Friday Flash - Icebreaker

Another unsuccessful competition entry this week, the challenge being to write a murder / mystery story set in my local area, in under 2500 words. Just squeaked it.

Icebreaker

It’s the middle of November and winter’s drawing in. I’m walking up the lane through the woods at the back of Cragside Farm and there’s ice in the tractor track puddles for the first time this season. I take this route because no one else ever does. The old man rarely leaves the house these days, and any visitors come up the tarmacked drive, through the gates with the CCTV. His son had those cameras fitted; I was here the morning he arrived to supervise. Bossy type, rude even, the way he spoke to that bloke from the security company. I knew not to use the drive again after that. Before then, I might have snuck up that way if it was late and dark and I’d had an especially long day on my feet. It adds another half mile to the journey, taking the back way, but what’s half a mile when you walk as far as I do?

Cragside Farm has been my home for 3 years now. No one knows I live here, but no one particularly cares. If you look at me at all, you probably think I don’t live anywhere. By the true definition of the word, I am homeless. I neither own nor pay rent on my own accommodation. No census or electoral register records my residence. I pay no taxes, utilities, nor anything towards the upkeep of this property. I haven’t even set foot inside the farmhouse itself. I sleep in the barn, the hayloft that’s still stacked with bales even though the old man sold off the last of his cattle in the summer. I worried he might sell the hay too, but nobody wants these old, square bales anymore. Nowadays they want huge, round, wrapped in plastic bales that’ll feed a herd for a couple of days and don’t have to be lifted by hand, the twine cutting into your palms, the dust coating your throat as you break them and shake them in the hay racks. I know all about that. I grew up on a farm just over the Pennines. How I got from there to here, that’s a story I prefer not to think about anymore. Thinking won’t fix it.

Even with the shelter of the trees, the wind cuts through me. There’s nothing beyond Cragside Farm but the moors of Marsden and Saddleworth. The rocky summit of West Nab standing vigil over Meltham and Huddersfield, staring out across to Bradford in the north and Leeds in the east. I couldn’t live in a city. I only ever walk as far as Huddersfield, find a busy corner to lay my cap down, hope I make enough to feed myself on the walk home.

It’s dark by the time I reach the barn. Across in the house, the old man’s already hunkered down in front of his TV. I’ll join him soon. First I climb into the loft and set out my evening meal. A stale sausage roll and half a Cornish pasty I salvaged from the bins round the back of Greggs; part of a ham sandwich someone left on the wall by the canal (for the ducks?); a bruised apple and a brown banana from the fruit stall on the indoor market. I usually eat better than this but I’m saving my money for when it’s too cold to sit around on street corners. I made almost five pounds today, spent just twenty pence. The rest goes in my stash for a rainy day, or a snowy day, or a day even icier than this one. They’re coming.

After tea, I retrieve my blanket from its hiding place under the loose hay and head back outside. My watch stopped working last year but I have a pretty good sense of time. NCIS will be starting any minute. It’s LA tonight. We like the acronym shows, me and the old man. CSI, SVU, even the old NYPD Blue repeats, we watch them all. Him from his armchair by the fire, me from the holly bush in his overgrown back garden. It’s one of those bushes you can climb right inside (if you don’t mind a few scratches) and there’s a big hollow space waiting to welcome you. When I was a kid, I’d have made a den here. Did I ever grow up? There’s a good view of the TV, anyway, and I can just make out the subtitles. The old man’s half deaf; he always turns on the subtitles.

So we watch our shows, NCIS followed by a CSI double bill. He doesn’t move from his chair, I don’t move from the bush. The wind carries the drone of cars climbing the hill towards West Nab. They sound so much closer than usual. Occasionally I even think I hear one approaching, but I see no lights through the trees and I know it’s just my imagination. I return to Miami. Horatio cracks the case, makes a subtitled quip, puts his sunglasses on and heads off down the boardwalk. There’s lots to be said for watching shows set in the sunshine state when it’s too cold to feel your fingertips. Even the fire in the living room has died down to embers, and finally the old man gets up from his chair, switches off the TV, and heads upstairs. I wish him goodnight and retire to the barn. Still wrapped in my blanket, I crawl deep into the stack of loose hay till all but my face is covered and fall asleep in seconds. It’s been a long day.


* * *

I wake to the crackle of a police radio. I’ve been moved on enough to recognise that noise as a threat. I go quickly to the boarded up window. There’s a gap in the boards when I can see out into the yard. Two police cars, an ambulance, and a muddy Range Rover I recognise as belonging to the old man’s son. Another car, an Audi, is just pulling up. Probably CID. I should be relieved: they wouldn’t come in such force just to move me on. I should make myself scarce, but morbid curiosity gets the best of me.

I climb down the ladder and cross to the front of the barn. There’s another window here, also boarded, except for the very bottom pane which still has its glass. Frosted outside, cobwebbed inside, but I can just make out two figures in the yard beyond. The younger is male, uniformed, probably the source of the radio crackle that awoke me. The other is a woman, late thirties, red hair and rectangular spectacles. I’d call her attractive if I allowed myself to think that way anymore.

“Bit of a wasted journey for you, Inspector. Pretty certain it was an accident.”

“What was he doing up there?” The woman’s looking up at the roof of the farmhouse, then her face drops slowly to the yard.

“Problems with his TV aerial. We spoke with his son – it was him what found him, first thing. Terrible that, finding your dad sprawled out in the yard, stiff as a board – I mean, frozen, like, not just the rigor…”

“Why was he here? The son? Does he often visit so early in the morning?”

“On his way to work, like. Apparently the old fella rang him last night complaining about the reception – couldn’t get any of his programmes. On about going up on the roof and fixing the aerial himself, but Mr. Armitage - the son, I mean - he thought he’d persuaded his dad to wait till morning. Guess he just didn’t want to miss the snooker.”

I go cold inside, colder than I felt in the holly bush last night while I watched three crime scene dramas back-to-back with a man whose TV was apparently on the blink. A man who never once got up to make a phone call (it’s out in the hall, I’ve never seen him use a mobile or cordless). I’ve watched enough detective shows to know something’s not right… but what can I do about it?

“Higgins versus Murphy, ma’am. Blinder, down to the very last frame. Don’t suppose you…?”

A third voice interrupts the post-snooker commentary, shouting “officer!” from across the yard. The inspector turns and I follow her gaze. I recognise my suspect immediately.

“This is Mr. Armitage now, ma’am. Mr. Armitage, this is Detective Inspector Silver—“

The inspector tells the son she’s sorry for his loss and Armitage’s face flashes a brief, humourless smile. Whatever he says now will be a lie. I know it, but how could I ever prove it?

“I’ve been going over the CCTV. I know what it looks like, but I just wanted to be sure…” He pauses and stares straight through the dirty, frosted window. I step back, suddenly afraid. Can he see me? Does he know I’m here? That I stay here every night? What if those cameras on the gate weren’t the only ones he had installed? What if he has me on film, coming and going from the barn, climbing into the holly bush, watching…

Watching…

Just like three years ago last summer. I spent my evenings on the rec’, watching the birds. There were always kids around, mucking about. Playing football, riding their bikes, smoking and swearing. I didn’t think anything of it. This was Delph, a little village just over the hills. I’d lived there most of my life. As a kid, on my dad’s farm, and then, when I was older and my brothers proved more agriculturally-minded than me, in a poky terrace in the village. I designed websites, kept myself to myself, never had a girlfriend or went out drinking, but I liked to walk down on the rec’, on a summer night, to sit and watch the swallows darting low to catch flies, or the blackbirds bobbing around on the ground, digging for worms. Sparrows, blue tits, magpies, the occasional chaffinch or peewit… until one night I found the little girl.

“Wanted to be certain,” the son continues, his eyes returning to the inspector, “that no one else… I mean, you tell yourself it was just an accident, that the silly old fool just couldn’t wait till morning… but I always worried about him, out here on his own. That’s why I had them cameras fitted in the first place. You hear such horrible things…”

“We’ll need to examine that footage ourselves,” says the inspector, and Armitage nods, his mouth a thin, tight line.

