put up or shut up, december 3rd
by uzwi
I also expect to see Dennis Wheatley’s lovers, fucking in a shallow scrape in the sand. Otherwise don’t call us, we’ll call you.
photo: Cath Phillips
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the m john harrison blog 
Weird. This post is like something straight out of a novel I’m messing about with:
The problem with letting strangers into your dreams was that once there, it was difficult to get them to leave. Connor didn’t think that would be a problem with this girl though, shapely figure and nothing on but that white scarf trailing behind her on the sand. They stood on a silver slip of morning beach amid the ruined ships of two-thousand years of sailing history—Greek Triremes stood next to old oil frieghters, the tattered sails of an English man-of-war hung limply next to the torpedoed husk of a German U-Boat. Among the gaping wounds that wrecked the vessels, ran the inky shadows of feral children. Connor had been to this beach before, as many had, and still no one had any idea what it meant, or how it related to the city of Oceania visible in the distance.
Connor followed the woman into the dark bulk of an ancient cruise ship —the one, he knew, that had sunk a century and half earlier. An old movie had made the rounds again recently, but the actors had been replaced by anime characters, someone’s idea of a mash-up joke he didn’t get.
Without transition, he found himself at the top of a grand wooden staircase without having remembered climbing it. Beneath him, a checkered floor lay under a foot of flooded water. Random objects floated on the surface: loose pages from a paperback, styrofoam cups, beer cans, and the cheap sponsored ads which populated dreams. There were filters for those ads, but they were expensive, and Connor didn’t want to pay. The woman, who he suspected flew up in first class, wouldn’t be bothered with any advertisements.
She crouched, cat-like, on a banister. Dark eyes and darker hair, her features molded with the unnatural symmetry found in gene tailoring. She jumped down from the banister and splashed into the water, then slogged through large, ornate double doors inlaid with brass. The next room was huge, the inside of the freighter again, like being in an empty stadium. A lake of oil would have once been stored here, dragged across the Atlantic for cities now underwater. Connor followed her, altering his appearance slightly. More angular jaw, more downstairs than he really had. He’d had this ability since he could remember.
The girl said something, but it was lost in the echoes of the chamber. She kissed him, her lips a taste of salt and citric acid. By the time they finished having sex in the steel cave, the plane was descending over the flooded canals of Free Miami. He deplaned to a bright sun and the oppressive Florida heat.
Better than a dead shark or unmade bed.
Ah.
I’d also like to see William Hope Hodgson pumping iron on the deck while Dennis Wheatley’s lovers do it in the sand.