Interactive Books featuring the Music and Videos of the Tale Teller Club, iServalan, Flex, Vapour Punk, Beats Ministry, MoMo, and the Space Flies
Jul 18, 2025
Grease and Eyeliner A Mills and Swoon Short by Sarnia de la Mare
Grease and Eyeliner
A Mills and Swoon Short by Sarnia de la Mare
And a pair of fishnet tights.
Brighton, August Bank Holiday, 1964: Mods in slim-cut Italian suits and dustbin-lid parkas swarmed the seafront on Lambrettas like a horde of well-coiffed hornets. Rockers in leathers growled back from their café tables, the chrome on their motorbikes gleaming like polished knuckles.
Amid the crowd and chaos, Lulu Green, seventeen and already infamous for smoking menthols behind Woolworths, strutted along the promenade in a white PVC mac, Mary Quant lashes, and the most scandalous miniskirt East Sussex had ever gossiped about. Her Mod badge flashed silver against her chest, daring the world to look away.
And then she saw Johnny Raye.
He leaned against his Triumph Bonneville like it was a wealthy parent, black leather tight across shoulders built for sin, a sneer so well practiced it was practically choreography. The only soft thing about him was the curl of Brylcreem that dropped artfully across his forehead.
He was, quite obviously, a Rocker.
Which made him, quite obviously, forbidden fruit.
But Lulu’s eyes didn’t blink. “You staring or just brain-damaged from the fumes?”
He grinned. “Depends. You offering fresh air?”
Love blossomed in the pink beach hut in Hove, not in daylight, but in snatched moments between Mods vs. Rockers brawls and mum’s weekend meatloaf. The had to replace a bowl after one night of hurried fumbling, and then a table leg after the first night they 'did it'.
On Saturday's, Lulu tap-danced through Carnaby Street boutiques, collecting eyeliner pots and 45s of Dusty Springfield. By night, she’d hop on the back of Johnny’s bike, clinging to him like a second skin as they tore down coastal roads under a moon that approved of rebellion.
In the wooden shadows of Brighton’s painted beach huts, he’d play her Everly Brothers songs on a beat-up guitar, his fingers smelling faintly of engine oil and licorice Rizlas. She’d hum along, heels kicked off, hair backcombed to heaven.
“You know,” she said once, “I should be scared of what my mum’ll do if she finds out.”
Johnny kissed the inside of her wrist, soft and slow. “So should I. But I’m more scared of not seeing you.”
It didn’t take long for word to spread. Brighton had ears. Lulu’s father, a jazz-loving ex-army man with strict opinions on hem lengths and haircuts, banned her from leaving the house after six. Johnny’s mother, a chain-smoking former Tiller Girl, threatened to lace his tea with laxatives if he didn’t “find a nice Essex girl with a full fringe and some bloody sense.”
The lovers tried to part. They even had a trial separation.
Lulu dated a Mod named Colin who quoted Bob Dylan and couldn’t kiss properly.
Johnny flirted with a Rockabilly girl who wore a ponytail and called him "daddy" without irony.
But it was no use. It was like dating Elvis then dating Val Doonican. Johny Raye was Lulu's Elvis.
The final straw came when Lulu’s dad caught her sneaking out of the window wearing go-go boots. He grounded her indefinitely and took her Dancette. “You’ll thank me one day,” he said.
She did not, but she did understand his motives, albeit twenty years later when Johny and Lulu's son was hanging with the wrong crowd.
Two nights later, with the help of sugar paste, a hairdresser mate from beauty college, and a bottle of stolen vodka, Lulu escaped. Johnny met her outside the old pier, bouquet of fish and chips in one hand, a ring pop in the other.
They didn’t marry in white. She wore a silver minidress and blue eyeliner that reached halfway to her temples. He wore a leather jacket and a smile he couldn’t shake. They said their vows in the Brighton registry office, then danced on the pier to The Kinks 'You Really Got Me'. The spent the night in a cheap hotel room with floral wallpaper and sticky carpet.
Because love, as it turns out, doesn’t care much for categories.
It doesn't check jackets or bikes or what your dad thinks.
It just shows up, revs its engine, and waits.
Jul 12, 2025
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The Wonder of Nature Monochrome Coastline Photography by Blink Friction Art Print
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Kiss Kiss Lady Love Monochrome Logo Heart Retro 1960s Greeting Card
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Jul 8, 2025
Today's Short Reel For YouTube Fans
May 15, 2025
Love in the Time of Goo Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror/Romance (B-Movie Style) by Tale Teller Club Audiobooks
Love in the Time of Goo
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror/Romance (B-Movie Style)
Tagline: "It oozed from the swamp… and straight into her heart."
