Many regular readers of The Prague Review have enjoyed the short stories we’ve published, especially those by author Michael Collins. We’re pleased to announce that he has published his first novel ‘Runaway‘. Below the synopsis and also by special permission, the first chapter.

Runaway: Book One Of the Dominium Trilogy – Synopsis

On the face of it, Matthew Carter should be happy. Young, successful, loved and in love, Matt has everything he should ever want. Yet Matt feels a void inside himself – something missing, a mystery in the fabric of the world that he can reach out and touch… almost. When, in a busy London bar, he meets the enigmatic, beautiful woman named Marie, and she murmurs to him, ‘You have to get me out of here,’, Matt’s perilous journey towards the void and its secrets begins. As he aids Marie in her breathless escape from her pursuers into a nightmarish, unrecognisable version of a snowy, nighttime London, the void inches ever nearer, as do Marie’s enemies – the villainous Dominium group, and the vicious, gleeful assassin Tommy Black. As Matt is lured further into the dark world of Marie and the Dominium, and his part in the events swirling around Marie becomes clearer, Matt is faced with a choice – to continue to help Marie, or to walk away and leave her to whatever fate awaits her. What rests on his choice, what is at stake, is also becoming clear: nothing more than everything. Runaway is currently only available on Amazon Kindle – you can order it here: UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0DG5ZFZVB/ DE: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Michael-Collins-ebook/dp/B0DG5ZFZVB/ US: https://www.amazon.com/Runaway-Book-One-Dominium-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B0DG5ZFZVB/ Dark, horror themes.

Runaway: Book One Of the Dominium Trilogy – Chapter One

It took only eight words to forever change Matthew Carter’s life, to send him spinning uncontrollably into a world he never knew existed. Eight words, spoken by the right person at the right moment, words that he didn’t know were coming. On the day that Matt would hear these words he woke wordlessly. This day struggled sluggishly to life, this dank, grey morning presenting nothing different than the previous four or five; but from the moment he rolled over to slap the buzzer on his six-thirty AM alarm into angry submission, unease flickered across Matt’s consciousness. Standing under the rusty showerhead that spat spiteful little darts of hot water at him, he felt a familiar emptiness, a void deep inside his mind that he could neither dispel nor fill, no matter how hard he tried. Examining himself in the mirror, Matt wondered whether the void was just an expression of something missing in his life. Sipping his second cup of coffee and idly wishing his shirt could iron its own damn self, he ruled it out – there was nothing tumultuous or turbulent in his life that accounted for this strange feeling. This void in his mind was something else; something external. Matt left his flat to go to work. He worked at Garners, an advertising agency based in a smart little suite of offices just off Cheapside. As Matt exited the stairwell to the underground car park he grinned as his car came into view – a one-year-old red Audi TT. The ominous cloud over his head left him a little as he started the car, its engine growling into life as he set out for work. But the void sat inside his mind still. He turned the radio off as he drove, gazing at the murky sky above. It was another freezing day, temperatures perhaps staying under freezing, with a little snow forecast later. Winter was giving London one last show of teeth as it retreated before spring’s green advance. The foreboding echo nagged at him throughout the journey, returning to his fleeting mind like a fly trapped in a room, banging against the wall of his mind. Something, he thought to himself. Something in the air. It was bullshit, he told himself, nonsense; there was nothing about his good life that even hinted at something wrong, or bad. But he couldn’t deny it was there – a black cloud of doubt and worry in his mind. A cloud that promised a storm was coming. Matt got in just before half past eight and made his way to his desk. Johnny Bryant was waiting for him, ostentatiously pick-pocking a foam stress ball against the wall, catching it on the return, his long hair a blond, breaking wave. ‘Today’s the day, huh?’ he asked, pitching the ball over to Matt, who caught it and returned it with a nod. ‘I’ll have it to her by two o’clock,’ he said. Johnny made the ball disappear, formed his hand into the shape of a pistol and fired it at Matt. ‘I’d better leave you to it,’ he said.