“Of course, of course… but there’s nothing… He was alone all night. No one else comes up the drive till my own Range Rover, first thing. I had to be sure, you understand. That there wasn’t any kind of… foul play. Bad enough knowing he might still be alive if I’d come round last night… but I was so tired, I’d had such a long day…”

The inspector tells him not to blame himself, but I’m thinking about the phone call. The one the old man supposedly made to report his faulty TV. The phone records, I think, the police can trace any calls made to and from this house last night, I’ve seen it done a thousand times on TV. They can prove no such call was ever made… but then I think of the CCTV, and I realise how long the son’s been planning this…

He must have been here, I realise, long before his father retired for the night. Early enough to place that call himself, from out in the hall where he knew his father wouldn’t ever hear. Some accomplice – his wife, perhaps, or a friend he’s cut in for a profit once he sells the farm –lice – his wife, perhaps, or a friend he’s cut in for a profit once he sells the farm – was waiting at home to answer. Or maybe he just had an answerphone set up. It wouldn’t matter, as long as the records showed a call from here to there last night, long enough to complain about bad TV reception. But I know he’s lying. I know the old man didn’t leave his armchair from the start of NCIS to the end of CSI. I’m a witness – if not to the actual crime, then at least to the fabrication of Armitage’s alibi. But he’s a grieving son who’s just lost his father… and I’m a homeless beggar hiding out in the barn. A homeless beggar who the police already have on record…

I found her body in a scrappy patch of dock leaves at the corner of the playing fields. I thought she might be still alive, despite all the blood. I picked her up and carried her to the nearest house. I should have just left her. The police came, and her blood was on me. Nobody knew what had happened. She’d been missing all afternoon. Her parents were frantic. They took me in for questioning. I tried to tell them, I’d just been watching the birds. They broke into my house, found the porn on my computer. I was a twenty-eight year old man without a girlfriend. It was nothing sick or perverted, not kids or S&M or... I shouldn’t have had to defend myself. I shouldn’t have felt so ashamed. They made me feel that way. They wanted me to confess.

The case fell apart. Someone had seen me at home when the girl went missing. The DNA evidence didn’t tally. The police lost interest and let me go. It didn’t matter. The damage was done. The stares, the whispers, the mothers pulling their children hastily away as I walked down the street. Even my own family… I left Delph three weeks later. Walked away from it all: my home, my job, my life. Been walking ever since.

I’m walking again now. I sneaked out the barn and up through the winter-dead brambles to the track I came in on. There was no point staying. I’ve watched enough of those shows to know that without actual, physical evidence, it’s going to be my word against Armitage’s. There’s nothing I can do for the old man now, and there’s no home here for me anymore. I’m carrying the few belongings I kept stashed in his barn. My blanket, my flashlight, my meagre savings in an old tobacco tin…

When I stumble, the tin goes flying. I stoop to pick it up from amid the smashed ice. The ice that’s been smashed by tyre tracks. Big, heavy tyre tracks that weren’t here last night… when the ice was fresh. Not tractor tracks though…

Suddenly I remember the sound of the approaching engine while Horatio did his thing and the muddy wheel arches on the son’s Range Rover, which he went out of his way to prove never came here last night… and then I know. I have to go back.

Friday Flash - 7 Seconds

I haven't run a #fridayflash story for some time, but I found this in my old writing files and thought it'd fit the bill. It was originally written for a competition; the challenge being to write a short story that would fit on the back of a postcard. That doesn't give you a whole lot of time... so that's exactly what the story ended up being about. Not having a whole lot of time...

They say that after decapitation, the head remains conscious for up to 7 seconds. Never thought I’d get the chance to find out. Stuck behind a lorry full of gobstoppers, in a rush to get back to Jo’s, had to risk overtaking on that blind bend. Audi coming the other way. Of course it was an Audi…

They also say that before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Waiting for that now, but all I can think is damn, I’ll never get to watch series 6 of House. The DVD arrived in the post this morning. I don't even feel sad, more frustrated – like when you can’t find the end of the sellotape. Expected a bit more drama somehow...

Plenty of drama, that last row with Jo. The things we fight about! The 5 second rule… I picked that toast up in three, it was perfectly good to eat. A few cat hairs weren’t going to kill me. But I hate that the last word I said to her was “off”.

Is 4 roses cheap? All I could afford. Where are they? Over there, past the bike… past the body. Legs still twitching – so it’s not just the head. Glad I can’t see the neck, think I’d puke if I did… wonder how that’d work?

Mum says accidents happen in 3s. Banged my knee on the coffee table this morning - I can still feel the bruise - then sliced my finger, cutting rind off the bacon. I’m all about proving people right today…

That kid in a hoody, stooping to pick up Jo’s flowers! Little git, gonna give ‘em to his girlfriend… least he won’t have to pay 2 quid a rose! Me, I’m waiting on another hoody now – the world’s first. Carrying a scythe, not stealing roses…

Wonder if she’ll remember to put my ashes in a firework like we discussed? ‘Purple Rain’ at the funeral? Give my comic collection to Barnardo’s? Come on… where’s my life-flash? This can’t be all there is. Thirty-three years, there’s got to be… wait, wait – it’s coming. I can see it now… I remember! Yes! My 1st ever--

Friday Flash - Dinner At Eight

I'm taking a break from the #fridayflash stories after this week while I concentrate on a few other projects. I love the discipline of writing these stories to deadline, and have greatly appreciated the feedback from fellow #fridayflashers and regular Slawit readers alike. But I've had to resort to older stories more and more over the last few weeks, and while it's fun to drag them out and dust them down and see if they still stand up, it's also a huge cheat.

So while I recharge my short story batteries, I leave you with this delightful Come Dine With Me menu from back in the good old Elephant Words days.

Dinner At Eight

So we’re having your friends over again, and you’ve told me to prepare something special. Being the dutiful little wife you always expect me to be, I’ve put a great deal of thought into tonight’s menu – and knowing how particular your friends can be, I’ve prepared them each their own individual dish, as follows…

For Martin, whose monobrow is Cro-Magnon, who was born wearing an animal logo over his heart, and whose chins the turkey wants back: T-bone steak, medium rare, served with asparagus tips, a fresh green salad, chopped pistachio nuts, and 8 to 900 milligrams of burnt thallium salts. That should give him three more days to use the word “methinks” wittily in conversation, to slosh and gargle his Merlot because it “releases the flavour”, and to tell everyone he meets how his wife was born under the sign of Dexys, so her parents christened her Eileen. (Even though she was born twenty years before that song was even written!)

For Eileen, who gave us dirty towels when we stayed the weekend, who kisses her miniature poodle with tongues, and who was so horrified by the death of Princess Diana that her hair turned platinum blonde overnight: braised lambs kidneys in garlic butter on a bed of spinach, served with artichoke, purple flowering broccoli and a reduction of calvados, crab apple and antimony. Perhaps this will finally stop her asking, “You’ve been married ten years now – why no kids?” (“Because we discovered something called birth control, my dear. It’s fucking wonderful.”)

For Trevor, who, like a budgie, hasn’t ever seen a mirror he hasn’t wanted to look in, whose silver threads among the gold fall regular victim to the genocide of Grecian 2000, and who is currently dating a girl not born until his seventeenth birthday (if you ask me, ‘cradle-snatcher’ is just a polite way of saying paedophile): pan-fried pheasant breasts in a tangerine and crème fraîche sauce, cavolo nero and new potatoes, garnished with parmesan shavings and mercury chloride. Although initially concerned that he might notice and question the rather distinctive crystals of HgCl2 sprinkled across his platter, I’ve since decided that between his ingénue, my cleavage, and the tantalizing reflection in his silverware, Trevor’s attention will be taken.

For Kelly, who spells her name Cheallaigh, who trained as a synchronised swimmer and hasn’t ever lost the smile, and who last time we got together insisted on showing everyone her bikini line at the table (in the restaurant): Salmon en Croûte (fish is, after all, good for the brain) served with horseradish, beetroot and chopped dill. Rolled into the pastry, its flavour disguised by lemon juice: taxine – taken from the leaves of our very own yew tree. (You are always encouraging me to do more in the garden.) I’ve chosen an especially low calorie recipe for Cheallaigh in response to a conversation we had about dieting at Cliff and Carrie’s New Year’s Eve party. “They say eating less helps you live longer,” she told me over her second slice of Black Forest Gateau, “but it also reduces your sex drive. I think when I’m older, I’d rather be plump and up for it like you than… well, skinny and frigid like poor old Eileen.” My grandmother, god rest her soul, would have said of Cheallaigh: she thinks she’s chocolate, and everyone wants a lick. Not after tonight.

And for you, my dearest Raymond, given that you long since stopped asking what I’d like to do this weekend; that you’ve never learned to cover your mouth when you yawn; and that last month I overheard you telling Trevor that mental arithmetic has never been my strong point… (“I've got a head for figures – the wife's got a figure for head. Ho ho.”) Given also that there are three things we never talk about over dinner in this house: religion, politics, and the female orgasm; and given that at most of these infernal parties you force me to cater for, I feel about as welcome as a zit in a wedding photograph: I’m serving arsenic, straight up. I’ve put it in your scotch, since that’s the easiest way to get you to down it in one. Enjoy your duck…

Friday Flash - Chartsengrafs - Rol Hirst

This week has been hectic. Finished off the proofreading on my novel, but had very little time to write anything new (except for a one page Powerman & Iron Fist script for Thoughtballoons).

