Tales of the Disconnected

Made it to the final 8!!

2011-11-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

But fell at the final hurdle.... So here, for your delectation, is a little vignette called Chalk....

It was one of those summers that kept its heat, built on it every day, added another brick then another till it felt like we were walking round in a kiln. It was the summer that saw the end of Old Lilian and Don Grayson and that poor little dog that Troy Welkman left locked in his truck. Most of all though, it was the summer that killed Tony Moretti.

Everyone knew Tony and Tony knew everyone. Knowing everyone was Tony’s business. He knew when it was your birthday, always came with a gift and a song. He knew when you were sick, sent one of his sisters round with soup. He knew when you were behind on your TV payments or struggling to make rent, and there he was again, this time a clutch of dollars in his hand.

Tony was a saint half his life, Father Thomas said at his sending-off.

It was the other half that worried us, we replied in amen.

Tony knew everybody and Tony knew everything. If you got a new job or a bonus for Christmas, there was Tony for his share. If your cousins came into town with some fish or some beef - no labels, no questions - there was Tony, making a claim. If your sister got married and the Italian side of the family came with brown envelopes bursting green notes, there was Tony, dancing with the wives at the wedding as he put his hand among the cash and took his fill. Every shopkeeper in town dreaded the rattle of the door, the clatter of the bell that meant Tony was coming in to check the register.

It was the summer that killed Tony. The heat that kept on building like a string that kept on stretching. Stretch it so far and - snap.

Someone shot Tony, twice, in the back, as he walked up the church steps late one night. Could’ve been anyone, the town said, and the Sheriff could only agree.

They drew a chalk line round where he fell, took his body away. His sisters came that night and washed away the blood from the steps, careful though to keep the chalk line neat and clean. And the summer kept its heat and the sidewalk kept the shape of Tony Moretti, splayed like a spit roast.

And each time we went up the steps to church, there he was, waving us in, reminding us that you can be half a saint and half a sinner, but sometimes it’s better to be one thing or the other, not both at the same time. Because if you’re both, said Father Thomas, the Lord doesn’t know what to do with you, and you can spend a long time in a limbo made of chalk if the summer keeps its heat.

Grandpa Ping

2011-11-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

So I thought I would share it with you. It's part of a series I'm working on, so feedback very welcome! This one is all about Grandpa Ping.

Grandpa Ping was in one of those camps out in California in the war. Never quite got over it. At the time he protested, said he shouldn’t go to the camp because he wasn’t Japanese. Told the military he was like a mongrel dog, a little bit of everything, all kinds of Asian thrown in together like some sort of soup. Turns out the soldiers processing him weren’t really listening, heard the word “dog” and the word “soup”, came up with “dog soup” and thought ‘this guy Ping is a troublemaker’. Started his time at the camp in solitary. Got a lifelong hatred of men with clipboards from that day. Didn’t like dogs much either.

Jimmy Ping said his grandpa stayed in California for as long as he could stand, then moved here to get away from the weather. Jimmy used to come visit for the holidays when he was a kid; his father and mother ran a grocery store in Sacramento, always busy, too busy to take a break when their son was out of school. So Jimmy came to Steelton for summers and winters. When Grandma Ping was still alive, the Pings were out and about a lot; they’d play bridge; they’d pop in to Becker’s for a soda from time to time; they helped with the fireworks every 4th of July. Grandma Ping was a dynamo, a bubble of energy, fast friends with Mrs Gleason at the pharmacy. Grandma Ping taught Mrs Gleason some Japanese; Mrs Gleason taught Grandma Ping enough Latin to understand prescriptions, so she could stand in the pharmacy and, by listening in, figure out what was wrong with everyone else in town. That was Grandma Ping’s daytime soap, her religion: she could gossip her life away on other people’s ailments.

When Grandma Ping died, Jimmy came to live with his Grandpa full time. He was sixteen or so by then, and his folks said “we don’t need you at the store; we’ve got enough little Pings around to take over”. Something like that, so Jimmy told us. Jimmy came to Steelton to look after his Grandpa, finish his schooling, get himself something to do. He was one of the last people to move in rather than move out.

Grandpa Ping never forgot his time at the camp at Tule Lake. There, he was surrounded by those Japanese deemed most dangerous or least trustworthy, like some kind of devils’ yearbook. Most Likely To Start An Insurrection. Most Likely To Be Passing Secrets To The Enemy. Grandpa Ping would have been the kid on the page who was Most Likely Just To Annoy Everyone By Being A Pain In The Ass And Get Himself Into More Trouble Than He Deserved. He should never have gone to Tule Lake; he would never have gone there if he could just behave himself, keep quiet, answer questions simply, show a little respect. The whole thing about being some kind of Asian mongrel was just the beginning. After that there was the time he started trading in oranges, pretty much the only fruit that came into the camp; he would buy and sell, trade oranges (which he didn’t eat) for cigarettes (which he didn’t smoke) for cash (which he couldn’t spend). By the time he was rumbled, he’d got about $2,000 in small bills and coins, enough to get him more time in solitary and a few extra enemies, American and Japanese. Then there was the time he decided to pal up to the guards, offered to teach them some Japanese phrases so they could communicate better with the prisoners. Given the prisoners all spoke pretty good English, no-one’s quite clear why the guards said yes. But lo and behold, they learned some phrases and, next time there was a health check up or a roll call or something, they tried to organise everyone into orderly lines by shouting “Your mother was a dirty whore” and “You have the penis of a tiny mouse”. Once they calmed the riot, there were two guards dead, a bunch of injured Japanese and Grandpa Ping at the sideline laughing like a hyena.

For every moment like that, Grandpa Ping bought himself six months of trouble. Solitary confinement, reduced rations, extra labour duty. Managed to turn everyone against him - the guards, the administration, the other prisoners, the locals. After the war ended and he went home to San Diego, word had spread. Everyone knew that gaki Ping was trouble; he found himself blacklisted even amongst his old friends and neighbours. Moved up to San Francisco where things were a bit more open; people moved on a bit quicker; trade kept everyone with their eyes and minds open to the Pacific. That’s where he met Grandma Ping who fell hook, line and sinker for his tales of mischief and created herself her own little hero.

The rest is only so much sandwich filling, but the thing with Grandpa Ping was that he could never let go of what had happened to him at Tule Lake. The isolation. The punishment. In some ways, the certainty of the place too, the routine, the order. Once Grandma Ping had gone, and Jimmy had shown up with his own brand of chaos, something changed with Grandpa Ping. We heard about it from Buck Keegan who used to go and help out from time to time, fixed the roof after harsh winters, flushed out some pests that had crawled under the house. What it boils down to is that Grandpa Ping moved himself out of the family home and into a shed at the end of the yard. He would get up every day at dawn, kick pebbles around the yard all day, then go to bed at sundown. Keegan said that Jimmy would bring food out to his grandfather; each day Grandpa Ping would only eat a fixed amount of it, there would always be something left over. It was like he was back on rations again, Keegan said. A few months in, he got Keegan to bring over some barbed wire, put up a fence around the shed, made himself his own internment camp right there in his yard.

We asked Jimmy about it. He didn’t like to say much, just that it made the old man happy and who could argue with that. Then Norm Hayden and George Corrigan got talking to Julie Stensson one evening when Julie popped into Becker’s to bring in some extra chips after Becker hadn’t ordered enough. And Julie was telling them what she’d heard about Grandpa Ping and said:

“What he needs is a friend. Someone who’s been through the same sort of thing.”

