The Daily Postcard

Catch up with me at Twitter

2009-02-14T01:30:00.003Z

Hi,

Just thought I'd say, you can catch up with me on Twitter. I'll be posting random bits of writing here:

http://twitter.com/paulbernard

Cheers,

Paul.

Thank you and goodnight

2009-01-05T23:55:00.004Z

Well, it has been 12 months since I first set up my Blogger account and started my yearlong quest to keep writing and publishing.
I pretty much managed it, every week day, throughout 2008 (with a few short breaks, for my sanity) but now I must bring the journey to a close.
I wasn’t sure if I’d get through the year without admitting defeat. I’m glad I stuck it out. I also wasn’t sure if anyone would read the stories. I have been so proud, this past year, that people I’ve never met should take the time to read and comment on my writing.
I never tried to publicise the blog much, and for a while I didn’t have many readers. But that all changed when Blogger awarded me ‘Blog of Note’ status for The Daily Tale (my non-picture based story blog).
Overnight, I found myself with an audience of thousands, plus many commentators, which was exciting and a little overwhelming at once. It was difficult to hold everyone’s attention. I’m not sure which parts of the year were my creative peaks, or whether the blog’s popularity coincided with these. I often found the most popular pieces were not the ones I expected, or my favourites, but I was glad people liked them (or at least felt moved to comment) all the same.
Anyway, a nice collective of people stayed interested through the course of The Daily Tale, but I needed to freshen up the blog to keep me interested in it. So, halfway through the year, I opened up a new blog – this one – The Daily Postcard. My idea was to separate the two blogs and keep each as distinct archives of my work.
The Daily Postcard gave me a chance to publish many of the photos I’ve been taking over the last couple of years, and also use them as the basis for writing stories. Sometimes the confines of the picture were a blessing to the writing process, sometimes a hindrance. Still, it was a fine experiment, I think.
I’d particularly like to thank the crop of readers who stayed with me until the end of the project and for all your kind comments and support. It’s especially pleasing that you guys are all such fantastic bloggers and having such superb writers as yourselves reading my work, and hopefully enjoying it, is something I’ve cherished. I’ll have more time to read your blogs now so keep up the great work.
It will be strange not to write every day, but I’m looking forward to exploring other creative outlets (such as music) and then I’ll get back to writing, either some full length short stories, or perhaps a novella, or something bigger…
Rest assured, as I come up with short tales and other ideas I will post them either to the Daily Tale or Daily Postcard sites so keep an eye out for them!
Ok, well I think that’s it from me. All that’s left to say is – thanks, so much, for reading.

Paul.

The living and the dead

2009-01-02T20:04:00.002Z

Sebastian,

I trust this note finds you - it’s difficult to track you down at the best of times. Still, if you’ve been trying to get in touch with me, you won’t have managed it and I’ve sadly missed out on your fine words.
What must be must be, though, Sebastian. I was thrown from my digs a few months back and had to find whatever shelter I could. The church saved me.
Now, some people say it’s hard to be dead but I just don’t agree. I’ve been living in the grounds of this church for a while now and not noticed their hardship. The dead sleep better than the living and, when they wake, they have little to worry them. The dead do not disturb me.
Sometimes I’ve heard them whispering or moving rocks and leaves about, but they’re not interested in me. I’m as dead as they are.
It’s not been all fine here, but the priest is an understanding fellow and turns a blind eye to us, as often as he can. We stay out of the churchyard in the day, when people might be visiting. It’s a large cemetery and crypt here at St Theresa’s and it’s been easy to hide our existence from others. Fr Mead has warned us that if a needle is found in the churchyard he will be forced to call the police. I regard that as only fair.
I’m staying here with some friends – Millie, who I’m very fond of, also Gregor and his brother Tony. There was an incident a few months back, a group of guys throwing rocks and insults at us. We managed to get away from them, but they trashed our stuff.
The next day, we were drinking and Millie went back early because she felt ill and needed to sleep. They were waiting; she said it was the same guys. They were merciless with her. It brings me such pain to recall the sight of her when we found her there.
She said she’d be alright, that it wasn’t the first time it had happened. She didn’t want to go to hospital because they’d involve the police and then we’d all be moved on. So we looked after her as best we could. The men never came back.
I’m sorry I don’t have brighter news for you, Sebastian. Maybe I’ll see you, friend, next time you’re near the old church? Know that I think of you, often.

Your friend,

Robert.

The fish wife

2009-01-01T20:11:00.004Z

When the fish started talking to the man, rather than being staggered, the man simply found the sea creature rather rude.
The fish had interrupted a perfectly lovely conversation between the fellow (a middle-aged man, called Leonard) and a pretty young thing he had met at the docks.
The fish began to bleat quite pathetically: “My name is Susan, and I shall not be ignored!” The man, Leonard, tried his best to ignore this imposition for as long as he could, knowing full well that, were he to engage the fish in conversation, his pretty young conquest would soon turn heel and run.
But, just as a guilty conscience bangs the head like a hammer and nail, so the streamlined fish continued to shout up from the water: “I’m still here Leonard, stop ignoring me at once. I will be spoken to, remember, I need you to purchase some items for me – from the store.”
Leonard ignored the blue-eyed fish for as long as he could. He liked the way the young girl smiled at him and touched his hand occasionally. This was a sign of affection that his wife, Susan, never offered him.
“Who are you talking to up there?” snapped the fish, swimming out and away from the quayside to better sight the young woman.
“Hah! Why she’s nothing other than a common whore. Stop wasting your pathetic lusts on this floozy and run along to the shop to fetch my supplies,” shouted the fish, slapping with its tail to send a spray of water up to soak the couple. “I shall make you very sorry if you do not!” came its companion cry.
With that, Leonard’s calm reserve subsided and he turned upon the fish with a volley of verbal abuse. “You fish wife, you scaly serpent, your gills are blocked shut with venom which you spit forth at your erstwhile husband. Why, I should not hope to meet such a slippery eel as yourself again, and yet I find myself tied to you for eternity in matrimonial bondage!”
The fish chuckled to itself, at this tirade, and the pretty young maid did indeed turn fleet-footed from the scene and the middle-aged man was left to trudge wearily to the grocer’s store and purchase the few items she had sent him for.
Then he walked slowly, back to the quayside, and upended the brown paper bag of groceries into the water, whereby Susan, the blue-eyed fish, hungrily gobbled up this new and tasty flotsam.
She then waited, maintaining her position through small bristling movements of her fins, as her husband clambered down the rusting iron ladder on the wharf and plopped into the cold waters, beside her.
“Come along, dear,” said Susan, and they both swam off, away from the docks and on into deeper waters.

To remember

2008-12-31T17:39:00.003Z

I remember you; the grass running free in the meadow and you rolling through it. I remember you standing atop a narrow boat, your reflection in the water bejewelled by the sunlight.
I remember touching you, whenever I wanted, never having to hold back. I remember that day, on the towpath, tugging you along though you were scared of the water.
There was breeze, yet there was sun; there was fire and there was fear. Still, we ploughed on, didn’t we?
Do you remember the autumn coming? Ensnaring auburn leaves in your hair? Catching patchouli wafting from that bright boat we passed? Kissing my eyes and mouthing ‘I love yous’; breathless and silent, feeling the shape of the words through close-pressed lips.
Staying, that night, beneath stars we hadn’t seen for years. A bitter cold night, but we moved slowly and surely, sculpting one body against the other so there was no room for icy air to intervene. Do you remember it all?
Funny how it has come to me now. I hope it crosses your mind too, from time to time. I worry you never think of me at all.

Sensing hope

2008-12-30T21:36:00.007Z

After what they told me was a passing of thirteen days of my life, they moved me to a room where I could see daylight.
And not just see the sky outside, but taste the air; breathe and smell it. Winter is a cruel time for colour and the sky was blanched grey: no remedy there for the cold stones of my cell. Still, it offered such respite for my soul that I put all thoughts of giving in and wasting away, there in captivity, firmly aside.
I thought this view might help me to better understand or even recall how I came to my current predicament. I was trapped in a stone hewn cell, perhaps like that of a castle or medieval keep. The thin, overcast, corridors were lit by torches.
The guards ordered me about in grunts and arm movements. My interrogators questioned me in broken, halting English. They were all white-skinned, of obvious European descent, but their accents were seemingly impossible to place.
Their questions, too, were a source of perplexity: "How many kings have reigned during your lifetime? Do you remember the last time you saw your mother? How many times have you attempted suicide? Have you ever been to South-East Asia?"
They would ask these in a barrage – one after the other – seemingly not recording the answers. I have no idea which questions they needed the answers too, nor if the answers to all of these questions were of interest to them.
It may have been a psychological exercise or an information extraction. All I know is that I had difficulty recalling much of the information they required. My mother, for example; I have no recollection of her whereabouts, nor where I last met with her. This seems to be a cause of real sadness to me.
I’m drifting now, between consciousness and sleep. I’m peering along the tiny passage, as wide as my fist and barred at both ends with barbed wire. I’m peering out in some vain hope of salvation. And then I hear something, a song from the outside world; a call of nature.
A dark bird sings and I am undone, for it is the caw of a crow. I don’t know whether to call myself blessed or cursed, but I find myself making the strangest of sounds. My throat feels like it is being strangled, torn by internal wires. Still, I struggle loose a caw of my own, a quite realistic call. Where did I ever learn to do that?
I cough a little and then wait. Sure enough, after a small time, I am answered. My body floods with warmth and a smile greets my face.
Somehow, I know now, there is hope.

The devil's hand

2008-12-29T19:51:00.002Z

The silver coin weighed him down, played on his conscience. Neil’s grey hair, was parted and greasy and flopping into his face as he stared down at the mugshot of capitalism. It eyed him coolly in return as a magic mirror, almost smirking remembering the spinning lies and the possible future it had once shown him.
He tossed the coin away then, as the thunder rumbled in the hills behind the city. There would be a flood, soon, but not that day. The rains never reached the city until late summer, but the devil walked freely there.
So Neil saw it: the evil twists of his life’s story. He guessed at a sinister edge of dark magic being accountable for his wretched decline in wealth and status. Perhaps men like Neil refuse to see the truth in such situations, for to see the truth would be to accept blame, to understand one’s own fallibility and take blame for one’s own actions and the outcome of their risks.
So Neil kicked on through the black heart of a city that seemed dead, now that trading hours had ceased. And there, he found himself; his head repeatedly pressing itself up against the tastefully lit windows of designer stores.
He saw the devil, there. Somewhere between Buddha and baby it laughed at him in its perverse infant nudity, all red and burning. Behind it lay the stuff of temptation and greed and pride.
And, from its nascent sulphurous palm, Neil struggled to climb free.

Happy Christmas

2008-12-25T23:51:00.000Z

Hello dear readers,

Hope you're having a wonderful Christmas. I am not going to post a tale on Christmas Day or Boxing Day.

See you next week when hopefully I shall be more sober, full of leftover turkey and with more stories to end the year.

Paul.

The tidewalker

2008-12-24T23:40:00.001Z

She used to tell him that the moon brought lovers together. She’d say that its great actions in the heavens would draw souls together, magnetised by lunar cycles and destined to cling forever to the other.
He’d laugh, of course, and kiss her forehead and they’d both sigh and wish it were true. When he lost her – lost her to doubt, fear and perennial lust – he had an epiphany soon after.
He began to believe her idea, about the moon and the souls of young lovers. He began to imagine this intangible thread running always from him to her. It was now tightly drawn, and straining across a great distance of space and mind, but it existed all the same.
So he came to thinking that the flow of the tides could help him to find her; that the gravitational pull of the satellite moon would be the strongest at high tide. That if he were to stand on a beach, when the yearly tide was at its highest, there was a good chance she’d be there, on that same stretch of beach, searching for him too.
So there he was, on December 14th, 2008, his shoes filling with salt-water, his trousers sopping and him flinching in the chill. He was there, on a desolate winter’s beach, strolling through the surf, walking the tide.
Nobody else was on the beach that bitter day but, in the icy sting of the salt spray, a song came to him, shuffling forth from his memories.
It was a song she sometimes sang and it always made him smile. Somehow, he had lost this memory to time, and now the clawing December tide had returned it to him along with a clear visual memory of her face, fair and glowing, at Christmastime.
He stood there, tidewalking, for as long as his shivering body could stand the winter sea. And, all the while, he smiled.

The melting prayer

2008-12-23T23:00:00.000Z

Religion is such a wonderful thing. Believers feel they can invoke it, as a warlock would a magic spell, to bring their dreams to life.
Here is a religious bribe; a treat with a message for selfish needs. A big tin of Quality Street with a sticker on it saying: “Thank you for your prayers that I get into Pembroke! Have a chocolate!”
Quality Street is a popular brand of confectionery, and Pembroke is a respected college within Oxford University. How do scholarly life and the aspect of the Christian pulpit become so intangibly entwined?
I asked myself that question as I toured the sacrosanct chapels of the Oxford conglomerate; saw the enlightened ministers of the written word that studied nearby; inspected the towers of beer cans they had drained, we all laughed to see such fun.
And there, on the dark oaken table, next to the postcard of Michael defeating Lucifer, sat the tin of temptation; the treat-laden box of delights with the begging message: pray for me, just me. Pray for me and perhaps I will enter these hallowed halls and be better. Better than you, or better than most.
Pray for me. Pray for me and have a chocolate. Pray for my intercession unto the right hand of the dons.

Into the vapour

2008-12-22T23:51:00.000Z

What a thrill it is to walk unguided into the syrupy mist. What wonders might await you in the lands you cannot see?
Usually the landscape of your home is a thing of ornamental ordinariness to you. When the fog cloys and the mists choke the trees and bushels, the houses of your neighbours and the fields of the farmers are less obscured than actually lost to sight and so knowledge. Only on closer exploration can an explanation for their existence be found.
When I was a young lad, my older brother told me that when the mist descended upon the park to the rear of our house it offered us a strange chance; to reach a land of dinosaurs.
If we might tread carefully and absolutely correctly, along the grey concrete path cut through the centre of the oval park, then we might find ourselves coming through the spectral mist into a land of thunderous lizards.
We’d set off to school with excitement in our hearts and I’d hold his hand tight as we stepped into the fogbound field. Sometimes all we could see ahead of us was the cool grey path. And I swear that, sometimes, I could hear the cumbersome roar of giant beasts, lurking somewhere ahead in the strange smog.
We never made it to that prehistoric land he conjured up but, whenever the mists return and the world returns to the haze of childhood, I tend to think, there’s always next time...

From the forest to the sea: The House

2008-12-19T22:20:00.000Z

So he returned to the clearing, dragged and heaved the body, scraped along the path and then on into the trees.
He stopped some way along the journey. The woman’s dress had caught and was now up over her head, revealing her underwear. He slowly and quite gently replaced the dress, for he felt her shame.
Soon he came to the old house. He saw no-one on the narrow dirt track through the trees and he left the forest cover and approached the dilapidated property.
He followed the message he had received via the beacon. He took the body to the first floor of the house and laid it in the large room to the west. He was able to prise up some of the rotting floorboards and drop the corpse there.
He stood and looked for a little while, spied to see if the woman’s hand was showing, or if her cold eyes regarded him in return.
When he was at last satisfied, he left the house with a glance to each side, and he never went back there again.

From the forest to the sea: The Beacon

2008-12-18T23:35:00.000Z

He crossed the dunes. His plan – to return to and burn the body – itched at his scalp. It was wrong, somehow.
He needed to ask a higher power, but the sea was not granting him communion today. Then he spied the great spear, the beacon which could connect him to heaven, and he rubbed against it and kissed it and spoke sweetly to it.
And, sure enough, the wires rippled and whispered to him in a strange breeze of tongues. He waited there for comprehension. He pieced together the voice from the strings.
He smiled when he understood. Its message was as beautiful as the strumming of the lyre.

From the forest to the sea: The Shore

2008-12-17T22:16:00.000Z

He spent a while looking into the vegetation. His eyes couldn’t pick the body out and he was satisfied. It safely hidden, he went to ask the sea what to do next.
The rich dark wet sand crumbled under his mighty footstep; the killer, come to the almighty sea like a pilgrim to Delphi. He sat down, cross-legged on the deserted shore. He listened to the waves as they whispered their commands.
After a time, he got up and snarled at the sea birds. The messages were all garbled and confused. He didn’t know what to do next.

From the forest to the sea: The Clearing

2008-12-16T23:19:00.004Z

At the edges of the forest the trees were leafy and deciduous.
He dragged the battered body to the treeline and hesitated at the clearing. It seemed a lane, running from the dunes back to the inhabited world. It was a potential giveaway, a total lack of vegetation to cover his sin. Yet, where were the people? Where the witnesses?
He bent down and examined the corpse for signs of animation: a gargled breath, a sinister movement (for he could have sworn it jerked and spasmed still, such is the wont of the restless dead).
It lay still though, like yesterday’s doll. It almost made him want to cry, so he hauled it over the path and dumped the heavy load down, amid the longer grass and nettles; kicking it until it rolled down a shallow bank and under the trees again.

From the forest to the sea: The Forest

2008-12-15T23:11:00.002Z

He killed her in the forest, while she was walking alone.
The sun shone its brilliant light through the thin canopy of pines. She saw him, smiled a hello, let him approach.
She bit his fingers as she struggled. He lifted her off the ground as he strangled her. She didn’t stop fighting until her head hit the tree.

Dragging the millstone

2008-12-12T23:35:00.004Z

The stone hit with a thud and a whine. There was no movement, thereafter.
Though it was late afternoon, nobody was around the village green and no cars were driving past. Charlie acted quickly, dragging the body by the scruff of its neck away from the open lawn where it lay and soon into the bushes and soon into the trees.
He knew the hidden ways well, places where he’d hide and watch the children play. The body was surprisingly light. He looked back at it for a minute and saw blood pooling upon the crack in its head, mixing with hair and dead leaves.
When he was a safe distance from the village, he thought of leaving the carcass in the trees to rot, or for animals to feast upon. But his eyes heard the babbling of the brook and he was soon sliding down the bank with the small body trailing behind him. They made two firm splashes as they hit the water. He stopped to peer about the banks, for signs of fisherman or nosey children, but the area was as silent as any a dull day in Breckford ever was.
As he dragged downstream, the body grew heavier with water and his arm soon weakened. He eventually decided he would find a deepish pool, under overhanging branches, and weight the body down with stones.
Charlie looked down at the sad bedraggled creature he had killed. Blood mingled in tugging draughts from its head wound, matting its fur. Its pink tongue lolled from its once snarling mouth. Its tail hung pathetically and uselessly behind, like some broken rudder.
Still, it soon sank, and the stones fell slowly to crush its bones.
Charlie withdrew, up the bank, covering his pants with mud. On the shivering walk home his mind whirred with excuses, ready for the parental inquisition to come.

A future explosion

2008-12-11T23:44:00.002Z

Though he touched her and felt alive, he found himself more afraid of this girl than he had been afraid of anything, at any time in his life.
Her priapic presence was a joy to him, a real joy. He wanted to sing it to every man he met, that he was there, that he was at last in love. So long a disbeliever, he'd finally succumbed. He had found his faith; his calling.
Looking at her, as she slept, he examined what it could be that induced this terror in him, something that disturbed his slumber and worried him all day at work and then later when they ate (and he ate, but a little).
He analysed his fear, and it had always been aimed at the future. With other women, he had no such fear. The future was something unbeknownst, and he always felt that it would not contain the woman he was seeing at the time.
Now, however, the future was different, almost clearer. But it seemed to him a green field with a paradisiacal beach at the other side of it. This green field looked, at first glance, inviting; a thing to stroll across on a sunny day, arm-in-arm with one’s lover.
Stare at the scene, at the field, for a second or two, and see that it is strewn with ruptured bodies and dangerous craters caused by the eruption of once buried landmines parked, shallowly, beneath the lush and healthy exterior of the field.
This field, of his, was a trial. Everyday he would have to step carefully across it, measuring the green blades below with the progression of his feet, striving to cross with safety, without explosion.
He was scared because he now had to try and navigate this field, not alone, but tied to another who must somehow be shielded from potential carnage, underfoot.
As he lay there in bed – scratching his arm, a light sweat upon him – the bright beach seemed very, very far away.