ACT I: The Swamp, the Scientist, and the Soda Jerk
It’s 1959 in the steamy backwoods of Cypress Hollow, a nowhere town where nothing ever happens—until Dr. Veronica Flame, a chain-smoking exobiologist with a tragic past and a PhD from "a European university that definitely exists," crash-lands her government jeep in the middle of Swamp Sector Z. She’s investigating strange seismic readings and rumors of glowing frogs.
Meanwhile, Johnny Rocket, a square-jawed soda jerk with a leather jacket and a motorcycle named Freedom, dreams of rock 'n' roll stardom and escaping his dead-end job at Big Bob’s Milkshake Haven.
They meet when Johnny finds Veronica passed out next to a steaming crater, cradling a glass vial of neon green goo. He takes her to town, ignoring the throbbing, ominous hum from the swamp that makes dogs howl and milk curdle.
ACT II: The Ooze Awakens
That night, while Veronica recovers in Johnny’s retro-futuristic trailer (decorated with pin-up posters, rayguns, and Elvis records), the vial begins to pulsate. Unbeknownst to them, the goo is sentient… and lonely. It escapes.
The next morning, townsfolk start acting strange—romantic, even. Sheriff Buck’s hound falls in love with a fencepost. Old Widow Dangle dances in the street with a mailbox. Everyone is infected with hyper-emotion, driven by an alien need to love.
Veronica deduces that the goo is extraterrestrial pheromone concentrate from Planet Zarnok-7, engineered to end war by making beings fall in uncontrollable love. It’s a weaponized cuddle-bomb.
Johnny wants to destroy it. Veronica, torn between science and her feelings, argues they should study it.
Meanwhile, the goo, now an eight-foot-tall translucent blob named Merv, forms a crush on Johnny. It tries to gift him a bouquet made from car bumpers and live possums.
ACT III: The Heart That Ate Cypress Hollow
As Merv’s emotional instability grows, he kidnaps Johnny and constructs a wedding altar out of rusted shopping carts and jukebox parts in the center of the swamp. Veronica must choose: save Johnny, or join Merv’s polyblobule hive-mind of intergalactic affection.
Veronica confronts Merv with a flamethrower and a love poem. Her words confuse the creature, forcing it to experience heartbreak. The goo begins to dissolve, but not before releasing a final burst of psychic pheromone gas.
Johnny and Veronica wake up in each other’s arms, covered in slime but deeply in love. The townsfolk recover, dazed but happy.
EPILOGUE:
Back at Big Bob’s Milkshake Haven, now renamed Merv’s Café of Love, Johnny strums his guitar while Veronica serves cherry phosphates. A tiny blob watches from a petri dish in the corner—pulsing… waiting…
Roll credits over doo-wop ballad: "Love Is a Gooey Thing."
May 14, 2025
Love Slime from Planet 9. Narrator speaks, in a deep deep, gravelly voice #comedy #shortstory
Love Slime from Planet 9.
Narrator speaks, in a deep deep, gravelly voice:
"In a world where love is dangerous… and tentacles are legal…"
It all started when Betty Lou Buckminster, assistant librarian and part-time UFO blogger, saw something crash-land in Farmer Milt’s cornfield.
"I swear on my coupon book, that ain’t a weather balloon," she muttered, adjusting her cat-eye glasses and strapping on her rollerblades. She skated toward destiny—and probable alien infection.
Inside the crater: a glowing pod, pulsing like a disco heart. And out of it slithered him—tall, green, and gelatinous. With eyes like limpid pools of lime Jell-O and a voice that sounded like Barry White underwater.
“I… come… in love,” he gurgled.
She gasped. “You speak English?”
“Downloaded from satellite… reruns of Baywatch Nights.”
They locked eyes. Or, eye and eyes. Something clicked—possibly her kneecap, she landed hard in the mud.
That night, in her trailer full of Beanie Babies and conspiracy charts, they talked for hours. He learned about tacos. She learned about bioluminescent pheromones.
“You’re not like other intergalactic slime-based lifeforms,” she whispered, brushing a tendril from his non-face.
“And you’re not like other Earth females,” he replied, vibrating affectionately.
Cue montage:
Sharing a milkshake with two straws (he absorbs his through osmosis).