That got everyone thinking and then George Corrigan said “What about Old Eli?” and it was the best idea that he or any of us could have had. Old Eli had lived in Steelton as long as anyone could remember. He’d come straight from Europe at the end of the War. He had the look of a man who was always being followed, like his shadow was his enemy, but like he knew he couldn’t run fast enough to get away. As the years passed, his long face grew longer, jowlier, until he came to look like a tired old bloodhound. Everyone knew things about Old Eli without being told. We knew Old Eli had seen some things in the war, things that haunted him. We knew he had lost people back in Europe and that he kept hoping that maybe someone was alive and that he would send out letters trying to trace people from the dark days. This was enough - to Julie Stensson and to George Corrigan and to Norm Hayden - to put him together with Grandpa Ping and get the two of them to be friends, maybe help break Grandpa Ping out of the strange pattern he’d fallen into.

Julie Stensson spoke to Old Eli the next time he was in the store. She had that kind of way about her, that she could bring up these subjects, sensitive things, in a way that didn’t feel like she was prying or sticking her nose in. Old Eli listened patiently then said that of course he would pop by and see Grandpa Ping and maybe talk a little about the old days and see what Grandpa Ping would say.

So life moved on, and Old Eli and Grandpa Ping became firm friends, sitting together in Grandpa Ping’s yard playing chess or walking around the yard kicking pebbles together. We’d thought that having someone come to visit might get Grandpa Ping to come into his house, sit in some comfort, settle back in, but it turns out Old Eli was just as happy out in Grandpa Ping’s camp as Grandpa Ping was. Jimmy Ping used to look out of the back window of the house and see the two of them, relaxed in the sunshine or cowering in the rain, always outside, heads bowed together over the chessboard, sharing their food, talking, always talking.

It was Steve Akers who first got us worried. The Akers house was a few doors from Old Eli’s, and sometimes the post would get messed up. Steve had complained to Dana Morton who ran the post office and didn’t live that far away herself, saying how could she get it wrong when this wasn’t exactly a big town. Dana shrugged her shoulders, said it wasn’t her fault if people didn’t address things properly and turned her attention back to whatever gossip magazine she was reading. Loved her gossip magazines, Dana did; she was always nose deep in the latest shenanigans of this movie star or that wannabe. Like she could ever dream of being like them, with her pudding-bowl haircut and her puddingy face and her puddingy figure. Anyway, Dana wouldn’t do anything to make the post get where it was meant to be, so it was up to the rest of us to make sure letters got to where they needed to be. And sometimes, by accident, you would just open a letter that came through your door that wasn’t meant for you.

So Steve Akers had opened up this letter that wasn’t for him, but for Old Eli. And once he’d opened it, he started reading. And once he’d started reading, even though he knew it wasn’t his letter, he just couldn’t stop. Because this letter came from someone who’d been with Old Eli in the war, who’d been at the same camp, who was bringing Old Eli up to date on this and that piece of news, and who was reminiscing about what it was like back in the war, back in the camp, back in charge of all of those prisoners. And this was the point that Steve Akers got; this was what he told us that got us worried. Turns out that Old Eli wasn’t a prisoner in a camp in Poland or Czechoslovakia or wherever: he was a guard. Old Eli was a Nazi. Now Creaky Joe, the barber, when he heard about this, said how can he be a Nazi when he’s a Jew, and the rest of us said maybe he isn’t a Jew, but Creaky Joe said he definitely is. And Becker said that maybe he had converted to Judaism at some point; and Tuke McCall who isn’t subtle at the best of times said did this mean that Old Eli had felt so guilty over taking Jews out of the world that he decided to add one back in, and things started to threaten to get out of hand, so Becker told everyone to calm it down a bit and turned up the volume on the ball game to distract us from each other.

Still, Old Eli had been a Nazi guard and Grandpa Ping had been a prisoner, even if it had been in a camp in California which was very different from what Old Eli had been running. It seemed that Grandpa Ping should know about this, or at least that Jimmy Ping should, so Julie Stensson went to talk to Jimmy, to tell him what was going on. And Jimmy took Julie down to the end of the yard where Grandpa Ping and Old Eli were playing chess, and Jimmy said “Eli, can we talk to you for a moment?”

“Of course, Jimmy. What do you need?”
“When you were in the war….” Jimmy Ping started, then stalled, so Julie Stensson carried on. “In the prison camp, Eli. What did you do there?”

“Well, I suffered. We all suffered. I hoped. I prayed, and the Lord carried me through.” Old Eli looked as holy as a pope as he spoke.

Julie persisted. “But what did you do?”

“What we all did. Hoped for the best. Tried to survive….”

Jimmy lost patience. “Eli. What we’re trying to ask: were you a guard in a Nazi concentration camp?”

Eli smiled a smile of resignation, like he’d just had to fold on the most convincing bluff he’d ever played. He seemed to shrink a little too, to become two or three inches shorter, like he’d let out a great breath he’d been holding for fifty years. “Yes, Jimmy. Yes. I was.”

Jimmy Ping and Julie Stensson just kind of stared at him for a while. Old Eli stared back. It was Grandpa Ping who broke the silence.

“We were all different people in the war, Jimmy. Back then, I was a prisoner, right here in America. Eli was a guard over there in Europe. Things change. People change. Time passes. Now we both get to be prisoners here in my yard. Or guards, if you prefer. Really, we’re just two old men who like to sit and play chess and pass the time of day. Now will you get out of here? It’s his move and I think I’m going to beat him for once.”

Another comics update

2011-09-05T04:02:00.000-07:00

Two more bits of groovy comics news:

I've had a piece accepted for this year's Hallowscream, an online anthology of sweet and innocent tales of loveliness (erm...). Delighted that Louis Carter is putting pencil to paper on it. Publication date - Halloween 2011 (obviously). Keep an eye on the Back from the Depths website here - you can also download the 2010 anthology which featured a gently little tale called Windle, written by yours truly and drawn by some bloke called Boyle.

And secondly, the lovely Owen Watts is now putting together the second edition of Dr WTF!? and has kindly allowed me to graduate from a one-pager last time round to five whole pages this time. Naturally, I have repaid him by producing a story partly set in a toilet, but what do you expect? This one will, I hear, be drawn by Pete Wood. This one I think will come to see the world at Bristol Comic Con next May.

More soon :-)

A story about cake

2011-08-24T14:27:00.001-07:00

Advisory: don't read this immediately before or after eating. It's not nice.

http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/lizzie-boyle/cake/

I would say "enjoy" but that's probably not the right word....

Patience rewarded (I hope)

2011-08-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

Because you have all been so lovely and patient, I've decided to upload two stories for you today - how generous am I!?

First up this stand-alone story called The Scene. It starts like this:

So it's late, ten or half ten maybe, and me and Tommy and Chris are out, and we're in Soho and the streets are full of people and cars and scooters and we stop to look at the scooters and there are girls, “man, the girls” is what we say, and we look at the girls but only carefully so they can't see us looking.

And Tommy says he can get us into the Scene Club and that's where we're headed because that's where they're playing, the greatest rock and roll band in the world: the Rolling Stones. And Tommy says he can get us in because his sister who's older is seeing a guy who knows the man who drives the van with all the Stones' equipment in, all the guitars and the amps, and they say there's always whisky and beer in the van in case anyone gets thirsty and when they first started out the band would travel in the back of the van with all the instruments but they don't any more because now they're successful and they have a car.