The blog has suffered - I haven't managed a new post since Tuesday's Top Ten Songs About The 80s. Sorry if you missed me. But at least I haven't left you with a #fridayflash story... here's one from the golden days of Elephant Words. It was better than I remembered it.

(Thanks to Grandaddy for the title.)

Chartsengrafs

Trevor always said he didn’t believe in luck. Good things don’t happen because fate decrees them, they happen because you work hard to make them happen. Because you believe in yourself, and your own ability to succeed. He regularly quoted Theodore Herzl to anyone within earshot, and later, Jean-Luc Picard. After a while, the two intermingled. “If you will it… you can make it so.” Trevor wasn’t any more Jewish than he was a 24th century starship captain. He just had a thing for what he called “inspirationals”.

Theodore Herzl died of a heart attack aged 44.

Twenty-seven years I’ve worked in this office. Twenty-five of them in the desk right next to Trevor. He was nineteen when he first arrived at Selly-Sales; me, I’d just turned twenty-five. I still remember his first day. Getting that flaming Life Chart thing out of his briefcase, blu-tacking it on the wall above his word-processor, snapping his fingers, “Let’s go!”

I have to admit, I laughed at him. I mean, that bloody list… it had his whole life planned out! By 21: BMW 3 series. By 23: wearing Armani’s and Versace’s to work. By 25: three bed semi. By 30: Porsche. Married by 29, first kid by 32, second by 35. Before his 40th, a chalet in Provence. Of course, he updated and upgraded as time went by. The semi became a waterside loft apartment; the Porsche: a 911; the second kid: twins (that update, after the fact). But not once did he scale down his expectations, and not once did he fail to achieve his goals.

At 50, Gianni Versace was shot dead on the steps of his Florida mansion.

Three weeks after his wedding to the former Miss Blackpool, Trevor became Sales Manager and they set him up in that big office overlooking the river. He hardly ever went in there. Kept his old desk on the sales floor, right next to mine. Wanted to stay in the thick of it, he said, where the action was. You ask me, he wanted to keep us all looking at that blasted Life Chart. All his ticked off successes, all his unstoppable aspirations. By now he’d taken to attaching little pictures of the things he wanted, after reading that book on visualisation and harnessing the power of positive thinking… whatever.

There was the vintage Fender Strat, torn from the pages of Total Guitar. If he was going to learn, better to do it on a classic.

There was that photo of him dressed in the Steve Irwin shorts, standing with his kids in front of the lion’s enclosure at Chessington World of Adventure. Not long after, he booked a safari in the Kruger National Park, and ordered another five pairs of those shorts from Millets.

Steve Irwin lost his life to a stingray, a few months shy of 45.

Then one day, there was the pier.

“It’s a little jetty off the Isle of Skye… I found the image online while I was researching something for Culbertson McQuarrie,” (our biggest client), “just fell in love with it instantly. So peaceful, so beautiful, so serene… Trudi and I are booked into a hotel up there in the autumn, we’re gonna find that pier, get up nice and early and watch the sun rise. Breathe in the stillness, get back to…” I’d already stopped listening. Over the years, I’d learnt to tune Trevor out. For my sanity. His jokes, his catchphrases, his bloody “inspirationals”…

“We’ll have a Moet et Chandon, please, waiter… do you keep it in a pretty cabinet?”

“Suck in that gut, soldier – there’s targets to hit!”

“If you will it… you can make it so.”

That photo though, I just couldn’t tune that out. Whenever Trevor was out meeting clients (always parking his car round the corner from their premises so they wouldn’t know just how much he was taking them for), I’d sit and fixate on that pier, and wonder just where I’d gone wrong. My own Audi (A4) is five years old; I can’t afford to upgrade. I’m over-extended on the mortgage. This year, Brenda and I managed two weeks in Portugal; we argued the whole time, and the kids had dodgy tummies. I badly needed some serenity in my life, and that photo… the wind stirring the waters, the cloud quilted mountains, the wasting afternoon sunlight… that photo became my escape pod. I could jack it all in tomorrow, or maybe not tomorrow, but as soon as the kids left home; I could jack it in and buy myself a B&B somewhere tranquil and remote like there… no, not somewhere like there. There. Right there. Get up nice and early and watch the sun rise. Breathe in the stillness, get back to…

Late October, when Trevor returned from his holiday, two things had happened. One, he’d cut his hair like Steve McQueen. (Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t look anything like Steve McQueen. But he looks more like Steve McQueen than you or I do.) Two, he’d put in an offer on an old fisherman’s cottage situated right on that harbour in Skye. Now he could fly up there any time he felt like it. Only 90 minutes to Inverness on a Friday afternoon. He’d let me rent it if I wanted, £350 all in.

Steve McQueen died of liver cancer in Mexico, the same age as Versace.

Trevor’s going up there again this weekend. So am I. His Life Chart’s all clear right now. Everything’s ticked off. I’m sure he’ll be adding something else soon. If he gets the chance.

Friday Flash - Yolanda (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here...

Last week's #fridayflash story came with not only a 'To Be Continued...' but also a challenge to its readers - could they guess where it was going? It was an experiment to see if the seeds I'd laid in preparation for the twist were subtle or obvious... and when Steve G. saw through my cunning plan, I was forced to think a little smarter. Which, I think, leads to a better conclusion. Sometimes the first idea you come up with is the best... other times, a little brainstorming can be of great value. And as the best plot comes from character, I let the protagonist's character guide him towards a more apt fate...

I hope you enjoy how it all turns out...

(Image by -Kj.)





Yolanda (Part 2)


Do I really expect her to come? I suppose it depends how desperate she is. From her text, I’d say pretty damned desperate. But I don’t know anything about her beyond her name and what she looks like. She might live all the way over the other side of town. She might have responsibilities – god, a kid or something – meaning she can’t leave the house, only entertain visitors at home. Course, if that was the case, I find myself reasoning, surely she’d have texted back by now. The longer I sit there in silence, the greater the chance Yolanda is actually on her way… and then what will I do?

I finish my second coffee and think seriously about getting a third. I’m not going to sleep tonight anyway, whatever happens. The cafe closes in ten minutes, so if I don’t order now I won’t have time to drink it. I’ve pretty much given up on her walking through the door when she does just that.

She’s wearing a purple top with some kind of Muppet on the front (not one I recognise), a long black jacket, and stripy stockings that stop just below her black A-line skirt. Some kind of weird fishbone necklace and earrings shaped like tiny little cassette tapes. Is she even old enough to have ever owned a cassette tape, I wonder. As I try to stop myself staring.

She looks around the shop and scrunches up her face. As she turns in my direction, my eyes dash out into the street. I watch her reflection in the window instead. Thank god for big windows. Then I see her go for her phone.

Shit! Why didn’t I think? When Guy isn’t where he said he’d be, what’s the first thing Yolanda’s going to do? Call him up and ask why. But if she calls now, she’ll hear his phone in my pocket. I can’t even go to turn it off because she’s still looking in my direction. Then she’ll know. I’m a thief. And a liar. And… what? Some scary guy who pretends to be someone he’s not to lure young girls away from the safety of their home in the middle of the night and…? Oh, god, no, that’s not what I am. That’s not why I did this. That’s not—

“What can I get you?” says the bloke behind the counter and Yolanda pauses from making her call, turns to consider the menu on the board above his head, and shrugs.

“Guess I better have an expresso,” she says. Under normal circumstances she’d lose thousands of points for thinking there’s an ‘x’ in the spelling, but in that moment I really don’t care. I’m just glad of the distraction that gives me time to fish Guy’s iPhone from my pocket and hold my thumb against the off button.

Yolanda turns back in my direction while waiting for her drink and puts the phone to her ear. I stare at my empty cup and take a long, deep breath. I know I’ve blown it now. I couldn’t make a move even if I had the guts. What on earth was I thinking? That she’d come all the way down here and be so… what? Pissed off? Heartbroken? Horny? So fucking vulnerable that she’d just fall into my arms and I wouldn’t even have to try? What sort of idiot am I? Really?

“Guy?” she says to his voicemail, though she pronounces it ‘Gui’, and I hate him even more for that. “Guy, you utter shitheel, where are you?” Her voice is low, but direct. It’s anything but the voice of the shy, sensitive ingénue I’d been imagining. People with confidence scare me. “I can’t believe you’d drag me all the way down here and not even… This isn’t funny, Guy… you’ve got five minutes to get your arse back down here, or I swear to Leviathan you’re going to regret it.”

