This week is themed on idea suggested by Gareth D Jones (altered film titles), please take time to check out excellent pieces from Shaun C Green and Gareth D Jones. No doubt there will be a full round up on Futurismic later. I hope you enjoy:

Full Meta Jacket

By Neil Beynon

I’m sitting in the small airless meeting room we use for interviews. It is stark white with no exterior window and a small pinewood table that almost fills the room. The chairs are stained with the echoes of hundreds of meetings and the blinds looking out at the reception area are closed. I do not want people to look in – it’s lunchtime and I’m writing.

Or at least I am meant to be writing. What I am actually doing is chewing my pen and wondering if this is the day it happens. If this is the day the words dry up. I write a line – “There was a man with only one eye.”

I stop. I cross out the line.

I have been at this for most of the hour and now my lunch is nearly gone I don’t have much time left. My head aches in throbbing waves and my left eye is ghosting so much it’s hard to see. I’m getting a migraine.

I pop two ibuprofen and hope for the best. Washing them down with tepid tea that makes me gasp, it’s colder than I realised. In the aftershock I think of the hangover god and from there Terry Pratchett and then it’s not a big leap to Small Gods. The title spins round my head like a kid on a skateboard, grinding in the turns.

I write a description of my own small god. He is twenty centimetres tall, wrinkled like worn leather and wearing a tiny robe that might once have been white and may once have hidden his bare feet. He is not a happy god and he does not mean anyone well. Characters in my stories so rarely do.

My head is aching as I stop. It’s not a bad character idea, not a brilliant one either, but it isn’t a story and I realise I’m not going to hit my deadline. Balls.

The pain is sharp and intense like someone is pulling my hair tight enough to take away skin. My hand bats it away in a reflex I cannot control and I leap from my seat at the shock of actually having flung something across the room.

The thing hits the door and slides down to the carpet. It is still holding a chunk of my hair and blood is flowing down my neck, at least I think it’s blood.

I am mad.

No, I reason; I’m bleeding. They are not the same thing. The creature is now muttering at me in a language I do not understand. Its dirt encrusted sleeves flapping as it punctuates its meaning with a wave of my detached hair. I feel sick.

I reach for the door. To do what I’m not sure…? Independent verification perhaps…? Medical attention would certainly be wise. It doesn’t matter. The creature – the god I suppose – is forewarned this time and raises its free hand. I stop. I cannot move – It lowers its hand and I fall to the seat.

Then it leaps onto the table.

I still cannot move as it walks up to my notebook and reads the text. It glares up at me before pointing to the pad. I do the best shrug I can given the invisible straightjacket in which I am trussed up.

It points at the pad once more and my hand rises slowly and reaches for the pen. I am not moving my hand as I begin to write and although I am relieved I do not know where the words are coming from. The sound of the pen on the paper seems to soothe the creature as it would me were it not for the sound of my blood dripping onto the page.