❦

 ‘It’ was the final pitch to a new customer that, if successful, would add three-quarters of a million to Garner’s annual revenue and launch Matt into the 99th percentile of their account managers. It had gone through five drafts and three reviews by Johnny and the senior leaders. Matt was making the final touches, adding the magic ingredient to turn it from just another pedestrian sales pitch into guaranteed gold – another Just Do It, or Because The Lady Loves. Matt rarely knew from where this inspiration came. Sometimes it felt like it came from the void inside his mind. But come it did, almost always. Four hours later it was finished, and Matt called Johnny in. Johnny sat down, sleeves rolled up, and began to read. Three minutes later, he grunted an affirmative and stood up. ‘OK, Matt, you can send it.’ Matt took a deep breath and sent the file right to the top – to Julia Garner herself. Johnny Bryant smiled. ‘Well done.’ He inclined his head towards the lifts. ‘Pub?’ he asked.

❦

 It was customary, Johnny Bryant said, to celebrate the sign-off of a big piece of work in the pub. According to Johnny it was also customary to shake off the disappointment of a failed pitch, to celebrate the addition of a new colleague to the team, to mourn the departure of a colleague to another firm, to slough off the ennui of a slow, dull day, and to bleed away the stress of a particularly tough deadline day, Fridays, bank holidays, Thursdays, Wednesdays, Mondays and Tuesdays in the pub. Matt had never met anyone who could drink like Johnny. He assumed the man’s liver was constructed out of iron. This was London, with a pub or a bar on every street corner, and there were plenty of watering holes in and around the Cheapside area – a whole corner complex on Paternoster Row beside the famous old cathedral and a few dotted in and around Watling St behind Cheapside itself. But Johnny always found himself drawn (and would, in turn, draw, by the strange magnetism of his personality, the entire office with him) on his frequent expeditions, inevitably towards the river. On countless occasions Matt would find himself staggering back across the Millennium Bridge through a haze of whisky fumes after yet another Bryant-inspired session. They walked across the Millennium Bridge, wincing at the vicious wind that screamed down the Thames across them. It was thronged with walkers going north and south, people departing work early and tourists stopping for selfies with the river in the background. A stray shaft of weak sunlight glanced off the glass façade of the Shard to Matt’s left, casting a molten glow down its structure for a moment before the pale sun was swallowed up again by the clouds. Matt could smell snow in the air. His phone pinged out a brief trilling tone. It was a text message from Becky: ‘Hey, Charlotte Jenkins scored tickets to Wicked at the Apollo tonight, and she’s giving one to me!!! Wow!!! I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!!! Congrats again!!!’ Smiling against another fierce gust of wind, he texted back a ‘nice one’ response and pocketed the phone. Three months ago, Johnny, who seemed to know every office worker and receptionist in the capital, had hooked him up with Becky Gilmour, a tall, slender girl with wavy auburn hair and large brown eyes that widened attractively when she smiled, which was often. She was interning at one of the big insurance firms that had sprung up around Liverpool St, and their relationship was progressing very well. Matt had invited her over Saturday for a romantic dinner, and he was very much looking forward to spending the evening on the sofa with a bottle of wine, not watching the TV. He mentioned the text to Johnny, who responded, grinning: ‘So that means you’re off the hook tonight then. Free to indulge yourself in whatever fleshy delights await us.’ ‘Ah, come on’, said Matt. ‘You know I’m a good boy – unlike you. I don’t mess around.’ Johnny unleashed – it was the only word that fit – a vast guffawing laugh. ‘More opportunities for me.’ Another blast of wind hit them. ‘Bloody hell,’ said Johnny, pulling his coat tighter across him. ‘Colder than a witch’s tit out here, boy. Let’s seek shelter.’ He pointed to the other side of the bridge and strode on, neatly swerving around a group of Chinese tourists so as not to ruin their photo. They headed across the bridge to The Pickled Egg. This unlikely-named bar (the name’s origin was lost to history: whoever had named the place was long gone, and subsequent owners and managers decided to keep the name, presumably as some kind of surreal joke) was a two-storey building set back a little from the Bankside pier, tucked away between Tate Modern and the Globe. The building had two floors: downstairs, a large bar and dance floor with a long rectangular bar of burnished steel with a back mirror framed in cool black marble, a tidy DJ booth in one corner, and faux chrome tables and chairs dotted about the square dance floor. The room was sparsely lit with chilled blue spotlights, allowing for many an intimate encounter in the shadows. Above was a smaller version of the downstairs bar – no tables, allowing those dedicated clubbers to move and groove to the DJ. In the summer, the rooftop was converted to an outdoor bar, offering excellent views of St Pauls and the City. Matt stood and watched Johnny pull open the glass-paned door of the bar as the first snowflakes began to fall from London’s dreary February sky. As he did so, the tingling, creeping feeling came over him again, stronger this time. He felt it coalesce in his mind, strengthen and firm into something approaching a premonition. Something is going to happen here, a voice whispered. The voice came from that blank emptiness lurking in his mind. He shivered.