She swears to Leviathan? Riiight... so, turns out the weird goth shit goes further than just her fashion sense. And I’m glad, in a way, because that makes it easier to get up and walk out of there. That and the fact that this is the sort of woman who’d obviously eat me alive, despite my advantage in age. But then again, what did I expect? U know what I need. And I need it bad. There’s a good reason no one’s ever said anything like that to me. Because the sort of woman who’d be that confident, that direct… I’d never be able to approach them in the first place. No, women like that, girls like Yolanda… they get the conceited arseholes they deserve. Guys like ‘Gui’. It doesn’t matter that I’d treat her with more respect and kindness and love than he ever would. It doesn’t matter than I’m better than a box full of Guis. That’s just the way the world always works. Good guys finish last... bad Guis get all the girls.

“Where do you think you’re going…?”

I’m almost out the door when I hear her. At first I think she must be talking to someone else, but as Robert De Niro might say, I’m the only one here. I want to keep going, but I want to turn back more. Look at her. Talk to her. Defy the way the world always works.

I watch her knock back the espresso in one. Only just poured, it must still be molten. If it is, she shows no sign of it.

“M-me…?” I say, and curse myself for the hesitation.

“You,” she says, wetting her lips as she steps towards me. The bloke behind the counter gives me a look, surprise stirred in with jealousy, and that’s the last I ever see of the world as it was. From that moment on, everything is Yolanda.

“Come with me,” she purrs, taking my hand and leading me out the door. She smells of jasmine and old things, her skin on mine feels like the crawling and tickling of a thousand ants. “I think you have something I need… and fuck me, mate, I need it bad.”

And then we’re outside, where I couldn’t tell you, but there’s rain on my face and brickwork against my back. She’s pressing her body against mine, breathing coffee and liquorice, and her eyes are impossible. Somewhere a radio plays Reet Petite. Woah oh oh oh. Woah oh oh oh.

“Tell me,” she says, her voice little more than a whisper, “tell me how much I deserve a man like you. Tell me, how much better you are than the boys I’ve had before. Tell me how I’ll never be happy with a conceited ape like Gui, and only you - only you can satisfy my need."

And that’s how I ended up in thrall to the demon, Y’olan’da, archduchess in the church of Leviathan. That’s how I ended up fodder for an infernal beast that sustains itself on the arrogance and envy of others.

I thought myself better than this.

Friday Flash - Yolanda (Part 1?)

Yolanda

Ever eavesdrop on a conversation that makes you so angry, you have to do something about it?

Here’s my advice: keep out of it. Look at what happened to me…

It starts in a coffee shop, one evening after work. Ten hours on my feet, with just a 20 minute break for lunch and nonstop earache from Victoria all afternoon, I’m ready to drop. But I don’t just want to go back to my lonely flat and slump comatose in front of another CSI repeat. I need a little human interaction, even if it’s only the brunette in Caffé Nero who always has time for a chat and stamps my loyalty card twice, with a wink. I actually thought I was in there, but of course that’s the night I arrive to find her stepping out with some Neanderthal in a Fred Perry top. As is often the case, I left it too long.

Now I’m way past wanting to be sociable, I just want my coffee. So I order my usual, Americano, black, and sequester myself in a booth as far from the counter as possible. See, people are generally lazy. They don’t want to have to walk to the other end of the shop to sit down after all those endless minutes (say, two) standing in line. And it’s pretty quiet in here tonight so the changes of anyone schlepping all the way over to disturb my sulk are slim. That’s the theory anyway. But it’s been one of those days, so my coffee’s hardly cooled to drinkable before these two huge emo arseholes have slung themselves into the booth next to mine, all Siouxsie Sioux make-up and black leather trenchcoats. I hate them on sight, and then they open their mouths.

“Broke up with Yolanda last night,” says the one on the left. He’s wearing a 30 Seconds To Mars T-shirt and drinking what I’m guessing is a cinnamon latte. Too much eye make-up and bandages all up his left forearm. “What a scene.”

“Aw, dude, I’m sorry,” says the other. He’s only got one eye because of his ridiculous fringe and his coffee’s iced. Never trust anyone who likes their coffee cold. That’s one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. “Yolanda was smoking hot.”

“Bitch went nuts,” says Bandage Boy, and my loathing plumbs new depths. Those bandages are obviously for show. I’d love to think of him carefully scoring that arm with a razor blade, but there’s only one kind of self-abuse this idiot specialises in. “How was I supposed to know it was her birthday?”

“Sheeeeit,” says One-Eye, sounding nothing like that guy from The Wire. He laughs and asks how long it’s been since they first got it together.

“I dunno, man,” Bandages replies, “feels like, four, five, six… thousand years or something." If his face was an email, it'd read LOL right now. "Who keeps track of that kind of shit? It was good while it lasted, but a man gets bored – you know?”

“Oh, I know, brother, I know…”

It’s the kind of situation makes me desperate to commit random violence. How such an utter dick can end up with a "smoking hot" girlfriend who he takes for granted, treats like utter shit, then crows to his mate about dumping her. And meanwhile, here’s me, 27 year old, a steady job, prospects, and I don’t even have the confidence to ask out the girl in the coffee shop before she hooks up with some fashionista simian.

I’m still fuming five minutes later as the men in black drain their cups, lick the foam from their lips, and bounce on out of there. I can’t even rejoice at their departure, they’ve made me feel so bad. And that’s when I notice the iPhone Bandages has left behind in the booth. Must have fallen out of his trenchcoat. Anyone else, I might have chased after him, but this oaf? I’ve half a mind to phone up some premium rate sex line in Bangkok and leave the call running till the battery goes flat.

And then the text noise goes off and I almost drop the phone... until I see her picture flash up on the screen. Yolanda. There’s no denying it: she is smoking hot. Not a phrase I would generally use without bunny ears, but this is a girl who knows how to wear eye shadow, juju beads, and fingerless indigo gloves. Her hair is an explosion, but it’s the kind of explosion you’d gladly throw yourself into, and she’s smiling in her photo – the kind of smile that makes me hurt inside when I think of her wasting it on a cock-end like Bandages. I click the envelope and read the message.

Guy – we need 2 talk. Cant leave it like we did. Meet me. Tonite. U know what I need. And I need it bad.

And that's when I lose it completely. It makes me so angry, I want to smash things. Bandages’ iPhone, my grande coffee mug (it’s empty now, I wouldn’t smash it if there was still coffee to be drunk), this stupid leatherette booth, the whole blasted shop. Nobody’s ever sent me a text like that. Even the girls who stuck around for a while, none of them have ever told me they needed it. Bad. But this heartless buffoon… this faux-emotional poseur… this Guy… from him, she needs it. She needs it bad.

My thumb hurries off a reply. It’s automatic.

I’m in Caffe Nero, by the station. Waiting. See you soon.

I detest shorthand. My texts are always written in complete, punctuated English. But as my thumb hovers over send, I realise Guy wouldn’t be quite so conscientious. I rethink, then rethumb.

Babe - Im in Cafe Nero by station. Waiting 4 u. C u soon.

Yes. Much more illiterate. I hit send, slip the phone in my pocket, and head back to the bar to order a second drink. This time I’ll sit nearer the door.

To be continued...?


*********************

This week's #fridayflash wasn't meant to come with a "To be continued..."

I knew exactly where it was going and could probably have found time to write the second half... but then I hit a natural stopping place. Rather than rush the ending, I thought it might be fun to allow it a little more space to develop.

I dunno... what do you think? Let me know if you'd like to read part two next week. I'll take stony silence as my cue to come up with something different.

More importantly... where do you think this story is going? I'm intrigued to know whether the plot thus far suggests a predictable resolution. No, I'm not just scrounging around for ideas... in fact, if someone does suggest the ending I have in mind, it'll probably discourage me from taking this any further. Think of me as M. Knight Shyamalan, stopping at the end of the first act of The Sixth Sense, and asking his audience... so? If anyone says "Bruce Willis is a ghost", I promise I won't take this any further.

Friday Flash - Why’d You Do It, Tommy?

Don't be misled by the cute hedgehog picture below, this week's Friday Flash is as dark and disturbing as I get. It returns to a recurring motif in my fiction, evil children bullying. You don't have to be Freud to work out that I obviously have issues. I'll say a little more after the story, but viewers of a nervous disposition be warned... you might not like where this one takes you.

Why'd You Do It, Tommy?