The inevitable waters

2008-12-10T22:45:00.000Z

The tide is rolling in now. I can hear it coming. I can feel it. And with each roll, my stomach turns and my knuckles go white.
I’ve never been scared of the sea before; I’ve never really thought about drowning or the creatures that lurk in its murkier depths, but it’s all I can think of now. When I come to the beach it fills me with dread.
A few days ago I had to tell Sylvie I was ill. There was no hiding it any longer; she’d done well to pretend she hadn’t noticed it in me. She looked at me for a while, right in my eyes, then welled up and asked if I was going to die. I told her that I didn’t know, that they didn’t know.
I stroked her arm, like it was her who was sick, and told her to sit down. It dawned on her this information wasn’t new, that I had likely been keeping it from her for a good while.
She asked me why I’d not mentioned this sooner, but I didn’t know what to tell her. She asked me how I’d managed to get myself to and from appointments, perhaps tests and procedures, without her help. She asked me earnestly and I just sadly shook my head.
She looked up slowly from the bed and queried with her eyes. Even more slowly, she shook her own beautiful head. Eventually, she stood up and pushed past me. I listened for her and heard the front door open and close, then the ignition of a car’s engine.
She hasn’t been home since. She must have picked Greta up and taken her too, because she never came home from school that day. I’d made ratatouille, just in case they came home. I ate what I could manage and threw the rest away.
I shan’t come to the beach much more, I think. I can’t get what I need from the water, it seems. Not anymore.
Ha! And now it seems it’s going to piss down upon me from above too. Well, if I’m not going to jump in, it’ll still drown me in the end, I suppose.

Notes left for someone to find

2008-12-09T22:50:00.002Z

Calling from the hole;
The cracks beside this bed, will echo sounds lost through reams
Of scholarly failures before me,
Crying you to sleep or awakening your dreams.

And which of us will remain?
Ghosts walking among are soon to linger with kindred.
We may all be able to leave
But the house keeps a token; how large, depends on the dead.

Different now
From the moment of entry – yesterday or last year –
Change entraps time, snorkelling our memories;
Discarding flotsam, lampooning fear.

Time seems of little importance,
Life, at the time, now forgotten, along with the point of it all?
No deep truths, well, will we understand,
Here, our time is over, and soon some voice else will call.

We begin anew, elsewhere, somewhere
Separated, yet together; connected. You’ll find
You have the chance, here, now,
Not to understand your deep truths, rather the ones we leave behind.

The end of the rails

2008-12-08T23:20:00.002Z

I’ve been driving the trams for years. ‘It’s a fine life,’ I always said, when people asked me. It’s not boring, like they think.
There’s a strange sort of freedom that comes with the trams. No-one understands that, when I say it to them. ‘Trams are stuck on rails,’ they say. ‘There’s nowhere to go than where you always go. A bus driver, even a train driver will need to go a different way sometimes, but you’re always on the same rails, going the same way, day after day.’
I find it hard to explain why I feel free on the trams. I can never explain my thoughts clearly when people ask after that. I tell them, sometimes, in reply, that I believe God has put before us a hundred and two different ways and means of getting through the day, every day. And if we thought, about all the different decisions we made in one single day, and where these all might have taken us, if we’d done things differently, then we might all go completely mad.
You see, these decisions, they’re taken away from me – when I’m on the rails. I only have to stop and start when either the lights or the people ringing the bell tell me to. Everything else has been decided for me. And I’m free, then. Do you see?
Found out I had some sort of chronic anaemia this year. Doctor didn’t recommend I kept working on the trams. Could be dangerous; if I got tired, you see. Could get sick from meeting so many people, too. Immune system’s buggered now, apparently.
So, the company are retiring me. Can’t get insurance for me to drive the trams, anymore. I’m into my last week on the route, this week. A couple of women brought me a card the other day; said they were very sorry to see me go, that I was the only friendly driver on the route, these days. That was nice to hear. Someone else said she had a present for me, but every morning she says she’s forgotten it and will bring it in tomorrow. She’s got so much to think about in the morning you see, so many decisions to make.
People tell me it’ll be great when I’m finished on the trams. That I’ll have so much time to relax and enjoy life; do all the things I missed out on while I was travelling the rails. But, truth be told, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know what to do; what can I do?
When the rails run out, there’s only roads to travel and paths to choose. Sometimes it seems all too much, this choice, the unlimited journeys we can make. It all gets so overwhelming that I can’t think of anything else. I don’t feel free anymore and I can see the end of the rails coming up fast. All I want to do is turn around, and go back the way I came.

A century of postcards

2008-12-08T23:15:00.003Z

I've made it to 100 Daily Postcards now. I like to mark things like that.

Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me and read on, especially if you've been a reader since The Daily Tale.

The year's nearly up and the stories are nearly done...

Following Annabel (part two)

2008-12-05T22:51:00.002Z

His juddering hand pressed lightly upon the white door, to see if it could be pushed open. The door felt like ice. Such a jolt of cold went through him when he touched it that it almost repelled him from the house altogether. But then came the moans of Annabel filtering through the cracks around the door, he had to enter.
Wrapping his hand in his sleeve, he gripped the door handle. It seemed almost frozen to the touch but it turned and the door slowly opened before him. He took a step back as a blast of icy, reeking air flowed out over him.
The man staggered a little under the charnel stench, but stumbled forward into the room. His senses were reeling; he rubbed his eyes and lurched towards something he might hold onto. In the strange twilight of the room, he saw red carpets running into purple walls. He found a supporting pillar and leant against it in a daze.
There was a strange fog in this room, it was stopping him from understanding quite what was real here. He tried to look through it, to peer through the wisps to the motion beyond, the place where he could hear Annabel struggling.
He stumbled on then, brushing the effervescing smoke away and walking into a couch, which he rolled over and lolled upon in a stupor. He could see her now, Annabel in the fog. Her eyes were closed and she was leaning back against the cloud that enveloped her. Her black blouse had been removed and she was twitching a little and murmuring in seeming ecstasy.
Around her, the cloud was snaking into some kind of form. Nothing precise and definite, but there was a sensation of form, of a grey shape stroking her body and holding her in space.
The sight of Annabel’s bare white breasts, moving in the asphixiating room, shook the man and angered him. His fear draining away, he ran to the girl and grabbed her, wresting her from the spectral form that danced upon her flesh. She opened her eyes then, but her pupils had rolled back in her head.
She pushed the man back against the wall, kissing him and scratching at his neck. He wanted to succumb to this, all of this, the reason why she brought him here, the limits of strange lust and desire, the complete wanton destruction and devastation of the soul. But he opened his eyes then, and saw the fine grey mist grow thicker and less gaseous. Its form grew darker, like an oily pulp, pulsating and flowing forward towards them.
A thousand futures seemed to race through his mind as the sludge descended. Would he give himself to an eternity of urges and feelings?
Instead, he pushed Annabel hard, back into the open arms of the thing that possessed her and ran for the door. He flew from the room and bounded down the stairs. He noticed a thin layer of smoke trailing from under the doors in the ground floor rooms and he kicked at the grey mist as he pulled open the front door.
Spying a motor-scooter further down the street, he hopped on and forced the engine to start. He heard the gutteral scream of a young woman from a room somewhere above him and saw thick black smoke pouring from a shuttered window. Not for a second, though, did he think to go back for her. Not for a moment.
Soon he was propelled along upon a moped, whizzing out of the warren of the back streets; every second getting closer to sanity.

Following Annabel

2008-12-04T23:51:00.002Z

He bought a new hat before he met her today. He wanted to look a little offbeat, out of sync with the world around him. He felt sure that would appeal to her.
She was so cool, so sure of herself. She didn't look like an Annabel. Her hair flowed pitch black down her back, her blue eyes stoked those around her with intense excitement; her lips, ruddy and enticing, she'd bite them when she was thinking. She'd bite sometimes while she was kissing, too.
She didn't mention the hat when she saw him, but she looked at it and smiled wryly. She kissed him slowly on the cheek and drew her fingers slowly down his face as she withdrew. Those same fingers then wrapped tightly around his hand and she set off, running at a startling place. "There's somewhere wonderful I've found," she shouted back at him. "I want to show you."
They danced through the back streets of the city. Flying down alleyways and along narrow streets he saw a world that he'd never noticed before: the city in daylight as a warren, almost deserted.
And then on a thin, overhanging street she slowed and walked quite genteelly to a door ajar. "I don't know how I found it, the first time," she said softly to him, smiling excitedly, "But it welcomed me, all the same. That's how it felt, anyway."
The girl shook her head then, as if she had been speaking gibberish and undoing all the hard work she'd put in establishing her casual persona.
When he stepped through the door, the young man was surprised to see the still furnished hallway of an apartment building. There even seemed to be a communal phone connected there.
Annabel looked back at him from the staircase. She’d already bounded halfway up one flight. Her head was turned towards him. She bit her lip and held her hand out, beckoning him.
He wanted to go upstairs with her, so much, but something about the house left him uncertain and uneasy. He stepped slowly towards the stairs, listening intently for some sound from this dead house. There was nothing. He stepped onto the first step as Annabel said, “Hurry! Come on!” and disappeared up the second flight. He heard her padding on across the landing. He was so scared of going up there with her, he looked for a reason not to go. Was that blood on the stair carpet? He almost wanted it to be, but he kept on, plodding up the stairs, feeling colder and more awkward with each step.
It seemed to take an age to clear the stairs and reach the landing. Why did he feel such dread? There were four doors, all closed, and the window shutters were all fastened. Where was Annabel?
He saw more stains on the carpet of the landing, more stains on the wall and, then, a bloody smear upon the old white door. Second to the left, a shaft of light illuminating the streak of red dried upon it. His body shook. What happened here?
He heard Annabel then. She was on the other side of this door. She was whimpering. And she was speaking to someone.

(To be continued...)

From a beautiful balcony

2008-12-03T20:10:00.003Z

From a beautiful balcony she saw the world. It was a world of constant blossom and energy; the kinetics of motion seemingly drawing a performance of life on and on before her lookout post.
She, Sarah, was a tender girl of 20 years; soft of face and lustrous of hair. Her young love, Theo, was the reason she watched out so much.
On the days she knew they would meet, she spent at least an hour before his arrival looking down upon the speeding world. This panoply of colour and sound would bring such a delighted smile to her mouth that she would often start to tremble with sheer joy, or perhaps shed a little tear for the world and all the beautiful things it had to show her. Even on the days it rained, she was happy by the teeming water tapping at her window.
When he eventually came (always five minutes early) she would see his black head bobbing along the street from quite a distance. Immediately her heart rate would increase and she might feel a little bit sick, but she would take a deep breath and follow his progress with her eyes.
When he got near to her balcony he would always look up to see her, but she was able to time this to perfection and always rolled away and around, back into the living room, to keep him waiting for his glimpse of her, to heighten the anticipation of their imminent embrace and kiss.
There was one day, just one day, when she looked out for him, looked out long and hard and she couldn’t see him. Her eyes flicked like a hungry tongue around the street, crossing to the other side and then back again. She felt sick, she was trembling, her eyes were tearful, but no sign of him. ‘He must just be running late,’ she told herself over and over. ‘He’s okay’.
But when the time came when she would usually twirl around away from the window, she simply fell to the floor, covered herself in her dress and wept. Not for long, though. It dawned on her that her Theo might be in trouble, somewhere near by. She must look for him, at least. She must do that.
And running down the stairs, without stopping to take a coat or change her shoes, she flung open the double doors of the house and then stopped dead. There, upon the first step, was a bouquet of delicate white roses, and smiling next to them was her love.
She stepped over the flowers, then, and threw herself into Theo’s arms, weeping some more and kissing his face, almost falling from the weight of the contrasting feelings she had been subject to these last minutes.
But he held her up and kissed her eyes, and found that he was weeping too.

The queen of all she surveys

2008-12-02T23:16:00.004Z

She looked out, across the flaming grass, upon a hot and salty scene. They’d left her there, while they played, or sat to talk and read; they left her there, in the shade.
It wasn’t as if they were thoughtless children or mean. It’s not as if they sought to dump their infirm gran as a young mother might disregard her newborn’s pram.
No, they thought she liked to sit alone, as regal as a queen upon her throne. They would slowly turn their heads to spy; see her relaxing and smiling or staring at planes in the sky.
They never knew what thoughts blistered her head, what screams twisted her dreams. Her smiles and waves were enough to share; they’d get no closer than when pushing her chair.
It was a torment to her, you know? Every moment she was propped before that show. With the pantheon of summer laid out before her – all pumping limbs and cart-wheeling hair – there’s grandma with the brakes on and the wheelchair, frozen in leering frustration before them, like a garden gnome.
The hours there, broken only by the short straw and trips taken to the lavatory door, until four o’clock comes and it’s not quite so warm. They forgot her cardigan you see, they forgot to leave it under the tree; so it’s time to stop having fun, ‘cos grandma might be getting cold. It's time to load her into the back of the car and drive her home.

In the undergrowth

2008-12-01T23:21:00.002Z

You hear people talking all around you when you’re a child. You’re too busy to listen, of course; it’s more a constant buzzing that encircles you, filled with boredom.
You learn to respond to certain tones or commands; else you’ll be grabbed, slapped or worse. But soon you find that the odd word begins to slip inside; is allowed through the net of interference and white noise.
I remember, when I was six years old, I heard my parents use the word murder in front of me for the first time. It’s funny how with some words you just know what they mean. Straight away, I knew this word was tinged with violence and death. I was scared of this word, but more I was scared of something I’d seen the week before.
On the bus on the way home from school, I’d seen a man lying in the undergrowth. I told the children on the bus and they laughed. I told my mum when I got home and she told me to stop being silly. When I insisted, she dismissed me by saying: “He was probably just having a lie down.”
I thought about it all night and in the morning, when dad was helping me to get dressed I told him I had seen a murder. He was shocked, of course, but from my description he soon realised my misunderstanding of the word ‘murder’, for it was the victim I thought I’d seen.
He didn’t tell my mum where we were going but we set out on his bike, me riding pillion and going faster than ever before.
I remembered a patch of “yellow flowers”. Weeds they were really but I called them yellow flowers. There were so many patches of these plants, from Naylor’s Farm all along the lane to Turnpike Road. It all seemed so familiar and my dad was shouting at me to remember and to stop bloody crying.
And then I saw the hand; rising from the grass like it just wanted to shake mine. I jumped up and down and moved in to grab it, but my dad stopped me. I looked once and saw a huge beetle perched on a white-brown index finger. I looked away then, for as long as I could.
I listened to what the noises of the undergrowth could tell me. I heard my dad flagging down a passing car. I heard him speaking something to a man and him joining us at the roadside. I heard one of them break a branch to use as a stick. Then rustling in the grass and the buzz of insects. Then a cry from a man and the sound of retching.
I opened my eyes and saw a stick lying on the roadside. My eyes scanned around it and there, in the undergrowth lay the uncovered hand connected to an uncovered arm, which was unconnected from anything else.
Everything else about that day fades away into a soft-edged dream. Mists come all over and swathe my memories in ambiguity. But I remember every detail of every moment I’d looked upon that repugnant limb.
I’d stared so hard at the severed arm; it felt like my eyelids had frozen. I’d stared until my dad regained his composure and picked me up and held me close so that I couldn’t see anything anymore.
Later, he would say sorry and hug me in front of my scowling mother. Later still, he would take it upon himself to come and comfort me, at my bedside, every night that I woke up screaming.

Fish heads and wolverines

2008-11-28T21:29:00.001Z

When they caught him, Francis said he’d been chasing fish heads and wolverines. He said he’d followed them until they returned to the river. Then they told him to take off all his clothes and swim with them.
Later the wolverine called him from the water on the other side and took him on a stroll through the park. He told the police this after they’d found him, naked and dripping in the cold afternoon.
They took Francis back to the station and took this strange statement from him. Later, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Francis was a minor celebrity. He had appeared on Big Brother, series three. Everyone in the house had quite liked him. He was funny and he cooked most of the time for them. He was open about himself and did not bitch about the others. He always said he prided himself on keeping his mouth shut, when needed.
He made it to the last four housemates and people cheered when he was released. Later that year, he hosted a cookery show on Channel Five. He was happy for that year and people would greet him in the street; complete strangers shaking his hand.
He even got ‘papped’ a few times. That is, the paparazzi would sometimes cross the street in front of him and take his picture for OK magazine or maybe even The News of the World.
And then it all went downhill for Francis (or Fat Frank, as he came to be known). His fall from grace has been well documented so we don’t need to go into that here. Suffice to say, he got well and he went back to trying to live his life.
He’d been out of the flashlight glare for some six months, when he noticed a man was following him. When he went into town, when he walked his dog, when he went to the shops of a morning, so many times he’d see this man out of the corner of his eye. He knew it was the same man, because he always wore the same clothes: blue t-shirt, blue jeans, white trainers. He always wore a t-shirt and showed his arms, even though it was cold, and he never wore a coat.
Francis was perturbed by this and noted that it was happening increasingly frequently. Still, he didn’t mention it to his wife, for fear that she’d think he was losing his mind again. Instead he planned to question this blue shirted man when next he spotted him and ask him to come clean about the reasons for this apparent stalking.
It was on a Saturday in early November of this year when he next saw the man. Francis was in town and had decided to explore some of the historic sites of the place that he had always just walked straight past. It was while he was up at the top of the cathedral, as part of a guided tour of the seldom opened north tower, that he spied his stalker once more. Francis looked with horror at the man, who was down in the street below, looking up. Despite the distance between them, the unmistakeable shape of a quite wicked smile then crossed the lips of the man as he pulled to his eye a small black camera fitted with a zoom lens, and began to snap, snap, snap away at the defenceless Francis.
Poor Francis; trapped between two old women on the thin walkway of the tower’s rampart, no room to squeeze by, nothing to do but stand and shout, howl and scream in utter frustration at this devil who was following him; tormenting him at every turn. The look of horror on the face of the old woman to his right was the last thing Francis remembered before he passed out on top of her.
He came to in the vestry below. Evidently someone had carried him there. They gave him warm tea and kept him warm until his wife came. He said nothing to them about the photographer, even though they asked. He knew well enough not to talk now.
And even after he was feeling better; and even after he was safe in his wife’s car; and even after he’d seen the man standing at every bus stop between the town centre and his home, Francis knew to say nothing.

The unconquerable walls

2008-11-27T23:25:00.001Z

The body of the old church looked pristine. It was so smooth, like the alabaster skin of a virgin bride. Jacob wanted to touch and stroke its walls. He longed to climb it, but he had little knowledge and still less skill when it came to such things.
Jacob had seen a man, on TV, called the human spider or some such epithet. He could climb up vertical structures, tall buildings with almost no footholds or handholds. All the time he’d push himself further, make the acts more dangerous, watch the crowds get bigger. Did they gather beneath him to see him succeed; to tackle this mighty and impossible edifice and defeat it? Or did they gather to see him fail, and hopefully fall to a grisly end? They could tell their friends: ‘I was there, I saw him fall. It took longer than you’d think, you know, to hit the ground...’
It didn’t matter to the human spider though. He said that he never worried why the crowd had gathered, because he knew he would never fall. He would keep climbing until there was nothing more to climb, rather than let himself fall back to Earth.
Looking up at the church again, Jacob stepped back to admire it more fully. He had no idea quite how old it was, but ‘the old church on Bethel Street’; that was the only way he knew it. It had a richness that spoke of the decadence of organised religion; of the Papacy and the secrets held deep within Vatican vaults. And yet, he knew nothing of its denomination, though it spoke stoically of Catholicism. All he knew was that the deep mysteries of faith and belief in the divine were held inside these walls; secure in near darkness, candlelight and the filtered unreality of stained glass.
Jacob longed to belong then, to become a part of this great building, this great Church, this institution of understanding and security. How wonderful, he thought, it would be to be assured. To be certain of one thing in this life; one thing that would make it all worthwhile and take all the fear out of it, out of everything you ever had to do.
He reached out to touch the smooth walls once more. His hand hovered, tantalisingly, over the perfect brickwork but he withdrew, suddenly. He felt something strange, a shuddering, like an earth tremor beginning.
That was enough, he thought. Enough for today, and he turned his back on the perfection of the church and its unconquerable walls. He stepped quickly along the narrow street and off around the bend.

