Author Archives: Martyn Winters

I’m waiting for my man

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

I’m standing on the corner of East 125th and Lexington, just as I did all those years ago. It’s still a shithole. There are too many people, streaming ant-like from the Metro, where the 4, 5 and 6 lines rumble in from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. There’s no glamour here, just the press of humanity in its pointless pursuit of gratification. Each lump of flesh dotted on the broken pavements scurrying to unknown nirvanas, what’s left of their minds calculating, planning, seeking – all hidden behind frozen masks of hate. They don’t like what they are. They don’t like what they do, or say, or the music they listen to, or the food they eat, or the beer they drink. It’s all senseless.  

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Life is Magic

Posted on by under 2022, April 2022 - Magic

The house was like nothing she’d seen before. It smelled of biscuits and old tea; and looked like a half-buried cottage with just the top floor sticking out. This, it turned out, was an accurate description.

She’d been dropped at the end of the lane by a taciturn bus driver, who simply nodded at the lane when she asked for directions.

After walking for a mile, the lane ended, and the bramble shrouded garden began. At first her aunt’s cottage wasn’t visible, just a curl of wood-smoke from a chimney poking above the treetops. She headed towards it and arrived at the two up, three down-down-down to find her aunt leaning out of a window, shaking a large quilt covered in esoteric patterns.

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On the twenty-fifth day

Posted on by under 2021, December 2021 - Christmas

Michael Noach was lighting a candle on his hanukkiah in the window of his small terrace when he heard a crash and someone crying out. Instinctively, he reached for the phone next to his window but stilled his hand when he heard a second cry, this time clearly coming from the back. He stood still, stroking his beard, pondering his actions. Another yell. He could not ignore a human in pain, so he picked up the torch he kept by the back door and peered outside.

“Is anyone there?”

“Oh shit,” said a voice. He shone the beam in that direction. There, on the ground, was a teenage boy, his foot at an oblique angle to his leg.

“Hold still,” urged Noach as he hurried across the yard, “I’ll help you up.”

“I think I’ve broken it.”

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Never give up. Never-never-never-never.

Posted on by under 2021, November 2021 - Never give up hope

Doctor Silas Mills watched from a promontory near the Southern edge of Palmer Land as the last boat docked at Shackleton Port, disgorging its crates. Adjusting his CO2 filtration mask so he could speak clearly, he turned to his family and handed out three small envelopes, one to each of them.

“Keep these safe,” he said, “I’ll let you know when.”

His wife, Tricia, folded hers into the pocket of her raincoat and looked at him with desperate eyes.

“How long?” She reached out an arm to pull her eldest daughter close.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The phytoplankton is all dead. We probably have a few months’ oxygen left. A lot depends on how quickly the seas turn stagnant and start emitting hydrogen sulphide. January maybe.”

“What about the electrolysis project?”

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The Mission Statement

Posted on by under 2021, October 2021 - The Mission

“We exist to progressively leverage existing world-class total linkage in order that we may efficiently develop low-risk, high-yield e-business with 100% on-time delivery.”

Bernard Brightman, acting sales manager for Hayter Hair Products, held up a plaque to his staff. “What do you think?”

Emily popped her bubble-gum and walked out muttering. The remaining employees just looked at each other. Silence descended on the staff room.

“Well?” Bernard eyed them, his face slowly hang-dogging. “Does anyone have anything to say? This is important, guys. Mister Hayter is visiting to sign this off.”

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Rikki don’t lose that number

Posted on by under 2021, Sept 2021 - You Can't Pick Your Family
Rock start + Royal Courts of Justice + Young Girl with Curly Hair

London: 1976.

“Why don’t you get some sleep, Ma.” Ricky rearranged an errant silver lock.

 “You need sleep too, Richard. Why keep touring instead of settling down and having children?”

“I do it for you, mum,” he said, “I want you to be proud.”

“When dad died, you held it together. I couldn’t be prouder of my boy?”

“Boys, mum,” Ricky said, thinking of his late brother.

He went to give her a peck, but she was already asleep. “See you on Sunday, Ma.”