READ THE REST HERE: http://tinyurl.com/3j6exmd

It's all about the comics....

2011-04-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why it's been a bit quiet here lately.... Well, there's been a lot going on in the background. Thought it was time to share:

I've had two (count 'em), two comic scripts accepted by Future Quake for inclusion in Something Wicked later this year. Delighted that Pencil Monkey is drawing one of them (his blog here) and very excited to be working with Chie Kutsuwada on the other (amazing website full of piccies here).

Not only that, I've got a short but sweet story coming out in a new Not-Dr-Who anthology, Dr WTF!? Drawn by Tony Rothwell, it was great fun to write and to see made real. See more of Tony's stuff on his blog, and follow the Dr WTF project on Facebook - there's a link at www.drwtf.co.uk.

And and and and....

Chris Cronin is editing an homage to all things pulp, including a caper I'm putting together with the inimitable Dark Jimbo - watch out later in the year for gangsters, vixens, chases, escapes and some mozzarella.....

So, that's why there haven't been any new stories. Sorry ;-)

On the theme of Loss

2011-01-18T13:18:00.000-08:00

Here's another burnt offering, a story for a competition on the theme of Loss. Didn't get anywhere but I got a great bit of feedback from the competition reviewer, so happy days.

Click here to read. Enjoy!

Christmas Tale, the Second

2010-12-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

And here's another one, a wistful little tale of a big man in a red suit.

Lonely This Christmas

Three small creatures, dressed in green and red, stood on tiptoes, their hands holding them up to a frosty windowsill, their faces just high enough to peer into a window ringed with condensation. Their grip was precarious; every so often, one of the elves would lose his balance on the snow below, or feel his fingers sliding off the sill, and would tumble to the ground. This brought forth laughter from his companions - elves find nothing funnier than other elves falling over - then hurried shushing as they tried to stay hidden from the man inside the house.

Watching for a while, they were intrigued.

"What's he doing now?" asked Torven, the elf who had fallen most often and so could see the least of what was happening inside.

"He seems to be… moving." Heggle replied, in a not very helpful way.

"That's not very helpful," pointed out Mishi, for elves cannot help but state the obvious.

"You're stating the obvious," Heggle answered with a smile.

This conversation could have carried on for many an hour - which elf conversations often do and which explains why they have never fulfilled their potential as rulers of empires - had not Torven slipped and fallen again. The three elves laughed uproariously. (Had they built an empire, it would have been a very happy one.)

Torven got back to his feet and stared through the glass again.

"Is he… is he dancing?" he asked hesitantly.

The three elves looked in. Inside, a fire roared in the hearth of the wooden cabin. A Christmas tree, weighed down with baubles and lights and chocolates and gifts and fruit and candies and all sorts of Christmassy goodies, stood in one corner of the room. A great red settee reached out across the middle of the room. Above the fireplace, on the wall, a portrait of the owners of the house, an old man with a full white beard and his wife, round and plump and puddingy, with rosy cheeks and a white bun of hair like a dollop of ice cream on her head.

And in the middle of the room, the man himself; dressed in his red suit, with his belt hanging loose, barefoot, his boots drying in front of the fire. And, yes, he was dancing. He held his arms out, one out sideways at the height of his wife's shoulder, the other as if around her waist. And he was waltzing - though the elves did not know this word, for they only dance in four-four time - he was waltzing alone.

It had only been a few months since his wife had passed away. Last Christmas had been her last Christmas; they had worked so hard together, finding and packing and tying and readying all of the presents for delivery, before he went out on his rounds. It had been bitterly cold last winter and she had caught a chill that just would not go. A cough at first, then a deeper hack, then a sense that her lungs were full and sticky, and finally, in the quiet summer months, he had held her hand and said Goodbye and she had breathed out her sweet cold breath for the last time.

Since then, the old man - Father Christmas - had tried to carry on alone; he had been busy with work, always the pre-Christmas rush, and the elves and the reindeer couldn't look after themselves - for elves are not good at cooking, and reindeer have no opposable thumbs. But even amongst the hectic schedule, there were times when he found himself alone, usually in the night-time and in his little cabin, when he would look up at the picture of himself and his wife and say "Mary, Mary, Mary" under his breath and realise how much he missed her now that she was gone.

And on those nights, he would wind up his old gramophone - for electricity is scarce in those cold far reaches of the North - and he would play songs that reminded him of their time together, and he would always end by playing "Lonely This Christmas" and dancing with the shadow of his wife, Mary. After some nights like this, he stopped playing the other songs and played only that one, and he would dance, and dance, and dance.

This was one of those nights and the three elves watched - not for the first time - as Father Christmas spun slowly around the room.

"This has to stop." Mishi said with determination in his voice.

"You sound very determined about that," Heggle replied.

Sensing where the conversation was going, Torven deliberately slipped and fell. The three elves chuckled. Torven, sensing that he had their attention, said from his cold seat in the snow, "I have an idea."

Mishi and Heggle stared at him. "Really?" they said in unison.

"Really. I have an idea."

The two elves looked at Torven, then at each other, then at Torven again. Then they burst out into a round of applause, for elves are always impressed by ideas. Torven took their applause with a small bow, really a nod, as he was still on the ground. He scrambled to his feet with a broad smile, proud of his achievement in having an idea. The applause died away. There was silence.

"So… what is it?" asked Heggle.

"What's what?" said Torven.

"Your idea!" Heggle cried, exasperated.

"Oh, um, now…. let me see…." Torven scratched his head through his little green hat. His mind had gone as blank as a foggy sky. "Oh yes, that's it!" And he gave another bow.

"You have to tell us what it is!" Mishi pointed out.

"Ah, right, yes." And the three elves leaned their heads together and whispered, for though elves are always impressed by ideas, they are very protective of them and do not want passers-by to hear what they are.

-

The next evening, Heggle, Mishi and Torven took their places at the window. But they were not alone. Every window into the cabin had a gaggle of elves pressed up against it, for though the three had tried to keep their idea secret, elves are really not the most discrete of creatures and word had spread far and fast. Inside, the fire roared, the tree sagged a little, the settee, well, it was just there. Father Christmas walked into the room, stamping his boots to shake off the snow before taking them off and casting them in front of the fire. It had been a long day; two of the reindeer had pulled muscles and the elves in the packing workshop had been distracted and unproductive all day. Father Christmas undid his belt buckle and breathed a sigh of relaxation. His belly seemed to grow a little, released from its restraint.

He looked up at the picture above the fireplace. "Mary, Mary, Mary," he muttered, then reached for the gramophone and started to play his song. He sang along quietly, "Well, it'll be lonely this Christmas without you to hold…" and to dance slowly around the room, waltzing with his wife who wasn't there.

And as he waltzed, the door to the cabin opened, and in walked Mary. Father Christmas stood stock still, staring at her. "Mary?" He said. The figure approached him, reaching out a hand to him. Flabbergasted, Father Christmas reached out to her, took her hand and actually took her hand. It came away in his grasp, a plastic hand from a mannequin. "What the deuces?" He cried as, unable to contain themselves, the elves around the house, and the elves operating the mechanical Mary, burst into fits of unstoppable giggles.

Not quite sure what was happening, Father Christmas flopped down on the big red settee.

"Does anyone want to tell me what's going on?" He asked of no-one in particular.

By this time, Heggle and Mishi had pushed Torven into the little cabin. It had been his idea so he could explain it - for elves liked nothing more than passing the blame to others. Torven shuffled hesitantly towards Father Christmas.