We met under the trees

2008-11-26T23:37:00.003Z

We met under the trees that day; Rhoda, Sanchez, Billy and me.
The sun was so white it bleached the light and the buildings around us. It was hot, but Billy sat outside the shade of the tree. I looked at his arm and hoped it would soon go as red as his t-shirt. I wanted it to become thick with boils and sag, peel and wither.
I hadn’t seen these guys for a few weeks, but I barely spoke. I glanced around the group, but my eyes would linger longest on Billy. I wondered how I’d be the next time we met, but I didn’t think I’d feel this upset.
Billy, for his part, looked at the ground and sometimes at the others, but never at me. He spent a long time rolling a joint; longer than I’ve ever seen him do it before. So meticulous it was, that you’d expect it to be the most amazing, the most perfect joint ever constructed. However, when it was eventually passed to me, I noticed all the usual small flaws in its architecture, all the scattered thoughts that made it such an imperfect work of art. Perhaps Billy had been building these in by design?
I dared to glance up at him and this time he caught my eye. He offered a smile; thin and intangibly curved. I found myself beginning to smile in return. It’s something I find hard to resist, my ability to please. But I couldn’t let him have this smile, I couldn’t let him have this day. So, as my lips began to imperceptibly curl, I slowly blew the smoke out of my mouth, covering his face with a thin blanket of grey.
Childish, wasn’t it? I know it; everyone gathered there knew it and they shuffled uncomfortably. Billy, though, took the hit. We’ll give him credit for that. He knew he had to do whatever it took to regain acceptance and re-admittance to the circle. Still, the line was a tough one to walk. How to not let Billy have an easy ride back from the brink, while also not alienating Sanchez and Rhoda from myself? Ah, they wanted such a quick retribution, a swift ending to hostilities; but I’ve never worked like that.
I had to restrain myself, stop my legs from standing me up and shuffling me away from the cover of those trees. That would have meant a failure on both my goals; but it was so hard seeing him there and thinking of all the things I blamed him for, all I suspected him of, and all I knew he was guilty of.
Probably a few blows to the face or stomach is what everyone had hoped for. That’s how men can sort things out easily; simple retribution. But I was extracting my flesh pound for pound, and the strain was beginning to show.
So, I spoke to Billy. I asked him how his mother was! It was the best thing I could think of. Of course, talk of mothers was the last thing Billy wanted, and the last thing anyone expected to hear from me.
I enjoyed watching Billy flounder for the right words. I don’t think he could believe I’d said this to him, and at last his skin had gone red, all around his face. Waiting a second or two, I then turned my head slowly around the group with a grin stuck to my face to let them know I was having a joke at Billy’s expense and that it was okay for them to laugh.
That’s when they exploded, Rhoda and Sanchez. They’d waited so long to laugh, their bursting faces went as red as Billy’s and they were soon fighting to refill their lungs. The laughter rolled on like a spring tide, and Billy had the chance to join in, and so did I.
Later Sanchez would tell me that he’d been about ready to stand up and scream, before the pressure was released. That, had he a gun, he would have been fidgeting with it; toying with suicide or murder.
I nodded, and told him I knew just what he meant.

I'll see you back home

2008-11-25T23:57:00.001Z

The movie’s over,
And then I get hit by the way you walk -
Same way you get hit back home;
I’ll see you back home.

I call your name,
And then I get hit by the way you talk -
Same way you get hit back home;
I’ll see you back home.

Dreaming spires

2008-11-24T23:58:00.001Z

I unfolded my life like a pocket handkerchief; unfurled and hung it from the tops of the great Sentinel spires.
I climbed like Quasimodo to the tip of the gothic tower and danced around on top, my features blacked out by the sun at my back, my shadow cast long across the great square below. It looked so strange to see my silhouette, maybe 30 foot long, dancing a jig upon the plaza, with a dumbfounded crowd looking on.
And then I plunged inside the statue’s head, this sentinel of the tower, and felt that inside was the warm squish of a living brain.
Without hesitation I ripped it from its casing, from its stimulating wires. But only a portion of the brain came free, and it tore apart like raw minced beef. I had to scoop the leftovers out and hold it above my head. Grey matter rained down about me, but the crowd started to cheer and with one almighty heave I lobbed the brain out, away from the tower and listened for it to splatter satisfyingly upon the building’s steps below.
And then, seeing the cheering crowd scatter, to be replaced by Authority forces with weapons trained on me, I took the decision to step off my platform. And as I saw the great steps racing up at me, I was laughing at the thought that soon they wouldn’t be able to tell the bits of my brain apart from Mackenzie’s.
Mackenzie, the founder of Lacroix, the first Sentinel; how I laughed. In fact, I woke up laughing.
Now I sit, awake and sweating. Will Authority be coming for me? How far can the Sentinels see? Do they read my dreams for dissent? Will Mackenzie himself be sleeping with me tonight?
I dare to flick a glance out of my window; I dare to quiver, but the city is still tonight.

This tale is related to an earlier piece called The Sentinels.

The strength of the sea

2008-11-21T22:43:00.001Z

In my regular trips to the beach, I am often impressed by the power of those creatures that depend upon the sea for their lives.
It seems to me that such creatures have an overwhelming capacity for survival. I could go into numerous examples; the great spawnings that help defeat predation, and also the swarming of fish and the flashing of their scales to confuse those creatures higher in the food chain and help them to keep surviving. Still, nature often finds a way to break them down, no matter how well they protect themselves. It’s all quite inevitable, I suppose, but no less remarkable and fascinating.
It is, perhaps, the ability that many smaller, very simple creatures have developed to defend and protect themselves from the world that impresses me most. Take those creatures who reside within shells, for example. What miraculous creatures they are. They protect themselves from attack by coating their soft invertebrate bodies with a shield of their own creation. They manufacture crystals of calcium carbonate and add them in layers to create a protective exoskeleton. How amazing is that?
And then, they latch onto a rock. They hold fast and steady in the face of turbulent tides and the worst of storms. They wait in the baking sun for the sea to rise once more and cover them, and allow them to feed. And they just sit there, in the face of chaos, safe in their armour.
Anne agreed to pick me up from the hospital after my procedure. Heck, she even offered to come with me. That was nice of her. I’d quite forgotten she could be nice.
When she dropped me back home she asked if she should come in to make sure I was alright. Sylvie was at work, but I said no. ‘It wouldn’t be right’, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
I thanked Anne, and she told me to look after myself. I couldn’t help chuckling a little as I got out of the car. ‘Look after myself!’ I think it’s a little late for that.
I spent the next couple of days in bed. I told Sylvie I had a cold or flu or something. She brought me tea and sympathy, but she’s none the wiser. I’ll get the full results soon and then we’ll know.
Today I felt better. Today I have been to the beach and walked on the sand. I saw the mussels clinging to the grey rocks, just waiting, prone but secure enough, until the waters returned.
And then I watched the gulls, wheeling overhead. They held stones in their beaks and they dropped them from a height onto the mussels, smashing their proud shells and brittle bodies. Then the gulls descended and feasted.
It’s impressive. Nature; its capacity to survive and to devour. So magnificent.

This tale is part of a series. To read all the stories in this series search the blog for the keyword 'Anne', or click on the word 'Anne' in the 'Labels' tab below.

The Liquorice Man

2008-11-20T23:05:00.002Z

Everyone in San Pedro remembers the strange events of November 20, 1998. How could they not? That was the day the Liquorice Man came to stay.
He came in broad daylight; the morning, seeping from the pavement like thick black oil. Commuters spotted his birth and pointed and shrieked, like maybe they could claim this gusher and become rich.
Soon though, the liquid pooled and formed in ways that physics ordinarily would not allow. Then the people were startled and moved back; stepped away from the black phenomenon.
As the pool grew bigger, so the liquid seemed to suck up the blacks and greys of the tarmac and the pavement. The liquid swirled and flowed along atop itself, forming tubes of whirling slick that began to extend in arms, up, away from the pavement.
People where now visibly and audibly frightened. What started off as a magical natural phenomenon had soon turned into a biblical nightmare. With cries of ‘El Diablo’ filling the air, terrified shoppers and businessmen ran in all directions from the scene. And, as if in response to their screams, the strange arms began to thrash about, pulling down cables and smashing signposts and lampposts.
And, just as before with the pavement and the road, when the thing came into contact with these random objects of the street – the ephemera of daily life that it was haplessly trashing – it took hold of the different colours, of signs and posters and lampposts and screens, and added them to itself. Soon this Liquorice Man had grown into a strange kaleidoscopic swirl of colour, rotating and hurtling across its growing form with abandon.
Inevitably, though perhaps strange that it took over five minutes of mayhem before it occurred, the Liquorice Man smacked his whirling arm into a person. A woman, it was, named Maria Angelina Reyes. She passed away that day, her body sucked up into the vacuum arm of the thing and never seen again.
But the addition of Maria’s form to that of the Liquorice Man’s caused a strange thing to happen to him. His swirling arms began to slow their rotation, his colours separated, he began to crawl and curl less. People watching said that it took around three minutes but eventually, at seven minutes past nine o’clock, the strange entity that became known as Liquorice Man was completely frozen, there on the street that had spat him forth.
In the days and weeks that followed, many attempts were made to destroy the remains of this unholy creature and rid the street of its stain. But, no matter which tools were tried upon its arms, nor which priests were called to its exorcism, the creature’s corpse stood firm.
And so, it was the mayor of the town, Poncio Guadalupe, who proclaimed that the Liquorice Man should stay there on the street for all time, as a reminder to the people of San Pedro of the strange works of the Lord, and how it was a human spirit which defeated this awful being.
People – tourists – who walk by now see only a marvellous multi-coloured artwork; and they stop to take a picture there. But if you ever go, to the small town of San Pedro, stop there in silence and awe and remember that this thing is a creature, escaped from the dark places of this world and that it took the life of a young woman named Maria to bring it to peace.

Through the strange grass

2008-11-19T23:27:00.005Z

Confidence is a strange thing.
Jonas learnt that the hard way in the strange grass near Loch Kilder.
Climbing the lower boughs with less angular friends, he sought to reach and stretch as high as they could.
See, Kelvin can shimmy so high, he’s out of sight in the thick branches. And there’s Liam, holding on to the overhanging limb with one arm, already so strong and limber. On a hot day he would allow himself to fall, plunging into the cool waters to shatter its clarity with sweat and fizzing bubbles. But today, when the temperature was niggly and the vegetation retained the water from the night before, Liam just held on as long as he could, staring down at the damp ground below as if it were the strangest thing he ever saw, before climbing back up and sitting straight upon the branch, like a bishop.
They called to Jonas, “Come higher, come and sit with us; you can do it,” and he tried to stretch and climb; and though you know what happened after that, it doesn’t make it any less sad.
The two boys, strong and able, ready for anything, looked down through the leaves and through the strange grass, to a sight they’d truly never seen before.
Little Jonas’s flickering eyes, looked away from them. He wanted to shiver but he didn’t feel he could. All he felt was ashamed and he looked away from the strong and able boys, through the long wet grass. The grass seemed like it was bigger than him and he felt so ashamed.
He felt ashamed until he felt nothing more.

In that other realm

2008-11-18T23:21:00.000Z

I will not be there
In the phone book of your mind,
No, I’ve waited too long;
All those unliving
People in your eyes
Make me long to be dead.

I will not see
The phone book of your mind,
Only the Lord could take me there;
Still, I will not get there
Even if I’m blind,
But I could see you…

In that other realm,
Where you find yourself sleeping in the day;
You are not living there
And I am visiting your bed.

You will not fight it
Even in a lie,
Cos you will be coming too;
And I will not leave you
On into the day,
As long as you don’t ask me too.

Then, on into your loving
Evening time,
Knowing hours with you;
We’ll keep on loving
Even ‘til the light
Of the dawning.

Oh, and you’ll ask me to
Leave yourself just sleeping through the day;
And when you rise next time,
Find yourself escaping from the lie.

But I’ll keep on loving,
Even through the day,
Knowing you’ll never love me again;
I will not give this
Feeling to the night
Although grown men will ask me why.

Always to see you
Just dig into my mind
There, all of my senses, divine;
I would not give in
Even if you asked
‘Cos I would just ask you back.

And even if you held me
Know that I would not be there;
Because I’d be running wild
In the fragrance of your hair.

The morality bubble

2008-11-17T23:08:00.005Z

It was a long walk, in the drizzle, from Heather’s hotel room. I’m not sure why I stayed so long, lost in myths aroused by the sweet touches of her soft, warm lips.
Whatever, I stayed until the trains and buses had all gone to bed, and I had to follow the lights of streetlamps and shop windows back home.
Heather was of a curious morality. She had no fears in inviting me back to her hotel life; this little bubble she’d constructed which consisted of four walls, a bed and room service. It seemed that, within this bubble we could do what we wanted; say what we’d always wanted to.
But after minutes turned to hours, and kissing to caressing, and clothes started to be discarded and entangled upon the floor; suddenly the bubble that Heather had constructed around the room, retracted quite violently so that it seemed to cover only her body. Her hands removed my hands from the edges of the bubble and we were soon staring at each other from different sides of an iridescent film.
Heather said she didn’t want to cheat on her man, Jules. It seemed that kissing was one thing, quite separate to cheating, and as long as things didn’t get too wild inside her bubble then the moral equilibrium was preserved. Presumably, in some hotel room in Kent, Jules was ‘just kissing’ someone too.
I thought about pointing out how ridiculous this whole situation was. Pointing out that she obviously didn’t feel that much for Jules, otherwise she wouldn’t be here with me. But for some reason I simply acquiesced. We kissed a little more and then we replaced the few clothes we’d shed and I stood and pondered the night, from her hotel window, and how dreadful it would be to leave here and make my way home.
Still, I had to leave.
It’s funny; I don’t remember seeing another soul on the dank journey of that night. No other loser sloshing through puddles, his mind muddled by such curious morality.
I do remember halting, though, in front of a strange shop; its one window illuminated to show its strange display. And there I smiled grimly to see a troupe of hands, severed from myriad shop dummies, and all covered with beautiful and expensive leather gloves.
Perhaps, I mused, had my own hands been encased in such delightful bubbles, they would not have been so easily turned away.
I stood for a moment, grinning incredulously at the strange window, before turning on my heels towards home. And I think I kicked the stars out of every puddle more, I saw that night.

Mirrors

2008-11-14T22:17:00.002Z

Through an old mirror in the hall I saw a strange corridor.
It looked out upon strange vistas, cloistered chambers and amnesiac subways. I rubbed my eyes and was amazed to see the visions change each time I looked again.
Checking over my shoulder I looked around at the people shuffling by. It was midweek and I was in a grey museum. I was incredulous that they didn’t stop to wonder at the mirror, showing such strange and wonderful places; hidden spaces of the Earth.
‘No matter,’ I thought. ‘Let them walk on; passing by without thought or care for this miraculous mirror on the world.’
It never occurred to me, until much later, that perhaps when they looked, they just saw a mirror. Maybe it was stranger that none stopped to wonder why a man such as me should wish to stand there, peering deeply into the glass of a seven-foot mirror.
But even miraculous phenomena such as these grow tiresome to the short attention span of a man. I soon realised that each wonderful place I saw was empty; devoid of humanity. And then I came to realise that each of these, at first strange and wondrous, places were actually locations I had visited, even frequented, somewhere in my life.
Once they thronged with life and I, young and carefree, frolicked in them. They were my playgrounds and my courting haunts, my workplaces and my bed chambers; but not one single ghost was seen to reside there. Everything of living flesh had been removed from my mirrors and, as I realised this and span around, I felt the blood trickle from my face and I crashed to the floor in a feint, under cover of thick darkness.
When I came to and all the damn people stopped crowding around and let me breathe, I returned home and took to my bed for three days. I was lost inside dreams, some waking, some fever-cold, and haunted myself like this without water or food. And in all my dreams I walked inside the mirror’s scenes and tried desperately to revive the memories of the people who once had walked there with me.
And at the culmination of those three drenching days, tossing and clawing the bed sheets, I woke with my ears filled with awful tears.
“They’ve all gone,” I sobbed. “They’ve all left me.” And I cried there for hours more. You see, the people of my memories had all left me, so long ago, that they had even left my dreams. And that, friend, is the most punishing mirror of all, to make yourself stare into.

The intake of breath

2008-11-13T22:58:00.004Z

Woke up late, next morning, past 10am
When I discovered your soul
You'd left it on the side for me to read
I turned it over, looked for tears,
Any hint of your name
But you'd left yourself in pools down in the street

The scream of the crowd at the scene,
That's all I can remember, 'cept the beam
Of light that followed you down
You landed on a car, it broke your fall

Time passes slowly,
The intake of breath
That comes before the clock strikes 12
Crashing out across the skyline,
It summons your eyes
Booming through my mind and then we sleep

You screamed, like the crowd at the scene,
That's all I can remember, 'cept the beam
Of light that followed you down
You landed on a car, it broke your fall

Lost in the Amazon

2008-11-12T23:30:00.003Z

As she sat there with James, she was sheltering from the world. Though it was 30 degrees, she hugged her bag to her for warmth and protection and stared ahead.
The race they’d run, across town, just to get here. It had been unbelievable, reckless of him, to drag her in front of fast moving cars and trams. And then he’d gotten lost and they had to settle on the steps of the French Embassy, and she was wondering what the hell she was doing here, in this strange country, where she didn’t speak the language, with an idiot called James who couldn’t read a map.
It was then that the Amazonian strode past. In every way, Lorraine could never hope to compete with this huge woman, who strode past on eye-catching red slip-ons.
Lorraine’s eyes flowed up from the shoes, up the muscular legs of this giant woman, to the thigh-high point where her dress ended. At this point she was almost upon her and Lorraine could now sweep easily across the model-like features of this woman.
It made her sick to be cowering in front of this specimen; this woman who couldn’t even raise her face to look another person in the eyes. No, better to stare in front of her to ensure her step was as perfect as her physique.
Lorraine noticed James was looking intently as the woman strode away. She was ready to get very angry, until James said: “Bloody hell, was that a bloke in a dress or what?”
Lorraine’s shoulders lifted up to her neck and she beamed again. She put her arms around her boyfriend and kissed his cheek so that it smacked. He looked at her like she was a little bit mad and smirked.
“Okay then,” he said. “I think I know where I’m going now.”