❦

           The Pickled Egg was packed. It was Friday afternoon going on Friday night; the whole South Bank was buzzing with office workers, partygoers and tourists, and the Egg was a popular joint. Matt and Johnny began to weave through the throng to the bar, Johnny hailing a face here and there. ‘I spoke to Dwayne at that law firm next door,’ he said over his shoulder. Already he had to raise his voice over the thrum of excited conversation and the bass thump of the music. ‘It’s one of their junior’s birthdays, or leaving do, or something, so most of them will be here tonight. And the rest of the lads from Garners’ll be here after five… should be a good crowd in tonight.’ He shouldered his way into the four-deep queue at the bar. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’m glad we got here early. Can you imagine this place in two hours?’ Matt nodded, filtering Johnny’s incessant chat into the background noise as he gazed around the bar, looking but not really seeing, allowing his eye to roam across the crowds of people at the tables, standing by the front doors, over at the electronic quiz machines, tucked away in the corners by the DJ booth, underneath the stairs leading up to the rooftop bar (closed today of course: not even the bravest or most inebriated of London clubbers were willing to stand on a South Bank rooftop in the snow and freezing cold), filling every available space. There were groups of office girls, laughing and whooping over their Proseccos and Pornstar Martinis; all A-line skirts and suitably neutral colour blouses. Watching the office girls (and sometimes joining in with the laughing and whooping) were the office boys; pinstripe suits, ties now loosened. Innuendoes and jokes were flying between the men and women, along with a suggestive glance or two, or three or four; the Friday night lines of the sexual battlefield being clearly drawn. More girls were over by the DJ booth; these girls younger, partygoers; make-up and glitzy sparkly mini-dresses were the uniform here. They’d already drawn plenty of speculative glances; when these girls had their fill of happy hour cocktails and ventured out to Ministry of Sound or Fabric, they would have plenty of eager chaperones. Over by the computerised entertainment – shiny fruit machines, electronic quiz machines, all swallowers of pound coins – were smaller groups, cheering at a lucky correct answer to random, esoteric questions (Which US state has the largest population? A: Arizona; B: Tennessee; C: Indiana; D: Maryland). These patrons, by and large men, had their coats still on, wedding bands on most left hands, older and more sober than the average. Already there had been one or two winces at the noise of the crowd, and a few muttered complaints about the music (I can’t understand all this rap stuff, what’s so bad about good old rock ‘n’ roll?). These guys would either be on the train home or somewhere sensible and far quieter by 7pm. Matt’s eye fell across an odd little knot of people stationed at a table near the front door. Six men, all soberly dressed in black suits and ties, stood in various poses of non-relaxation around the table, at which sat a young woman, a girl, really, small, slim and attractive. She had short, jet-black hair, parted on the right, which curled around behind her ears to lie snugly at the base of her neck. She had wide brown eyes. She had a pert retroussé nose. She was dressed in a rather flimsy cream-coloured top with long sleeves that reached down past her wrists to cover her hands, which accentuated an air of girlishness, and a pair of black trousers tight about the hips and flared slightly at the ankles. Matt looked and saw. And the girl looked back and saw him. And she held his gaze for a moment. And within the black void inside Matt’s mind, he felt – he saw – a tiny little glimmering pinprick of light. Matt felt a thrill, like a sharp fingernail down his spine, and shivered. His breath caught in his throat. The girl held his eyes with hers. In those wide brown eyes Matt registered fear, strength, and a strange sense of recognition. He fancied that for a moment he could feel another presence in his mind, a whispered voice calling his name, and experienced an instant of the strangest feeling of déjá vu – that this moment had happened before. The answer to an unasked question danced in his mind. Whatever was troubling him, whatever dissonance he felt about his life – he knew, without knowing, that she possessed answers. Then one of the men took a seat next to the girl and spoke in her ear, and she turned to respond, and the spell was broken. At that moment Johnny nudged Matt in the side. ‘Yo – Earth to Carter. Ground control to Major Tom. Hey, Matt. I’m talking to you, pal.’ Matt shook his head awake. A tiny hint of that thrill remained in him, like an aftershock. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was gathering wool. What did you say?’ And Johnny asked him what drink he wanted, and did he want a short with that?