"Sir, we're very sorry, sir, but we noticed that you were lonely and missing Mrs Christmas. So we thought we would make you a new Mrs Christmas." And with this he gestured to the new Mary. Looking closer, Father Christmas realised that she was made of a mannequin, lots of red material, a little trolley so she could move, a beachball for her head and a lot of cotton wool for her hair. The elves had worked secretly all day on the model Mary and now looked nervously at Father Christmas, wondering what he would say.

It took a few moments before the man on the settee began to chuckle, and then to giggle, and then to laugh with all his might, a big, booming laugh that made the Christmas tree sway and the fire splutter and the elves - who could not resist laughter - join in too. Then, as if the wind had changed, the man's laughter turned into tears, a quiet sobbing, and the elves fell silent.

Father Christmas sniffed his tears back and gathered his composure. "Elves, elves, everyone, gather round." And all the elves from around the house tiptoed into the room, and sat at the feet of the big man in the red suit.

"Thank you so much for what you have done. You have seen that I have been lonely and you have tried to make me feel better. But this Mary, she cannot replace my Mary, who is dead and gone and will never come back to dance with me."

The elves sniffed in unison.

"I shall always miss my Mary, and I know you miss her too." The elves nodded in unison and collectively wiped back a tear that had strayed from an eye.

"But what you have made me realise is that, whilst I miss my Mary, I could never be lonely. I have so many good friends among the elves and the reindeer, and so many people who send me letters from around the world, that, although I shall never find another Mary, I shall never be alone. Thank you, my friends."

And with that we take our leave, backing quietly out of the cabin door, into the snowy night-time, safe in the knowledge that the elves will continue to look after Father Christmas - for, above all, that is what the elves are best at doing.

Christmas Tale, the First

2010-12-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something wot I wrote, drawn by the inimitable Conor Boyle (see more of his genius at http://pencilmonkeymagic.blogspot.com)

It's a one page story about a 2000AD character called Dirty Frank; if you don't know who he is, I don't have time to explain, but you might like the jokes. Or just skip to Story Number 2 :-)

http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,31127.msg565548.html#msg565548

Steampunk

2010-12-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

A little something I entered into a steampunk writing competition, prompted by the Emperor, one half of Paragon and the wordsmith behind Fractal Friction.

The first sentence was given, the word limit was 500, the rest was up to you. Sadly, I didn't get anywhere, but thought I'd share the musings anyway. This one's called The Memory Of Horses:

No airship could fly faster than the Zenith. Passengers hung their laughing faces through the portholes, liberated like eagles on the wing.

We watched the Zenith from the streets below, rolling our self-winding marbles along the granite. Mothers stopped loading the auto-washers to watch it rend the sky. Commuting fathers squeezed the brakes on their steam-bikes, pausing to watch their dreams made real.

The Zenith and the steam-bike, the hydro-pump automobile and the steam-engined train; suddenly we could travel farther and faster than ever before. As children, we saw the oceans; we played and waved as great liners danced upon them. We were taken out of the city, shown the great fuel-forests. We watched as steam-saws sliced through the shafts of ancient trees, fuel for our changing world.

Older, we found nostalgia. Nostalgia now, but then we were scorned, called Luddites, anti-progressionists, revolutionaries. Those who spoke loudly were cast into jails. Others remembered in the safety of silence.

We thought back to those long-gone forests. And to what we saw when we snuck away from the felling of the great trees. Coming to a clearing, looking up to the branches, we saw hand-made ropes and rough-hewn ladders, sensed a skittering and a shuffling in the leaves.

Hidden, we watched. And from the trees emerged children, their ragged smocks nothing like our silks and cottons. They shuffled into the clearing and sat clustered on the ground. Silence, the silence of a world without machines. A few moments later, more children came, each leading a horse tethered by a hand-knotted rope. They too entered the clearing and waited.

Unnerved by their silence, we fled, back to our parents still salivating over the march of progress, back to their star-spangled wonder at the great saws and the Zenith overhead.

Only years later did I understand the clearing. These were the horses that used to pull the cabs and carriages; the ponies that dragged the tradesmen's carts along our narrow streets; the children who tugged the rickshaws for our fathers' commutes; the boys who ran telegraph messages from house to house; the maids who washed linens by hand and cooked meals in great pots over open fires.

It was the memory of horses that struck me; when I was a baby, there were as many horses as people on our streets, as many stables as homes. Horses now are unseen, unknown.

I had watched the horses in their living grave, there in the woods, and I had seen the Zenith sweeping through the skies. And I saw I was a bridge between the old and the new. The next generations would only know their automated world, not what came before. They would not know the horses, the children, the trees, all long gone now.

I have kept my memories close in the world of the Zenith, the world of a difference engine on every desk, a steam-auto outside every home, a miniature Elisha-phone raised to every ear. I have kept my memories close.

Shortlisted!!

2010-10-15T06:33:00.000-07:00

No story this time, but a bit of self-puffery (which is a neat trick if you can do it)....

Entered the Meridian Short Story Competition (www.meridian-writing.co.uk, I think) and have managed to get myself shortlisted. If you look down the rather long shortlist, you'll see one called The Ride. Who knows what will come of it, but if it doesn't win, it'll be published here first!!

Have a bunch of other things out in story competitions at the moment, hence holding off publishing them, but there'll be some more new stuff very soon.....

A story about darts. Honest.

2010-09-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

A short and not so sweet story, perhaps a little more gritty than previous?

Click here to read more

And she tries her hand at something romantic....

2010-04-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

So the next one word theme was spinster... A little snippet below or follow the link for the full thing -

http://tinyurl.com/3ae9to7

Love

Four heads leaned towards each other over a small round table. A conspiracy of drunks, Friday-night triple-distilled drunks, fresh off the sites and out of the offices, shirts ironed and tucked into their jeans, trainers clean, the world at their mercy. They leaned in, forehead to forehead, the moment before the decision was made.

“I bet you I could make any woman in this town fall in love with me.”

Cries of “yeah, right” and “bollocks, mate” in response. The peacock mocked but undeterred.

“No, seriously.” The peacock shuffles his feathers, swigs from his pint. “There's these two girls at work practically fighting over me... my sister's mate who can't leave me alone... your Mum...”

“Fuck off!”

“I bet I could!”

A look circulates the table. The three conspirators understand, wordlessly, what is about to happen. With a silent nod, their spokesman says:

“Alright, Dave. You're on. We name the woman, you get her.”

Unidentified

2010-04-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

An interesting challenge - someone gives you one word as the theme for a short story. Two weeks later, what have you got?

As a teaser, here are the first few lines. If you want to read more go to: http://tinyurl.com/ydu87mm

Unidentified

About three years ago

"Deke. C'm'nd have a look at this."

"What you got?"

"Not sure. Need you to take a look."

They look. On the fizzing screen in front of them, ahead of the Lander, is a strange, bulbous outcrop.

"What's the scale here?"

"Close. Close in. Thing's about five, maybe six inches across."

"New?"

"Tracked this quadrant before and no record of it. Could have blown in on a wind, 's small enough."

"Composition?"

"Haven't probed it yet, but it doesn't look like standard Mars rock. It's kinda shiny. Waxy."

"OK. Approach. Have a dig. See what it is."

Something gruesome this way comes....