The place of the skull

2008-11-11T23:56:00.003Z

Milandra and the two boys, faster than ever before, ran through the park.
The three children, their rough hair blowing in the wind, thought only of murder as they flew by the boating lake and the man selling ice cream from a cart.
It was on the far side of the great Memorial Park – the arts quarter, where children rarely played and adults liked to wander, holding hands – where the strange alien lifeform stood.
An angular amalgam of stone, its curved tops gave the impression of heads, of life, to the artwork. Its intermingled hard, straight lines, cut and climbed across each other like people playing or fighting. And all around the grey lifelessness of the sculpture were smiling green trees, plants and lush grass.
“There,” they pointed at an imaginable 3-D area where nothing now existed; a perfect cube of emptiness that the children could all see perfectly well. “That’s where Sonya found the skull.”
The story – as it had been recounted to them a hundred times that week in school –explained that Sonya’s dad had taken his daughter out for the day, but he’d brought his girlfriend with him. Sonya, bored and tired, had slipped away while the two of them were kissing near the fountain.
She watched a squirrel run by, stop under the sculpture, dig a little, look around and then shoot off for the cover of the trees. When she skipped over to see what the squirrel had found, she saw grey-yellow bone rising from the soil.
Quite fascinated, she apparently picked it up, brushed the dirt from it and brought it over to show her dad and his girlfriend. Her dad made her take it back to where she’d found it before he called the police. His girlfriend cried. That last bit made all the children at school laugh.
Milandra now led the two boys over to the edge of the monument. Much braver than them, she leaned her hand on the sloping ‘leg’ of the sculpture and strained to see where this skull might have been buried.
“Can you see anything?” asked one of the boys; a short, scrunched up, red-headed child of 10. “M-Maybe there’s more bones, and a f-f-full sk-skeleton down there?” asked the other, then sneezed into his hand and wiped it on the grass.
But Milandra took a step forward, knelt down and shook her head. “It’s all gone,” she said softly. “This isn’t a grave anymore.”
She looked up to see that the other two boys had joined her to kneel beneath the sculpture. So Milandra, realising she was in sole charge of proceedings, did the only thing she could think of doing. She made the sign of the cross, closed her eyes, and led the boys in solemn prayer at the graveside of the unknown skeleton.
She made them both stay there, until the prayer was done, but as soon as she said “Amen” she let them both run, far from the scene. Milandra, though, walked away slowly, looking back continually, just in case she saw something there.
She kept looking behind her until she reached the duck pond.

A routine

2008-11-10T22:27:00.003Z

Falling into old patterns and routines is a common failing of man. Perhaps, I should amend that to ‘men’.
I mean, I’ve been coming to this beach at least once a week for the past year; and for what? I prefer to come alone, I scowl at the sea, I flinch when the birds fly by in case they drop shit on me. Maybe I come here so that I can get all my frustrations out without company to aim them at? Perhaps I’m good at preserving my relationships; with friends, wives and lovers equally, because I just haul out my pent up feelings once a week and throw them in the sea? Maybe we could all try that?
I came here last week to look at the newspaper and the letter I hid from Sylvie. That morning in bed I looked at her as she was rousing and when she opened her eyes she saw me looking directly into them and gently holding her soft face.
The poor thing screamed and shot out of bed; thought somebody was trying to kill her. I explained I was just thankful for what I’d got; such a beautiful and tranquil human being to share my life with. Then I told her I loved her. I can’t remember saying it before to her, though I’m sure I must have.
She dismissed it and said I must still be drunk from the night before. Then she said if I was after a bit then I wasn’t in luck as she had a busy day planned. Then she asked me if I wanted a bacon sandwich for breakfast and left the room before I could answer.
Of course, she knew what I was going to say in reply. I love bacon butties, plus a cup of English Breakfast, of course. I have it every day.
When I open the letter, I’m propped up against the timbers of the old pier. The tide’s right in, but it’s lapping softly and there’s only a light breeze. A gull is airing its wings right beside me and it looks like the damn thing’s trying to sneak a peek at my letter.
I pull the white piece of paper close to my chest so nobody can read it. I think about letting it go, down into the salt water below, but I don’t. It’s got my appointment on it, and I’ll never remember when and where I’ve got to go without it. Especially as I’m not telling Sylvie.
I need someone to drive me to and from the hospital though. I wonder, should I ask Anne? I ask the seagull his opinion and he almost shrugs then turns away.
I feel like wringing his damn neck and go to grab him, but he’s easily away from me and flapping. Very soon he’s soaring, off over the sea, and then all his worries will seem far, far behind him. Insignificant specs, to him, will we be.
He’s so high and still climbing.

A dread autumn (part 5)

2008-11-07T23:37:00.004Z

The world looked grey from the church roof. Grey and cold and getting colder.
A bird’s eye view gives little more than an overview of the world. From here, nothing is certain, all you can see is stark contrasting colours and the earth seems garish, twisted and impossible to fathom.
A rook was perched there upon the pointed spire of St Alfonso’s. ‘Twas a crow looked down upon Lord Winstanley and Father Seddon that cold November day when they were taken.
The green children spoke then as they pulled and clawed at Winstanley’s coat. “We ready ourselves for winter’s depths. Come, join us in sleep. Soon we will hunger and we will quake.”
Leanlo clawed at Winstanley’s face, drawing blood and saying: “Provide our sustenance. You know we will hunger all winter long.”
And poor Winstanley climbed down there, climbed into that hole of his own accord. The crow saw this, took it all in; the priest and Lord Winstanley, at the bottom of a deep grave with three green children for company. The rook flapped its wings and pecked at its feathers as lice would often get in there and cause such an itch. It watched the people in the grave with an impassive eye and cawed for company.
Soon there were five crows atop the church, and they peered down to see the grave where two poor men were howling as green children clawed at them.
Soon the green ones began taking clods of earth and scraping them in upon themselves. Green grass and brown soil, sullen sods of earth, hurled down upon the grave and the poor howling creatures below were soon buried beneath.
Leanlo stood atop the grave and filled the last of it and patted it smooth before glancing at the dying world about her. With a last gasp of autumnal air, she dug her way down through the centre of the loose soil, replacing it as she went, journeying down, down into the black grave, there to join her brothers in hibernation.
And soon the crows would fly. Fly on, far from that place.
And soon the ground would freeze. And soon a new priest would be found and the church would be opened anew. And soon the people of the parish would visit once more, to hear mass, and to break bread with Christ.
And all the while, the green witches slept beneath their feet, awaiting the end of the frosts, the end of winter’s death kiss. They longed to stir and rise again.
O come spring. Come summer, soon.

The end

This story is a continuation of ideas from earlier tales, including:
Winter Quakes, Spring Awakens, and The summer meadow.

A dread autumn (part 4)

2008-11-06T22:31:00.002Z

But the children did not return for Lord Winstanley. He had perhaps lain there in depressed retreat for a half hour before he realised he may have been spared.
It would be unfair to criticise Winstanley for not immediately running home once the hermit had passed away, or else following after the priest to try and save him. Such unworldly horrors as the green witches are not often seen by ordinary men, and Winstanley himself had not even seen battle in his lifetime, though war it was that gave him his fortune through his ancestry.
At first he sat up and peered about him. The forest seemed quite silent, above the running of the nearby river, until the Lord was able to make out a low moan somewhere on the other side of the river.
The fear, that had hurled him prostrate next to the dead body of the hermit for so long, swirled and changed into a great anger and Winstanley leapt to his feet and ran along the river’s edge to spy for a fair crossing place.
A worn and sturdy log seemed to have been placed, some time ago, across the two banks and Winstanley made swift use of it, running in the direction of the sound until he heard a growling, agonizing howl.
He came upon the priest, broken and sobbing, his body thrown down upon the stump of a felled tree. All around this place the trees were bowed and sagging and three scorch marks haunted the ground where the green witches had stood.
Winstanley turned the priest’s face towards him and was sickened by the horrifying scowl his face was contorted into. He lifted Father Seddon, a small man of balding middle-age, onto his feet and then, half-kneeling down, took the priest’s weight upon his shoulders and began to carry him. He would head for sanctuary; he would head for the parish church of St Alfonso’s.
Usually but a twenty minute walk across country, today Winstanley did well to make it in under two hours, such were the burdens of the day. As he stumbled up the moorland slope and beheld the sight of the church, Winstanley thanked God for the first time in a long time.
But the skies were brooding and dark and perhaps God was getting ready to shut his eyes upon the little church beneath him, for as they neared the gateway to the parish graveyard the hitherto silent priest began to speak.
Though his eyes remained closed he spoke steadily and rhythmically, chanting three names over and over again: “Petandral, Leanlo, Gerrent; Petandral, Leanlo, Gerrent; Petandral, Leanlo, Gerrent.”
Winstanley recognised one of these names; that of Leanlo, the green girl who had spoken in his mind. He shuddered and halted beneath the arched entrance. A gravel path offered a straight line, 40 feet before him, on into the safety of the church building. He scanned his eyes about him and could not see the green ones, though he knew in his heart they must be near. All that could be done was to walk forward, without looking back, on through the great wooden doors of the old church.
For a man carrying a dead weight, his pace was swift and sure, but Winstanley’s eyes were caught upon an awful and insane sight just to the left of the path. There before him lay an open grave, deep and fresh, with earth strewn about it. And down at the bottom looking up at him with piercing, smiling eyes were three green faces.
And soon they were climbing up, out of their hole. And soon, they were upon him.

(to be concluded)

This story is a continuation of ideas from earlier tales, including:
Winter Quakes, Spring Awakens, and The summer meadow.

A dread autumn (part 3)

2008-11-05T22:34:00.003Z

The hermit stepped with care and precision along the woodland route down into the valley. Lord Winstanley and Father Seddon followed cautiously.
Choosing a path that followed the river, the hermit turned onto a tree-lined corridor in the wood, walked until the troupe were equidistant from each end of the path and then halted.
“They will not surprise us here,” said the hermit with more than a little glee and confidence.
“This is madness,” cried Winstanley. “Why, they may approach us any route they see fit and drag us into the forest.”
“No,” said the hermit softly. “They will stick to the lanes, for there people go. We will see them approaching, one way or another.”
“Well enough, but have you weapon to face them? The priest has a crucifix and I but a pocket knife. How shall we defeat these fiends, then?” enquired Winstanley.
“My Lord, you are free to leave if the fear is too great. The priest and I will stand alone, with faith in ourselves and in the greater powers that built this world.”
Winstanley gritted his teeth at the hermit’s chide, but his resolve stiffened and his hand moved to grip the hilt of his hunting blade.
“They are upon us,” said the priest and the hermit nodded gravely as the three kindred of the soil appeared ahead, moving effortlessly along the dirt path. As they neared, Winstanley noticed the dead leaves being blown and brushed from the creatures’ path by unseen forces. Every sinew strained in him not to flee this ghastly scene or else take his knife and rush headlong into battle and likely doom.
It seemed to him the creatures flickered and oozed, as if lichens and fungus grew and then died upon their bodies; living out entire existences within seconds over their childlike torsos. And as they came to the place where the three men stood to face them, the trees bowed and bent as if to flee the unholy and most powerful presence of those green beings.
Winstanley heard them speaking as they passed through the avenue of trees. At first he thought they spoke to each other, but soon he heard them calling his name, asking him to step forward and lay himself down before them, though their almost formless faces did not seem to have mouths to speak.
Leanlo touched his mind then, speaking deeply to him and her arm reached out, beckoning him forth. Winstanley closed his eyes and began to step forward. The chill in the air was gone and his mind felt only the lush green of summer as the girl invited him to roll upon green grasses forever.
As he stepped forward he was aware of a temperature clinging to his bones, a coldness more deathly than a winter’s frost on a flower’s stalk. And just as soon as it had gripped him it left and he came to with the hermit’s dirty and wrinkled hand holding him by the shoulder. He saw that both he and the priest had taken two large and unwarranted steps forward, almost into the reach of the green ones, but the hermit had saved them, for now.
From the look of intense concentration on the hermit’s face, it seemed he was attempting some complex equation, or else arguing within his own head against some unshakable principle of the universe. But Winstanley was taken with the possibility the hermit was locked in unspoken conversation with the green witches, or perhaps some unseen battle of minds and wills was taking place high above the auburn trees and the greying fields around about them.
If the hermit was locked in combat then, perhaps he could have bested them had not Father Seddon ultimately screamed and then fled the terrifying scene, into the forest. His concentration broken, the hermit shouted to the priest in vain before collapsing upon the ground, the green ones departing the scene in seconds to give chase to the priest. Winstanley wheeled around in confusion as things unknown to his mind weighed so heavily upon him that he too collapsed beside the spent and broken body of the hermit.
And as he watched the hermit’s breath shallow and his eyes twitch and then close forever, Winstanley knew all was now surely lost. He lay there on the hard ground and looked up at the forest canopy, spinning up above him, and awaited the return of those fearsome children to feast upon his vitality. As he lay there, in sorrowful defeat, he realised that, while many of the trees were skeletal and bare, some of the trees remained defiant, some of the trees remained green. He held that thought with him as he lay there in painful defeat, just waiting for the chill to kiss his bones once more.

(to be continued)

This story is a continuation of ideas from earlier tales, including:
Winter Quakes, Spring Awakens, and The summer meadow.

A dread autumn (part two)

2008-11-04T23:51:00.000Z

The hermitage was dark and moist. It smelled of moss and mould, but the dim light of candle would not prick the shadows enough to throw clear light on the walls and floor of the hut, in order that Lord Winstanley might see what was growing there.
Winstanley had given this stone dwelling over to the hermit, following a dying practice of landowners allowing a wise man to stay for free upon his land.
Lord Winstanley used his squatting tenant as a sign to others that he was both rich enough to give this property away and benevolent enough to suffer the old fool gladly, this hermit. He certainly wasn’t glad to suffer his ravings now. The hermit bounced about the room, excited by the arcane words he spouted. His wild eyes glinted towards Winstanley, who caught a reek of his bastard breath and had to cough so that he wouldn’t wretch.
“Fr Seddon,” enquired Stanley, “would you kindly ask this man to aid us sensibly and with some decorum and more judgement than his childish persona suggests he is capable.”
Stopping his manic jig and standing stock still, the hermit spoke but looked away from Winstanley, his back to him. “You may address me directly, sir, for I am no fool, though I see and hear of things so phenomenal you too would lose yourself on occasion and find it a simple thing to become lost on the way back to a salient mind.”
Though the hermit addressed the stone wall beyond, Winstanley was transfixed and stared intently at the back of the hermit’s head, feeling his words through the slightest of neck movements; a tilt of the head this way or that became mesmerising.
“The priest has come to me with more than the devil on his mind, for if it were Satan at work then his God would show him the way.”
“But, these green ones. They vex him. They are of a magik older even than Lucifer, for they have crawled straight out of the belly of the Earth herself and woe to him who sends them back to their mother now.
At this, the priest spoke up: “But if it were possible, to cast these creatures back to the sluices of hell they grew up from, then you could tell us how. You could guide us?”
The hermit didn’t speak for a long while and Winstanley was almost moved to speak when he became aware of a sudden warmth, becoming a strong heat within the dank cabin, but no flame was lit there.
“It is done,” said the hermit, presently. “I have spoken to them, to Leanlo and her brothers and they are coming to meet us.”
“What!” exclaimed Winstanley, “the green ones come here now? And when shall they arrive, and what shall they do?”
“They arrive soon, they are almost here,” said the hermit turning with a delicious smile to face his landlord now. “And they come to dine upon you, my lord, if they should be allowed to.”
With that Winstanley grew pale and looked at the hermit’s sandaled feet. “Though, I dare say,” continued the hermit, “they should not be allowed such liberties, wouldn’t you agree Lord Winstanley?”
“Come now,” the hermit said, taking an agape Winstanley by the hand. “They are at hand and we must go out and meet our guests where the grass still grows.”
The hermit then led Winstanley from the hut and the priest had little option but to follow on, slowly and most fearfully, close behind.

(to be continued)

This story is a continuation of ideas from earlier tales, including:
Winter Quakes, Spring Awakens, and The summer meadow.

A dread autumn

2008-11-03T23:53:00.006Z

And as the old priest and Lord Winstanley climbed Tarren’s Moor, the dread of the season was upon them.
Autumn was reaching past its soft light and golden hues, scratching at winter’s throat, trying to drag the cold in upon the harvest. The leaves were not yet dead in the gutter when talk of the green ones were upon the lanes.
The green witches were abroad in the valley and even close to the town. That was what the people were saying. Children had spoken all summer long about the menace of the three who would come to play when the adults were not watching.
Seventeen children had gone missing between June and September and the magistrates in London had demanded to know what was occurring in the countryside.
“Still,” said Lord Winstanley, “Children are one thing, but for them to approach grown men, good men with thick arms and sharp minds, and leave them howling in ditches, that is not the work of man or of a gracious God.”
The priest nodded. “They howl for their souls, sir. These green daemons are advocates of the dark and they seek to prise free everything a man holds dear; his eternal soul, even. They must be ended. This is why we must see the hermit.”
At the crest of the hill they saw him, his white beard and tangle of hair a crescendo in the whipping breeze. The old man was transfixed in contemplation, a rock perhaps in his hand and he staring most intensely at it.
As the two men climbed nearer, they blanched to see it was a sun-bleached skull held tightly in the hermit’s hands.
The wild man looked up then with glee, saying: “The green witches! They will take what they may to keep them through winter. They will grow strong this year.”
Dropping the skull, he leapt up, turned and danced his way into the desolate cottage. Lord Winstanley and the priest slowly followed, scowling at the shattered remains of bone that scattered their path across the threshold.

…to be continued…

This story is a continuation of ideas from earlier tales, including:
Winter Quakes, Spring Awakens, and The summer meadow.

Random blogging

2008-10-27T22:32:00.000Z

Hello all,

Am on holiday this week and not sure if and when I'll have access to a computer. So may be random or no blogs this week. Sorry.

Paul.

The perfect place

2008-10-24T23:04:00.002+01:00

I took her hand as we came to the perfect place.
We’d always just walked past or come to keep watch while others rolled there. This time she led me over the style and into the beautiful field. I held her face in my gaze so that I’d never forget it. Her face was tattooed with freckles, her lips anxious. Occasionally I could glimpse her ivory-white teeth, biting at her lips or finger.
She held my hand firmly but she led the way, she showed me where we were going, and as we waded like refugees amongst the long grasses I was burning inside.
That afternoon was filled with exclamations. I told her I loved her for the first and the twenty-first time. She left strange marks on my body that I did well to conceal.
We were hidden there, that day in the meadow, rolling and grasping, and crushing all the insects around us.
I like to imagine we’d stayed there, quite hidden, forever.

The middle-class drifter

2008-10-23T23:22:00.004+01:00

Here we go again,
The long haul into winter.
To find a Christmas destination?
That’s easy – just go… nowhere.

Flicking coins all afternoon
We don’t know what happened to morning.
The cobwebs, the drink, which first?
When late nights become early dawnings.

You know why we do this though, right?
Escape from it all, responsibility, life
Insurance, the fresh wounds commitment deals
And scars. But some things never scar.

I’m talking open wounds, baby,
The inescapable, that which cannot be
Forgotten, or left behind, and
No, I’m not married!

I’m not saying wounds are bad,
I just don’t need any more,
The ones I have help me look inside myself
And remember where I came from.

That’s why this year, for Christmas… I’m going home.

The end of the big sky

2008-10-22T23:36:00.003+01:00

Sometimes when you look up at the sky, it’s too vast, too magnificent to comprehend.
Its swirling cloud formations and the refractions of the sun’s dying rays of light appear as entire galaxies, racing to the solar system’s end. Each night is like the end of time.
That’s how it felt the night I heard about Nandez’s passing. I hadn’t spoken to that man in eighteen years, but his words are burned onto me. I felt a strange crumbling void, somewhere in this world, to learn of his passing. I’d have gladly sacrificed the morning to know he was still around.
I stayed out, long after the early dark, that night. I just stood there, stock still, as the last creepers of light pulled their tangled arms down into the impregnable undergrowth. Gnats and midges bit hard, but I held firm, entranced by the darkness. I wanted to see if Nandez would come.
In my mind’s eye, I could see Hernandez: blue jeans and long hair. A strange stereotype of an older, mysterious man. He was good to me, but he told me strange things, horrible things. He said he knew when he was going to die, and he said that I’d know it too, when the time came.
For years, I thought that he was going to appear to me at the hour of his death; one last meeting between us two. It really scared me for a while. It’s scary to think I believed he could actually do it.
After a while I realised he wasn’t coming, and I felt something between relief and pain. It turned out that I did find out he was going to die, but that was because his friend called me to tell me a few hours before it happened. “He fell under a train,” said Simon. “He hasn’t got long.”
I’m not sure what Simon wanted from me. A message? An apology? After a long while, I just whispered, “Goodbye,” and put the phone down.
I was thinking about this, as I stood out in the field, in the fantastic enveloping darkness. Had I been wrong? Should I feel regretful?
As my eyes got used to the pitch blackness, I saw the slow wink of a hundred points of light poking through the veil, and soon the sky had returned. It was just different now.
And as the evening clouds moved on and the star fields blinked into glowing life, once more, I turned my back on the sky. As I walked slowly to the house, I decided that I’d done the right thing. I looked at my hands in the moonlight and they seemed good, they seemed right. I wasn’t regretful at all.

