THE VERDICT SO FAR - THE PROFESSIONAL MOURNER EARLY REVIEWS

 

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SNEAK PREVIEW - THE BELGRADE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

 

To give readers an exclusive sneak preview of Neil Randall's latest novel The Belgrade School Shootings, Alien Buddha Press have made the opening chapters available on their blog. 

    Here's the opening scene, to whet your appetite:

ON THE THIRD of May 2024, my former partner Issak Lazarevic, an award-winning novelist and lecturer, shot dead ten of his students. Why, no one who knew him on a personal or professional level had any idea whatsoever. Issak was a popular and well-respected figure in Serbian society. His short- and long-form fictional works were considered the finest in the country’s contemporary literary cannon. His students absolutely idolised him – there was a four-year waiting list for his creative writing programme. Colleagues who spoke to Issak earlier that morning detected nothing out of the ordinary, in either his general demeanour or outward behaviour. In the staff room, not half an hour before he opened fire on a group of defenceless teenagers, he acted perfectly normally – or as normally as anyone so intense and preoccupied with his own thoughts typically acted. He exchanged good morning greetings with everyone he encountered, and even went so far as to confirm his attendance at a colleague’s retirement party. ‘Of course I’ll be there,’ he told Ivana Lubic, one of the secretaries. ‘Radovan is a fine man. I’ve always had the greatest respect for him. I’ll be sure to pop out at lunchtime and grab him a bottle of something special. Forty years in the profession is a huge achievement’.

     Hardly the words or sentiments of somebody carrying CZ-75 Shadow 2 and Ruger .22 LR variant pistols in his briefcase.

      In CCTV footage that would feature on news bulletins not just in Serbia but all across the world, Issak can clearly be seen walking across the faculty car park, with the same briefcase in his hand. If you didn’t know him personally, or weren’t aware of his literary pedigree, he would’ve appeared completely unassuming – medium height, middle-aged, unremarkably dressed (the same corduroy blazer, striped button-down shirt, and slacks combination he’d been wearing to lectures for years) – a face worthy of any crowd. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, I remember replaying that footage time and again on my laptop, what were the last moments of the old Issak Lazarevic – a man I once genuinely loved with all my heart – before he became someone and -thing I would never have recognised: a maniac and monster rolled into one.

      And it’s curious how we can piece together a person’s movements like this – from the security camera images to the eyewitness accounts, to the moment armed police burst into the classroom and found him sat at his desk calmly reading from a well-thumbed copy of The Professional Mourner, what many consider his masterpiece, while surrounded by ten fresh corpses. But we can never tell what’s going on in their heads, or why they acted in the way they did, what motivated them to do something so despicable and so out of character.

       As for the actual murders, the crime scene specialists were able to ascertain a concrete and chilling chain of events. From the entry point of each bullet, the blood spatter, to the way the young bodies had crumpled to the classroom floor and the desks and chairs been upturned, it was evident that Issak had opened fire on the children without much, if any warning. This was corroborated to a certain extent by the lecturers and students in adjoining classrooms, as they heard no raised voices or anything out of the ordinary before the first shot rang out. Each student had been targeted twice, with the first bullet either killing them outright or incapacitating them. The second bullet, a headshot, was uncanny in its accuracy: direct through the middle of the forehead. When questioned following the attack, one of the ballistics experts made the following comments: ‘It was the kind of thing you’d see an experienced hunter do after they’d clipped their prey. What you’d probably call a “humane gesture”, putting the beast out of its misery as quickly and expediently as possible. That, or a mafiosi-style contract killing’.

      And it’s here that the case presented its first serious anomaly – of what would be many in the coming weeks, months, and beyond.

      Only a skilled, experienced marksman could’ve discharged shots of that accuracy in what was an incredibly short space of time. By all reckoning, barely a minute passed between the first reported gunshot and the last. But to the best of anybody’s knowledge – certainly mine, or any of Issak’s close friends, fellow writers, or colleagues at the institute – he’d never fired a gun before in his life. 

To read on, click on this link.