2010-02-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

Left alone on rainy Thursday evenings, my mind tends to wander.... This next is an excerpt for something I'm tinkering with - try supernatural-futuristic-gory-London-noir-graphic-novel-script and you'd be about there..... Gruesome deaths, inept police and the idea of getting the vigilante you deserve.... Anyway, here's something delightful (written part comic script, part just as it comes, I'm not good at formatting!):

PANEL 1

Night time, clocks are crawling through the early morning hours. Rain. Gold street lights merge with the vague whiteness of a moon behind clouds, casting pale yellow accents around the city.

We see a night bus, passing through the junction at Monument, heading south to London Bridge. It is profiled against the office and shop windows behind, a dark red creature limping through the night.

PANEL 2

Inside the bus, sitting at the back, on the upper deck, looking forward. A few rows ahead, to our left, a couple, the girl with her head resting on her boyfriend's shoulder. Further forward, a man, head leaning back and against the window, asleep, drunk. Nearer the front, two more men, travelling separately, lost in their own thoughts.

PANEL 3

A shaft of light enters the bus from the left hand side, jolting the girl alert and upright.

“What's that?” she asks.

All faces are turned to the left, looking towards Tower Bridge.

PANEL 4

Tower Bridge, from London Bridge. It is as if the sun has emerged behind the bridge, a bright white light shines along the river towards us, silhouetting the unmistakable shape of the bridge.

And in the middle of the bridge, beneath the top gantry, a shape that is not normal, a shape that doesn't fit. It looks like the tiny shape of a figure, hanging by its hands, crucified almost.

PANEL 5

The sound of the girl's scream follows us as we move closer...

PANEL 6

Closer... (and the light behind the bridge starts to fade)...

PANEL 7 - splash

And closer still; we now can see the full figure of the man, quite close, head to toe.

His hands are outstretched past his shoulders, lashed to the bridge with ropes, nails through the palms. His neck is also roped to the gantry – this may be what has killed him. His head rolls down to the left, his mouth slightly open; his eyes stare dead ahead, cold, white eyes, the colour dissipated from the pupils. He is naked apart from some kind of cloth around his hips. His torso is peppered with wounds, five, six, seven, knife wounds, the blood still dripping fresh. His ankles are bound together, blood has flowed down his legs and caught the ropes at his feet, staining them red.

It is his eyes that we will remember. White, white eyes. Full of fear and pain and some kind of ungodly horror at what has happened to him, frozen in the instant of death.

The Music Box

2010-02-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

This one dates back to last summer or so, but I have a soft spot for it so thought I'd share. Now if I could only shake the tendency to kill people off...

The Music Box

The familiar chime of the doorbell roused her from the Telegraph crossword. She wasn’t expecting anyone, so chances were it was an earnest West Indian Christian or an over-eager young electricity salesman. Half-tempted to ignore it, she rallied herself, and strode with a sense of purpose along the hallway to her front door.

The postman. Of course, the postman. He handed her a cardboard box, the size of a shoebox but made of heavier card and bandaged with packing tape. A grunt and a wave of a clipboard translated as “ sign here”. With as pleasant a smile as she could muster in the face of unnecessary surliness, she signed the clipboard, barely reaching the last r-y of her surname before the clipboard was ripped away and the postman bounded off.

She made her way back to the kitchen at the end of the hall and resumed her place at the homely oak table. She laid the package on top of her unfinished crossword and considered it for a while. It was postmarked Brighton, which meant that it had something to do with Beatrice. She needed a deep breath or two before she was ready to open it.

Beatrice’s funeral had been as lonely and dismal as could be. There were just the three of them – the vicar, Alice, and that carer chap who was always sniffing around Beatrice whenever Alice called. Winter had saved the last of its bitter rain for that day; the church echoed with cold and the graveside pronouncements were made at double time.

Back in the church after the burial, Alice paused for a few minutes, deciding it was an apt moment to sit and think about her sister. Bea had died suddenly, as suddenly as anyone aged eighty could die. Pottering in her ground floor flat one moment and crumpled in a heap on the floor the next. She hadn’t suffered. Ironic that a woman whose life consisted of complaining about her suffering had missed out on the chance of a moan at the very end. When the young chap telephoned to tell her, Alice had breathed deeply – much as she did now in the church – and commented that you never knew what would get you and when. All those years of sisterly rivalry, plotting, scheming and competing – those patterns etched in childhood – and now Bea was gone. In a strange and reluctant way, Alice would miss her.

The vicar’s busy day wouldn’t permit him to dwell, but the young chap had invited Alice out for a consolatory cup of tea and slice of cake at the sort of café you don’t find in London any more. All doilies and cake stands, nostalgic for a simpler, more delicate time. He was an interesting enough boy – boy – he said he was twenty-seven! – but she paid little attention to his story-telling and his sympathies. Instead she thought about the gap that there now was in her life – she had always been a sister and now, aged seventy-seven, she had become an only child. Whilst Bea had not been a daily presence in her life for many years, the concept of Bea, the certainty of her, had been there all these years. Yes, she would miss her.

And now this package, which must have something to do with Beatrice. Whoever had packed it had been far too flamboyant with the tape, and it took a good ten minutes with the sharpest scissors in the kitchen before she could prise open its cardboard casing. Inside, a selection of ripped up newspaper, toilet tissue and bubble wrap shielded its contents. Rummaging like a child at a fairground stall, she pulled out a folded piece of paper and a small wooden box.

She opened the paper:

Dear Mrs Flannery, It has come to our attention that the enclosed was mistakenly retained by the hospital when processing the personal belongings of Miss Beatrice Sullivan. As her next of kin, we are forwarding this on to you. We understand that Miss Sullivan was holding this item when she was brought to the hospital. We apologise for the delay in returning this to you. Please accept our apologies and our condolences at this difficult time.

It was signed by some administration manager or other at the hospital in Brighton where Beatrice had been taken, no doubt another of those interfering private sector busybodies failing to administrate and getting in the way of the nurses and doctors we really needed. It didn’t take much to get them in a muddle at the hospital. Just a small wooden box.

Alice didn’t recognise the box, but then, Bea had gathered so many bits and pieces over the years it was impossible to keep up. Always in and out of charity shops and jumble sales, car boot sales out of town when she’d been a bit more mobile, picking up this bit of bric-a-brac or that bit of old junk. So many things, small, annoying things that sat on shelves accumulating dust. When the bulk of Bea’s possessions had been sent to her, she had asked the van driver very kindly if he would mind taking them along the road to the shop for the hospice. What did she need Bea’s life for when she had her own?

The box was a curious thing, though. Rectangular, about eight inches wide and six inches deep, standing maybe four or five inches tall off the table. It was of a dark reddish wood, polished so that it had a lustre and a glow that almost seemed to pulse. The top of the box was plain, but around the sides, figures were etched into the wood – dancers, animals, quite a festive scene, based on something Greek, no doubt. At the front of the box, a small metal clasp in the shape of a goblet or chalice held the hinged lid in place.

As she lifted up the box to open it, Alice felt a charge – an electric shock, almost – leap out from the wood into her fingers. But one didn’t get electric shocks from wood, an odd sensation that only added to her curiosity. She unhooked the clasp and lifted the lid.