Funny story I always tell in a situation like this, how when I was a little kid, I had a hedgehog. Called him Hector, ‘cos I was eleven and originality wasn’t really a thing back then. He wasn’t a pet or nothing, but he lived in our garden and we built him a little hide and I fed him scraps after supper. He especially liked the crusts from my peanut butter sandwiches, it’s weird the things you remember, isn’t it?

So anyway, there’s this kid lives up our road called Tommy Mason, local bully, nasty piece of work. We all knew to keep away from him. He pushed my mate Adrian in the canal and snapped Walter Hinchliffe’s little finger so it bent all the way up the back of his hand. Had a thing for stealing underwear off washing lines too – fancy stuff, what they’d call ‘lingerie’ nowadays though we never had that word back then – and forcing lads to wear it in the playground. That was quite funny, I guess, on occasion, though not if you were the kid with a cross-your-heart brazier wrapped round your head like an Easter bonnet.

Anyway, like most bullies, when Tommy latched on to a new victim, he went all out to make that kid’s life a misery for as long as it took to break him… or until he lost interest and found someone new to plague. I’d done pretty well at keeping myself off Tommy’s radar, but I knew he’d get round to me eventually, and sure enough, one summer afternoon I’m on my way home from school when Tommy steps out of the bus shelter and puts himself in my way... and from that moment it was on. Problem was – Tommy’s problem, anyway – I was fast. Fastest kid in our year, proved it every Sports Day. And Tommy, well, he carried a bit of weight. You wouldn’t call him fat to his face, of course, but… well, he wasn’t ever going to catch me if I got to running, and as soon as I knew he was after me I ran pretty much everywhere. All the way to school in a morning, all the way home on a night. Even in between lessons – I lost count of the times I was caught by a teacher and made to “go back and walk”, but I was happy to walk if I knew a teacher was watching. If I knew I was safe. The rest of the time? I wasn’t giving Tommy no chances.

Thing about bullies, and maybe you understand this, they don’t like being denied. Sometimes I think maybe it’s easier just to give them what they want straight out. 'Cos the more you deny them, the more they want it. Maybe if I hadn’t run, maybe if I’d just let Tommy have his way, modelled some frilly pants for him in the yard and taken a few slaps, maybe he’d have moved on to somebody else. But all that denial, it built some kind of resentment in him, I guess. One way or another, he was gonna get me. And if he couldn’t catch me on foot, he could still follow me home and wait. And watch. And…

Which brings us to the bit of the story which isn’t all that pretty. Someone like you, you’ve probably been waiting for this part. Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m gonna spare you the gory details. I’m sure you can fill them in yourself. Tommy followed me home, then he waited, and he watched. He saw me bringing scraps out to feed that little hedgehog, saw how happy I was in that moment, saw something that was missing from his own twisted life, and then he waited till I’d gone back in the house, and he took that from me.

I didn’t know anything about it till the next day at school when I opened up my locker and there was Hector… what was left of him.

You know that kid on The Simpsons? The bully that picks on Bart, with the obnoxious laugh? “Haw haw”? I don’t know whether this is one of those memories I added on retroactively, or whether Tommy really made that sound as I stood there with the locker door in my hand and tears rolling down my…

Tommy got his. Maybe he taught me something that day about watching and waiting, till the right moment comes. Till the afternoon he’s out by himself, walking past the old allotments, and he doesn’t see me coming up behind him with that cricket bat till it’s way too late, and the next thing he knows he’s waking up in that shed, hands tied behind his back with a pair of washing line knickers I’d dug out the pocket of his coat, staring at the tools I’d laid out on the little bench in front of him. Pruners and shears. One of them little garden forks, a trowel and a wire cutter. Secateurs.

“Why’d you do it, Tommy?”

The thing is, he couldn’t tell me. Oh, he came up with plenty of excuses and explanations – he hated the way I won all the races and did well at spelling and lived in a much fancier house than him and got to kiss Gemma Gibson twice in the school play – but we both knew they were bullshit.

“Why’d you do it, Tommy?”

I kept on asking, till there were bits of Tommy all over that shed, but he just couldn’t give me an answer I was satisfied with. Closest he came was, “I don’t know - all right, Dylan? I just don’t know!”

What happened that day set the course of my whole life, you know? It’s why I joined the force – why I worked my way up to detective. Wanting to know what motivates people to do the sick things they do… having to know. A lot of the times the answer is obvious. “He was sleeping with my wife.” “She was threatening to take away my kids.” “When he gets drunk, he hits me.” All perfectly good reasons, you ask me, and I’m happy to let the law deal with people like that.

Every now and then though, I come up against someone like you. Someone who, just like Tommy Mason, has no real justification. What you did to those girls, Peter, it’s no different to what Tommy Mason did to my hedgehog. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you actually will be able to give me an answer that’ll make some kind of sense. We’ll see. I’ve got all night. And lots of tools.



*************

I don't like cruelty to animals. In fiction, I find it far more disturbing than cruelty to humans. You can kill, torture, maim and mutilate as many regular people as you like and I won't bat an eyelid, but harm a cute little bunny rabbit and I'll be up in arms. I didn't like what Tommy did to that hedgehog, I didn't even want to write it... yet not writing it might be even worse, depending on the reader's imagination. This story was unsettling for me, but I still had to do put it out there. Horror should be unsettling... the real world certainly is.

Friday Flash - Hairshirt In Reverse

Some days, you eat the bear. And some days, well, the bear, he eats you.

This has been one of those weeks where the bear wore a bib. A blocked week. I left my Thoughtballoons strip to the very last minute, and paid for it in the comments. And as for Friday Flash, inspiration failed to strike.

Rather than force it, or leave you without my weekend sermon, here's another old Elephant Words story, dusted off from 2007. Enjoy... and if you can't enjoy, endure. For me...

(Image by Austin Andrews.)



Hairshirt In Reverse



Have you seen my shirt?

“Which shirt?”

You know perfectly well which shirt. Which mean you must also know where it is. Must in fact be responsible for where it is. Something else you know: how much that shirt means to me. It used to mean something to you too.

1995. Like a million other sixteen year-olds before me, suddenly I’ve got this hard-on for individuality. I don’t want to listen to the same music as everybody else, or read the same books. I certainly don’t want to wear the same clothes. There was this odd little second hand shop in the back of the Corn Exchange. I was in there every Saturday, spending the peanuts I made stacking shelves Friday nights in Asda. Most of the time, I was their only customer.

Antique cuckoo clocks. Dusty old Serge Gainsbourg records. Coffee mugs with women on the side who lost their clothes when you filled them with liquid. (There’s a joke there somewhere, but I’m not in the mood.) Authentic Japanese Godzilla posters. In the window: a vintage 48 key concertina, a working Hornby 00 Gauge train set, and a French policeman’s hat like the one Claude Rains wore in Casablanca. A tag claimed it was the exact same hat. I never believed it.

Of course I remember the day I bought the shirt. It was the afternoon prior to our fourth date. Our third, three nights earlier, ended later than we expected. Just me and you and the swallows, we had Marigold Park all to ourselves. If the rain hadn’t stopped us, that could have been our night. We ran home laughing. I could see your parents in the front room watching telly, trying not to glance out into the street. You made such a big deal about kissing me goodnight. I knew it was for their benefit. I’ll say this for you, though: you knew how to keep a bloke interested. Do you remember what you said to me that night?

“Fuck, Porter – you’re going to get so lucky this weekend.”

It was the first time I'd ever experienced spontaneous human combustion. Good job it was raining. I walked home in another dimension. The shirt I had on got soaked, ruined. I couldn’t wear it two dates running anyway. I needed something new. Special. I worked overtime Friday, on the frozen food. My fingers lost all sensation by the end of the shift.

The thing is, there wasn’t anything special about that shirt. Not to look at it. Just a plain white thing with short sleeves and no collar. It wasn’t what I was looking for. I can’t tell you why I bought it. When I held it to my chest in the mirror... it just felt right.

Saturday came and your parents were up in the Lakes. You made fresh avocado salad, and we split a Bounty while listening to Nick Drake. It was the first really hot day of the summer, and after tea we walked up through the cornfields behind your house, looking for a place to set down our blanket. I started to take off my shirt, but you put your hand on my chest and told me not to.

“Keep it on.”

The thing is, your first time’s supposed to be all weird and hesitant and bungling… I don’t know about you, but that’s what I expected. When it wasn’t, when it… I mean, where do you go from perfection? Afterwards, you flicked a greenfly off my collar and told me you loved me. I reckon astronauts could see me from space that night.

When I got home, I hung the shirt on the curtain rail to catch the breeze from my bedroom window. I was worried Mum might smell us on it when she threw it in the wash. Except, by morning, I’d made up my mind. That shirt wasn’t ever going in the wash. I know you don’t believe in such things, but sometimes I think that’s where the magic came from. The magic that kept us together.