Gloomy Sunday

2008-10-21T23:36:00.000+01:00

They’ve all gone home; finished early and left me here.
It’s a Sunday and I’ve been working overtime. “We have to get this all done and finished today,” I told Sylvie. “It can’t wait.”
Turns out I was panicking over nothing. We got the work done before 1pm, so the afternoon is mine to do with as I wish.
It’s been a few months now since I saw Anne. We both just let the contact slide, it was easy to do really. We were both pointing in opposite directions, but walking into the other, again and again; stuck fast and going nowhere. Once we worked out that all we had to do was turn around and walk the other way it seemed so easy to put distance between each other.
If I’m honest, now that the work’s done, I’d quite like to go home and spend some time with Sylvie. It’s more than that I feel I owe her some of my time: I want to give it. In the past I’ve felt shackled to her, dragged around, but now I want and desire her so often. I thought she was the lesser of two evils, but it seems she is shining in my eyes, now.
However, I just called her, there was no reply and she must have gone out. With no word from my Sylvie I’ll set out in the car to blow away the Sunday cobwebs with a promenade along the sands.
As I arrive at the beach, the weather closes in and I wait in the shelter of my vehicle. I eat the sandwiches Sylvie made me for lunch. I fantasise about one day buying a boat and living on it with Sylvie. I see Anne, dashing past with Millie, her dog, soaked through and loving it.
She gets into a black car just two spaces away from mine. I’m sure she won’t notice me, but even so I slip down in my seat as low as I can go. She’s already spoilt my lunch but she won’t spoil my day any more.
It must have been quite warm, slouched down there, because I doze off and when I awake – with a sore hip and a crick in my neck – the rain has stopped and I drag my sorry limbs out into the remainder of the autumn daylight. Anne’s gone.
I shake my head hard and take in a deep breath of the sea breeze. “The sun’s trying to poke its head through the clouds,” calls a man I may have seen walking here before. I wave politely and smile. It still might be a pleasant Sunday, I think to myself.

Brittle wires

2008-10-20T20:40:00.002+01:00

“If it captures anything, it’s an essence of mankind; an inkling of a moment’s despair transfigured over hundreds of pages, infecting each and every character it comes in contact with like a plague rat.”
Deborah was half listening. She hadn’t heard what book he was talking about. She guessed a classic, Dickens or Dostoevsky perhaps. It could have been; he liked picking on them. She almost bothered to point out that it was fleas rather than the rats themselves which spread bubonic plague. Not worth the effort to do more than nod or mumble an agreement, though. Better still to look out the window and sigh low enough that he couldn’t hear her.
What strange things pass through those wires, she thought. The truncating junction of collections of cables, attaching themselves to unseen abodes: she stared hard at them, like she could understand them, like she could see the sparks and waves that flowed within their casing.
Patrick had been talking, all the while. His little sparks and waves had become all too lost in tiresome evaluation. He had become a bore, before he’d really grown that old.
She turned around and regarded him in his rigid brown pullover and smart trousers. He looked like he was about to go and lecture, but it was Saturday. Saturday, for God’s sake, Patrick. But Patrick didn’t remember Saturday.
He saw her looking at him and was pleased. So she had been paying attention. He liked the feel of eyes paying him attention, even if they regarded his clothes and not his face. Clothes maketh the man.
“I’m just going to make a phonecall.” He half whispered this, like he was already on the phone and didn’t want the person on the other end to hear. He pointed at the telephone he held in his left hand, as if she might be too stupid to know what it was. For some reason, he swapped it to his right hand to make the call.
She turned around, back to the window, so slowly, like the air in the room had thickened and started to set during the last ten seconds. She slumped her chin back onto her waiting palms, arms resting on elbows, elbows on window-sill.
Now she could hear exactly what those sparks and waves meant, exactly what they were transmitting via their metal tendrils. Downstairs, the washing machine was kicking in to its final earth-clattering spin cycle. She got up, because she knew it was almost over.

Everything fuzzed

2008-10-17T20:46:00.002+01:00

The world looked very different to him when he woke up that day.
Everything was blurred, everything fuzzed. He looked around his own bedroom like it was a strange chapel, the light as if stained by the sacred glass of the windows and bathing everything in a rich glow.
He reached for a glass of water. He felt his thick fingers shunt it clumsily, nauseously it fell and smashed and spilled somewhere on the beige floor. At least he could still tell what colour the floor was.
He sat up and tried to think what last night had meant to him. He remembered little though he was sure his head met another object at force. Possibly the floor, or something overhead that stood firm when he tried to stand up.
He tried to stand up. It was so difficult, swimming in the strange floating colours of the new room. It was as though it had been repainted overnight in a fractious blend of rolling watercolours, and as he looked around he felt ill with the strain of looking.
He took a step and his back arched in a sharp response to pain. His foot hurt so he collapsed to his knees to save the pain in his foot. As his legs hit the floor they were gashed deeply by the remaining shards of the broken glass. He remembered this almost as soon as his hands felt the damp carpet. He screamed and then sobbed, but he knew no-one would come.
He just lay there in a tight ball, revelling in the pain, closing his eyes to the blindness.

The black rock

2008-10-16T23:24:00.003+01:00

The black rock called to me that day. Its sentience crawled out from under it and spoke to me across the waters. Its thick syrup of a voice sped across the breakers coming at me in engulfing waves, begging me to swim.
In a skyline devoid of rubble, except for the strange crust of souls that jutted high above the wicked sea, everything about the rugged peak inflamed my mind. I had to see for myself, I had to see what spoke to me from its burnt coal heart.
So I swam. I dropped as many of my clothes as I thought I needed and I waded into the surge. With each fresh wave that swamped my body I was refreshed for a moment and knew my recklessness, my insanity, but then the voice of the island craned its neck once more and carried its message still clearer so my ears could hear it anew. I had to press on.
It was a grave struggle. Never in my existence have I fought so hard; against tide, against exhaustion, against my own spirit and conscience, telling me to turn back.
You might think the waves would roll smooth and pitch less mountainous, less torrid than at the shore, but you’d be dread mistaken. I was buffeted and tossed by forces so great, forces I’d never feared and respected as I ought. And yet, as I drew ever nearer with every aching and despairing paddle of my arms the sound in my head turned to wondrous song and the voice became multiple. But the water was choking my lungs as I gulped of it again and the spray was singeing my eyes and I had not a stroke left in my muscles.
When I felt the strong arm of the lifeguard around my chest, I tried harm to raise my arm in defence, or perhaps even attack. With each firm kick of his legs the song died a little in my mind and I gritted and ground my teeth in such despair. Yes, I think I would have killed that saviour of mine if I’d only had the strength. I would have smashed my elbow into his face and drowned his body or dashed his head onto the rocks, if I’d had the power to. And as the voice of the rock faded forever, I cursed my guardian angel, this enigma of the sea, this lifeguard, with a tongue as black as the enchanted rock itself.
He left me there on the shore, screaming and ungrateful; begging of the black rock to call me forth, solemnly, once more.

Behind the bars

2008-10-15T20:04:00.002+01:00

There were men in uniform at the barrier today.
As the rain began to fall we all huddled under the shelter as the train pulled away. You could see the plump drops falling from the sky from a long way, could follow its route to oblivion. I listened to them splatter on the corrugated roof as I waited my turn to be seen.
As the queue receded, I could see them more clearly: a white woman with bobbed blonde hair and a black man with a light beard stood, padded in blue jackets, the company’s logo on their chests. The jackets made them look bigger than they were, more powerful. After all, who knew what lurked beneath?
Behind those two were two police officers; standard beat bobbies. But behind them were two special officers, wearing vests. They all looked around, uneasy, eyes picking over people in the queue, people on the station. I imagined there was a firearm or two stashed somewhere about these strange figures of civil power. A deadly weapon, hidden but brooding.
There was a murmur of disquiet about the rain soaked stragglers, creeping home through the station barrier, heading for the stairs that would lead them out of this strange Hades and back home to their wives and children. I arrived at the great checkpoint, slightly clammy, I’ll admit. All these people, all of this assembled cabal of authority, seemed to be doing was checking tickets and passes.
As I passed the first checkpoint unscathed a hitherto unseen officer lurched forward toward me pulled, it transpired, by a German Shepherd. The dog sniffed at my pockets and crotch and then moved on to the next man. It was but a brief defilement, but a defilement all the same. I stopped then, in slight bewilderment, looking round as if to check: ‘Is that it? Am I free to go?’
Nobody looked at me. Perhaps they didn’t know. So I trudged on up the stairs as normal and as the breeze hit me I realised the rain had stopped, or at least it had up here at street level.
I wondered how close I’d come to arrest at gunpoint. How good was the smelling power of those dogs? If I’d sat in a seat (and my seat on the train did feel like someone unsavoury might have been sitting in it, this evening) that a recent cocaine-fuelled lunatic or else a pot smoking fiend had recently used, could not a few grains of the white stuff passed on to my clothes? Might not my jacket and trousers have acquired the unfriendly aroma of cannabis? And then, then what would the dog have done to me?
I was suitably bemused by these thoughts all the way home, and when I got to the top of our staircase and pulled closed the baby gate I felt compelled to kneel down before the bars and peer out to sense the queer freedom of the world beyond.
I stayed like that until I heard the baby crying.

Drinking song for Rosie

2008-10-14T23:52:00.001+01:00

We were gathered around drinking, been up since the dawn,
And there in the corner lay Rosie, so warm,
When the barmaid came over she smelt something raw -
So we all blamed Rosie.

See Rosie’s our girl and we cannot deny
She’s the sweetest and cheapest, most drunken, bar fly
And if any of our best laid plans go awry,
Then we all blame Rosie.

She’s hardly a sweetheart, she’s black to the core,
She’s coarse and she’s bawdy, though never a bore,
And whatever your girl gives, well she’ll give you more -
Oh we all love Rosie.

I hear she was a looker, ‘til the drink took her man,
Then it took her along too and she was at its command,
And now if you’d ask her she’d eat from your hand -
But we all drink with Rosie.

Well I once met a girl and she looked better than you,
She was taller and thinner but she caused quite a coup
When I touched her behind - to the landlord she flew
And we all blamed Rosie.

Oh I wish I could sit you down on my knee,
I wish I could stand up, I wish I could see,
But I know there’s a girl who’s perfect for me,
So I’ll stick with Rosie.

Rosie dance with me, dance with me, 1,2,3
Dance with me, dance with me, 1,2,3
Yes dance with me, dance with me, 1,2,3
Oh we all love Rosie.

Stumbling home

2008-10-13T23:47:00.000+01:00

As I wandered the streets, my head weighed down with the water I refused to let well and fall from me, I stumbled and almost fell into the road. I sat and wondered how it would have felt to have been squashed by a truck or a bus. I couldn’t imagine it.
Wiping my running nose with my sleeve, I remember staggering on through the open market of St Christian’s. I wouldn’t cry in the street. The market stalls all lay bare and plastic bags swirled about my legs. It was Sunday, so I knew where she’d be.
I hadn’t thought about her in days. The economy of mind can help you get through life without any real thought muddying things. It helps you do your job, it helps you get up in the morning.
But yesterday I heard a flute playing quietly, a low soothing melody drifting up to me. It haunted me like a spiralling devil and I drifted down the hole that I’d been long digging but never fully explored.
I spent all afternoon in the company of red wine and the piano. Satie’s Gnossiennes coloured my day and I swear the music of the flute came through strongly every now and then, an accompaniment to my thoughts and my ever flowing fingers.
The fug hasn’t lifted since then.
I remember her chastisement on the last day we spent together, but I don’t want to recall why she scolded me so. Thomas watched me go past his open door via the mirror in his bedroom. She told me not to say goodbye to him. I could see the reflection of his red eyes blinking, though. He wrote and told me that he’d never felt a sound like the sound of my closing the front door that last time.
So here I am. I’ve almost stumbled home. Thomas likes to come to The Castle Courtyard where they put a play on every week. The theatre is always on after his bedtime, but Marie-Élise will take him to see a rehearsal, or just to witness the stage hands preparing the props and the lighting and the sets. Thomas can watch their performance for hours.
He started to clap when they lowered the chandelier from the rafters. It must have seemed like magic to him. And when two people walked by he stood on his chair so that he could still see the stage, just in case he missed anything. His mother held his hand, so he wouldn’t fall.
I ducked back behind the pillar then. I couldn’t hold myself upright any longer, hold myself in. I sank to the ground, biting at my lip, clawing at my hair. I heard the squeak of a bicycle wheel and shuffled around, away from the oncoming steps of my wife and child.
Once I was sure they were gone, I raised myself and took the seat she’d taken. I sat then and watched the men as they finished dressing the stage; applauding and weeping at their every flourish, their every measured placement of cloth or curtain, long, long into the burnished night.

The glutinous tide

2008-10-10T21:00:00.003+01:00

The strange giddy essence of summer has been long spent. I’m back to my beach now, back to reality.
How hateful it was to see Anne once more. It was as if, in exile from her, on the sunny south coast, she floated in a bubble of perfection, colouring every image that invaded my head. Then, once my eyes were confronted with the truth of her image, they were suitably repulsed. How her features hang from her face, how her bones seem to sag. I kissed her goodbye on her pallid cheek and headed for the beach.
This is a beach, this is a real beach. No streams and golden sand, no bikinis and balls, no surfers and no tanning crowds – just a miraculous red-brown slop, as far as the eye can see.
Who knows where the sand stops and the tide begins? None would dare walk out on it for fear of being sucked down beneath the cloying mud.
That’s what I’ve come to appreciate now. I don’t need the beauty of the blue sky and the miles of pristine beach. Give me a dangerous, windswept, miraculous, mudpool any day. Give me something that will swallow me up in its bleak glutinous tide any day of the week.
Give me Sylvie.

The stare and the portrait

2008-10-09T23:42:00.005+01:00

“Do you see the way he stares? It's unnerving”
“I wonder if he has any hands?”
“What might be the significance of the wine bottle?”
The photographer moved about the exhibition silently, dodging guests munching canapes and sipping champagne. He barely brushed their suits nor crushed the silk of their dresses as he wafted by without recognition.
It wasn't that he was unknown in the industry, it was just that these people, this assembled throng of monied patrons had sniffed the scent of 'the next big thing', of 'a sound investment'. They didn't care whom the artist was; the name was unimportant until it truly carried value. At the moment his name was simply spelled: 'Potential'.
You might ask why the photographer himself was even there. He asked, but the curator just tugged at his arm in an over-familiar manner and said: “Oh come now, Baker, I need you there as the deal clincher... if anybody's wobbling on a sale, I bring you in to charm them into the bag.”
So far he hadn't been called into action to perform his reverse snake-charming trick. The gallery had already made four sales, with the minimum of fuss. A red sticker against the glass frame of the large black and white prints gave that away.
All the sales so far had been of landscapes. They were an easy sell. But the portraits, now there's a different matter. How does one convince another that a portrait of somebody they've never met before, and likely never will, should hang forever more in some corner of their home – and that they should pay close to a grand for it?
Still, Baker was proudest of his portrait shots and felt driven towards their sale. He drew closer to one of his favourites. He'd called it: 'Neil Young fan, number 02758'. The photograph had been taken earlier that year, during the round of summer music festivals that always draw the strangest of creatures out into the open for their annual glimpse of the sun. Baker had paid the subject £20 for the shot, a price that included a glass of wine, a drunken acapella song and the man's ticket stub for the concert – which gave the image its title.
“Aha,” cried the curator of the gallery, breaking off from his schmoozing of the ravenous guests for a moment. “Here is the artist himself. Mr Baker, I wonder if you couldn't spare a few moments of your precious time to talk to some of our most valued patrons, Mr Baker?”
Baker forced a smile, but it came out flat and barely raised north of his lips. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, a pleasure to meet you all,” he said with a slow nod. 'Was that over the top?' he thought to himself – he really couldn't be sure.
“Mr Baker,” piped up one of the women, a plump thing with an expensive face, “I wonder, could you tell us a little about your inspiration for this image?”
“By all means,” he said with another forced smile. Inspiration was something he greatly needed at that moment and he searched through his mind for the name of a photographer to help him out.
Everyone seemed to lean in as Baker paused to speak. “Er, well, of course, William Egglestone was my primary influence, as I'm sure you can see.” He doubted anyone would be able to see anything other than a man in a hat, sitting on something waterproof. He felt better.
A tall man in a cap and green jacket who looked like he'd spent all day at the races spoke then, a look of scrunched up confusion on his face: “But surely, Mr Baker, Egglestone is known for his documentary of the ordinary, the mundane. I'm sure you'll agree, this subject isn't the sort of pristine, banal capture that Egglestone favours.”
Baker hid his scowl and the grinding of his teeth as best one can when caught out like that and, grabbing a discarded glass of wine from a nearby table, knocked back half the champagne in one before turning upon the man with gusto.
“Of course, you've failed to see past the obvious in this image. Yes, there is a strange young man in the photograph. Somewhere between grainy and pristine, akin to the close portraiture of Robert Frank. But look beyond the man, look deep into the image, at the fragments of canvas and grass and the stink of cheap red wine. That sir, is the hallmark of William Egglestone!”
And with that he polished off the remains of the bubbling vintage he held in his hand, and swept away to a darkened corner of the room. He wondered if perhaps here he could retire from the unceasing and unnerving stare of the punters and just be. Perhaps here he would become unknown and unnoticed once again?
Whatever happened next, he knew it would not last for long.

Of sheep and men

2008-10-08T23:17:00.004+01:00

The sheep munched lazily on the grass. Hazy viewed afternoon; Jennifer settled down on the grass, a safe distance from the animal.
She didn’t like sheep. She would tell other people that she didn’t like anything which had a plural the same as its singular. This would disarm or amuse the person interrogating her so that they wouldn’t ask why she was scared of fluffy little, wouldn’t hurt a fly, cute and cuddly, sheep. They could walk on by without further questioning.
Now that she sat in this vale, with nobody but her and one sheep for company, she wondered if it was their multitude that scared her. Flocks and sheep are words inextricably linked. It was unusual to find one here, contentedly chewing the long summer grasses, completely alone.
Watching the sheep intently, Jennifer wondered if the two of them hadn’t been led here, by some greater power, to better strengthen the bond between man and sheep. To gain a better understanding of each other and cast off the fear of the unknown.
The sheep, she gathered, needed little. It wished only for grass, which was in plentiful supply. And, when the weather grew cold, a coat of the very finest wool grew heavily across its body.
‘It’s not a bad life for a sheep,’ she thought, completely forgetting where the creature stood in the food chain.
Jennifer hopped up onto her knees and then allowed her bodyweight to shift forward. Her arms reached out and caught the ground before her. Her simulation of life on four legs was simplistic, but it would have to do.
She looked back at the sheep, brushing her long black locks from her face in order to better observe it. The creature bent its neck low and bit at the long green stalks, vacuuming them into its mouth and ruminating upon them with a professional ease.
Jennifer tried it. She found that she really had to grind her teeth together hard and then use all the strength of her neck muscles to help rip the tough grasses free. And then she munched.
The girl stayed in her four-legged pose while she worked the cud round and round in her mouth. It felt like her saliva had become thickened and milky in her mouth. She looked at the ground and noticed the odd fly and beetle hopping across the stalks. Undeterred, she kept on chewing and, when she felt like she could chew no more, she swallowed it all back. It was a strange sensation as the thin blades were sucked down into her gullet and she choked a little before it was all gone. She considered the taste for a moment, but could only place it as ‘grassy’. It seemed like she instantly recognised the taste of grass, though she couldn’t say for sure that she’d eaten it before. ‘Perhaps it’s the same for everyone,’ she mused, as if knowledge of the taste of grass was innate to human beings.
She was dribbling a little onto the ground and when she looked up she saw the sheep across the vale was staring at her, quite obtusely, as if she had no manners whatsoever.
“It’s alright for you,” she called. “You’ve done it all your life, I’m new to all this grass malarkey!” And with that she sat back down on her bottom, scowling at the sheep, and wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing her cheek green.
The sheep looked away, nonchalantly as you like, and moved a little closer to the river where the grass is even lusher.