***

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Stockholm Syndrome

Posted on by under 2021, July 2021 - The Secret

“Hello,” said the tall man as he peered around the door to the classroom. “Are you Cecelia Luth?”

“Why, yes I am,” said Luth. “May I ask who wants to know?”

“My name is Bejerot,” he replied and stepped into the room, “but not the famous one. Are you familiar with the name?”

“I really don’t know who you might mean,” Luth responded warily.

“You don’t know Nils Bejerot?”

“Should I?” Luth said, “The name seems familiar, but I can’t place it.”

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Changed

Posted on by under 2021, June 2021 - Afterwards

March 2016 – Houston, Texas: Mark and Scott Kelly are identical twins, both are captains in the US Navy, and both spent time on the International Space Station. Scott spent nearly a year orbiting the Earth, returning in March 2016. On his return, they compared his DNA to his twin’s. During his flight it modified so much they were no longer considered identical twins. He had changed.

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Caught Short

Posted on by under 2021, May 2021 - Happily ever after?
Bloody hand on mobile phone

DI Alice Cauldwell looked through the mirror at her suspect as he sat with his solicitor, pinched the bridge of her nose, and willed her tiredness to recede. At the fag-end of a long night, all she wanted is to get this settled.

“Okay, Kev,” she said to her DS, “let’s get this done.”

The officers strode into the room and sat across the table from Todd Greenwood, their prime suspect.

Kev flipped open a folder and looked Greenwood in the eyes.

“Do you understand why you’re here?”

“Tell me,” Greenwood responded.

“We have not charged you with any crime,” Kev said, “you’re helping us with our inquiries.”

“I don’t want to,” Greenwood said, “can I go?”

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Killing time in his head room

Posted on by under 2021, April 2021 - Room

The trouble with British Summer Time, apart from it being a misnomer that is, is it takes Joel Bloom nearly a week to catch up with the lost hour. Mornings are difficult: a constant struggle with his body clock, which point-blank refused to accept the evidence of his eyes when looking at his bedside clock. 

“Can’t be eight already,” he would murmur in his fractured oddity of a voice. Since Becca said she was leaving, he formed the habit of talking to himself. Good company and intelligent conversation, he joked, but the reality is, he is lonely and affronted by her betrayal. The bloody postman, he thought, how much of a cliché is THAT?

“Maybe it’s time to look again,” said his head.

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The ring of death

Posted on by under 2020, Dec 2020 - Ring of death

Charlie looked down at his shoes. They were scuffed with curves of light-brown roughened leather where the door panel he kicked in earlier that morning scraped across the shiny toecap. He tutted and reached into the glove compartment for his shoe-shine kit. He always kept one in there, along with a tub of hair gel and a clothes brush.

Charlie liked to look smart. He thought it gave him an air of authority, a kind of lawyerly feel, judicial even. He chuckled at that: Charlie was no judge. In fact, he never made judgements. Things were simple in Charlie-World, there were just three states of being: a problem, not a problem, and no longer a problem. Simplicity was his byword, which was just as well because having too many thoughts about his line of work could lead to problems.

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Incidentes de honor

Posted on by under 2020, November 2020 - Dilemma

Since my last visit to Cartagena, a pair of aerial fig roots, previously just hints, were dangling near the statue of the eighteenth-century actor, Isidoro Máiquez.

“I’ve been away too long,” I thought as I brushed sun-dried leaves from the statue’s base and looked up at his Shakespearean pose.

Máiquez, although famous, is interesting to me as the father-in-law of Manuel Tamayo-y-Baus, author of “Un drama nuevo”, the object of my student’s study. My student, a young woman by the name of Analia is, in turn, the object of my secret desires.

I settled into a café chair facing the plaza, ordered a coffee and flicked open the binder of notes I made on her thesis.

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The Devil’s Music

Posted on by under 2020, September 2020 - Demons

“Hey Belial,” Lilith shot the demon a furious glance, “will you quit your beatboxing, or I swear to Dog I’ll beatbox your ears.”

His single, vein-etched eye widened as she swept a taloned claw inches from his snout and he tumbled backwards in mid-beat into a vat of moral turpitude soup.

“Watch it, mam,” he coughed, picking lumps of jellied depravity out his hair, “you nearly had my eye out then.”

