I haven’t got a single FUCKING clue about what treasures lie at the end of all this. I was hired to carry all their gear, and chop shit out of everyone else’s way while they told me what to carry and where to chop. I’m a no one, without any intention of being someone else. So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll go back the way I came.

There is no way you came, there is only where you can go. Reginald cackles with laughter as the floor beneath Clark falls away, and he tumbles into the entrance of a maze older than time itself.

With fevered desperation he casts a panicked glare back up at Reginald. W-W-WHAT IS GOING ON! I-I-I, I TOLD YOU I WASN’T T-THE ONE! I TOLD Y-YOU I LIED! LET ME GO! he bellows, only for Reginald to smile wryly back.

And I told you, you are the one, until you are not, he says as the floor reassembles itself above Clark, leaving a single stone unplaced as a bloodcurdling scream is roared from somewhere inside the maze. I’d run if I were you, Reginald quips as the final stone is put in place and Clark is left in the darkness, but before he can move, he feels a gust of warmth hits his face that is quickly followed by the smell of rotten decaying flesh.

Persuading The Night

The sun’s rays burn brightly down upon his flesh, causing it to blister almost instantly and he lets out a scream of agony while Saffron’s smile grows wider.

"At first, I thought it was a joke, some crude attempt at scoring favour with those in grander positions, and now instead, I am impressed beyond comprehension. But in this, many questions are raised, of course the first begs an answer I cannot wait to ask, one I am sure you are asked many times. How is this the