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OUT TODAY - THE BELGRADE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS BY NEIL RANDALL

 

Grab your credit card, borrow money from a friend, or steal from a casual acquaintance – but please don’t mug any old ladies in the street. Well...

    Neil Randall’s latest novel The Belgrade School Shootings is released today!

    The first part of The Belgrade Trilogy, written in a frenzy of literary activity in the dark depths of everyone’s least favourite year 2024, is a hard book to define. Some early reviewers have called it ‘a razor-sharp literary thriller’, others ‘a book about obsession, and the perilous intersection between fiction and reality’. Whereas the author himself always saw the novel as a ‘love letter to the act of reading’. But stopped short of aligning himself with the protagonist’s chilling warning: ‘If the younger generation isn’t prepared to read and arrest the alarming intellectual decline, then they should be put against a wall and shot.’

     The plot?

    Serbia’s most acclaimed novelist Issak Lazarevic guns down 10 of his students in a seeming act of madness. But as veteran journalist (and Lazarevic’s former fiancée) soon discovers – there is so much about the killings that don’t aid up – the way the children were shot in an execution-style manner (Lazarevic had never fired a gun in his life), uncanny Lazarevic lookalikes popping up all over the city, and most bizarre of all, the emergence of a novel written months before the school shootings, clearly written by Lazarevic, which predict events that hadn’t even happened yet.

    Lazarevic’s most acclaimed piece of work? – The Professional Mourner.

      Here is a short sample from the novel to whet your appetite. At this point in the story, Lazarevic has just been arrested for the shootings, and the police investigation is just getting underway.

 

When police raided Issak’s apartment in Dedinje, they made some curious, if not disturbing discoveries. Most peculiar of all, it looked as if the same two people were living in the one same space. And I articulate that in somewhat obscure terms knowingly and intentionally. In the only bedroom, there were two identical futon-style beds. The two wardrobes that stood facing each other on either side of the room contained the exact same clothes. And not just in style – the blazers, shirts, and slacks I’ve already mentioned – but in the exact same number: seven blazers, seven shirts, seven pairs of slacks. They made a similar discovery in the two underwear drawers: seven pairs of boxer shorts and seven pairs of socks in each one.

      In the bathroom: two toothbrushes, two tubes of toothpaste, two bottles of mouthwash, two cans of deodorant, two razors, two cans of shaving foam, two shampoos, two shower gels, and two towels hanging from the back of the door (both black and both still slightly damp). Even more freakishly and bizarre, when the officers examined the toiletries in question, either visually or by giving each individual receptacle a shake, the exact same amount of toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, shaving foam, even the number of cotton buds in their respective plastic containers appeared to be inside.

     All of which suggested that two people were choreographing and copycatting their everyday existence down to their oral hygiene and facial grooming routine. And the only way that that would’ve been possible (and I thought about this so much over the days immediately following the shootings, it made my head hurt) was for one person to have painstakingly and with a degree of precision you’d associate with a highly advanced form of artificial intelligence, to, not so much perform each individual ablution twice, but, for example, pour out two exact measures of mouthwash, use one, throw the other away, or spray deodorant under each arm, then discharge two phantom sprays into the air, and so on.

    None of which made any sense. To be that precise about everything that was discovered in the apartment would’ve taken a disproportionally huge amount of time out of Issak’s day. And this was a man who valued every single second, who knew how precious his time was, and who wanted to do nothing but channel that time into his artistic and educational activities. The Issak I knew could never have wasted even one valuable second on such everyday inconsequentialities. It would’ve been far too painful for him; it would’ve made his artistic soul squirm.

    In the kitchen cupboards and drawers, where you’d expect to find many plates, bowls, cups, knives, forks, spoons, et cetera – there were only two of each. And two places set at the table.