I took the plastic bag off one of my dad’s suits, just back from the dry cleaners, and rolled it over the shirt. I had this crazy romantic notion I’d get it out again in fifty years and wear it for our golden anniversary, but I needed it sooner than that. After we tried and failed to get into the same university... I had to take something of you with me to Bath. You hear about all those couples who split up while they’re away at college, I didn’t want that to be us. So whenever I got lonely, whenever some crazy girl turned my head with a look or a laugh or a keen knowledge of Chomsky… I’d go back to my room and unwrap that shirt, put on some Nick Drake, and remember.

And yeah, if we’re being brutally honest now, the times we did meet up… weekends, holidays, after you fought with Laura and almost dropped out… they were good, they were great, but they weren’t always quite as good as I imagined they'd be. But I told myself that once we were together again full time, things would be different. Better, I mean, better even than that night in the cornfield. But maybe I was kidding myself. Because we’ve been living here – what, twelve years now, and all we do is argue over who gets to open the new jar of coffee and take the first sniff, how it drives me insane that you have to screw up your shopping list and start again just because you’ve spelled ‘quiche’ wrong, and... I mean, god help me if you buy one more pair of culottes…

But no, I don’t want us to split up, and do you want to know why? Because whenever I put on that shirt (and OK, yeah, it smells a bit now—

“It stinks.”

–and there are stains I don’t even want to think about), I know I couldn’t ever meet anyone who’d make me feel half the way you did that on legendary evening in June, ‘95. So please, I’m going to ask you one more time – and don’t lie to me, Clare, because I’ll know if do. Please…

What? Have you done? With my shirt?

Friday Flash - Pile Up

I wrote this week's Friday Flash story for a competition entry last summer. Looking back now, I know why it didn't win. I was trying too hard to write the kind of story that I thought won competitions.

Perhaps you'll enjoy it despite that...

Pile Up

At what point do you realise you’re married to the wrong person, Alicia wonders. Is it the point where you hear about the sixteen car pile-up on the M62 and you think, ‘Brian’s on the motorway now’, but you don’t think, ‘I hope he’s OK’. Instead you start imagining a knock on your door and a sombre-faced policewoman:

“Is there anyone we can call?”

They met seven years ago, at a B&B in York. It was high summer, but they were the only ones there. Brian was up from Wolverhampton, attending a conference on The Future of Social Networking at the Barbican. Alicia was sightseeing. Since breaking up with Don, she didn’t mind holidaying on her own. Going where you wanted when you wanted without having to worry whether your partner really wanted to be there, or whether they’d rather be somewhere else, doing someone else. Don had been shagging that waitress from the Bull's Head for three months by the time they went to Crete. Why keep up the pretence for two whole weeks then drop the bomb the moment they got home?

“I didn’t want to spoil the holiday.”

Yes, because now Alicia had such great memories of it.

She turns off the radio when the adverts come on and goes to the fridge for Ocean Spray. It’s good for your bladder. She had an infection last year and Brian made her drink it. She was never a fruit juice person, but she’d grown to love it. Now she even drank it with vodka. It was weird the way living with someone changed basic things like your diet, what time you went to bed and when you did the washing. She’d never watched The Simpsons before meeting Brian. Now she watched it every night. Even the ones she’d seen three, four times. Would she still watch it if they split up, or would it be forever tainted by them?

Ah, but who was she kidding? They wouldn’t split up. Not on her instigation, anyway. Sometimes she pictured Brian’s face with that curled lip, does-not-compute expression he got whenever she had the temerity to disagree with him. Besides, it was complicated. She might not love him anymore, but she did still love him. One word, so many different definitions.

Sometimes she wishes Brian would have an affair too. But that was insane. Catching Don with that tart was the worst thing that ever happened to her. Worse than the time she broke her nose ice-skating, worse than the time she thought her dad had cancer (it turned out to be polyps), worse even than the abortion. At least that had been her choice. And yet if she’d arrived home tonight to find Brian shagging a floozy from someone else’s local, would part of her not have been relieved? What - she didn’t love Brian the way she’d loved Don? No, you couldn’t compare. All those definitions rendered comparisons worthless. Besides, Brian wouldn’t ever do that. He didn’t have room in his heart for another woman. He barely had room for her.

As she peels the potatoes, she thinks again of York. Arriving for breakfast to find her future husband sitting alone with his muesli. He’d caught her eye the moment she walked in.

“Good morning! Isn’t it a lovely day? I think we’re the only ones here.”
That appeared to be the case. Alicia had been intending to sit over on the other side of the room, but might that seem rude now?

“Why don’t you join me? I’m having the full English, what about you?”

When the waitress arrived to take her order, Alicia realised she didn’t have a choice. She asked for a grapefruit and some toast, thinking suddenly of her figure. Why? That was when Brian started telling her about his conference.

“To be honest, I could have done without it. We're so busy back at the office. But people are coming from all over the country – even abroad. Amsterdam, Iceland, one bloke from Czechoslovakia, or whatever they call it these days. I’m the keynote speaker. Can’t do it without me.”

Alicia had never spoken in front of an audience. Wasn’t he nervous?

“I’d only be nervous if I didn’t know what I was talking about.” His laugh defused the arrogance. No, it wasn’t arrogance, she remembers thinking: it was confidence. Such a scarcity in her own life, she hardly recognised it. Yet when she was with him, his confidence became hers. “I can do anything” became “we can do anything”. “They can’t do that to me” became “they can’t do that to us”. And so on. For a time, it was irresistible.

He should be home by now, she thinks, peeking through the blinds. It’s still raining. A car goes past the end of the drive spraying water from the puddles. It’s not Brian. She turns down the gas on the potatoes and checks her mobile. Sometimes he texts if he’s stuck in traffic.

Nothing.

She imagines herself in a solicitor’s office, Grantham, Surley and Braithwaites, talking over the particulars of her late husband’s will. His life insurance would pay off the mortgage. Then there’d be his pension and death-in-service benefits… but it wasn’t about the money. It was the long term benefits that really excited her.

These are only thoughts, she tells herself. Everybody has thoughts. Bad thoughts. Mean thoughts. Bleak, fatalistic, inappropriate, just plain evil thoughts that blow through your head like thunderclouds but don’t actually bring rain.

She remembers being a little girl, lying in bed, unable to sleep until she heard her dad come home. The later it got, the more she worried. It didn’t matter what Mum said to reassure her. Uncle Alan hadn’t come home one night; he’d been run over on the way back from his club by a drunk driver. Mum said that had been a tragic accident, but with something like that already happening to somebody in their family, it was far less likely to ever happen again. That was something called probability, though it turned out Mum didn’t really understand probability at all. Alicia’s maths teacher told her that if you tossed a coin nineteen times and it came up heads every single toss, it still didn’t change the odds of it coming up heads again on the twentieth. So Alicia had to learn to beat the odds and find another way to protect her dad. People said bad things happened when you least expected them, so every night she expected the worst. A crash, a fire, a shooting, a kidnapping… another drunk driver. By picturing it, she denied it. And every night her Dad walked in the door, that was one more victory over fate.

By those rules, wasn’t she now protecting her husband in exactly the same way? Ruling out the possibility of an accident by imagining it first? She ought to feel good about that. Why didn’t she?

When Brian asked her to marry him, it’d been a foregone conclusion. She’d thought about saying no, but she’d only have been doing it to see the look on his face. He’d probably think she was joking anyway. He’d already booked the church, and two weeks off work. “The difficult thing’s going to be the guest list. Narrowing it down. If I invited everybody who thinks they’re going to be invited, we’d have to hire the Albert Hall.” Brian had 2476 friends on Facebook, and few were mere acquaintances. Alicia could think of maybe six people she wanted on her side of the church, and that included her mum, dad and brother Ray. She ended up inviting people she hadn’t spoken to in years, in a vain attempt to balance the numbers.

Vain – there was another word that lost you in its definitions. A word that could have applied to both bride and groom that day, in entirely different ways.

For their first dance, Brian serenaded her from the stage. You’re Every Woman In The World To Me. They didn’t actually dance, she just stood there like a lemon and let herself be sung to. At what point do you realise you’re married to the wrong person? God help you if you’re still wearing your wedding dress.

She didn’t wish Brian ill. She certainly didn’t want him dead. She didn’t even hate him. She just didn’t ‘love him’ love him. The ironic thing was, if he didn’t walk in that door soon… if fate actually won this round…

When she hears his car in the drive, her emotions are all a tangle. Relief tied up with regret, twisted into guilt. Always guilt. What does she have to be guilty about? She was only thinking. This is all his fault. If he’d been home on time, none of this would have ever entered her mind. She takes a deep breath and forces the frown from her face, ready to greet him. As she does every night, she laments the passing of her time alone and readies herself for another evening of cohabitation.