Salvatore and the gardener

2008-10-07T23:40:00.003+01:00

Every morning, Salvatore crept up to the gateway of the Villa Fredo and peered inside, to see if the gardener was there.
In the mock elegance of the courtyard, its owner, M. Laroute, had created something akin to the famous Moorish palace of Alhambra in Southern Spain. M. Laroute had never visited Granada, but his gardener had.
His gardener liked to say that he had travelled to every continent of the globe, and that every single wonder that he had seen on his travels remained fresher in his mind than any shimmering painting or photograph, and far more fantastic and wonderful than any story you may care to tell about them.
On the mornings when Salvatore could find the gardener, he was greeted by a kindly smile, a funny joke and perhaps one of the oranges growing in the garden. Sometimes Salvatore would ask the gardener his name, but he would always reply the same: “You have no need of names when you grow as old as me.”
If pushed he might add: “When something is very old, Salvatore, it can’t remember its given name any longer and it just has to accept the new names it receives with grace and gratitude.”
And, if pushed further still, he might say: “Child, just ask the ground beneath you. It has so many names now, it has forgotten which came first, but it accepts each new title just as it accepts those who walk upon it without the merest consideration of its great and very ancient beauty.”
When Salvatore pushed and prodded the gardener this much, he knew a tale was not very far away. A tale of lands so distant, they might as well be the pinpoint lights of stars. And the people and the creatures that might inhabit these lost places… Oh, the wonder.
But this morning the gardener was busy tending the vines and trellises that adorned the arched walls and Salvatore knew there would be no time for a story today. “I’m sorry, boy,” said the gardener, “but I am doing the master’s work today. It’s not blasphemy to offer God a little helping hand making the flowers grow now, is it?”
So Salvatore ran along to school, and there he studied great books and was shown many images of the marvels of the Earth. But as the other children cooed and were amazed by what their teacher showed them, Salvatore couldn’t help but think that they paled in comparison with the wonders that lay inside his gardener’s mind. Lost, and impatient to explore, he spent most of the day imagining what amazing secrets still lay undiscovered there.

Perceptions

2008-10-06T23:33:00.006+01:00

Drinking with people after work. A potential nightmare. I made sure I found my way into the bar about 20 minutes later than we’d all agreed to meet. It wasn’t in order to make a grand entrance, rather to avoid those early awkwardnesses in a night out with people who aren’t friends.
Still, who to sit by? There wasn’t much choice. I knew Liza a little, and Casper too. Jane looked very sexy, but completely out of my league.
There was a space next to Casper on the corner of the table. It seemed a safe option so I said a group hello (giving an exaggerated wave), threw my coat in the space and offered to buy drinks – thinking everyone would already have one and so not take up my offer. It’s easy to get shot down by fast drinkers, though; both Steve and Todd were just draining their first pints. They were Americans and surprisingly adept at drinking for men more used to the likes of Budweiser than European ales.
I ordered up a couple of Heinekens for them and opted for a smoother pilsner called SD Haagens which I’d tried on my first visit to this bar, back during my first week in Milan.
Skilfully carrying the three full pints to the table I was further annoyed to find a shifting of personnel and that Casper had moved along to allow a fellow latecomer, Mandy, to sit down.
Everyone now was facing away from me. There seemed no chance of entry to any of these small whirls of conversation. Instead, I surveyed the group.
What a strange mob they were: a ragged and tousled group of dissidents, drawn from across Europe and America to work for a faceless multi-national, in the beating heart of Northern Italy. I’d been here three months now, and I’d seen little of the place except the inside of bars, the sunlit vistas from our plush office windows and the sickly pixel glow from my eternal monitor screen.
Something Mandy said had caught my attention. A word, or a name – something that interested my mind. I turned my face towards hers. Almost inexplicably for a member of this group, Mandy wasn’t drinking. She was a plain, boring woman who must have been close to retirement age. She was talking across the table to Jane. Her voice resounded with monotony but I listened in. There was really nothing else to do.
She was talking about music and I was surprised to hear her say that she had been a bit of a hanger-on during the burgeoning pop scene of swinging London, back in the 1960s. She mentioned meeting a few individuals whose names I half-recognised. Jane nodded blankly as she reeled them off.
With a smirk, I cheekily interjected and asked if she’d once been a groupie. She turned towards me, her face quite placid, and explained that she had enjoyed a rather torrid, short-lived affair, with the folk-pop star, Donovan.
I tried to hide my sudden interest in her, but, this woman had just changed in an instant. My perception of her was completely altered and I felt for a second that I could look through the lines by her eyes and the folds of her chin and see the brown headed temptress in a mini-skirt she once was.
Maybe she wasn’t even as old as I’d first thought? When I looked at her from then on, my eyes took ten years off her face, her figure appeared more svelte, and her voice, once monotonous, now chimed with the soft stroke of an acoustic guitar.
I’m an idiot, I know. How can something so distant, so removed from myself, as the person somebody used to be, forty years ago, make me find them interesting and, perhaps, even attractive?
A few hours later (as the Milanese were just themselves getting ready to go out) the group began to say its goodbyes and I walked Mandy and Jane to the nearby tram stop.
I kissed each goodbye, and tried to ascertain which woman's touch made my pulse race the quickest.
Walking away, I allowed myself the slightest of turns to glance back at the two women who had entranced me most in these few short months since I’d arrived in Italy.
It was strange where my life had led me, and where my lusts had flown. As I trudged home I tried to work out why I was doing this. Of all the women I’d met in this city of dreams I’d become transfixed with touching the two women who would surely remain forever out of reach.
I seemed to get a strange sense of satisfaction at that moment. To think I was doing this to myself, once again.
There existed then, a tangible sense of excitement in the city and in me. Excitement about the mundane, about going to work the next day, even.
Surely, I mused, this is what life's all about?

Once an angel

2008-10-03T17:18:00.002+01:00

As he sat in the field with all the other revellers, Matt’s little heart was breaking. He kept up the pretence of having fun; he smiled and smoked, drank, danced and sang. But inside he was sodden. A mess of man.
A man, you see, that’s all he was and that’s why he was so forlorn. Just that day, he’d realised that he wasn’t an angel.
Matt hadn’t believed he was an angel all of his life, though there were times as a child when he’d looked to the heavens and felt a kinship with the clouds, while the songs of birds and the music of harp or choir had always caused his heart to skip.
All of this combined at the age of fifteen to first make him question whom exactly he was. All of that, and the fact that he fell from a third storey balcony, three days after his fifteenth birthday and walked away with barely a scratch or bruise. ‘Maybe you’re immortal?’ teased his schoolfriends. ‘Or, maybe I’m an angel?’ – he pondered this thought for too long. It seemed a real possibility, to him. When one comes into real danger, when a life is genuinely threatened, one can react with a freshness of consciousness: with an intimate second to second awareness that the next move could be your last. It can change a person.
Still, Matt was always able to keep this aspect of himself hidden. He didn’t ‘seek’ his divine self. He felt that rather obtuse, and that his radiance would ultimately be ‘revealed’ to him and even to others. Perhaps this would be a slow process, or perhaps he would become transfigured one night in the pub? It was something to consider, anyway.
It has to be said that little else of any heavenly consequence touched Matt’s life until his camping trip to a music festival in the English hill country known as The Lake District. For there, by the vast stretch of Coniston Water, he came back to his mind and found himself strolling with the misty dawn. He had been awake all night, revelling. The stony beach gave him a silent place to settle and relax his body in preparation for sleep. When there, standing over the just lit waters of the lake, he saw a devil watching him. It’s grey lace wings were moth-bitten and haggard, but they flickered like a mosquito’s.
The demon’s thick black tail was coiled around its legs, but it sprang to life, arching and threatening as the fallen angel began to walk with purpose towards Matt. It drew forth clawed hands and unclenched a mouth of fangs. The unnameable wretch wished for battle.
And so Matt fled. Turned from the beast and scrambled up the beach in terror. And as he ran he heard laughing, chiding voices in his head: “You’re no angel! You’re nothing!” These demons howled their derision and Matt ran, sobbing, tripping over roots and guy ropes, collapsing miserably into his broken and sagging tent.
By the evening he’d slept and stopped shaking. He took a beer and smoked a joint. The voices had left him now, but he’d turned away and he could barely face what that meant.
Matt looked around at his close friends, gathered in a loose circle nearby. “I’m just like them now.” That’s all he could think.

The big match

2008-10-02T23:58:00.000+01:00

It was on a drizzle-specked dud of a day that the lads attempted to claim a slice of that golden glazed glory pie they'd heard so much about.
Smigsy, G'riller, Yabbo, Dave and Chatsy where the back four and goalie. Sam, Tony, Hunter, Casey and Chav packed the midfield. Ray was up front on his own.
They'd played every mud pool across the county to reach this moment. Here they were, in a half decent stadium, which usually hosted half decent teams playing half decent football – and the ground wasn't even half full.
"Be packed if it weren't rainin!" That's what Casey said. He's always first in with encouragement for the team. Probably should be captain but the manager, Steve Lennon, is persevering with Tony – sticking with his totem, his good luck charm.
They haven't lost so far on this cup run with Tony leading the way. He doesn't say much, he gets stuck in, he's good on the ball. 'Keep him happy and he plays well, then the lads play well.' That's the philosophy of Steve Lennon.
"That's how it works at this level," he says after five pints. "That's just how it has to be!" Some of the players call him 'Lenin'. He probably doesn't mind.
His team's name is Hanley. Just Hanley. Today they're playing a team that's just called Real Livingstone Rangers. “Young, inexperienced, easy to knock around.”
They're fast though. And skilful. They score first thanks to pace and quality. They only score one more, though, because they get calmly kicked right off the park. Real Livingstone Rangers' second and consolation goal is scored from a free kick, lumped forward onto the head of a striker. It is in a similar manner to how Hanley scored their five goals.
All majesty has been slowly drained from the occasion and, with each passing raindrop to hit the green turf, Rangers' chance to play some nice football literally disintegrated underfoot.
They had a good night, that night, did the lads from Hanley. At last, their name was going to be written on the cup, just as soon as they had enough money to pay for the inscription.
The drinking and singing went on long into the night, and Casey had to go back to the pub the next day to reclaim the trophy he'd dropped there, the night before.
He couldn't believe he'd left that precious trophy behind. The last thing he could remember about the night before was Lenin reliving the tactics which had won his team the cup, saying: "That's just how it works at this level, you see. That's just how it has to be."
‘He really believed in his tactics, did old Lenin,’ thought Casey as he walked home, silver cup in hand. He couldn’t stifle a grin.
After a few minutes he put the trophy away in his sports bag, swapping it for the match ball he’d taken home with him from the final. And Stephen Case kicked that ball all the way home, just like he was a schoolboy. The edge of every fence was a goalpost to him then. Every wall, a goal.

The prowlers

2008-10-01T23:56:00.000+01:00

Several torn containers full of sirloin steak lay near the top of the open bin. It was strange that the restaurateur should have forgotten to replace the lid on the large green waste receptacle, but not unheard of. There were no shortage of rodents patrolling the alleys and poking their little eyes from out of gutters and vents, from rooftops and narrow cracks in the pavement.
Perhaps they were all watching the restaurateur as he disposed of the meat that was past its best. That day was his birthday and his daughter had bought him a thin red mp3 player. As a thoughtful aside she had charged it up and filled it with many of her father’s favourite songs.
‘No More Heroes’ by The Stranglers was blasting into his eardrums during those moments when he walked away from the unclosed bin.
The birds were the first to land. It’s funny that vermin are usually thought of as an unusual presence in our lives, a creature that looks out of place in our streets, parks or gardens.
And yet the pigeons and the scavenging gulls you see each day, that caw and dive and shit without discrimination, are as verminous and multitudinous as any brown rat or white mouse you may encounter in a split second, on a quiet road, of a dark night.
But yes, once safety seemed assured, these skulking creatures of the depths and shadows came forth to see what they could seize.
It seemed in a moment they were thriving. Hissing, biting, fighting and ripping the hunks of tender meat apart. For them, it mattered not that their red meal had begun to turn green, that bacterial spores had gotten there first to massacre the meat, that its smell could turn and throw a stomach. They were just happy for the chance of survival.
And it was with thoughts of survival that the rats left the meal as swiftly as they had joined it. A tom cat prowled by.
He leapt into action, but he had not the same need for food. He was well fed, he had a warm place to sleep. He chased for sport.
The proud gulls and the lazy pigeons probably knew this, for they stayed on the rim of the bin, turning their heads to eye the cat just in case it was hungrier than it seemed.
The tom cat spied some discarded meat, sniffed, gnawed and played with it for a while.
He knew the rats would be back, but he had other things to do. Somewhere a fire was blazing and hands waited to fuss and stroke him. It really wasn’t worth the effort.
Just then he bounded away as a door opened loudly. The shopkeeper; he shooed the birds and slammed the lid of the bin, as if to compensate for his earlier absent-mindedness.
Somewhere, close by, one hundred little watching eyes drooped and seemed to sigh.

The postcard

2008-09-30T23:42:00.002+01:00

Hi Anne,

Wish you were here in sunny Cornwall (instead of me)!
Having an awful time, as expected. Just managed to sneak away from Sylvie for an hour and thought I’d grab a coffee and send you this.
This is a picture of the beach where I’ve spent most of my week. The river runs out across the beach. It would be quite a beautiful scene if there wasn’t the odd shit floating in there from the holiday camp.
Weather has been changeable, but it’s improving now. Sylvie has been a dream, as always. I don’t know what I see in her!
So, there’s a new man on the scene, eh? I’m only gone away a week… Well, I just hope he’s better than the last one.
See you soon, anyway,

Love from S. xx

The witch tree

2008-09-29T23:08:00.002+01:00

He took Rosy down to the edges of the lake, right where the river and meadows are subsumed by its shimmering potency, and made her sit close to him in the shade.
In the glade they felt tiny, small specks of colour within the green which rose up in leafy tree and wooded hill and even in the reflection of the water.
And just as she was relaxing and leaning back onto his chest, Vincent pointed out the witch tree.
He held his arm straight out in front, in a strong gesture toward the strange mass of vegetation growing up before them. He asked what it reminded Rosy of.
She looked for a few seconds, laughed and remarked that, to her, it seemed like one of Hannibal’s great battle elephants, rearing up, ready to crush and trample the Roman soldiers that lay before it.
He smiled and nodded, sagely, saying he was glad that she could see a creature of great potency there. Vincent however, saw a more troubling image in the strange growth of the old tree.
“It’s like a monster or a demon, there,” he said without looking at Rosy. “I’ve often thought so. Witches have always gathered there, for their Sabbaths and to mark days of great power. They’ve made many sacrifices, throughout the centuries, and the tree has grown strange and powerful, perhaps taking the form of one of their icons, their dark masters.”
Rosy smiled sweetly at him and bit her index finger. “That’s a lovely story,” she said, throwing a stone into the water, “You do take me to the best places!”
Realising he had failed to scare the girl, Vincent began to laugh. “You’ve never been here before in your life, have you?” asked Rosy, to which Vincent shook his head, grinning and scratching his eyebrow.
“In which case,” continued the girl, “I propose we take off all our clothes and swim over to inspect your ‘witch tree’. Once there, those dark pagan powers might overcome us both and then you can ravish me, if you like?”
Rosy turned her back to Vincent and began shuffling out of her jeans. Soon her milky body was preparing to step into the cool river and swim across.
“Are you coming in,” she called behind her, “Are you coming to join me, beneath the witch tree?”
But Vincent didn’t want to get up. His mind wouldn’t let go of the image he’d created and the grinning demonic tree snarled over the water at him.
How ridiculous, he thought, to grow afraid of a story of one’s own imagining. But the power of any story lies in the imagination, in the mind’s eye of the beholder, and this story had somehow reduced him to a shiver.
“I don’t feel like swimming,” he called from where he lay, “I think I’ve caught a chill.” And Rosy laughed like she never believed a word he ever said, and frolicked and splashed in the quiet summer afternoon, loving nature and loving her freedom, beneath the boughs of the old witch tree.

Salt Bert (continued)

2008-09-26T18:54:00.002+01:00

There came no scream from the dead man's lips, but a light was then shone on me and I yelped with surprise. A security guard had me trained in his torchbeam and he shouted at me to stay where I was. As if I could go anywhere, my eyes were fighting the brightness in order to catch a glimpse of the phantom execution. And as the security guard walked over, he must have become aware of the grisly scene unfolding nearby as his light flickered and swung round, illuminating the man, backlit as his body, rose, rose, rose, as if hoisted by ropes hung from the rigging of a tall ship. And then his body hung and swayed, suspended, floating there as his fluids drained away into the water.
Then the torch light died and my eyes couldn't adjust in time. Just a single splash was heard and the man was gone forever.
The shaken night watchman ambled over, scratching his head below a blue cap. He open the gate and we shared a warming coffee together in the shelter of his guardhouse. There he told me the story of Salt Bert, the crazed sailor who had attacked and eaten one of his crewmates on a freighter bound for Liverpool from New York. His captain was said to have caught him in the foul act and it took four burly seamen to catch him and hold him still. The crew then took turns to beat the treacherous cannibal sailor, slashing at him with spurs and fists. When they were done with him he was taken and locked in the ship's hold until the ship's arrival in Liverpool. The hold was filled with a cargo of salt, and not a man was said to have slept for the remainder of the voyage, such were Bert's cries of agony, shrieking from below deck.
Under Maritime Law, Bert was tried and executed at the quayside at Liverpool. His body was then thrown into the dock itself. The night-watchman, 'Captain' Tom Barrow, had seen Bert's ghost before prowling the wharfside and often, when he dozed off on duty, his sleep was duly disturbed by the agonized wails of Salt Bert.
So let's drink a drink for Bert, and remember his hideous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, writhing day and night in salt burning agonies. Maybe you'll see him tonight, or maybe you'll hear his scream, floating along the river's edge leading him back to his grave.

The End

Thanks to JuJu Spider for the inspiration…

Salt Bert

2008-09-25T22:53:00.001+01:00

I saw the ghost of Salt Bert last night.
As the train whistled by over the embankment near Sandhills station, I spied a lonely figure floating down the broken road between the old dock warehouses. I was compelled to get off, though Craven, who was travelling with me, thought I was mad. Maybe I had gone mad, but all I could think about was following this strange lonely creature through the night.
I soon picked up his trail, as I ran through the rain-soaked night. Crates and bins were turned over on either side of the road, as though a fierce drunk had staggered there; kicking and punching at the littered flotsam as he rolled across each side of the street.
And then I came upon him... he leaned upon the side of a massive brick-built storehouse, once used for processing raw tobacco from the Colonies. He seemed to smoke a stogey from one quivering hand. His grey beard scratched through, whiskers illuminated by the gibbous moon. He wore the hanging face of a doomed man. He didn't see me, he was eyeing a dark patch, spreading across his dirty checked shirt.
Soon his clothing was dripping with blood, but he staggered on into the night, his body seemingly effervescing, fading imperceptibly as the night's seconds ticked by. I followed him again, followed the shining trail of blood until we reached the great dock wall. The grave man passed through the wall as if he were merely pushing through green undergrowth.
I watched him then, through the bars of an old gateway. He stood by the dock and his shirt was ripped from him by an unseen force. Then the wound, spread thinly below his chest, was opened wider and entrails poured forth into the salt water. My eyes stung and my ears cringed at the sound of organs splashing into the swilling water of the Queen's Dock.

to be continued…

The fleeting house

2008-09-24T23:11:00.003+01:00

And they came back to the old cottage then, Maggie and he, after so many years away.
He marvelled at how well nature had hidden the place: “Saved, just for us!” But Maggie grew sad, poignant, thinking of how the old place had changed so, how it had not been cherished and loved. “I want to cry, I think,” she told him. “I’m happy too, but I want so much to cry some tears right now, for this place.”
He touched her though, wiped at her cheek before the tears had even started to well, and that was enough to make her smile and dry her eyes and take his hand as they continued to walk along the edge of the dry stone wall.
This was a palace of great wonder to both their lives, and even the ravages of time and nature could not dim its memory and meaning.
When they got to the gate they both tensed and resisted. “You go first,” she whispered, and he nodded, leading her slowly across the threshold once again.