      In the front room, two identical leather armchairs with retractable footrests had been turned around to face the wall, rather than the rest of the space (as if all the occupants of those chairs ever did was stare at that wall from absurdly close proximity). But the room contained nothing else. No TV. No coffee table. Not even any bookcases – which seemed wildly amiss to me, a former resident of the same apartment, as Issak had one of the most extensive personal libraries of anyone I’d ever known. Cherished volumes, signed first editions, rare, collector item tomes we’d discovered in book fairs on our travels. But when police made inquiries, they never found out where these books had gone (and to have removed hundreds, if not thousands of books from an apartment would’ve taken hours and a whole removal team. Activities that would most certainly have come to the attention of near-neighbours and the building superintendent).

      On the terrace, two wicker chairs were placed at corresponding angles with the best views out over the city.

       But none of the residents in neighbouring apartments or any of Issak’s close inner circle had seen, heard, or knew of anyone else living at the apartment. As far as they were aware, Issak resided alone and considered his apartment his own personal writing den, the place he sat and wrote stories which had touched people all over the world and been translated into fifty-plus languages.

      All of which segues into the most glaring anomaly of all: Issak’s work. His laptop. Memory sticks. The printouts of his early drafts. Copies of his works-in-progress. Folders and files. Notebooks. Where were they? Nothing was found at the apartment, nor his office at the institute. What had he done with his entire life’s work, the new short story he’d been discussing with a fellow writer in the days before the shootings, the big, sprawling novel he’d often referenced in interviews and on which he’d been working solidly for the last two years?

      Then there were his three main email accounts – one for everything writing-related, one for his teaching activities, and a personal account he used to keep in touch with friends and family. Not only were all the inboxes empty, but a little digging around in the cyberworld revealed a mass deletion the night before the shootings and, even more confusingly, a whole swathe of cancelled services and subscriptions, ranging from his internet provider, to the utilities for the apartment, and memberships to around half a dozen literary organisations he’d been affiliated with for over twenty years. ‘It’s the kind of behaviour you’d expect from someone who’s had a fatal prognosis from their doctor,’ said one of the more senior officers who examined the scene, ‘someone who wants to tie up any loose ends before they pass away’.

     It was a similar story with his phone records. On the night before the shootings, Issak had a series of lengthy telephone conversations – all to the same number, and all lasting over ninety minutes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible for the authorities to follow up on this information as the number in question was government-affiliated.

     “What’s a ‘government-affiliated’ number?” I asked Vladimir’s source.

     “It belongs to the highest office in the Serbian government.”

     “The Prime Minister? Bukic, you mean?”

     “I didn’t say that – I said the highest office in the Serbian government.”

 

If you like what you’ve read so far, you can buy the book here.

And if you’d like to learn more about the author’s other published work, take a look at his amazon page.

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OUT TODAY - THE PROFESSIONAL MOURNER BY NEIL RANDALL

 

Today sees the release of Neil Randall's eagerly anticipated new novel The Professional Mourner. The first book in The Yugoslav Trilogy that also includes Flags from the Old Regime and The Dead Crows of Velika Plana, it tells the story of a baby who wouldn't stop crying and who goes on to hold the fate of not just the old Yugoslavia but the rest of the world in her hands.

Here are the opening scenes of the book:

On a rainy overcast Wednesday in the small town of Velika Plana a baby girl was born to Dragan and Nevena Stanković. Seen very much as a miracle – the proud parents were in their mid-forties and had almost given up hope of ever conceiving a child – it would be no exaggeration to say that little Milica (as she was soon to be called) came kicking and screaming into this world. A perfectly natural state of affairs, many would assume. Only she didn’t stop screaming. Not from the moment she was safely delivered into her mother’s arms, to the moment Dragan and Nevena left the local hospital the following morning. Nothing seemed to pacify her. No amount of shushing or cradling or rocking. Even when her exhausted mother, in the hours immediately following the birth itself, presented the baby with a teat, she somehow managed to both greedily suck the milky goodness from Nevena’s swollen breast and continue to cry, sob, wriggle around, and prostrate herself in a manner the midwife (a veteran of over ten thousand deliveries) or any of the physicians on duty that day had ever seen before.

     “It’s the most curious thing,” observed Dr Ivanović. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say the infant actually enjoys being in a state of utmost distress.”

