Peter Atkins
Morningstar
Re-publication of a cult favorite.
$14.99 US / 256 pages
Trade Paperback (6" X 9")
ISBN: 0-9742907-7-7
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Novelist and screenwriter Peter Atkins was born in Liverpool,
England. After receiving an honors degree in English Literature, he
spent five years working in theatre as a founder member of the legendary
Dog Company -- whose fellow alumni include Clive Barker and Doug
(Pinhead) Bradley. Abandoning theatre after realizing he was possibly
the world's worst actor, he spent a further five years as a rock'n'roll
musician fronting his band The Chase in the bars and clubs of his
hometown, his final gig being at the world-famous Cavern Club.
He became a full-time writer in 1987 when
his first screenplay was
produced. Since then he has become well-known as the author of three of
the Hellraiser movies, one of the most critically-acclaimed and
commercially-succesful horror series of the last decade. He went on to
create his own horror franchise in 1997 when, for Executive Producer Wes
Craven, he wrote Wishmaster -- which has so far spawned three
sequels
(by other hands).
When Atkins' novels
Morningstar and Big Thunder were first published in
England, they were
received rapturously received by critics and
readers alike, Ramsey Campbell decreeing that "few fantasists combine
the visceral and the visionary with such wit, skill, and inventiveness
as Peter Atkins" and Clive Barker saying "Atkins is a brilliant supplier
of shudders and splendours. His voice is utterly distinctive and will
surely be heard for years to come". A first US edition of Big
Thunder is
forthcoming from Infrapress). Atkins has also authored the story
collection Wishmaster and two plays.
Peter Atkins is married and lives in Los Angeles where he gigs (far too
rarely) with his new band Invisible Cinema.
Excerpt from Morningstar
*CORRIDA*
THE ONE that was bleeding was bigger and stronger, but he was a
stranger in this place and the red light confused him and the yards of
polyethylene caused his feet to betray him.
Of the many cuts his body boasted, the one above his left eye, though
small, was very productive and his wiping hands could not keep pace with
the blinding flow of his blood. His left arm, in any case, dangled
uselessly beside him; split deep as it was from shoulder to elbow, its
only functions now were to send rhythmic telegrams of agony to an
already panicking brain and to piss distressingly large amounts of
bright red blood onto the polyethylene sheets on which he tried to run.
The other cuts were insignificant. Though two or three, in fact, were
quite vicious enough to scar him for life, they were not disabling, and
that was the only criterion here-- here in this circle of red light and
torment where life meant running and slipping and being or not being
cut. Any thought or memory of a life prior to this, a life of house
payments, of arguments and reconciliations, of painful loss and healing
love, had been put to flight by the same charge of adrenaline that had
removed the concept of futurity from his mind.
Twice rage had gotten the better of fear and twice he had charged,
bellowing, at the graceful, slick bastard who was doing this to him. And
twice he had received the serious cut -- the tactically blinding one to
the forehead, the cruelly crippling one to the arm. The other cuts
arrived as almost playful punishments for when he was clumsy enough or
frightened enough to fall over. He was often clumsy. He was very
frightened. He was going to die and he knew it.
The Matador was different. The Matador moved with sure steps
and little sweat and his knife danced as
gracefully as he. He felt no
pity for the lumbering animal trying hopelessly to avoid him or
foolishly to attack. He felt
only contempt for its easily summoned sweat, blood, and breathlessness.
There was little sport here. This one had no idea. There. It was down
again. Sent tumbling by its own blood, slick on the polyethylene. Knife
arcing elegantly beside him, he flew at it, marked his passing with a
thin, red signature on its cheek, and stepped back.
The figure on the floor felt his cheek stroked and waited for the cold,
sharp stinging that always followed. It wasn't long coming. He put his
good hand up to his face and touched the wound. The tip of his middle
finger disappeared inside his face as his cheek opened moistly for him
like an eager lover. He screamed. And for the third time the scream was
born of fury not of terror. Blind to danger, blind to pain, blind at
last even to the possibility of failure, he scrambled to his feet and
ran roaring at his tormentor.
The distance between them was too short and the demands of his rage too
great to allow for confusion to take a proper hold of his mind, but he
did have time enough to register a brief, animal surprise at the
response of the Matador to his charge. Throwing aside the knife, which
skidded away across the blood-slicked polyethylene sheeting, the Matador
stood perfectly still and awaited his attack with lowered arms.
He didn't need the invitation that this gesture implied; his momentum
and his hatred threw him forward anyway. He smashed into the Matador
and, the blood having filled his eyes again, groped blindly for
something breakable to seize. Then he felt it.
Not a knife, but equally sharp. Not steel, but equally insistent. He
felt the piercing, the puncturing, the rupturing. He felt the blood well
to the wound as if eager to leave his tortured body. He felt the Matador
hug him tight as if the making of death, like the making of love, was a
mutual endeavor. Strangely though, at the last, he felt no pain. It was
as if his mind, knowing it could no longer act on his body's signals of
suffering, was leaving the phone off the hook, having already gotten the
message. He decided to scream anyway -- almost as a point of principle
-- but he found his mouth was full of blood, and by the time he'd spat,
swallowed, or choked it away, a scream seemed for some reason to be not
worth the effort. A little like breathing. Or thinking. Or being.
* * *
A short time later, at one end of the room, a set of double doors
opened. Another man entered the room, a tall man, a stone-faced man, a
man whose build was a little too stocky to suit entirely the costume in
which he was dressed -- which was a chauffeur's uniform of soft black
leather.
He glanced quickly around the room to be certain all had gone as
expected. It had; his employer was seated, the other was dead.
The chauffeur moved forward. In his right hand he held a large black
plastic waste bag into which, with a minimum of ceremony but a fair
amount of effort, he placed his employer's bloody handiwork piece by
piece.
Folding over the top of the bag, he then dragged it along the floor, the
polyethylene aiding the smoothness of its journey, and out into the
corridor beyond the doors.
Leaving the bag behind, he reentered the room and began to fold the
polyethylene sheeting in upon itself, a trick he performed swiftly and
with the efficiency of familiarity; despite it not yet having attained a
state of stickiness, none of the blood escaped onto the highly polished
wooden floor that was revealed as his work progressed. When this second
bloody bundle had joined the first in the corridor, the chauffeur,
playing with a couple of light switches by the doorway, exchanged the
red light for white and looked carefully around the room to ensure that
his confidence had not outstripped his cleanliness. But he had been
diligent; the room was spotless.
The Matador was still sitting calmly at the far end of the room. He
remained silent as the chauffeur saw to the bringing in and the laying
out of replacement polyethylene. Once this was done, the chauffeur, back
in the open doorway, took hold of the two bundles of trash and, for the
first time, looked directly into the eyes of his employer.
"You know where to take it?" the latter asked.
The chauffeur nodded.
The Matador made a small gesture of dismissal and watched as the
chauffeur closed the doors behind him. He stood up and walked across his
room to the double doors. Reversing his employee's action with the light
switches, he once again flooded the room with redness and then placed
his mouth close to a small intercom that was adjacent to the switches.
"Next," he said.