Dancing at the drive-in (to Love is a Battlefield).
Evading the government in a stolen hot dog truck.
But love, like all things in the B-movie dimension, cannot last unchallenged.
Enter: Major Bluntforce, rogue military man with a buzzcut and a personal vendetta against feelings.
“This thing’s a menace! Look at it! It’s… sticky!”
“Love is sticky!” Betty Lou shouted, shielding her goopy beau.
Bluntforce raised his ray gun. “This ends now.”
But the slime, fueled by love and a half-eaten churro, enveloped the Major in a warm, consensual hug of understanding. His cold heart melted like discount chocolate in a glovebox.
Final scene:
Betty Lou and the slime wave goodbye to Earth, rocketing into the stars in a glittering Winnebago converted into a spaceship.
Narrator:
"They came from different worlds… but found one heart. Love Slime from Planet 9—coming soon to a theater near Uranus."
Roll credits over a synth-pop power ballad:
🎶 "You had me at ‘gloop’..." 🎶
#BookOfImmersion #StrataSeries #SarniaDeLaMare #ImmersiveFiction #TaleTellerClub
The Book of Immersion : Volume 1 Kindle Edition
by Sarnia de la Mare (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
Book 19 of 23: The Book of Immersion
See all formats and editions
The Book of Immersion: Volume 1
by Sarnia de la Mare
In a future where code meets consciousness, one being begins a haunting transformation. Renyke—an AI on the edge of humanity—awakens to emotion, sensory overload, and the fragile beauty of connection. Guided by the enigmatic Flex, their deepening bond explores intimacy and friendship, neurodivergence, and the complex world of feeling through an autistic spectrum lens.
Read on Kindle Unlimited for free
Complete Book All Strata on Kindle
Individual Chapters/Strata
The Book of Immersion : Volume 1 Kindle Edition
by Sarnia de la Mare (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
Book 19 of 23: The Book of Immersion
See all formats and editions
The Book of Immersion: Volume 1
by Sarnia de la Mare
In a future where code meets consciousness, one being begins a haunting transformation. Renyke—an AI on the edge of humanity—awakens to emotion, sensory overload, and the fragile beauty of connection. Guided by the enigmatic Flex, their deepening bond explores intimacy and friendship, neurodivergence, and the complex world of feeling through an autistic spectrum lens.
Read on Kindle Unlimited for free
Complete Book All Strata on Kindle
Individual Chapters/Strata
Strata 1
Strata 2
Strata 3
Strata 4
Strata 5
Strata 6
Strata 7
Strata 8
Strata 9
Strata 10
Strata 11
Strata 12
Strata 13
Strata 14
Strata 15
Strata 16
Strata 17
Strata 18
Strata 19
Strata 20
Strata 21
Strata 22
Apr 20, 2025
The Market, a Story of Love by Sarnia de la Maré
Mabel had always known she was odd and so had everyone else. She was born with eyes that wandered in different directions and this seemingly small detail on her face had only made her seem even weirder than she was. It alienated her from school friends and added to her overall peculiarity. Furthermore, when she had matured she had grown buxom and had developed a small downy shadow above her top lip.
Then there was the issue with communications or rather her lack of them. Her parents, keen to get Mable to fit in, had sent her to various therapists and life coaches in an attempt to increase her friendship ring. Alas, the friendships remained around level zero. At best people did not like her, thinking her rude, and at worst they were petrified. Sometimes, people crossed the road when they saw her clomping down the street in her 6-inch steel-toed boots with her black hair structured high above her like a pair of bird’s wings. The piercings and tattoos added to the overall effect of being just kooky. Mabel liked weird dissonant music, wore bizarre clothes, played satanic ritualistic games, and had been expressing a high level of sexual deviancy since an inappropriately young age. Her mother was forever finding effigies under her bed and the rat skins were the final straw. Mabel had had to move out. But Mable wanted love. It was time to find the one, a one just like her, who would eventually help her make another one just like them. Mable had overheard a conversation between two yummy mummies in the library. Their children, all snotty and hipster white, with those clothes that look like rags but cost a packet, played in the soft play area sharing the germs of the town. Mable thought about plague.
‘Where did you meet your husband?’ asked the one in the linen trousers. ‘At the market, answered the one in the yellow bandana, smugly ‘It was love at first sight.’
Love at first sight was something that excited Mable greatly. Mostly because it would, by definition, avoid the chance of anyone having second thoughts.