*

On their return to the family home, a modest apartment in the working-class district of town, the concerned parents did everything in their power to try and settle the baby down – more shushing, cradling, rocking, and feeding. They even let her suck on a wine-soaked finger (a now frowned upon but nonetheless effective technique routinely deployed many years ago). And while their efforts were rewarded with brief periods of respite when Milica had literally screamed herself to sleep – it didn’t last long. A matter of thirty or forty minutes at a time.  

      After two sleepless nights, they were nearing their wit’s end. 

     “Whatever are we going to do?” asked Nevena, red-eyed and haggard through exhaustion. “I know all babies cry. But this isn’t natural. It’s as if God has blessed and cursed us in equal measure, as if He has given us the one thing we most wanted in life, only for that great gift to be the most onerous of burdens.”

      “I don’t rightly know,” Dragan replied. “But you can cut out all that superstitious nonsense. Milica is a perfectly healthy baby. You heard the doctors say so yourself. This is probably just a tetchy period of adjustment. I’m sure she’ll be right as rain soon.”

      But that didn’t prove to be the case, and it caused untold problems in town.

*     

By the end of the first week of constant bawling all through the night and early hours of the morning, not to mention the vast majority of the day, the neighbours started to complain. Not just about the noise, you must understand – if many a resident did bang a piece of wood against their radiators time and again when the crying fit reached a feverish late-night or crack of dawn pitch. But because these were still a deeply superstitious people, regardless of the incredible technological advances made in recent decades. They saw something strange and worrying, portentous of evil spirits and bad omens in an infant who simply wouldn’t stop crying.

     “Mark my words,” they said. “This don’t bode well for any of us. That there little girl is possessed by dark forces. She be cursed. If we don’t watch out, she’ll bring bad luck upon every decent man, woman, and child in the region.”

If you like what you've read so far, the book can now be purchased in both paperback and kindle in the UK and US.      

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INTRODUCING: RANDALL READS...

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce the launch of his new social media channel 'Randall Reads...' Having spent the last lifetime or two reading the great works of world literature, the author thought it was high time that he shared one of his big passions with others. More importantly, there has been a huge cultural chasm in so many people's lives following the BBC's catastrophic decision to move Top of the Pops to a Friday - which ultimately sounded the death knoll for the show.

    Fear not. Randall - twenty years too late, admittedly - is now fully prepared to fill the void. Part song and dance man, part tuneless meander, he will finally step up to the plate.

    Over the coming weeks and months, he will recommend a book which made a big impression on him over the years every week. A Thursday, of course. In addition there will be a few bonus episodes where the author will read exclusive samples from upcoming releases like The Professional Mourner. 

To get the latest episode direct to you inbox, why not follow Neil on YouTube or TikTok.

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NEW SHORT STORY PUBLISHED - IN THE ADDICT COLONY

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce that his new short story In the Addict Colony has just been published by U.S. literary journal Blood+Honey.

     The story was written in a whirlwind burst of activity towards the end of last year, and was inspired by the criminal amount of misinformation, scaremongering, and conveyor belt of faceless naysaying drones who are continually lecturing the public on what is good and what is bad for them – avoid alcohol, drugs, food, laughter, sex, fresh air, et cetera.

    Perhaps this was best illustrated during Randall’s recent sold-out reading at Belgrade Youth Centre. In a lively Q&A session after the author had read selected extracts from forthcoming novels The Professional Mourner and The Belgrade School Shootings, the general direction of the discussion turned towards personal choices and freedom. In a scene reminiscent of Michael Douglas’ ‘Greed is Good’ rant from Oscar-winning classic Wall Street, and cherry-picking from JFK’s famous ‘Ask not what your country can do for you…’ speech, Randall launched into a blistering attack on social media, screen time, the homogenisation of culture, and the paralysing effect it’s having on the intellectual development of people of all ages.

      “Ask not what you can do for your body, but what your body can do for you…” he proclaimed. Shortly followed by: “Addictions are good. You just need to know how to control them.”