❦

           If the Pickled Egg had been busy at four thirty, by six PM it was rammed. Luckily Johnny had spotted a couple of girls from the accounting office on a nearby table and had finagled his way into their attentions, which meant waitress service and no need to run the gauntlet of attempting to get served at the bar. Their group was now swelled with most of the associates and juniors from Garners. The conversation was spicy: centring on who was sleeping with whom, or who fancied whom, the sexiest girls, the cutest men, who were likeliest to hook up. The last round of drinks contained shots of Jägermeister. Matt had clung to his sobriety – and his second pint of lager – by abstaining this time, but he knew it was a losing battle. Johnny had picked his target for the evening, it seemed: one of the staff secretaries from the nearby accounting office named Cassie, who seemed constructed entirely of blonde hair, breasts and bronzed legs. He stood, one arm casually draped over her shoulders, listening with a grin to a ribald retelling of a story of drunken misadventure by one of the young Garner associates, a particularly boisterous lad called Gavin. Johnny was drinking his pint like he was going to win a prize at the end of it. Matt had heard Gavin’s story before – how the man from Saatchi had to be rescued from the hotel bathroom of some exotic dancer they’d picked up in some Eastside dive – and knew that no audience participation was required in its retelling. Now was the perfect time to go take a piss, he decided. He made his way through the crowds, murmuring apologies when he nudged a body or two with more force than intended and thanks when someone stepped out of his way, and reached the alcove on the other side of the booth, where the DJ had begun a set of ambient dance. The alcove opened on a broad, spotlit passageway which led to the facilities. Not surprisingly, there was already a queue for the ladies. The gents’ toilet was clear. He was in and out quickly, washing his hands without the negligible help of the toilet attendant with his rows of cheap cologne and his plaintive cries of ‘freshen up, freshen up,’ and made his way back to the dark alcove, where he stumbled directly into the girl he’d seen out in the bar. Up close she was tiny. The top of her head came just about to Matt’s shoulders; she was barely five feet tall. And she was very slim; she was incredibly petite, child-like. Yet there was a sense of authority and a forcefulness about her presence in front of him that was anything but childish: the girl radiated an aura about her, almost visible to his eye, of charisma. Matt had read about how US presidents in the flesh seemed virtually overpowering in their force of personality; how people meeting Kennedy or Reagan were bowled over and taken aback by that allure of power. Matt felt he was feeling something of that effect here. It was her large brown eyes, he thought briefly. The way she held his eyes with hers. And up close, she left beauty far behind. Had he thought her only attractive? That thought was almost comic in its bad judgment. Her skin, pale almost to the point of translucence, was flawless. Her hair, neatly parted and tucked behind her ears, was glossy black. The irises of her eyes were the deepest brown, and they were locked on his. Matt couldn’t say how long that moment lasted, face to face, eyes locked on each other. He seemed weightless, floating in space with her. He was barely aware of breathing: his ragged and fast, hers smooth and even. The rest of the world ceased to exist. Becky, gone. Johnny Bryant and the rest of Garners, gone. The girls queuing for the loo: the whole Pickled Egg, gone. Just he and this girl, this vision, floating together in the void. Then she spoke eight words which seemed to break the spell and cast another. ‘You have to get me out of here.’ Although her English was perfect, her words betrayed a slight accent, a hint of a lilt, and the merest suggestion of an elongated ‘e’. And although the words indicated a desperate request or demand, they were delivered calmly, without a hint of stress or urgency. ‘W-wha-w… I’m sorry, what?’ Matt asked. The girl stepped in closer and took his forearm in a surprisingly firm grip. She locked her eyes with his again and repeated: ‘You have to get me out of here.’ With the repetition of her words and with her touch on his arm, Matt’s mind seemed to wipe itself blank. He felt the void in his mind pulsing and throbbing, an almost physical sensation. And the need to understand what it was – what he was – consumed him. He nodded once, slowly. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ he asked. The girl nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’ He felt no fear or elation, only the rightness of the moment: that this woman had the answers he had been looking for. She could explain the void inside his mind. Perhaps she might be able to fill it. Matt made his decision. ‘All right. Yes. I’m Matt. Let’s get out of here.’ He led her out of the passageway, bustling past a blonde girl in a tight white mini-dress. He led the girl back to the alcove next to the DJ booth, and as he looked up to the dance floor for the exit, he found his way barred by the six men he had seen with the girl earlier.