Back to the sea

2008-09-23T23:53:00.001+01:00

What is it that drives us back to the sea? We escaped from the tides and the surf and the foam all those millennia ago, so why does the crashing pound of those rhythmical waves claw at us still, mirroring the Sirens' call?
I wonder this as I lounge here on a Cornish beach. It is the height of summer now, and this is the second sunny day we've had. We go home tomorrow. Still, the weather brings us out in our droves; the weather and the whisper of the water.
I'm on holiday with Sylvie and her family. It is as fun as it can be. I'm enjoying peering through dark sunglasses at the perfect and the almost perfect bodies of the women who waltz by, and wondering which of them I could realistically have.
Anne has texted me twice this week. I can't decide if she's making a real effort by texting me, or if this meagre couple of texts shows I'm worth anything much to her at all.
This whole weekend, it's made me question why I bother holding on to this relationship with Anne. Of all the people to choose to have an affair with, why the woman I previously loved and lived with? I may as well have chosen some beautiful young thing. An oozing, raw, sexual presence whom I could just meet for a meal and some red wine in a shaded corner of a bistro, before whisking off to a hotel room for a few hours of sweating, heaving passion.
That way sounds good. I get everything I want - all the sex, the excitement - and I don't have all these unresolved issues cropping up, all the raised eyebrows and impatient huffs as I manage to annoy Anne, yet again. At least now I can leave before the row starts. That's probably why it's just about working. It's funny that I never row with Sylvie. She is an implacable pond before me and I can just skim right over her without a care.
Everything inside tells me I should concentrate all my attentions and affections and time on just one person, Sylvie. But then, I'm thinking, is she worth it?
So, as the waves crash in my ears like tribal drums, I close my eyes on the bikini beach and drift off to sleep while the sun's still high and my body's still warm and Sylvie's still by my side.

Field skeletons

2008-09-22T23:56:00.000+01:00

If a man stands in a field for long enough, he might become one of its skeletons.
As his shadow grows long in the afternoon, he may find that his feet have fixed to the tilled earth below him and that fate has made him part of that idyll forever.
That is a dream to have anyway, this dream to become a part of the field. Perhaps when I die someone will find my bones and scatter them there, bury them among the compacted clods and roots, plant them kindly.
A field holds many skeletons and not all of them below its green-brown canvas. From the dead sheathes of yesterday’s harvest to the slender sapling that yearns to grow so thickly and quickly towards the sun, all are skeletal beings. Spectral before you, transitory, without flesh, promising either life or death... but who knows which side will win through?
The very nature of the field is a slowly convolving routine; the ageless schema of death to life to death and life again. Nature is a wonderful thing of permanent resurrection.
But where does man fit into the field? Is man like this long dead machine, left to rust on the sidelines? Set there for eternity to watch its successor, the better machine, doing its role, doing everything better, while the new grass grows fresh and long all around it? What torment, it must feel.
No, I think man has a place closer to the field. It’s almost kin, to me, that aching pasture, that threshed turf, and we sit somewhere between that rusting carcass and the steady green grass. Though it’s hard to say just where.
I hope I’ll find out, some day, when the sun casts its long fingers across the shadow of my life and leaves me standing there, naked before the winter, still and skeletal in the midst of the great field.

Girl on a bicycle

2008-09-19T23:08:00.002+01:00

Abigail is the epitome of my lust. Perhaps that doesn't say too much about my sexual appetites, but there's something so sleek and handsome about her, so wholesome and healthy, my desire tarnishes her just that little bit and it stings me.
When I first saw her I wrote down these words in my journal:
"The girl on the bike wheels into view. I'm lost for a moment, panicked on a familiar street. Her hair falls like a celluloid dream, in perfect torrents of colour. She is an element of cool. Her very nature electrifies the air, magnetising the eyes and souls of wanton man and bitter woman. And she feeds off it. She grows straighter, more erect, atop her bicycle. She rides on without catching a single eye."
Perhaps, though, I didn't understand her at first. She is more than a simple object of desire, that is why I am so disgusted by my lust. It is difficult to know how to regard her. Surely not as some goddess, whose divine beauty inspires unholy desires which must be atoned for? No, she is not perfection, no matter how near that level appears in her.
Also, she is not unattainable, not at all. An ordinary man, as ordinary as myself, meets her regularly for dinner. They meet at Cafe Mouchel most often, although I have seen them at Taymon's, when it's not too busy. His name is Jeremy and he is a banker.
Her beautiful posterior is neither divine nor permanently attached to her bicycle, for I have seen her ride the bus and even a tram. Once I followed her onto a busy bus and had to stand, crushed, my face in close proximity to her hair, my body on fire. She smelled of damsons.
Sometimes she will ride her bike all the way to her mother's, on the east side of town, which isn't even served by an underground station. I watch from my scooter as she slides from the saddle and bounces up the grey concrete stair as if she'd just awoken from hibernation on a warm spring day.
I tried to speak to her once, at traffic lights. The red light meant I had to pull up beside her, and wait a few trembling moments in her presence. Remembering this was just a girl - a 27-year-old girl named Abigail who lived alone in the business district and loved to eat ravioli - I decided I could speak to her, we could notice each other today.
My voice was muffled under my helmet, she turned her face towards mine, in case I'd said something, and as her eyes met mine I was dumbstruck. She cycled on as the lights changed to green, but I was lost there, sinking still in the deep blue of her eyes, oblivious to the honking of the traffic behind me.

Summer, on the way to Sylvie's beach

2008-09-18T19:08:00.000+01:00

Sylvie’s beach has sand dunes, did I tell you that?
There’s Sylvie, struggling up the dune, trying to balance as the plush sand subsides beneath her comfortable shoes.
Greta is lagging behind and Sylvie’s mum, Patricia, is saying something to her. Patricia is probably telling Greta that she’s done something wrong.
I’m lagging behind too.
I pretended I was just interested in the flora. How does something so green grow straight through sand? I suppose I am a little interested, but I’ve never so much as Googled it, so what the hey!
It’s true that I don’t want to talk to Patricia. She has a penchant for ‘tuts’ and ‘tsks’. At first I thought she couldn’t abide me, but she treats me as fairly as she does her own, so I suppose I can’t complain.
Apart from Sylvie, the other of ‘her own’ is Louis. He’s visiting too and struts about with such purpose and vigour, you’d think he was younger than Sylvie. But he’s not; he’s fully forty years old and still living with mother. A total berk, anyway. You can just make him out, disappearing over the hill.
Father, by the way, is not dead – heaven forbid! No, he’s too ill or lazy to come to the beach. Too much sand, too much sun, that’s not what England is about for him. Patricia would have had to go home soon after and fix him a roast dinner – it’s Sunday, after all!
What do you reckon? You’re not really interested in these photos, are you Anne? Anne? Anne!

James, Wilberforce and the adult world

2008-09-17T22:26:00.000+01:00

James watched the flock, pecking and honking in the grass. He rested his young arms on the old fence and made tentative steps towards whistling. He hoped to train his puppy, a recent gift whom he'd named Wilberforce, to be a sheepdog and thought he'd train him using the lazy white geese that lived in the meadow.
In honesty, James had a strong dislike for the geese. They always hissed at him when he ran by on the way to help with the milking, and one (he nicknamed him Goliath) had bitten him on the hand when he was very young and trying to feed them. He paid little attention to the attempts of Wilberforce to herd the birds. He just settled back to practice his whistling and watch the small dog terrorising the flapping, feather-shedding, creatures.
Like the repeat of a rifle shot, the snarl of the dog and the rampant honks of the geese suddenly reached a shocking pitch. James was on high alert now and sprinted into the melee of scattering birds and yelping puppy.
Wilberforce whined and cowered before his master as the voice of James' mother called out in concern from the farmhouse. There at the boy's feet lay the slain Goliath, it's neck bloody and broken.
A sense of satisfaction fought with a sense of impending doom. His father would be striding now, black boots menacing, across the field towards the house. James regarded the sniffling dog below him and couldn't be angry. He felt an extraordinary kinship with him then and knelt down next to the body of the goose, awaiting the fearful arrival of the adult world.

The letter

2008-09-16T19:38:00.000+01:00

Dear Laura,

I’ll start this letter with the usual ‘how are you?’ Maybe it’s a stupid thing to ask because you can’t immediately reply, and how you are changes from day to day, but it’s the kind of rhetorical tradition associated with letters through the ages and I felt the need to continue the trend. So, how are you?

Hope everything’s good in your corner of the world, and, incidentally, I hope your sister got to Portugal. When I read about her passport problem I didn’t hold much hope for her – the way the passport process is at the moment! Oh and thanks very much for the letter, it was a nice surprise because, while I always thought you would write to me at some time – you’re a girl of your word, after all – I didn’t expect contact so soon. I thought an up and coming, forward thinking young businesswoman as yourself would be up to her ears in lucrative ventures and opportunities, and so too busy to write to some lazy arse writer. Anyway I’m glad you did write.

While I think about it, how are you finding your friends back home? What I mean is that I’ve been away from here for six years and I return to an altered landscape. I haven’t really kept in touch with people here and so now I’m finding life difficult and more than a little boring. I guess I went away to start a new life and now it’s difficult to pick up the old one where it left off. Anyway, I hope it’s easier for you.

I joined up with some people we met in India, just last week. It was a nice evening, yet strange to not have you there. Robert (small and Jewish) came along and we picked up our drinking where we left off in Mumbai. Carl is still considering whether to move to Australia or not, while his brother Owen hasn’t managed to find any work yet! He has interviews “lined up”, apparently, but we’ve heard that before.

Actually, Owen brought along his long-standing (and long-suffering) girlfriend, Caitlin with him to the restaurant. To think what he got up to while he was away. I don’t understand how he doesn’t even feel guilty about it, I mean Caitlin is a lovely girl and must really love him. Oh well…

That ought to be enough for now. I hope you’ll write back. I’m away to Scotland at the beginning of next month so I’ll send you a postcard and perhaps some shortbread. In the meantime, stay happy and having fun.

With love,

Patrick.

Hedgehog

2008-09-15T23:08:00.002+01:00

Leaves rustle and bushes twitch,
Tell-tale signs, nocturnal stranger.
Black and moist, the snout comes first,
Sniffs the air and looks for danger.
Slinky spines stand on end –
Ground shaking, people waking –
So hurry home, buried deep,
Day is broken, it’s time to sleep.

Abstract #5

2008-09-12T23:31:00.000+01:00

Minds and minds beget shadows churning shadows, churning shadows…
Through vales and glades the light shows grave amongst the thistles,
All souls will visit, pointing out errors and sad songs of the throstles.
So succumb to the wake, and follow the flow to the ocean,
Giving of all that you have and all you once were,
You’ll earn your reward and believe life’s colours forever
Without distance and time or darkness, just light in your eyes,
Bringing minds and minds and shadows churning shadows on the way.

Abstract #4

2008-09-11T18:31:00.000+01:00

Months before he saw the light, he heard it, speaking strange words, pouring them down some dangling gossamer thread into his ear.
It spoke in verse about his mind, the journeys it had made and the greater distances it had yet to travel.
Rather than being afraid, he found the voices oddly comforting. He was a lonely man, he was a weary man; the voices soothed him. He thought, if this is ‘going mad’ then this is surely the best way to get there. No screaming angry conversations warring in the brain, but a pleasant other, reciting poetry and soothing away the pain.
He did not see the light until seven weeks after he’d first heard the voice. At first he was just aware of a trickle, a tiny beam that seemed to be bouncing in the top left corner of the room, right at the edge of his worsening field of vision. It seemed to jump across from wall to ceiling, joyously skipping between surfaces as the voice spoke gently and purposefully, mirroring the rhythms of the speech.
The man was able to ignore the growing light though, passing it off as a result of his crumbling eye-sight, or as a common hallucination associated with the curvature of the eye.
Each night though, it grew larger and it gained some depth and distinct form. When the voice came to him again, on the third day of the ninth week of the phenomenon, he turned his head from his television and faced the thing.
Strange and shimmering it floated, translucent, like some arcane jellyfish, wispy and stretching, small arms of light constantly moving, reaching out, perhaps reaching for him. In its centre was its glowing heart, and from this pulsing emblem came the voice, beating with the same meter as the voice; light and sound aligned.
Each day, the thing grew larger; the voice, even calmer; its tentacles, closer to the man’s face. “One day soon,” said the voice, “my fingers will enter your eyes.”

Abstract #3

2008-09-10T18:31:00.003+01:00

He was very far from darkness then, light poured and rushed into his mind, but if light is all you can see, are you any better than blind?
Slowly though, colours appeared. And then they became shapes. The shapes were moving, an achingly gradual movement across the white desert. It was impossible to be sure if they moved towards him or he towards them, but a conveyor had seemingly been set in motion and an eventual meeting of shapes and mind had been set into inevitable motion.
The scene flowed on, gripped by a glacial entropy and soon his consciousness could make out legs and heads and arms, and the colours were in fact the bright colours of summer clothing.
Some of these figures walked side-by-side, others alone. Some appeared adult while others, mere children. He strained to recognise them, but he couldn’t quite reach into the depths of memory to recall them, couldn’t quite see their faces.
And then the entire scene froze. A small boy in red shorts had halted before him and everything else paused. The boy raised his head slowly and seemed to regard this man entirely, though it was impossible to discern if the child had eyes to see.
With a grave, creaking, eternal shake of the boy’s head the scene began to reverse, much more swiftly now, yet solemnly, until the colours and shapes disappeared over some scant horizon and out of view.
Just white remained. Just light.

Abstract #2

2008-09-09T23:17:00.001+01:00

And for the second time that night he saw the light coming.
He was blinded, apart, but he was aware of a warmth and then it slowly drove across his mind; the light, crawling like a caterpillar or digging like a worm through the air.
Soon a terrific wind blew up, and he felt his hair rippling, fronds on end, shock and awe. Still the light drew its messages in the room.
The man wondered if he was screaming, he couldn't tell, but he knew his mouth was open wide and the gale was ripping into his front room. It felt like he was standing, horizontally, outstretched from the edge of a cliff – the void rushing and billowing warm gusts and currents of air thick with the taste of ash.
And then the strange sulphurous air was replaced by a lilting calm. He felt like a velvet cloak had been draped over his entire body and the colour filling his eyes changed to a ragged shade of peace.
The light continued to waltz slowly around, but he was ready now and he began to shut his eyes to the music of the beam, slowly succumbing to the beat, grabbing onto the entrails of light and pulling on them, following them home.

Abstract #1

2008-09-08T23:38:00.006+01:00

Shadows and shadows beget minds turning minds, turning minds...
There are kings in the meadows and hearts find songs along the way,
Yet sleep with eddies that swirl and then change, sucking them down.
So flounder on the river, believing whatever you find,
Charring the lustrous glow of untarnished souls,
You’ll see that colours rust into love and seep into life
And even sully the bloody glow of the morning light
With shadows and shadows and minds turning minds on the way.

Sylvie's beach

2008-09-05T23:07:00.000+01:00

Sylvie took me to a new beach today, near the mouth of the river. The weather was fresh and calm, the sun was pleasing. I realised I hadn't been to another beach, except for my regular haunt, in four years.
Greta was back at school today, but Sylvie and I had one more day's holiday left. 'Let's make the most of it, honey,' Sylvie had said, and made coquettish, seductive eyes at me. That made me smile, but I almost smirked. Sylvie isn't very good at being sexy. She sounds like she's in a bad movie or she's reading lines from a Mills & Boon novel.
When we got to the beach we walked a little way and I plonked myself down in a spot sheltered from the light breeze. Sylvie had brought a rug along and motioned for me to shift onto that, alongside her.
Just the late summer sun and the odd wanderer along the sands for company, Sylvie rolled in towards me for an embrace. I was surprised, but reciprocated. I'm unused to public shows of affection and I had to keep one eye open and trained on the beach ahead, incase of peering nosey walkers.
I rested my left hand on her hip and she tried to pull it up so that it cupped her breast. I resisted and instead settled it lightly on her buttock, which seemed to appease her.
I began to wonder if Anne ever came here with Derek. I guess I had a small panic attack about it, because my breathing increased quite quickly. Sylvie broke away, looked deeply into my eyes and stroked my hair and my face sweetly, I think she thought she'd really quite turned me on. But then the moment was broken by a couple who strolled along the sandbank before us.
"Who's that, is it Anne?" I cried and broke away from Sylvie. Of course it wasn't her and I flushed with childish embarrassment. I looked at Sylvie out of the corner of my eyes and saw her face change from hurt to angry.
She turned away and pretended to sunbathe. We didn't speak again until she unpacked the sandwiches.

Underground

2008-09-04T23:55:00.003+01:00

Collins woke up in a strange part of town, with a strange man by his side and a peculiar banging in his head.
He left the room and the apartment with a mumble and a vague apology, scratching his head and stumbling still into his pants and shoes.
The street below was quiet. It opened up to the right onto a larger boulevarde, but at midday the road was dusty with little traffic. A Tabac was open on the corner and Collins thought about buying a Coke or an ice-cream or something, but instead he shuffled across into the middle of the main street. An old tram line cut through it, but who knew where the line went and how often a tram came by.
He stood for a minute or so, inspecting both sides of the long street for signs of a taxi. Giving up as the sun burst from behind a cloud, he headed on to the shaded side of the street.
Two policemen sat in a marked car, just watching the odd vehicle go by. They peered at Collins and he stroked at his unkempt hair, uncomfortably.
An old man sat smiling from his toothless mouth on a rickety stool in an open doorway. Collins asked him where the nearest underground station was. Through much spit and saliva, Collins eventually understood the old man’s answer.
He took the next right and ploughed on over another street, another tramway and found the welcoming darkness of the underground.
Inside, this cavernous station had six platforms for three different lines. Yet not a soul was in there. Collins was thankful for the cool escape from the cruel sun, but the icy reception of the station made his head hurt once more and he felt a shiver threatening.
The barriers were open to him, not a guard was in sight, nor a cleaner and certainly not a passenger. The escalators stood in reverential silence as if they hadn’t been touched in years. This entire cathedral to transport seemed like it had been preserved by some unknown beings after humankind was wiped out.
He hurried down the stairs to the first platform. He didn’t know or care much if it was the right one, but he scanned a sign for the line and saw the name of a place he knew. This would do.
Then he stood in silence, and awe, praying that a train would come.
After a few dread minutes had passed he heard the familiar squeal and crunch of metal wheels moving against metal track. His heart and lungs worked again and soon the doors of a train would open for him and he’d be greeted by the sights and smells of other people, once more.
The chirrup of conversation was like birdsong to him then.