    In what was described by one local journalist as ‘rabid invective fusing the worst elements of coprophagia and cynophobia, Randall talked at length about his own creative process, likening it to Johnny Cash strolling into a dark forest with a fierce arsenal of potent hallucinogens, losing his mind for a few days, only to emerge from the forest with a handful of soaring melodies and beautiful lyrics.

     “We all need to get away from ourselves from time to time. You should always go with your instincts, and do the things that get the most out of yourself, whether that’s locking yourself away, writing for months on end, running a marathon every day, devouring the greats of world literature, perfecting the yoga headstand, inserting small pieces of furniture up your arsehole, or cracking open a bottle of fine mezcal and drinking to the dregs in one sitting. Go let it in, go let it out.”

 

Here’s the opening scene from the story:

    

“It’s an unorthodox approach to addiction treatment,” said the Minister for the Interior. “I’m not sure anyone in our administration understands your methods or the true purposes of your programme.”

     “Understanding is an overrated concept, Minister.” Professor Stojanovic came to a stop outside the first addiction booth on their tour of the facility. “For who can understand why an individual will consume so many intoxicants they suffer major organ failure, why they gorge themselves on various foodstuffs, only to stick their fingers down their throat seconds later, nor why a young person lacerates their forearms with a razor blade until they bleed so profusely they need to be rushed to an emergency room. Understanding is not what we’re about at the addict colony.”

     “But to give patients access to the one thing that’s most damaging to them is tantamount to medical heresy, surely!”

     “We only study, not treat, and certainly not cure or offer any kind of solution to their problems. Our firm belief is that when, and only when, the addict wants to leave their own personal addiction booths will their own personal treatment be over. Now, let us commence with our tour. Behold.”

      Stojanovic beckoned the minister over to a high and wide rectangular window that looked in on a white-walled, cell-like space illumined by harsh overhead lighting. All the booth contained was a plank bed, table, chair, and television set. But it was undoubtedly the sight of a painfully skinny, almost naked young woman (she wore only basic bra and panties), with bruises up and down her arms and legs, crouched on the tiled floor, bent over almost double, repeatedly forcing two fingers down her throat which caught his attention. Even more so when the stricken addict, eyes clouded with tears and phlegm dangling from her chin, finally succeeding in making herself sick.

     “This particular addict – and we call them addicts here at the institute, not patients or clients – has just concluded a particularly epic eating binge. Four hours, twelve minutes, and forty-eight seconds to be precise. Bulky carb-rich main meals, red meat, junk food, chocolate desserts, a whole host of cookies and candy bars. You see how violently she is vomiting now, the convulsions which wrack her wasted body, how the regurgitated food is barely masticated.”

     Wincing, the minister had to look away. “But do you not intervene in a compassionate, if not medical sense?”

     “No. Never. We provide for the addict’s specific needs. In this case, an extensive menu of food, and then record everything that happens in the booth afterwards. If you look closely, you’ll see cameras positioned in each corner of the room.”

      “But this is barbaric! Surely you review the addict’s medical notes, their case histories, and try –”

      “Only the addict’s current behaviour interests us here. It’s our firm belief that we will never succeed in understanding addictive, repetitive, compulsive, and ultimately self-destructive behaviour unless we let each individual addict under our care see their own personal journey through to the end. If we intervene – as the medical community has done since time immemorial – then we can only ever offer temporary solutions and partial curatives. Six months later, the addict will resume their self-destructive activities. But if they’re allowed to continue on the addictive path, they might just be able to arrest their behaviour and find longer-term solutions for themselves.”

      The minister blew out some air and shook his head. “Well, I suppose that makes some kind of sense. But I’m still far from convinced. Not just by your theorising, but this facility’s reason to exist.”

      “Then perhaps we should move on to Addict #2. Please, Minister, come this way.”

 

If you want to read the story in full, head over to the Blood+Honey website.

 

And if you’re interested in Neil Randall’s published work, why not check out his amazon page.

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THE BELGRADE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS - NEW NOVEL RELEASE

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce that his new novel The Belgrade School Shootings will be published by Alien Buddha Press on the18th of May. This is the first book in The Belgrade Trilogy which also includes forthcoming novels From Belgrade with Love and Goodbye to Belgrade.

