Read by Linda Large
“Spock heard the quiet shoosh of the door and looked up. There stood Kirk, his captain in so many ways. Spock knew his Vulcan training forbade displays of emotion but his half-human side overwhelmed him and he raced over. He embraced Kirk, and they kissed. Spock began to explain how worried sick he had been. How he had feared the evil Android Queen may have parted them forever. But Kirk began nibbling his Vulcan ear and Spock knew that this was no longer a night for talking for talking. This was a night for passion …”
I had not expected this reaction from Angus. The man had always loved my work, and the Kirk slash Spock stories most of all. He’d been my first ever fan. We met in the very early days, back when I stayed late in the office to secretly type these stories for my own amusement on the work computer. One night I’d tried printing my efforts on the company’s dot matrix printer and it had jammed in the middle of my most erotic paragraph. Angus was the engineer sent to fix the problem. I remember being so terrified that he’d realise I was using business equipment for personal reasons and get me fired. Instead he read my story and loved it.
In fact he'd been so enthused, I felt confident enough to share with him all the stories I had written up to that point - the ongoing saga of a dashing captain and the ice cold science officer whose heart he melts. And then has passionate, loving sex with. Repeatedly. And it had been Angus who told me all about this new phenomenon called the “internet” and how my stories might find new fans around the world, simply by being put up on what he called a “web page”. It was all so exciting, it felt like being published!
But now, many years later, here was Angus criticising my work. I wasn’t used to that, and I could feel an awful frustration building up inside me as he tried to justify his comment, “I mean there’s nothing wrong with Classic Star Trek,” he continued, “but why not try spicing things up a bit? You don’t have to give up on Kirk and Spock, but how about involving them in a threesome with Princess Leia?”
“Ridiculous!” I blurted out, “She’s from Star Wars. It’s an entirely different universe. You can’t cross franchises like that.”
But Angus ploughed on, “People are, Maddie. You may not like it, but it’s what everyone is doing nowadays. And traffic to their websites is going through the roof. No-one's interested in Spock and Kirk repeatedly making love like an old happily married couple. Not any more.”
That was the point when I stopped being able to take his attitude, I leapt up out of my chair and grabbed my draft from his hands. “True Erotic Romance will never go out of fashion!” I yelled, trying to make my exit as dramatic as possible. I could hear Angus pleading as I stormed away, “Just try it Maddie, you could make millions – just look at Fifty Shades of Grey.”
“Do not ever mention that book to me again!” And with my final parting shot, I was gone.
However over the next few days that I found I couldn’t quite shake off Angus’ words. It was true that traffic to my web page had fallen recently, and that did rather hurt. I mean, I consider myself an artist – the work is its own reward – but there was a small part of me that missed all the attention.
Would it be so bad, I thought, to at least consider the competition? If only to confirm how bad it was. And so began many depressing hours trawling the web for what passed as fan fiction these days. It was all wrong. There was no romance. No real human passion. Just assorted characters from films and television rutting like savages. The new writers, they weren’t interested in the workings of their characters' hearts. They just lined them all up for one big crossover gangbang. An orgy inspired by randomly shuffled trading cards.
The funny thing was, the more I sneered at this stuff, the more it fired me up to write. I’d show everyone how pathetically easy it would be to write in this style, and be successful in it. So that night, I sat at my writing desk and began typing:
“The lights on the Enterprise were set to dim. This simulated late evening for the crew. Telling everyone that the work day was over and it was time to cut loose and enjoy life.”
A good start, I thought. One of my classic set-ups. Now to throw something different into the mix.
“Handsome outlaw Han Solo crept along the ship’s corridors. The man had love on his mind, and he was not a man to give up on a mission once he had started on it.”
As I typed, I could feel my rational brain in revolt. Han Solo. On the Enterprise. This is wrong. But I had to do this, so I made myself continue typing,
“Han reached the door of the Captain’s Quarters, and produced a stolen sonic screwdriver from his waistcoat pocket. He waved it at the door, and it shooshed open. He crept inside. There, asleep on the bed was Captain Kirk. Completely naked.
Han smiled as he walked over and began gently stroking the side of Kirk’s hip, whispering, ‘I’ve travelled many parsecs to be with you, Kirk.’
At this point I realised I was sweating. Every instinct I had was that this was wrong. Han with Kirk was wrong. Yet I found my fingers wouldn’t stop. As if they were freed from my rational restraints.