She skewered him with a look that would have frozen sunspots.

“What,” she snarled, “do you think I was TRYING to do?”

He tensed expecting another wave of maternal violence; she was always grouchy at this time of the millennium.

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And in the end

Posted on by under 2020, August 2020 - The Long and Winding Road

When Jack was a kid, his family drove from their home in Dade County to his grandparents’ farm in Seminole County. This meant three small boys sitting in the back of a 55-Chevy for over three-hundred miles. It was a long, miserable trip: seven or eight hours of brothers’ elbows, mother’s scolding and potholes testing the suspension.

Colquitt was the last town they went through, and there they would stop to get refreshments. They sat for half an hour in the shade of the Tower Hotel on North Main Street, mama sipping her peach tea, the others ice-cream sodas.

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When men write sex

Posted on by under 2020, July 2020 - First Love

“There’s lots of thrusting going on…” Jacquie said, letting the sentence hang in mid-air. My beta reader does not pull punches, even though her image is the archetype of diminutive, floral printed, butter-would-not-melt, she is actually a ball of literary savagery.  

She was referring to the first love scene in my Work In Progress, which has reached the point where the hero is shacked up with his female interest, they are surrounded by antagonists and need to dig deep to find a route to their goal. This is the moment where the hero puts down his gun, bares his chest and goes for his secondary objective. Thrusting ensues.     

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Nina’s Gift

Posted on by under 2020, June 2020 - Death

“You okay?” Nathaniel asked. His father looked up from his hunched posture.

“I was just thinking about her,” he said. “Bubbe Nina was a forceful woman.”

“Stronger than most,” Nathaniel agreed. “Didn’t she walk from France to Spain?”

“Yes, in nineteen forty-one, just after the Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv’,” Lionel said. “She feared it would spread to the south.”

A loud rap came from the front door and they jumped to their feet. Lionel waved his hand at Nathaniel, indicating he should sit again. The senior family member always greeted doctors. It was a measure of their importance. 

Doctor Llewelyn was a jolly man, dressed in an old coat and carrying a battered medical bag. He beamed at Nathaniel as he entered and held out his hand.

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The Science of Seconds

Posted on by under 2020, May 2020 - Survival

This is the shortened version. You can read the full version here.

It is twenty-four years since Contact and I’m drinking coffee while sitting behind my desk in New Scotland Yard. I cleared some space by moving a paper mountain to one side and set my cup down.

“Boss”, declared Detective Sergeant Kieran Mulrooney, as he strode towards me with a memorandum in his fist. “Read this…”

“Let me see.” It was from Intelligence. They were monitoring some scholars in Camden. Hard-wired bugs you understand. We don’t use radio, not since Scrixn’s warning, anyway.

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The last post

Posted on by under 2020, April 2020 - Crisis

I woke in a strange bed, which itself was in a large, unfamiliar room. Around me were a collection of machines and tubes, one of which was clamped to my face by elasticated straps. Chromium mannequins dressed in medical scrubs roved the tiled floor between the foot of my bed and the adjacent wall, clicking and whirring as they made their way from one task to another. I recognised them as robotic nurses from some TV show.  

“Good evening, Mister Craws,” said a voice. I turned my head to see a robot hovering to one side of my bed, a fresh set of tubes wrapped in sealed bags clutched in her three-fingered hands. “I’m Nurse 4. I’m here to change your breathing tube.”

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Saudade

Posted on by under 2020, February 2020 - Desire
Saudade

I first met Jose Luis Vercas on the concrete apron jutting out into the mouth of the Targus where the splendour of the Manueline Port of Lisboa ends and a wide expanse of river divides the city from Alcântara. He was short, but well-muscled and possessed of that curiously Portuguese combination of a mane of swept-back, black and wavy hair; and a forehead so high it begged to be labelled, “domed”. He said he too was a teacher, but offered no hint of subject or at what level he taught and, to be frank, my interest did not extend that far.

“Do you have it?” I asked in my formal Portuguese. He smiled and nodded – a slight movement of his head, causing a lock of stray hair to struggle free. Patting his messenger bag, he said in accent-free English, “It’s here.”

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