      Although written last year, the novel could not be more topical or relevant considering the ongoing civil disturbances that have broken out in Serbia over the last six months - events which Randall accurately predicted in the trilogy. 

    Here's a brief breakdown of the plot: 

When Issak Lazarevic, Serbia’s best-known contemporary writer, guns down ten of his pupils, the nation reels in disbelief. Was it madness or something more deliberate?

In the wake of the massacre, veteran journalist Jelena Basturk, Lazarevic's former partner and once fiercest admirer, begins her own investigation. What she uncovers is a labyrinth of contradictions: strange sightings, eerie manuscripts written before the events they describe, and a network of educators seemingly influenced by the writer's cryptic agenda.

As Serbia descends into chaos, with schools shuttered, and books burned on Republic Square, and cities torn apart by the protests, Jelena races to unravel the truth behind Lazarevic's violent act and the disturbing prophecies that follow. When two new manuscripts arrive at her doorstep, predicting even darker chapters to come, she realises the story is far from over.

Be sure to mark the date in your diary: 18th May.

If you can't wait that long, why not check out Randall's published work on Amazon.

 

 

 

 

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COVER REVEAL - THE PROFESSIONAL MOURNER BY NEIL RANDALL

 

Neil Randall is delighted to reveal the cover for his forthcoming novel The Professional Mourner (Dark Winter Press), Part One of The Yugoslav Trilogy. Now scheduled for release on the 5th of May, more digitally inclined readers are advised that the Kindle version of the book can be pre-ordered on the 28th of April. 

Here's a taste of the book from the back cover blurb:

From a baby girl who wouldn’t stop crying to a professional mourner with the fate of an entire nation in her hands.

 

When Milica Stanković is born, she won't stop crying. The neighours complain, her father is demoted at work, and the family are treated like pariahs. Regardless, they see something special in their daughter, how she seems possessed of a rare gift: to feel other people’s pain and suffering as if it’s her own.

 

Her father and a wily confidence trickster dream up a plot to hire out Milica’s services as a professional mourner. At many funerals, Milica expresses such raw emotion, it reduces the other mourners to fits of sobs, enabling to finally release all their bottled-up grief.

 

When word of her gifts reaches a high-ranking government official, he desperately wants to obtain her services. Their ailing leader is not only gravely ill, but his popularity has never been lower. If the Party can organise an emotionally charged state funeral, they might just be able to uplift the nation’s spirits.

If you want to learn more about Neil's published work, why not head over to his Amazon page.

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NEW SHORT STORY PUBLISHED - THE CANCER DIET CLINIC

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce that his short story The Cancer Diet Clinic has just been published by Hidden Peak Literary Journal in the U.S. Originally written some fifteen years ago, it is not only a testament to the power of perseverance from the much-maligned author and self-proclaimed crocodile whisperer, but a tale of loneliness and isolation in a cruel and unforgiving modern world.

     Back when the story was conceived, Neil was reading a lot of Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut. The futuristic treatment of such an indiscriminate disease owes much to those two mighty authors.

 

Here are the opening scenes of the story:

 

Patrick Carmichael was used to people staring at him. Back in his school days, kids routinely called him ‘the Beached Whale’ or ‘Jabba the Hutt’. But there was something about today’s situation, that he happened to be sitting in a modern air-conditioned waiting-room, surrounded by people of similar size and bulk, bad skin, dated, ill-fitting clothing, and questionable body odour, that made their stares that little bit more disconcerting.       

      Looking away, Patrick picked up one of the glossy promotional magazines handed out at the reception desk. Inside were photographs of models so slim, muscular, and dynamic, representative of success and desirability, he couldn’t help but feel chastened once more, that even pictures in magazines had been taken to mock and humiliate him, to show him that he wasn’t like everybody else, that he was ugly and repulsive, undeserving, that he had no right to do the normal things normal people did.