Mechanical music started to play – oh, the shock of it! Alice jumped in her seat, taken aback by her response to the suspense of opening a silly little box. It was a music box – she’d had one when she was a child, and bought one for her daughter Margaret when she was little. Margaret’s music box – which she would have forgotten by now with her busy life and her infrequent phone calls – Margaret’s music box had held a solo ballerina, frozen on one pointe, arms akimbo, forever spinning to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. This box was much more elaborate. The tableau in front of Alice featured a series of mechanical metal figures – a dancing bear who lifted his right arm and leg in time with the music, a circus ringleader beating a tiny drum, an acrobat performing backward somersaults (a clever piece of design, she thought) and a heartbroken clown – a Pierrot – turning lonely pirouettes and dipping his head as he sobbed through his dance. Each little figure performed its ritual, isolated, unaware of its companions but completely in time with them, lead by the tinkling beat of the mechanical music.

The tune was unfamiliar, a funny, quirky melody over a strange, jarring rhythm. It seemed to repeat itself though, and every time she thought the melody and rhythm had fallen out of time, they managed to complete a circuit and fall into place again.

What a bizarre little curiosity, she thought. Typical of Bea to have picked up something like this, probably she was dusting it when she collapsed and died. Perhaps it’s worth a few pounds; she resolved to watch out for anything similar on Antiques Roadshow and maybe have a chat with that nice man at the flower shop who seemed to know about all sorts of things.

As her mind wandered, Alice had the sense that the music was growing louder, a trick to bring her attention back to the box. It worked – she focused again on the quartet of bear, ringleader, acrobat and clown and watched them strut and fret on the tiny stage. The music started to accelerate and the dancers too, although she had not wound the key. Come to think of it, there was no key; it must have a very strange mechanism to keep working this way. The music got faster and faster and the dancers’ movements became more and more blurred and Alice felt her eyes starting to struggle to pick out each arm and leg, each somersault; her ears could no longer identify the melody or the rhythm or the drumming of the ringleader. Faster and faster it all went, until the music was almost a single continuous tone and Alice started to hear instead the lively organ music of an old carousel, and the scratchy energy of her father’s old fiddle, and the swing band playing as she danced her first dance with her new husband, never were they more beautiful or more together than at that moment. And she could hear the tinny drumbeat of some young lad with headphones on walking in front of her in the street. And the pounding thump of the music from the television news. And Judy Garland singing Somewhere over the Rainbow at Christmas. And a gaggle of children singing Happy Birthday, out of time and out of tune at one of Margaret’s interminable childhood parties. And it felt to Alice that within the single tone coming from the box, she could hear every piece of music that she had ever heard, and music that she hadn’t, and music that had not yet been written, faster and faster, louder and louder, quickening her heartbeat, bringing a sheen to her brow and tremors to her hands, shivers through her fingers and her arms, sharp twitches to her legs, a jolt through her belly as if she were a little model figure dancing to the wild wild music, always and inevitably dancing simply because there was music playing, simply because someone had lifted the lid….

A few moments later, the lid snapped shut.

It was the man from the flower shop who first called the police. It had been a week or so since he saw Mrs Flannery. She always popped in for a chat when she was on her way to the fishmongers or the greengrocers, an antidote against the frenzied modernity of supermarkets and takeaways and everyone hurrying everywhere. Once he got over his initial annoyance – why couldn’t she find someone else to talk to? – he’d started to appreciate what she symbolised and to look forward to her visits.

He knew that she lived alone and independently; she had told him that her sister died not too long back and her daughter was only in contact once in a while. He’d apologised to the policeman who’d answered the phone, saying it was probably nothing and agreeing that yes, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

And so it was that the florist accompanied two policemen – one round and middle aged, the other young and stringy – to Mrs Flannery’s house. After a good ten minutes of knocking, the young, stringy policeman had displayed surprising strength and kicked the door hard enough to pop the lock straight off. As soon as they entered the house, they knew there was something wrong, the air was stale with a sweet smell of rotten honey and they could hear the buzzing of flies from the kitchen. The policemen suggested he wait in the hallway, but he was inquisitive and had never seen what he expected to see, a dead body. So he followed them in. There, slumped across the kitchen table, was Mrs Flannery, her face resting on a half finished Telegraph crossword and her hand lying close to a reddish wooden box.

The round policeman placed two fingers against Mrs Flannery’s neck. “Dead”, he said, “I’m sorry.” Walking away a few steps, he started to mutter into his radio. The stringy policeman occupied himself staring out of the kitchen window, while the florist could not quite look away from the wooden box. It had a certain light about it, a certain quality, and it almost seemed to pulse when you looked at it. He picked it up from the table, then gave out a little exclamation as he received what felt like an electric shock.

“I wouldn’t touch that, sir,” said the stringy policemen, suddenly paying attention.

“Evidence?” asked the florist.

The round policemen responded before his colleague had a chance, “ Don’t worry, sir, you go ahead. I don’t think there’s anything suspicious gone on here. Just an old lady whose time had come.”

The florist turned the box in his hand, eyeing the etchings around the edges.

“What do you think it is, sir?” one of the policemen asked, as the three men gathered closer around the object.

“ I don’t know,” said the florist, lifting the lid….

A few moments later, the lid snapped shut.

2010-01-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

Something a bit different - what you get when you mentally start with the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night...". Click Read More to find the rest of it.....

From the sea

The stranger came through the night rain towards the bleak farmhouse. He was as wet as the rain itself, a black figure on a black night. The owls, the foxes, all were sheltering tonight. He had been walking alone for a long time, the sky’s rain mixing with his blood as wounds old and new failed to heal.

The farmhouse looked at first like a continuation of the wet, black rocks that surrounded it. It took some time for his eyes to pick out the straight lines, the corners, the shapes that told him this was made by man. He approached the house carefully. Shelter and perhaps food, possibly people. It would become more complex if there were people. People would ask him his name.

He entered the kitchen. Even in the darkness, he could see that it was sparse and plain, a broad table dominating its centre, no decoration, no finery. This was a simple house and these people would not have much to share.

A lantern came flickering to life. In its light he could make out the pale face of a girl, no more than twenty years old, her eyes wide like the night, her gaze fearful but alert. He stood transfixed; she was the most delicate, the most fragile creature he could ever have imagined. She looked at him with fear and ferocity combined, until, as the light grew, her expression changed. The light seemed to give her warmth, to bring a glow of something kind and gentle and giving to her face.

Breaking the spell, an old man leapt like a salmon from his hiding place behind the kitchen table. In his hands he bore a shotgun, which shook and shuddered with its master’s fear.

“I mean no harm. I’m from the Corinth.” The stranger cried, raising his hands in front of him, no weapon and no threat.

“The Corinth? The ship that came aground last Thursday?” the old man looked at him in disbelief.

The sheer relief of being among human company meant that the words burst out of the stranger’s mouth like floods breaking a dam.

“I’ve never known a storm like it, we could see nothing, hear nothing. The rocks just seemed to rise out of the sea towards us and we were in amongst them, men, rocks, water, the broken bones of the Corinth. At first there were shouts from others, people clinging to driftwood, barrels, each other, anything to stay afloat. Then gradually, the shouts became fewer and fewer. I thought they had just drifted farther away. But they had given in and gone under. Sometimes, I was swimming, sometimes just clinging on to whatever part of the ship I could find. It was dark, always dark, raining, blowing, I could not see the land or the sky, just blackness.

“I must have slept, I don’t know how, and as I woke, I was being thrown to the shore by great breakers. How many times was I thrown onto the rocks? I dragged myself free from the water, to feel my face still wet from my own blood. I wondered if this was death.”

“I started walking as soon as I was able, up, away from the sea, as far from its madness and its destruction as I could. I don’t know how long I have been walking. And,” he shook his head to try and escape the truth of it, “and I don’t remember who I am.”

