Catch up with me at Twitter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.