       Quickly discarding the magazine, he thought back to the television commercial he saw three weeks ago, advertising the clinic’s unique new treatment. That day had been another tough one at the office. At lunch-time, he heard Zac from Legal talking about him again: ‘Apparently, Patrick from Accounts is so fat that when he goes sunbathing down by the beach, the tide has to wait for him to move before it can come back in again’. Later, on the bus home, two school children had teased and tormented him for the entirety of his journey. Turning around in their seats, they puffed out their cheeks and pretended to toss vast quantities of invisible snacks into their mouths. As soon as he got back to his apartment, he sought solace in the one thing that had never let him down: food. And it was there, sprawled out on the sofa, stuffing a plate of fresh cream cakes into his own mouth, that an almost supersonic burst of sound ripped out of the television speakers, grabbing his full attention. He looked up to see a ridiculously tanned, well-groomed, well-dressed, white-toothed, almost pixelated apparition of a middle-aged man appear on-screen, sat behind what looked like a desk in a doctor’s office.

      ‘Do you suffer from the most dangerous medical condition on Planet Earth? Are you one of the millions of global citizens struggling with obesity – the single most prolific killer in modern society – scourge of our sterling medical services? Then why not call your local Cancer Diet Clinic today for a free consultation? Our radical new slimming techniques, using state of the art carcinogenic treatments, will help you shed those pounds in a matter of weeks, and help you become the person you so desperately want to be.’

 

If you like what you’ve read so far, you can read the story online here.

 

And if you want to learn more about more of Neil’s published work, why not check out his amazon page.

 

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NEW SHORT STORY - A PASSAGEWAY WITH NO EXIT - PUBLISHED

 

Neil Randall is delighted to announce that literary journal Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself has published his short story A Passageway with No Exit. The story is particularly close to the author’s heart as it was the first thing he wrote following his self-imposed exile to the former Yugoslavia.

     Very much inspired by the first apartment he rented in Belgrade (on the fifth- and top-floor, yet the elevator only went to the third-floor, with no heating in the bedroom, and plumbing so fragile it struggled to handle even the most innocent and unimposing of turds), it’s the story of a young architect from Belgrade who wakes up one morning to find that the stairwell has been mysteriously removed from outside her apartment, leaving her stranded in what now appears to be a totally deserted building.

     Here’s a taster from the opening pages: 

When Jelena left for work one morning, she found that the stairwell in her apartment building had been cordoned off with plastic tape, and that the stairs themselves, from the fifth-floor all the way down to the lift on the third-floor, had been removed completely.

      “What?”

      The sight before her was impossible to both believe and assimilate. The gap where the stairs had previously been situated looked like a CGI special effect. That, or a bizarre vision trick. But no matter how many times she rubbed her eyes, looked and looked again, the same empty space and dangerous, unsettling fall below, an unlikely manmade chasm, was there in front of her.

     None of which made any sense.

     Being an architect, Jelena had not only studied the plans but visited the sites of many construction projects. She knew the time factor involved in both designing new buildings and remodelling existing structures. The logistical, not to mention manpower considerations essential to removing what was in effect two sets of concrete stairs simply wasn’t achievable in such a short period of time – overnight, in a matter of hours.

      How long Jelena stood staring into this relative abyss, she couldn’t have said. When she finally returned to her senses, her first thought was to shout for help.

      “Is anybody down there? I’ve been left stranded up here all on my own.”  

      But nobody came to her aid. Nobody rushed to the bottom of the stairwell on the ground-floor. No doors opened in any of the apartments, either, indicating that the building was deserted, that the other residents had been evacuated from their homes.

      Returning to her own apartment, she opened the balcony doors and looked out over the other part of the building. To her growing alarm, she saw that all the blinds from the windows of the apartment directly opposite had been removed, offering a clear view into each empty room. There was no furniture inside or pictures on the walls. No sign of domestic life whatsoever. 

 

If you like what you’ve read so far, you can read the story in full here (scroll to Page 37 of the magazine/Page 47 of the PDF ).

 

And if you’d like to know more about Neil’s published novels, you can visit his amazon page here.

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