The wildlife of Castello Sforzesco

2008-09-03T23:50:00.002+01:00

As I walked the grounds of Castello Sforzesco I saw cats playing on the short lawns and relaxing in the shadow of the walls, down in the rich grasses where the moat used to be.
A lady walked up to me and asked me something in Italian. I think she wanted to know where to buy an ice cream. But that sounds wrong, thinking about it now. She dismissed my attempts at replying and stepped swiftly towards a fountain dispensing drinking water.
It was certainly a warm day and the swallows were chasing flies with lazy ease in those strange spots were insects seem to congregate for the feast.
I followed the woman at a distance. Now that I was aware there was fresh drinking water nearby I became very thirsty. My mouth grew arid and the sun seemed to draw new sweat from my brow.
The woman stood upright, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand without grace and strolled away.
I neared and eyed the green device with mistrust. A steady flow of water trickled into a basin and then away. It seemed a real waste, but perhaps it was used for sprinkler systems and the like?
No-one seemed interested in me, no-one in the fountain, so I stole towards it, ready to sup. But the pigeons landed first.
I never saw where they came from, but they swooped down and sullied the fountain all the same. Oh, you infernal flying rodents, you rat doves, why have you come to torture me?
But they just sat there, mocking me, drinking the water that, for me, was just out of reach. Ah, and where were those cats then? When I needed you, where were you, cat?
I looked about me in despair, inquiring after feline protection. I spied one, licking its tail on the grass behind me. In utter frustration I picked up a loose pebble and threw it at the cat, catching it full on the belly.
It howled and sprinted away to the safety of the moat. I was escorted off the premises by a guard. And as I passed through the great entrance gatehouse, I swear the turrets were covered with hundreds of those filthy rat doves, cooing and flapping, peering and gloating at their victory.

Hay bales

2008-09-02T23:10:00.001+01:00

As a sparrowhawk flew above the broken hedges, small coppices and then the open fields of Garradun Farm, he passed over the head of a child playing with twigs and rocks.
‘Bomber overhead, take cover!’ cried the boy as the hawk sailed by.
He was fighting a war against his foes, there on the edges of Sort’s Wood. The twigs were his revolvers, the rocks his grenades. ‘Stand and fight men,’ he cried. ‘Out of your trenches and at them!’
He was the consummate officer. With one hand he hurled a grenade at the approaching enemy, giving his men a chance to start a charge, while with the other he threatened a young private with execution.
‘Over the top, man. Don’t let your mother hear that you died like a coward, begging for your life in a fox-hole.’ But as the man refused to move, so the boy’s face turned into a grimace. It seemed that he hadn’t had to pull that face many times in his life, but he didn’t look away as he pulled the trigger.
‘Bang!’ he shouted and then leapt remorselessly from the ditch, calling through the trees, spurring his men on toward the enemy.
As the vegetation grew denser, the platoon was herded into a narrow avenue, cut into the thicket. His sergeant spoke up: ‘It’ll be a bloodbath if we don’t get out of here, sir. We’re trapped like rats.’ The boy nodded.
A gate blocked them in, one hundred yards up the track. ‘There’s nothing for it,’ he replied. ‘We’re going over that blockade.’
His men looked at him with grave eyes, like he’d gone mad. It wasn’t a gate to them but a high wall covered in barbed wire and bayonet spikes.
‘Follow me unto the brink of death, my boys,’ the child bellowed and tore off towards the iron gate. His beleaguered men trooped after him, but when he got to the foot of the gate his heart sank and he knelt down in despair and defeat. Some of his men dived over the ripping, snagging wall out of sheer love for their commander, but the boy just stared and pointed out in horror at the fleet of hay bales rolling over the hill.
‘They’ve brought the tanks in lads. Oh horror!’ He hammed it up even more then, as the shells rained down around them. ‘Goodbye men, goodbye to you my brave boys.’
And as he dragged his bloody body, shorn of lower limbs, back towards the farmhouse, he wondered how long it would be before supper.

The comedian

2008-09-01T20:11:00.001+01:00

My friend Graham is a stand-up comedian.
He practices an observational style of humour. I ridicule him sometimes about it. I point out that basically, his line of work involves pointing at everyday things and describing what they are, in front of people. And then they laugh, maybe because they’re stupid, maybe because they’re trained to respond in this way, en masse.
He says that maybe they laugh because he’s a genius.
He then points out that he will use people that he knows, his neighbours, shopkeepers, people he sees on the bus or the train, events that unfold in the street, or on the news, as the basis for his act. He is picking on the dumb things that these people do, the minutiae of their boring lives, and making people laugh at it.
‘Maybe,’ he says, ‘what is the funniest thing about it all, is that they think they’re laughing at some dumb neighbour of mine. But the reason they find it funny is because they do it and their family and friends all do the same. They’re just laughing at themselves.’
He goes on: ‘They know how dumb they are, how stupid the way they live their lives has ended up, they’re confronted with this and then all they can really do is laugh about it. And they’re paying for it, they’re paying the guy who’s throwing all this shit in their faces. Now how fucking funny is that?’
I agree it’s funny, I laugh a little, but I feel weird, like Graham is actually getting annoyed now. I posit that maybe it’s like therapy, laughing at yourself. He supposes it just might be.
Then he looks up and stops where he is. Graham points right up into the blue sky at a cloud, swirled almost into a grin above a church. ‘That’s God, right there,’ says Graham, deadpan.
I can’t tell if he’s joking.

A door closes

2008-08-29T23:45:00.000+01:00

How quietly one closes a door is a sign of how selfless they are, how much respect they have for their fellow human beings.
That’s my opinion, anyway, and you can have it for free. It doesn’t take any time for someone to slow the closing door, to put out a hand and soften its click with the handle. It’s a sign of how social-minded a man is; does he think for a second about doing or not doing a thing because of simple concern for his neighbours?
But then, some of them are quite aware that the noise bothers their neighbours, and some of these just do it anyway. They just let the door swing, because it’s easy. It will take a few precious seconds away from their wonderful life, it will mean making a special effort for the benefit of another person. No, that just can’t be done by these people.
It was one such person of this variety whom I tried to drown in the stream near our home. He lived downstairs from me. I could hear his every movement around his apartment.
One morning as I heard him going out I slipped out of my front door and deftly followed him down the stairs. I allowed the front door to slam shut before I left the house.
He crossed the farmer’s field in order to easier reach the bus stop. That’s trespassing, but I broke the law too, in order to teach him a lesson.
As he rounded the field edge and came onto the gravel path at the waterside, I sprinted full pelt and dived over a bush, tackling him with all my weight and we both tumbled into the stream.
His shock made it easy for me to hold him under, but I let him come up for air twice. The third time when I let him come up for air he’d stopped struggling. I dragged him to the bank and explained why he’d made me so angry.
He lay there, impassively, listening. He seemed to take it all in, his eyes bulging and staring straight into mine, but he didn’t speak or nod or barely draw breath.
When the lecture was complete I stood up, shook myself and made my way back across the field to our small converted house on the edge of the village. I turned, halfway across the lush meadow and saw that he was still lying there on the bank, contemplating how ill he’d behaved.
When I got back, so hastily did I wish to go in and get dry, that I’m afraid to say I let the door slam behind me.
I listened intently that evening, but I never heard a peep out of my neighbour again. I think he must have learnt his lesson, this time.

On the waterfront

2008-08-28T23:54:00.000+01:00

People think the waterfront's a peaceful place, somewhere to go and be contemplative. Somewhere to ease one's mind as you stare out at the lake, or the river or the sea you live near.
But really, we must know it's not as romantic as it first seems. I mean, we don't go there at night, down to the riverside, unless we're attempting something underhand, looking for trouble, looking for criminals.
There's no light, you see, down on the waterfront. Maybe the moon reflects on the churning waters but it barely helps you to see the edge, and it's oh so easy to step too far and slide into the soup.
I've watched in shadows as men have come to throw all the baggage of their lives over those black railings and into the tide. Sometimes these bags are still twitching.
And then dawn comes and you know the everyday will come and sweep the soot away once more, until evening. But even in the day, the sun beats down and flashes up hard from the glassy water, and the river's own vultures wait to pick you clean, razor wire tears around everything and hope either drains away back into the river or evaporates before your very eyes. And we all take a swim, before too long.

Greta and me

2008-08-27T23:49:00.006+01:00

Now, when I go walking upon that same stretch of coast, I fear I’ll see Anne.
It hasn’t happened yet, maybe it never will, but the clicking heels of Anne behind me is a sound that makes me wheel around with fear on stronger days, and pick up my pace in ignorance on more usual days.
I dread most to see her today, because today I’m walking with Greta.
Greta is not my new girlfriend; Greta is my new girlfriend’s daughter. She has strange falling locks of boy blonde hair and a propensity to bounce and giggle. She reminds me of Millie, Anne’s dog.
I guess if I’m going to see Anne, I’ll see Millie first. I wonder if Millie will recognise me still. I wonder if Anne will.
It’s funny that as the seasons roll on by and the storms and tides come and go, it’s difficult to tell the month when you’re at the beach.
I like to think my face is like the beach, weathering the beatings of nature and standing almost timeless, just shifting sands giving away its slow changing nature. But maybe I’m the only one who can’t tell I’m changing?
The wind picks up and slaps our faces and Greta has teary eyes. I’ll get her home now. I’ve avoided Anne again.

The crimson arena

2008-08-26T23:53:00.003+01:00

On his stay in Catalonia, he had to see the amphitheatre – the arena where the bull is slain.
Ghosts of Hemmingway had haunted his life. As a pale-eyed dreamer of a boy his father had recklessly thrown the works of the great American at his son’s head, near decapitating him with the weight of the prose.
He’d read them with remorse, more than relish, and yet they informed and educated him still, though he hadn’t touched Hemmingway’s bold lines in years.
So here he was, at the circus of death. There was to be no fight this afternoon, the moustachioed men had packed up their wagons and returned to the hills, far away from the marshes where the mosquitoes blazed. This was August, and its heat could drive back a man from his city. Even mules kick those who try to make them work in such temperatures.
And yet, here he was, a great traveller come to find Spanish gold. Come to see the drops of blood on the wire of the torero.
He’d be leaving soon and he wouldn’t even see the dust spattered crimson floor of the shallow arena. The gates were locked to him.

At the bottom of a bag of crisps

2008-08-25T22:52:00.003+01:00

After coming home wasted from the pub for the third night in a row, Robert Young thought that he saw the meaning of his life in the bottom of a half-eaten packet of crisps.
Through dribbling fits of coughing and raving he had dropped his packet of crinkle-cut cheese and onion at the foot of the couch.
Getting down with a wobble, onto his hands and knees, he was able to peer inside the value ‘snack pack’ of fatty fried potato sustenance before him.
The large plastic packet seemed to expand before him, opening up like some magical portal into a strange land of salt and grease.
The more he stared, the more he was aware of strange lights and images floating within and upon this vista.
He wanted so very much to crawl inside, to climb the mountains of crisps, and dig beneath the crinkly caverns. An Aurora Borealis seemed to flicker like a neon sign across the white ‘stay-fresh’ lining of the inner bag, and so he climbed head first into the remnants of these snacks, crunching as he went…
The next day, his flatmate, Lizzy Prescott, found Robert passed out in a large bag of Walkers.
She removed the bag and brought him round. His entire body was covered in salt and grease.
As he opened his eyes and smiled, he told her of a strange journey he’d just taken, into a great cave of crisps. The cave seemed to go on forever, but, just as he finally made it to the end of this vast lair, in the slag heaps of salt there lay the answer to his poor life.
She asked many times just what it was, what had he found there beneath those white crystals. He never answered.
He just hauled himself onto the grotty couch, cracked opened a warm can of beer and rummaged under the gas bills and magazines until he found a fresh pack of salt and vinegar crisps beneath the TV Guide.
He opened the packet with a smile and then began to beam when his hand came to rest on the television remote.
“This, is the life,” he said, and with that Lizzy slowly rose from the carpet and joined him.

On Brocking Avenue

2008-08-22T23:27:00.001+01:00

A strange street it was, but in the dusky light it seemed to ghost in and out of existence. A cold trail of cloud hung upon its bushes and fences, the street lights flickered and pulsed with strange energy.
Harry had been living in his new apartment for two weeks when he spotted the girl wandering down the centre of the street. She roamed in strange snake-like curves, veering toward the cars and then the curb on the other side of the road.
She must have been drunk, that was the assumption you would have made. But Harry was transfixed, amazed at her movement: so smooth, like she skated upon the tarmac, effortlessly dancing down the street.
Then, as she neared the mid-point of Brocking Avenue, this girl leaned to the right, almost as though she would tip over, and wheeled at high speed first through a fence and then the wall of a house.
When she was gone Harry looked away. He turned and supported himself against the grey-beige of the paint-peeling wall. He'd seen a ghost.
Slowly turning to peep out the window again he saw that an upstairs light in the house had come on. He watched in wide-eyed minutes, imagining horrors unfolding in that poor house. But, as suddenly as the girl had veered right through the brick of the house, off flicked the light and the street was quiet once more. Vacuum hours passed, with only traffic to watch, and then sleep.
The next evening though, this evening, Harry's curtains will part once more as he begins another vigil. Silent Harry, waiting there at his window, waiting for the night to creep and come and perhaps impart a few more of its secrets.
A strange, spectral sight he would be, no doubt, to any who would look up from the street below and spy him there.

The Sentinels

2008-08-21T23:29:00.006+01:00

The four towers stretch high into the air above the city of Lacroix. Upon the summit of each stares down a forefather of the city, keeping watch forever over his citizens.
And far below in the city there is rarely unrest because the children know that their fathers are always watching them, and they will react with swift vengeance, should one step be misplaced.
Construction of the tower of the first sentinel began just five years after the city was sacked and captured. Renamed Lacroix, it became the capital of the new republic of Cedon, but the mixed cultures of the city warred on, and no amount of official force was able to keep the peace, or spot each atrocity the disparate gangs of rebels plotted.
The first tower took ten years to be completed. It was supposed to be a marvellous tribute, a monument to this great new city of the future, but the authorities had immense difficulty just keeping the great tower from being bombed.
It was then that the Sentinel was placed atop. An all-seeing eye, watching over the city and able to pinpoint crime or any sign of unrest and neutralise with immediacy.
All that was needed was a human head to fill the cavity inside the great statue, real eyes to see and a brain to decide on reactions to potential aggressions.
The city’s founder became the first Sentinel of Lacroix, and his head maintains control over his city long after his body is dust. Officially, the records state that the decision to reside in the Sentinel was decided upon his death bed. However, folklore passed down through generations of townspeople tells that he, Mackenzie, a man of just fifty years, actually asked for the honour of crowning the Sentinel, despite being in full health. He asked for his brain to be removed from his fully functioning body and placed inside a statue for all eternity, so that he may see and perhaps know everything.
Mackenzie’s almost instant success in silencing the disquiet in Lacroix meant the building of tower two was not long to start.

My lady's chamber

2008-08-20T22:24:00.001+01:00

I saw my lady looking out today from her bedroom window, a rare glimpse of her auburn hair in the morning sun.
I dream of walking with her in the gardens, holding hands and laughing at the Herms that stand guard over the threshold. I wonder long about why she spends all day now in siesta. Did I see her unclothed behind the shutter there?
I long to climb, to enter her chambers, stealing in through the moonlight, creeping past her sleeping maid and creaking open her cedar door. I wonder what she’d do, when I woke her. Would she recognise my face from her dreams, or from those merest of glances exchanged as I pass by her gate twice each day?
For now I’ll watch, just watch, for sometimes touching a dream is akin to sullying a fresh spring with a drop of blood.

Evening stroll

2008-08-19T23:39:00.002+01:00

I’ve taken to walking along the front most evenings now. It’s calm in those unique fractured moments, at the end of the day.
There are always other people around. No matter how cold or how little sunlight there is, people are making the most of the day.
I see other people walking dogs. I started taking Millie with me, every day, but Anne had always walked her enough in the day. It seemed strange to Millie that she be allowed out so often, I suppose, so I stopped bringing her. She’s quite literally a creature of habit, like her mother.
I’m not habitual in many things. That’s why I could get away with this evening walking; Anne is never surprised by anything I do anymore.
So I’m looking out onto the beach or maybe the sea, and then I tend to grow tired of nature and I’ll turn around and look at the cars whizzing up the coast road, or I’ll stare straight down the long path that runs along the seafront. This promenade of life; I can see everything I want to see here. Everything I want to be, everything I want to possess, everything I haven’t got.
No wonder I always arrive home in a worse mood than when I left.

Cobweb

2008-08-18T21:27:00.000+01:00

He stopped and looked up at the sky. For the first time in a long time he noticed the entangling of cables above him.
Wires connected the street lights and the traffic lights. Above these, the phone lines split off puncturing the sides of surrounding buildings, and through it all ran the cables bringing power to the trams. Altogether, it created a perfectly scattered cacophony of lines. Wires begat wires begat wires.
As he sat, engaged by this intersection of energy for the first time since he first came to the city, he could almost see a gigantic metallic spider spindling across and down from the building opposite to ensnare an unfortunate bus in its web.
He was awakened from his reverie by impatient honks and shouts from other motorists. He let his foot slip from the clutch quickly, shunted forward and stopped in the middle of the junction.
The lights changed again and he tried to start the car as the honking and shouting grew louder. Panic, panic and the sound of an engine labouring, juddering, flooding. He was stuck fast and he looked up, anxiously, in case the spider was coming for him.

Sunset

2008-08-15T23:04:00.001+01:00

And as the sun set upon another day, the questions flitting through his mind began to slow and, like the birds and insects of the day, find a place to rest for the night.
The night was just warm enough to sit out, if you wrapped a coat around you. Henry sat, his body rolled back on the grass so that the base of his spine was holding him in place, stroking the ground, rather than the padding of his bottom.
He wondered at the sun, how its hue grew darker and more intense as its glare grew less powerful. Soon its red entrails filled the sky. He thought of how men once believed the sun descended with a hiss into the ocean at the end of a day, but was always thankfully liberated from the waters in the morning before its light and heat was snuffed out forever.
He then imagined the waning sun as a man being lowered alive into hot wax or oil. He thought he heard it howl as it dipped below the horizon.
After its demise, Henry sat there in the early dark for a few more minutes before standing up, shaking a spider from his legs and dissapearing back inside his cottage.

The ruined castle

2008-08-14T22:45:00.001+01:00

She said she was going to take me to the ruined castle. She said it was like a fairytale, and that magic happened there. Then she held my face with her two warm hands and kissed me.
We held hands on the walk down from the car park on the top of the green hill. “It’s a bit of a walk,” she said, “but it’s worth it.”
We followed the thin gravel path cut into the hillside but paused as it turned and stepped down to craggier cliffsides to allow an older couple to pass. She put her hand to my ear and stroked it while whispering: “I want to take you to my favourite place, the best place to see it, for your first look at the castle.”
I smiled and nodded at her. She let go of my hand now and clambered down the grassy slope, diverging from the well trod path and into grasses perhaps untrod for centuries. “It was once King Arthur’s castle,” she said. “He slept here with his lady Guinevere.”
When we reached the cliff edge, she paused and turned to me with a grin of such mischief I almost bust out laughing, but I knew what this all meant to her and I didn’t want to break the spell. “It’s just up this hillock,” she said, and led me by the hand once more, slowly, until Tintagel Castle came into view.
We stood there, on the mound, and surveyed the green scene. Where was the castle, I wondered. Where the towers and battlements and the queen’s gardens? All long gone, of course.
Yet, she beamed and marvelled at it. No doubt, she could see it all, could picture its pomp and majesty right across the hillside. All I could make out were some crumbling ramparts and a great fence to stop children and old women plummeting into the waves below.
Underwhelmed, though I was, I bit my lip for her. I held my tongue. She stroked my head and smiled some more. This must have been exactly how she’d envisioned it, how she’d planned it in her head for weeks.
Then she turned to face me, lay down in the soft grass, unbuttoned her blouse and bent her knees so that her skirt slipped and jerked up her legs to her cream thighs.
She held her hand out for me once more and I took it with relish, my smile genuine now. I fell upon her then and soon made both our fantasies come true.