He put his hands to his head, as if trying to wring his lost memory from his skin. The old man looked at him in disbelief. The girl rose from her seat with her hand raised as if to interject. He watched as she showed with her hands that she was mute, that she spoke only through gesture. He turned to her the old man, her father, again.

“I remember the shipwreck, and I remember more than I care to of the days that have followed since. But of the time before? Nothing. No names, no faces, no places. Nothing.” He fell to his knees in desperate isolation, his head in his hands. Loneliness surged over him.

He felt the hands of the silent girl resting on his own, cupping his torn and bloodied face. She lifted his head to look at hers and stared into his eyes with compassion, no, with something beyond compassion, something that felt so powerfully like love that he could not bring himself to look away.

“The lists are here, on the table. You could look for a name that you might know,” the old man indicated a sheet of loose paper. “They were brought from the village yesterday. All hands on board reported dead. So, if you were on board that ship, chances are you’re a ghost!”

The stranger picked up the paper from the table, riven with trepidation. He scanned the list of names. It took some time to read them all. Each name was like a sip of wine to him, to be savoured, rolled around the mouth, considered in full. Each name was a possibility, a perhaps, a maybe; attended by a story, a past. Each held a tale of family, of past loves and lies, of wealth and loss, of grief and laughter.

As he read, he became increasingly aware of the girl standing beside him. She stood close by his right shoulder. She was near enough that he could feel the cold dampness of her breath on his neck but she was not touching him. He gave his full attention to the quivering paper in his hands. She reached around him and pointed a slender, white finger at the list. He followed her signal and saw the name he had been looking for, his name: Master James John Gilbert.

“Ha! That’s it!” he yelled. “James John Gilbert, known as Jack to all on board the Corinth."

“Well done, sir,” smiled the old man, “A fine name to remember indeed!”

Gilbert shared his smile. “Jack Gilbert, of the Corinth and, I believe, of Bristol.” He paused, realising that the well of his memory was not yet full. There was still much to remember. “But I do not remember anything else. Jack Gilbert of Bristol and the Corinth. It is not much.”

“But it is something,” reassured the old man. “With a name and a town, a man can achieve a great deal.” He adopted a more practical expression. “Perhaps this would be a good time to rest, sleep a while. You have had a long and difficult journey and some rest might help to uncover some more of your past.”

He gestured Gilbert towards a pile of blankets on a box close to the fire.

“Sleep will probably help, if I may,” agreed Gilbert. “You have helped me so much already that all I ask is a little warmth here for the night.” He took the blankets and spread them onto the floor. He felt the emotional surge of rediscovering his name ebbing away and a powerful fatigue taking hold. The old man and the girl left the room, and Gilbert let himself be taken by the waves of sleep.

-

At first, he did not know what it was that stirred him from sleep. He thought perhaps a gust of wind from the storm outside had brushed along his cheek. And that the breeze had caught under the blankets and under his clothes and was somehow caressing his cold skin. It took him some moments to truly come awake and to realise that the girl was there, alongside him on the floor. She had come in her silence, with her face filled with longing and love, and was slowly and soundlessly making love to him. Her touch was light and chill, like a cold leaf brushing your face on a winter day, or walking through spiders’ webs in the forest. Every fibre of his body quivered and danced and jolted with passion. He could wait no longer and, grasping her wrists, he spun her onto her back, her body so fragile in his hands. He took her with a violence, a hunger that threatened to shatter her into pieces, to break her gentle fingers against his skin. He had a sense that only once before in his life had he ever felt such a great need for one person, a sense but not a memory, and as he pushed down and down on her brittle figure, he tried to bring his memory back, tried to remember, tried, tried…..

-

Gilbert woke with the dawn, uncertain of his surroundings, yet still hearing the patterns of the storm outside. He was alone in the small kitchen room, lying on his makeshift bed of blankets. For a moment he thought he had dreamed through the night, that the passions built up whilst at sea had been realised in a vision of the silent girl. As he rose, though, he could smell her scent on him, and, looking at the wall low beside the fireplace, he saw where she had etched a tiny C for Charlotte and a J for Jack, intertwined like the limbs of lovers.

She had been real; it had been real. She had sated his passion that night but she had also triggered something in his memory, stirred a sense of a love for a woman, a fragment of the truth of his own life.

As he stood, straightening his clothes, the old man and the girl entered the room. Charlotte adopted her customary place, sitting on the stool in the corner by the fire. Her eyes darted to the etched initials, then to Gilbert’s face, and she looked at him with a tenderness he had never imagined possible. Her passion frighted him, more than any northerly wind or mast-high swell. It was this fear that decided his next course of action.

“I must take my leave now. You have helped me far more than I imagined possible.” Gilbert rose as he addressed the old man and pulled his coat around him.

“It is a shame to lose you so soon, Gilbert. We have had no visitors here for almost a year.” The old man’s face fell beneath a forlorn shadow.

“I have greatly valued your hospitality,” Gilbert answered, conscious of Charlotte’s eyes upon him. “But, yes, I must go.”

He had almost reached the door when he looked back. “My regards to you and to your daughter.”

“My daughter!” the old man cried. “My daughter? Oh, will the truth not leave us alone?”

“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to …”

“Sit down, Mr Gilbert, sit down!” The old man said with great authority. Gilbert sat. “Let me tell you about my daughter!” His face had taken on a look of such intensity, of such impassioned rage that Gilbert had no choice but to listen.

“My daughter was always so dear to me. Her mother died as she was born, one pure soul leaving the world as another took its place. Since she was born, my daughter was a mute. She never uttered a word. But we lived here, father and child, for these many years, learning to speak with each other through the silence.

“A year ago, while I was away at Plymouth, a man came to our home, a man whose name and face are still unknown to me. He sought shelter here from a great storm. In the short time he was here, he cast a spell over my beloved daughter. She was compelled by him. Captivated. She told me, in her way, that she loved him beyond all language.

“After two days of the storm, he left our house, but his memory stayed, in the form of a child growing in my daughter’s belly. The shame of it, Mr Gilbert, the shame, I can barely speak of it. We stayed hidden from the village, we did not attend church, we saw the farm go almost to ruin as we stayed away from the market.

“My daughter’s child grew in line with my shame. When it came time, the dishonour of its origins was enough for the child to be born dead.”

Gilbert had felt his colour rising as the old man spoke. Something swelled in him like a wave about to strike the rocks, building and building, poised to unleash its awful truth. His memory started to return, his memory of this place, of Charlotte, of this hearth, of her hand on his face. A memory a year old. A memory that had come to life, unbidden, like the child, only to be welcomed by death.

He knew that he could not speak to the old man of this memory, could not confess that it had been he who had felt the girl’s love a year ago, and felt it again just a few hours before. It was too powerful, too great a chance to have come this way, to have chosen this path. And the old man’s shame was so strong, what would he do if he knew that the cause of all his grief was the very man sitting at his table as the storm blew outside?

“Born dead, unwanted.” The old man continued after a moment. “It was a great relief to one, but a heartbreak to another. A second death followed swiftly. When one cannot find a path through the storm, sometimes one just waits to be swept away, you, a man of the ocean, will understand.”

Stunned, stricken to the colour of snow, Gilbert rose from his chair. The child dead, and the daughter too? He clenched his fists until his fingernails started to puncture the skin on his palms. The daughter too? Then last night, the Charlotte of last night, was a phantom, a memory, a ghost of some kind? What had seemed so real and so sure, the feelings of this beautiful silent girl toward him, were simply night terrors, visions of some kind. A love found and lost so quickly, so powerfully. He could hear only the drumming of his heart, the gale of his breath as emotion after emotion coursed through his every vein.