The look he gives her as he opens the door wipes those thoughts away. She doesn’t even have time to say, “you’re late,” or “what time do you call this?” or ask if he got stuck on the motorway because of the accident. She knows something’s wrong.

“Sit down,” he says, and yanks off his tie like it’s the real reason his face is so white, his eyes so red and rubbed bloodshot. “Just sit down,” he repeats when she tries to ask why, and even now hope flickers in the dread. Has he met someone else? Was he with her tonight? Is he going to leave? She pulls out a chair with a scrape.

“Ray called me on my way home. From the hospital. He didn’t want to tell you over the phone, better someone told you in person. Obviously he though I was best…”

He crouches in front of her and takes her hand. Behind him, the cat flap goes and Mandrake squeezes through, bedraggled from the rain. He lets out a crabby meow and rubs himself against the tea towel that’s hanging from the radiator. Then he glares at Alicia like it’s all her fault. Where’s the summer gone?

“It’s your dad,” Brian says. “He was in an accident. There was a crash on the motorway…”

The cat’s right, Alicia thinks. It is all her fault. Her daddy’s dead, her mum’s too upset to talk, even her brother doesn’t want to be the one to break it to her. It’s all her fault. She hasn’t been protecting him like she used to. When she heard about that accident, all her thoughts were for Brian. No, not for Brian. They hadn’t been for Brian at all. Selfish cow, she thinks, look what you’ve done now!

Her husband’s still talking. Of course he is. He’ll take care of all the arrangements. She doesn’t need to worry. It’ll be the best funeral anybody’s ever had. A testament to the man, a great man, a man Brian had a lot of love and respect for. Everything he deserves, we’ll do him proud.

“I have to go pack,” Alicia tells him, “I need to be with my mum.”
Brian says he understands. He thinks it’s a good idea. A few days at her mum’s, that’ll do them both some good. They can grieve together. He’ll drive her over there now, fetch her back at the weekend.

“No,” says Alicia. “I might have to stay longer than that. Quite a bit longer…”

Brian doesn’t understand, she thinks. But he will. She’ll make him. This is her chance. He asks how much longer and she answers without hesitation.

Friday Flash - Love Song

First #fridayflash short story of 2011... and I've actually managed to keep below the 1000 word limit. I'm sure that won't last...

Love Song

I’m in your bedroom, writing this song, trying not to make an obvious rhyme like ‘but I keep getting the words wrong’ because I know you wouldn’t respect that. You called me “the greatest lyricist of our generation” after all, do you remember, Evie? Of course you remember. It was the day we met. Well, the day we first communicated. The internet’s an amazing thing, isn’t it? That it could bring us together like this. How could you have known when you tweeted “I love Terry Tribeca, I want his babies!” that I’d be sitting there in my peeling wallpaper hotel room after that piss-bottle gig in Newcastle, late and lonely, just looking for someone to make me feel worthwhile... that I’d see your message and think: ‘thank you’?

You became my muse, I’m apt to confuse, the thoughts… the thoughts… the thoughts… This new album, Evie, it’s all about you. You had such a shock when I replied, you couldn’t believe it was me. Even though it had the verified tick next to my picture to prove the account was genuine, you were certain it was just my manager or somebody in my entourage mucking around. “Entourage”, ha. I guess my world seems a whole lot more glamorous from the outside. The crazy thing is, 15, 20 years ago, I probably would have had an entourage. I’d have had a record company that threw money at me, I’d have had stylists, publicists, photographers, hangers on… but those days are gone. Like I told you that first night we chatted, I don’t do this for the money. I do it because I have to. Because the songs are inside me, screaming to get out… and if I don’t have that release, well, I think I’d just go crazy, you know? Lose it completely. The songs keep me sane.

Not everything’s an accident, sometimes you have to be provident, if you want to make a start, in matters of the… The following night, when we bumped into each other at that club in Coventry, that wasn’t just coincidence, you know. I can tell you this now, we’re close enough that you won’t think... I went there to find you. I saw you talking to your friends about it on Facebook and as I didn’t have a gig that night and it was only a couple of hours on the train and I thought it’d make for a good song… Knock-Outs, remember? You said you didn’t think someone like me would be seen dead in a place like that. Didn’t I get recognised all the time? The truth is, hardly anyone ever recognises me. Your friends certainly didn’t. They didn’t even believe it was me. Yeah, I’ve been on the cover of the NME and my face is all over the internet – but everyone’s face is all over the internet. Unless you’re actually looking, you wouldn’t notice me. I’m not exactly a pretty boy, though “my unconventional look matches my unconventional lyrics,” says Alex Petridis in The Guardian. Though I guess since meeting you, my songwriting’s become a whole lot more conventional. You know I almost wrote a ‘swim any river, hike any mountain’ song last night? Maybe I’ll have a pop hit and flush my indie cred with it. That shit doesn’t matter anymore. I want to take you to Paris and Rome and New York, and not in the back of a fucking tour bus, Evie. I want my own private jet, like Bono. I never wanted to be Bono, but for you, Evie, for you I want to be Bono. I want to be whatever you want me to be.

I saw you in the arms of another, I went to pieces, then and there. I knew I wasn’t your only lover, just don’t tell me more for him you… Clumsy. That’s fucking clumsy, man. What’s happened to my writing? It used to come so natural. My mind’s on other things right now. That second time was a mistake, I admit. You were with your fiancée at that restaurant in Nuneaton. Not the classiest of establishments, but Michael wasn’t really the classiest of guys, was he? When I saw where he was taking you for your anniversary… I wanted to show you how much better you could do. That’s all. Crispy duck and a cheap Merlot? Is that really all you were to him? Caused quite a scene that night, didn’t he? Your ex… I know, I know it’s an adjustment, thinking of him in that way after all those years together, but you need to try. Part of you still expects him to walk in the front door any minute and start whinging about his shit day again. How much he hates his boss, wishes he could find something else, always wanted to be a fireman. Of course I read your blog, even though you don’t use your real name, enough of your friends know about it, leave messages on it, link to it… it’s hardly a secret. That post you wrote about me, long before we even met, that was what convinced me. You understood. And yet, by him, you were misunderstood. “Shame he’s not hunky enough to be a fireman - LOL!” That’s what Rachel wrote in your comments. She was right, of course, Michael was hardly a body builder. He couldn’t even fight me off.

You can’t have her, Mike. You’re not the man she really likes. I saw you leaving your office at night. My alibi is airtight. Mike. I know you don’t want to hear the details, Evie, but it’s done now. You don’t need to worry about him any more. We can get on with our lives. Come on, Evie, open the bathroom door. Talk to me. I’ll turn the music down if you promise not to scream again. Please, Evie, don’t be mad. Open the door. Don’t be like all the others…

It's Clichéd To Be Cynical At Christmas

I wanted to write you something special for Christmas.

Perhaps a #fridayflash story about a political party who wanted to ban the season of good will because it merely encouraged people to demonstrate bad will through the rest of the year. And about the serial killer determined to stop their nefarious schemes because Christmas was the only time off he gets.

Perhaps a comic strip pitting the Punisher against a Terminator-esque rogue Santa Claus gone evil. (Oh wait, I actually did write that.)

Perhaps some poorly veiled excuse to plug PJANG #5 again to the three of you who haven't yet bought a copy...

Perhaps a list of bleakly humorous festive tunes, like A Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis...




But then I read Steve's hugely touching Christmas post and I thought... you know what...?

It really is clichéd to be cynical at Christmas.

And I hate to be a cliché on top of all my other many flaws.

And so, to everyone still reading this saggy old, baggy old blogpuss of mine... have a very happy one.

I'll be back next week with my favourite things of 2010. A whole week of lists! Yipee!

Friday Flash - The Devil Wants Your Small Change

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Friday Flash - Shooting People Is Good

Today is my fourth Blog Birthday. Four years since I crawled onto the internet and set up this blog, unsure of whether it was something I wanted to be doing, but driven to it by forces beyond my control. Blogging has changed beyond all recognition in that time. It has risen and fallen, and many of its brightest stars have since moved on to twitter, facebook or just quit the internet altogether (or have they?) Maybe the best days of blogging are behind us... or maybe the renaissance is just around the corner. If I could predict anything on the internet, I'd be much richer man than I am now.

Anyway, it's Friday, so time for a #fridayflash. Sadly the weather disruption has ruined my chances of producing a new story for you this week, so here's another repeat, from way back in 2008. Hope you enjoy it...