❦

           All six men were larger and taller than Matt’s five-ten. Their ages were difficult to guess, but they all had about them the relaxed, confident bearing of competence and experience. They had a range of builds; the one on the far left of the group could have been a basketball player; he was extremely tall and thin. The man to his immediate right had the immense mass of a powerlifter. There was a sense of athletic ability and physical prowess about all six, however. They wore identical black suits, white shirts and black ties. The man at the centre of the group took a measured pace forwards and said, ‘Marie, I am glad we found you. Shall we go now?’ His accent was very similar to the girl’s – Marie, his mind told him, her name is Marie – and this time Matt caught the accent: French. The girl made no response. Again, the man made his request. ‘Shall we go now?’ He held out his hand. She turned her head to look at Matt, found his eyes, held them in hers again. ‘I am sorry, Matthew,’ she said. She stepped forward, level with the man who had spoken. The others, unspoken, neatly fell into formation in front of them, the basketballer taking a position to the girl’s left. Before he was aware that he was moving, before even being aware that he was going to do so, Matt moved up directly behind the girl. Nobody stopped him. His mind started to race: were these men the reason she wanted to get out of the place so urgently? They must have her against her will. Why? What did they want with her? Where were they going? And what the hell was he going to do about it? The men moved beyond the alcove into the crowd of partygoers, exuding a subtle physicality in their movement that brought to Matt’s mind an image of a troop of chimpanzees stalking through the African forest. Each individual in the group was signalling, by a rolling of the shoulders, or a lengthening of stride, or the placement of hands by their sides, an aura of menace, of don’t mess with us, that was undeniably militaristic. They carried themselves like men equipped and ready to do violence. There was an inevitability about their progress which carved out a ribbon of space for movement towards the door. The way they flanked the girl reminded Matt of TV footage he had seen of police officers escorting on-trial criminals into court, but he dismissed the image out of hand. What possible crime could she have committed? He shook his head involuntarily. She may well be their prisoner, but not because of anything she had done wrong. Every step they took closer to the exit was a step further away from her freedom, and another chance lost for Matt to intervene, although he couldn’t think what possible action he could take to stop these men. They were forty feet from the front exit when it happened; the sort of inadvertent physical encounter that occurs all the time in busy public areas. How it happened was this: the basketballer to the girl’s immediate left, displaying a sudden lack of limb coordination that had not previously been suggested by his lithe frame, stumbled over something unseen on the floor and tripped over his feet. His athlete’s reflexes recovered the spill enough to avoid going to the floor, but not enough to stop him from bumping into precisely the wrong sort of person to jostle in a packed London bar – a City trader, already lit on lager, coke and Jägerbombs, standing in a group of his rowdy confreres, barely any room between them. The trader had a full pint in one hand, which tipped, held for the barest instant in apparent contempt for gravity, then obeyed the laws of physics, depositing its contents in full upon the Savile Row pinstripe of the trader’s nearest mate. Predictably, the trader turned, his face damp with Stella Artois and flushed with anger. ‘Oi mate, wanna watch where you’re fuckin’ going?’ The one who had been jostled (having done very well to keep the Jägerbomb in his other hand upright) had recovered his equilibrium and stepped forward into the basketballer’s face. ‘What the fuck was that, mate? What you do that for, mate?’ His now pint-less hand grabbed the lapel of the basketballer’s suit. ‘You wanker,’ the trader said, his mates surrounding the basketballer. The other Frenchmen (Matt assumed they were all French) stepped up in unison, the one who had spoken to Marie with his hands raised in conciliation. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees, and the crowd, obeying its own rules and sniffing trouble in the air, emptied a space between the two groups. ‘Please, gentlemen, let me- ‘began the man with his hands up. ‘Your mate is well out of order,’ said the drenching victim, one fat pink finger pointed at the chest of the Frenchmen’s leader. ‘What you gonna fuckin’ do about it?’ ‘Fuckin’ want some, do ya?’ said the inadvertent drencher, Jägerbomb still in hand. His mates began to crowd in against the basketballer. The leader of the Frenchmen raised his hands higher, placatory. ‘I am very sorry for the accident. Please, allow me to make it up to you,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah? And how you gonna do that, you prick? This is a two-thousand-pound suit, mate.’ In his drunkenness the trader’s East London accent betrayed itself, changing the word ‘pound’ into a flattened, lifeless thing: ‘paaaand’. The fingers of his right hand jabbed at the Frenchman. ‘Wanker should buy us a round, Jimmy,’ said one of the traders, eyeballing the rest of the Frenchmen’s’ terse, professional demeanour and realising that in a fight he and his mates would be distinct second favourites. There was a chorus of shouted agreement from the rest of the traders. The drencher let go of the basketballer’s suit. ‘Yeah, a round would work. Bottle of champers each, right lads?’ A rumbled chorus of agreement issued itself from the traders. Matt felt a small, insistent hand creep into his. He turned and saw the girl, eyes calm, at his side. ‘Matthew,’ she said, ‘we should go. Now.’ He saw that all the Frenchmen were turned away from them, locked still in confrontation, or negotiation, with the traders. They were currently alone, and escape through the front door awaited. For a moment, Matt’s mind tried to argue with the imperative in the girl’s eyes. He could just about see Johnny Bryant on the far side of the bar, arm around the blonde, laughing at some joke one of the other girls had made. His colleagues, his friends. He could return to them and leave this girl Marie to whatever fate awaited her. If he did, he’d never know what secrets she might hold. What she might know about the void that lay inside him. If he left her, the not knowing would tear him apart. There was, way down, a core of steel hardness buried deep in Matt’s nature, and it baulked hard against that thought. Matt turned back to the girl, nodded, and led her towards the door and the cold London night beyond. It was freezing outside, the air so cold that his breath was snatched from him with each exhalation. Matt could see fat, thick snowflakes falling and beginning to settle on the path. He looked over at the girl, saw her wearing just that thin cream top, and shrugged off his suit jacket. He handed it to Marie, who accepted with a smile and a nod of thanks. They crossed to the Millennium Bridge. Its walkway was illuminated with recessed blue strobing, creating an otherworldly glow of the bridge surface. Directly across, St Paul’s Cathedral stood stark and magnificent against the sky. They hurried across the bridge over to the north side. The snow began to fall more heavily, quickly dampening Matt’s shirt. As they reached the end of the elevated walkway, Marie tugged on Matt’s sleeve. He stopped as she pointed back towards the South Bank side. ‘Matthew, look,’ she said. He followed her extended hand to see the six Frenchmen emerge from the alley leading to the bar. The distraction caused by the basketballer’s slip had given them a chance to escape, but not much more. ‘What do they want?’ he asked her. The girl Marie looked back at him. ‘Me,’ she said simply. ‘You have a car?’ she asked. Matt nodded. ‘Then come,’ she said. ‘We have no time. We must leave now.’ He nodded again and led her up the embankment towards Queen Victoria Street. He didn’t want to look back. He didn’t have to look back to know the Frenchmen were following.   Runaway is currently only available on Amazon Kindle – you can order it here: UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0DG5ZFZVB/ DE: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Michael-Collins-ebook/dp/B0DG5ZFZVB/ US: https://www.amazon.com/Runaway-Book-One-Dominium-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B0DG5ZFZVB/