Recovering himself, he made to leave. “I have taken advantage of your hospitality too long.” Gilbert began desperately. “You have been most kind to me, but I believe the storm is clearing and I should be on my way to the town to reclaim my name and my life.”

“Mr Gilbert, please do not hurry away. You are rightly embarrassed to keep company with someone who has been through such shame and such grief. But please, an old man does not have much company.”

Gilbert gave a cruel laugh. How little the old man knew, that the ghost of his silent daughter was in this very house, in this very room, staring at him – Gilbert – with eyes full of wonder and pleading. Eyes that begged him not to leave, a face that bloomed with tenderness, that could capture and keep his heart if he only allowed himself. But a face that was dead and cold and gone to another world.

“I must go,” Gilbert concluded. “I thank you again for your kindness to this stranger.”

He looked again at the silent girl, as tears formed in her eyes, droplets of sadness countering the rain that pattered on the ground outside. She reached a hand out towards him. He shuddered in fear and turned to leave.

As he walked into the yard, a gust of wind took up, scurrying the autumn leaves around, clearing a patch of ground that had been covered for many months. He recognised the shape of two gravestones, rough-hewn rocks that seemed to emerge from the earth, like souls frozen in time as they fled the dead bodies beneath. A tiny stone for the child, a larger stone for its mother. He pulled his coat around him for shelter and strode away, remembering the taste of a ghost’s kiss in his mouth, the feel of a spectre’s hands on his body.

-

He did not turn as he walked away. He did not see Charlotte coming from the house, her hand raised to beckon him to stop. He did not see her weeping as she fell to her knees, watching the one man she truly loved walk away for a second time. She could not cry out to him. She could only watch and weep. As she slumped and cried, she felt the gravestones of her dead child and her dead father staring at her in judgement, their judgement her living purgatory.

She wept in silence amid the storm.

Dredd's Desires - another 2000 AD competition story

2010-01-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

Second story submitted to 2000AD competition in December 09. Click Read More for the conclusion... Enjoy :-)

Dredd’s Desires

Dredd approaches the machine, checking up and down the street. All quiet.
He inserts his credits. The screen in front of him flickers for a moment before a beautiful woman’s face appears.

“Good day!” the machine greets him huskily. “I am here to fulfil your needs. Please answer the following questions. Name?”

Dredd punches at the screen. The woman on screen smiles in encouragement.

“Occupation?”

He punches again.

“What four things are you never without?”

He thinks and types – helmet, Lawgiver, Lawmaster – it gets tricky after three. Ha! I am never without the law!

“Thank you. Please wait while we cater to your specific requirements.” She smiles again and – was that a wink?

Dredd taps his feet nervously, checking the street again. If he is caught here, in this dingy alley, using this machine for… for… these purposes…

“We are ready for you now, Mr Dredd.”

With a deep breath and a growing frisson of excitement, he hits the screen again to continue.

The woman fades out and in fades an image of an old man with a white beard. He speaks with a retro Austrian accent.

“Meester Dredd. Vot you are about to experience may cause you concern. If at any time you vish the broadcast to halt, please tap ze screen.

“From vot you have told me, I can only say zat you have some issues vith the sex. Ze tools of your trade – your Lawgiver, your Lawmaster – zey are tools indeed. Large veapons and fast vehicles are symbols of ze penis – you are obsessed vit your penis and zose of others around you.

“I belief zis stems from your father. He voss also a man of ze law, voss he not? He had power over life and death – it is hard, is it not, to follow him. You vish to kill your father, a vish zat you cannot fulfil. Zis is why you have feelings of sexual inadequacy.

“You also, of course, vish to sleep vith your mother. But you have no mother. Zis is why you vish to have sex vith ze women in your life but you do nothing. You create zis distance consciously, hiding behind your mask. And yet ze very mask you wear, zis helmet, is it not a clear symbol of ze vagina? Are you not, scared and alone, attempting to recreate ze security of your absent mother’s womb? You vish simultaneously to return to ze womb, to have sex vith your mother and to kill her. None of zese things can you do. Zis is also why you have feelings of sexual inadequacy.

“In summary: you vish to kill your parents and to have sex vith them both too. You confuse zese desires for sex and death; whilst zis makes you a good judge, you find it hard to have meaningful relationships.

“Sank you for consulting vith Sigmund F-Droid! Have a nice day!”

Dredd stares aghast at the now silent machine. “Drokk, I only wanted something to eat.”

Scarlet Dreams - a 2000AD short story comp entry

2010-01-22T10:37:00.000-08:00

Posted on the 2000AD Forum Short Story Competition, December 09, theme: love and rockets. Click Read More to see how it ends...

Scarlet Dreams

You dream a lot in twelve hundred years.

Your everyday mind and your body may be out of action but your unconscious self takes longer to switch off.

I had dreams of war and killing, dead planets I’ve never known.

Dreams of bounty hunting, the greatest days I’ve had, the cold feel of long steel, the pump and recoil of the blaster, the rippled grip of brass on knuckles, playing with time and playing with fire. Our war against the world, a war fought for money and for kicks, sneck, I dreamed of those kicks.

Dreams of Johnny, always Johnny, my Alpha and omega. The touch of his hand, gentle on my face, every callous a kiss from his gun-wielding fingertips. The rasp of his bristled skin against my lips, the tender scratch down the lines of my body as he moves his mouth over my skin. The mutual desire for killing, the passion for death, the elemental burst each time I caught his eye as another quarry collapsed to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

And after a time, the details slipped away. I dreamt of a womb, of being naked in a cave.

Dreams of the only two things that really matter, the only two things that beat the rush of watching a man die at your feet – blood and lust. Pulsing, raging, blood and lust beat through the body, skin bare, flesh alive. Memories of hands and mouths, of arms and legs, alive and dead, entwined, some sort of orgy of life and death, Johnny slipping away from me, fading into the crowd. Bodies aflame, a great burning world I have never seen, a seething mass of flesh, seared with lust and scarred in death. Knowing somehow that time was passing and that each day saw my thirst for blood and my hunger for lust growing and swelling. Twin pulses – one in my heart, one in my heat – beating a rhythm, faster and faster, taking my sleeping form to a precipice, a point, a moment of pure anticipation. Here it comes, here comes the culmination of twelve hundred years of dreams…

And suddenly I am floating, emerging into white light, my eyes closed, my world crystallising into pure blood and pure lust.

And some crazy snecking blond dude is staring at me, talking about his scarlet light. What the…?

“Sneck. What time is it?”

I barely hear his answer, every sound drowned by the pulsing of my blood. I need to speak, to drag myself away from these sensations, to find myself in reality, in the details. “What is this place?”

He answers again and keeps talking. What to do - slake my thirst or slake my lust? “Will you shut it? I’m trying to think here.”

Time to quench your appetites, girl, come on. But which one: blood or lust?

Breathe, breathe, deeply, deeper.

“Did you say something about a drink?”

To tell the truth: blood always wins.

Day One - The Author Makes A Start

2010-01-22T10:23:00.001-08:00

A repository for words and, perhaps, deeds, where stories will emerge, hopefully be read, helpfully be critiqued and ultimately... well... Let's just say that I shall post (occasionally) random stories from the soft underbelly of my brain. If you like them, please say so.