Shooting People Is Good



Be honest now – you all wanted to shoot somebody today.

Maybe it was your boyfriend, or that dude cut you up on the freeway. Maybe it was a politician – lord knows Lee Harvey set every one of us an example with that. Maybe it was your sister or your ma, your high school gym coach or that jerk in accounts screwed with your expenses four months running. Maybe it was that creep hit on your girl in the roadside, or the motorcycle cop followed you a steady thirty all the way home, or the drunk who threw up all over the steps of your building. Maybe it was Hannah Fucking Montana – seriously, who’d blame you for that?

The who don’t matter. All that matters is we both acknowledge the truth. You wanted to shoot somebody today, and you didn’t. For all those crazy reasons that keep our half-assed excuse for society from drifting into anarchy and chaos. Morals and decency. Conscience and consequence. The law. You didn’t do it, and it’s chewing you up inside. But imagine for one moment you didn’t have to worry about any of that. Imagine you could shoot whomsoever you wanted, whenever the mood took you – without fear of arrest or reprisal or guilt. Imagine you could work out those frustrations in the moment, bask in the swell of satisfaction, gratification… justice…. then move on with your day. Be honest now…

The first time it happened was an accident. I hadn’t seen him and he shouldn’t have been out there. I arrived at the range a little after seven – I was the first one there and Crebbins was still sweeping out the yard. He waved at me from across the compound as I set up. I was eager to try out the new Westley Richards 20 gauge I’d bought from an old-timer out on the Circle Hill Road. Guy was selling off a bunch of old shotguns – said his wife had died so he no longer had any need to keep them in the house. Most of them were crap, but this one… this one was a beauty. 28 inch barrels, nitro-reproofed, with a solid silver safety and red sandalwood stocks. I’d been careful not to go straight for it, gave some consideration to the junk before settling on my jewel. If the old man didn’t know what a peach he had here, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let on. In the end I got it for seventy-five, two cases of ammo thrown in. I could have sold it on for five times that, and maybe I might have done just that. I’m not sentimental about these things, a profit’s a profit. Turns out though, this particular gun was worth a whole lot more.

Like I said, I hadn’t even seen him. No way I could have known he was out there – why would he be? Why would anybody go wandering across a live shooting range, seven in the morning, like he’s taking the air on Main Street? Turns out he was a retard – mentally deficient, like – dragged out into the country on a whim the night before by some reckless kids from Johnstown, then left to find his own way home. Poor fucker couldn’t read the signs, it was simple as that. He just saw the lodge in the distance and started out towards it. A little barbed wire and a few red dangers weren’t going to stop him – he was in a flap, and he wanted his ma. He came climbing right up out of the ditch in front of the target area just as I pulled the trigger on my new Westley for the first ever time.

Those people you wanted to shoot today… how far d’you let that particular fantasy play out? Maybe you lined them up through the hood ornament on your car, maybe you tossed them what Mr. Raymond Chandler used to call The Gunman’s Salute – two fingers and a little click, back of your throat, followed by a mouth-filling boom. Maybe you actually imagined the blood – the stain of it, blotting cross the fabric of their shirt, just like in the movies. You’d have to be pretty far gone to picture the insides of their skull blooming up like fungus from an old tree stump – the full-on ‘NC-17’ special effects – but hate’ll do that to you, and I don’t reckon we know the half of what goes on in most people’s heads but never gets out fully into the light. That’s probably for the best, you ask me. The world’s a scary enough place as is, don’t you think?

The retard’s head didn’t explode or nothing. This is a bird gun we’re talking here, and what would be the point splattering your duck all over the horizon? There’d be nothing left to eat, certainly nothing worth having your picture took with. So a nice, neat hole, no bigger than the end of your forefinger, and down he goes.

“Shit!” Lest you think I’m a callous… some kind of cold-blooded type… well, I’d never shot a man before, and while certainly I’d thought about it just as many times as you have, it’d never been without provocation. This was just some innocent kid, not even playing with the full deck, I had no truck with him. No, he sure as hell shouldn’t have been out there, but don’t for one second think I thought he deserved it.

“Oh Tom, oh Tommy – my god, Tommy, what did you do – what did you…?” That was Crebbins, running out after me across the range, mewling like a just-spayed tomcat, though I knew his concern wasn’t so much for the kid as how this all might lose him his license. That range out in Tilbury closed after an accidental, though rumour has it there was more going on behind the scenes facilitated that particular termination.

“Go call an ambulance!” I shouted back, more to get Crebbins out of my vicinity than because I believed the kid stood a chance. Not many folks survive a headshot, not even from a gun like this. Maybe at a greater distance – but this was the nearest target on the range, little over 15 yards, and sure enough his lights were out by the time I got there. And that hole – that perfect little red-black hole just above his left eyebrow – I couldn’t help but stare into it, though I couldn’t tell you exactly what I expected to see.

What happened next, I don’t rightly recall. After the clarity of that one moment, the rest of the morning blurs away like cream in your coffee. I remember Bob Cornell came out from the Sherriff’s Office; I knew Bob from back in Junior High, we was on the wrestling team together. He was a good man, mostly. He asked me some questions, then he asked ‘em me again, then he said how he’d have to take my gun in as evidence, and I remember how that felt then, like this was the most devastating part of the day, like I just couldn’t abide the loss of that Westley – not for nothing.

“First I need – I need to clean it on out,” I remember saying that, telling him. But that was an excuse. In back of my head, I had this notion – and it’s just as crazy as it sounds now – that if I could get another couple of cartridges in that thing, I could hold off Bob Cornell and his deputy. I could get away, the Westley with me, and hide it where they’d never find it.

Of course he tried to stop me – that was his job. “You’re in shock, Tom, you’re not thinking right. You can’t—“ But he never had won a bout, Bob Cornell, not against me, and I wasn’t about to let him start now.

“Just need to clean it out,” I told him again, “just need to—“ Right then I must of sounded like the kind of idiot goes wandering across shooting ranges seven o’clock in the a.m., but I couldn’t let him take that gun. Even if he pulled his own weapon on me – for tampering with the evidence and that – I couldn’t let him stop me.

So I broke open the action and the spent cartridge popped on out of the breech. Bob Cornell shouted at me to stop. I wasn’t listening. I reached down and plucked out what was left of the hull, then…

Then I was back at the beginning. Bob Cornell, his deputy, the paramedics and all the crime scene boys… they were gone. The sun was lower in the sky and Crebbins was still going round with his broom. It was the quiet hit me first. After all the clamour and palaver the morning had become, I’d forgotten it’d ever been this quiet.

In my hand, two fresh cartridges, waiting to be loaded. I checked my watch: 7.14 a.m. A breeze came out of the pines and stroked cool fingers long the back of my neck. Geese crossed the sky, safe as houses. It wasn’t the season yet anyhows.

“You OK, Tom?” said Crebbins, leaning on the handle of his broom like he was about to start singing ‘Oklahoma!’

I looked around me and off towards the first set of targets. I didn’t need to think this through. There wasn’t any doubt. I knew exactly what had happened.

“What the hell kinda place you running out here, Crebbins – there’s a fucking kid out on the range!”

Crebbins went white, but not as white as he’d been the last time this moment played out. He set out across the grass, still carrying his broom – waving it and shouting at the kid who was walking towards him too now, arms splayed in panic.

“Mister, I’m lost, mister… Where’s Johnstown, mister, where’s 43 Beech Street, where’s my ma, mister, where’s–?”

I knew exactly what had happened, and somewhere deep inside, I knew it’d happen again. Whenever I wanted it to.

Say you could shoot whomsoever you wanted, take out whatever frustrations you had – watch them suffer, watch them die… and then put everything back just the way it was, with nobody any the wiser? Say all you had to do was carry that gun round with you day in day out – get yourself one of them fishing rod cases, one of them zip-up pool cue bags – hell, a fucking violin case, you don’t mind the cliché. Say whenever the mood took you – and you’d probably find it took you a whole lot more as the days went by – you just get out that weapon and hold it straight in their face. Whichever one of them pissed you off most that moment. See the look in their eyes, hear them trying to talk their ways out of whatever they did to upset you in the first place, listen to them beg… begging’s always good… then click. Click – boom. You know what I said earlier ‘bout a bird gun not making much mess? From a distance, no. But get it right up between some bastard’s eyes – right where the sweat off their forehead beads down onto the top of their nose – pull that trigger right then, and you won’t get no pretty little nickel-shaped hole. You’ll get what they deserve. What everyone deserves, one time or another. You know what I’m talking about.

Come on now, be honest with yourselves – given a gun like mine… how many people would you have shot today?