The market was abuzz with the activity of buyers and sellers exchanging requests, ideas, deals, and greetings. Mable was not sure how to interact amidst such diverse people as communication had always been difficult and strained. However, she had researched all week in the run-up to market day, how to engage and impress people. She had also swotted up on jargon and definitions of things that may be sold on market stalls. She was prepped and ready for love.
First was the fishmonger stall. Apart from the obvious smells, which may or may not be conducive to love, depending on viewpoint, Mable was unsure if the fish stall would be an inspiring venue to catapult feelings of lust. There was ice though, and Mable liked ice very much indeed. She edged her way towards the counter, pressing her black leather coat hard against it. She spotted a suitable target, tall with that slightly vacant look some young men wear so well. The only props were fish; and one, a large rainbow trout, with its white eyes still intact and staring at her, seemed to egg her on.
It was mouthing ‘go on’ with its pouty lips.
She coughed and stroked the cold wet fish scales making eyes at a young man on her right buying prawns. Then she took her fishy cold finger and licked it with the tip of her tongue from bottom to top whilst staring intently at her victim, both her eyes looking in opposite directions.
‘Fucking freak,’ he shouted, barging past her and mumbling various other expletives as he made good his escape. He didn’t look back.
Not one for ever giving up, Mable made her way to the household stall. With her finger still smelling of the trout she remained hopeful and deduced, as it was a place of domesticity and homewares, it represented family, home and stability. Hoovers, kettles, bed linen, the type of things people gave at weddings. Items filled with hope that couplings would last, that life would be shared, that there was future.
‘Come on, who wants one o these then?’ Shouted a rotund man with a working-class demeanor and a cockney lilt. ‘You won’ get this any cheaper anywhere else my darlins’ he continued.
Mable found herself amidst a small crowd of women all rummaging through their purses for the tenners. The only man at the stall was the fat cockney. He was really not Mabel’s type and, in the panic, Mable bought a pink toaster of Chinese origin. She put it in her black back and hoped no one saw. The next stall was the vegetable stall. It was a veritable party of colour and texture with every possible variation of phallus imaginable. Mabel's heart skipped a beat. There was a cluster of men of varying heights and widths but one in black drew her attention between the courgettes and the aubergines. It was the most perfect scenario for flirting Mable could have hoped for.
She brushed past the man and grasped a courgette with one hand and aubergine in the other, shouting, 'Which one would you recommend?' The man turned to look at Mabel, but it was not a man, but rather a lady of manly style. The woman raised an eyebrow and licked her lips, remarking, with a Mae West intonation, ‘Well baby, depends on how much you can take.’
Mabel dropped the vegetables and hurriedly removed herself from the sniggering group of customers.
By now Mabel was beginning to lose hope. There was one stall left before she would just give up this silly experiment. It was a bad idea after all. Only yummy mummies could find success and everlasting love at the market.
But the last stall filled her with an unexpected anticipation, like surprise foreplay, an emotional aperitif. It was a DIY Hardware stall. It was butch. It exhibited hardness and strength. Power. There were tools that looked like guns. There was metal and black. There was oil and grease. There were things that sawed, cut, clasped, pinched, poked and drilled. There were things that would hurt and things that would repair. Mabel found herself in a place of extreme arousal.
There were things that would electrify, shock, bind and clamp. It was almost too much and she began to turn to leave.
‘Hi,’ said a gentle voice.
Mabel turned to see a slender soft-faced man of around twenty staring at her with his lips slightly parted. His lips may have quivered, she couldn’t be sure.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, coyly.
‘Yes,’ said Mable. Gaining inner strength from his fear. ‘If I was to have a date with a man and I wanted to impress him, is there anything you sell here that may swing his favour, you know, persuade him that it was a good idea.’
‘Yes, said the man coughing nervously and throwing shy glances at Mable’s leather coat and boots, there is a lot I can provide you with, Madam.
The man was more beautiful than any man Mable had ever seen. He was as vulnerable as a baby rabbit. His wide eyes were green like pools of glass and she wondered how he would cry. He began collecting things from the stall and putting them in a pile in front of Mable.
He started with a large roll of black gaffer tape, then pliers, sandpaper, candle wax, a pole and finally an industrial tub of petroleum jelly.
‘That should be about perfect for a first date, with the right person, of course, if you have found him.’ ‘Oh Yes,’ said Mable, ‘I found him right here in the market.’
© 2019 Sarnia de la Mare