“Kirk woke gently from his slumber, and his beautiful hazel eyes stared angrily at Han.”
My fingers were a blur now. It was like I did not know what I was typing any more.
“’This… is wrong.’ Kirk spoke angrily and Han jumped back, surprised by the captain’s hostile tone. ‘You should ... not be here.’
‘Indeed you are right to find this illogical, Captain.’ The voice of Spock made Han Solo spin round. There was the Vulcan, newly emerged from the shower wearing only a tiny towel wrapped around his waist and clutching a powerful phaser gun. Clinically, Spock pulled the trigger and Han Solo exploded in a violent shower of blood. Kirk moved to run over to his lover, but before he was halfway across the room, he was waylaid by Princess Leia. “You bastards!” she screamed, as she cut half his face off with a machete.”
I could not stop typing this bloodbath; the crew of the Enterprise were now facing off against the great and the good from across all of genre fiction. Leia was shot by a crossbow wielded by a drug-addled Legolas. Who was himself torn to shreds by a pack of zombie Ewoks. And this just went on as I wrote for the rest of the night, each new execution more blood drenched and gore-heavy than the one before. It was as the light of dawn broke into my writing room that I wrote these final words to my new epic:
“Waving his severed stump of an arm one final time, the dying Luke Skywalker sent all sixteen chainsaws rattling through what was left of Bruce Wayne. Finally restoring balance to the Universe.”
I slumped back into my chair exhausted. I now knew that I just couldn’t write for this new modern audience.
But then a curious thing happened. Angus got to read this new story and he loved it. And after he’d put it online, I soon had new fans desperate for more. Within a few months people had begun to refer to me as the Queen of Slasher Slash fiction, assuring me that all of the copycat writers emerging in my wake lacked my “magic touch”. I wrote constantly to meet this demand. I even began receiving numerous requests from my new fans – asking me to write about their new favourite characters from emerging cult successes I’d never heard of. It was especially enjoyable to learn about these frankly rather dull new heroes purely for the purposes of devising ways to slaughter them.
It was then that I received my first actual phone call from an actual real-life book publisher. The young man on the line was very enthusiastic, stating that if I just changed the names involved he was certain that they might be able to publish my most recent work “Hannibal in Hogwarts”.
He then began listing his favourite deaths from my work, gleefully recounting how much he’d enjoyed the story where Spock had been burnt to a crisp by an angry Godzilla. And I began to feel uneasy again. And as he continued on about the “fifty shades phenomenon” I found my fingers twitching again, as if I had to type something as soon as possible.
I hung up the phone mid-conversation, and went straight to my writing room. There, I sat at my desk and my fingers began furiously typing again.
“A sea of blood overwhelmed Kirk. As his lungs filled with the red liquid, his mind raced with perhaps his final thought: ‘Could this ... be the moment ... I die?’
And then Kirk woke up to find himself in his captain’s bed on the Enterprise. He was drenched in sweat and tangled up awkwardly in his sheets.
‘Spock, Spock!’ he shouted anxiously, and his beloved science officer raced out of the bathroom wearing only a very tiny towel wrapped around his waist.
Kirk began to explain how he’d had a terrible nightmare. Of strange characters from distant universes and how they’d triggered an horrific massacre. And as he spoke, Spock wrapped him tenderly in his arms and whispered, ‘it is not logical to be affected by such nightmares, darling. They do not mean anything.”
And as I typed Spock speaking those words, I began to feel happy. A joy in writing that I realised I hadn’t felt for a considerable amount of time.
“’Thank you … old friend,’ Kirk smiled, moving purposefully to turn himself around in Spock’s arms. Where he began to kiss his way slowly down the Vulcan’s athletic body.”
And they went on to have passionate, loving sex. Repeatedly.
(c) Alan Graham, 2014
Alan Graham studied "Creative Writing" and "Economics" at UEA and is still unsure which discipline relies on make-believe the most. He currently lives and works in London.
Linda Large (left) is a jobbing actor who lives in London. She's played several torturers and murderers as well as nicer people including the murderer's mum Madame Raskolnikova and the murder victim Alyona in Crime and Punishment adapted for the stage by Jackson Wright. Linda is represented by Rosebery Management and London VoiceOver. See her details at www.lindalarge.com.
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