Alienskin about to launch.
Almost eight years ago, Alien Queen Mother landed on Earth and set about gathering the brightest and best of the scaremongers to Alienskin magazine. Many fell by the wayside, to be burned in the Zap Room or tormented for failing to following simple instructions in the 'You are an idiot' room.
Now, at last, Alien Queen Mother has had enough and the Alienskin ship launches back into the void after the next issue, eight years after it started. The site will remain until it decays into its constituent particles over the next couple of years but the Alien Queen Mother will have left us for another world and a new population of writers of dreaded fiction.
It is to be hoped that the Alien Queen Mother will complete the Mother Book and send it back to us as a warning of what may be if we become feeble and easily frightened, for it is the purpose of we acolytes to teach the nuances of terror, the possibilities of the future and the happenings of unseen worlds - and thereby increase the resilience of the population as a whole. They need it, oh, how they need it. Now more than ever, the flabby minds of the easily offended need to be exercised if the race is not to descend into the horror of an especially grey Stepford that extends over the entire planet.
We will continue in her absence. This blog, like the rest of the site, must eventually dissipate into the aether as if it had never been. Before that happens I will transport its contents, suitably revised, into print on paper. The articles, also, will live on in some form as will the online existence of Phineas Dume. I cannot let the dynasty die. Caligula would be furious and that's never good. Father would turn all the cellar-gold into lead and Death would have nobody to talk to. Then there are all those officials. There would be far too many of them if I left Dume Towers.
In a little over two months, we must wave our bloodstained hankies as the ship rises into the sky for possibly the last time. We must take pride in the extensive entry the Alien Queen Mother has written in her star-journal:
Earth: A silly but mostly fun place.
Well, it's not much but it's a better entry than Venus which is simply recorded as 'hot and dull'.
I wasn't there when the ship first landed. My own involvement came some eighteen months later when 'Electricity' was published. Then I was invited into the inner cabal and have relished the wonderful normality of life which ensued. I will post that story here, as it was written seven years ago when my efforts were primitive and almost cringeworthy. No editing, no changing or fixing. Tributes should not be tampered with.
The Alien Queen Mother might return one day. There will be signs. There will be books and articles and if I discover them, I will reveal them to the faithful. In the meantime, keep the faith.
People need to be scared. They need to think of the future. They need to consider alternate realities.
Otherwise they stagnate and end up offended by their own shadows. Even the ones who didn't have offensive shadows to begin with.
I have one last article to write. This time I will not leave it until the day before the deadline because this one is special. It is the final Alienskin horror-writing article and it must be apocalyptic and devastating.
All I need is an idea...
