Hubert approached the freezer door gingerly. The seals were failing and he was fearful of triggering an ejection of its replenished contents. DIY maintenance was not his forté. Opinion on this had been unanimous since the incident involving pergola components, a hammer drill and his newly numbed left hand and truncated thumb. Lifting the door handle and easing outwards whilst bracing with his knee usually worked.
He had been re-examining the previous evening’s chronology – the pier’s shadow in the fading light, the incoming tide and Jenny paddling at the water’s edge. They were discussing wedding pros and cons – woodland versus church – when interrupted by a commotion out in the bay. A boiling murkiness was expanding as it rose from the ocean’s depths. Bubbling and spitting it ran towards the shore; the coral-pink darts of the drowning sun were unable to disperse it. Overhead competing clouds of gannets and seagulls quarrelled in a screaming circular tornado. And at their feet, tickling their toes, the advancing flume line turned silver with thousands of doomed sprats. Fleeing the mackerel’s strike they wriggled and squirmed on the reducing ribbon of sand.
I must say, it was the weirdest outing ever. I can try to laugh about it now but really, it just reinforced all my early fears about not getting into things where you can’t see a clear way out. (I completely blame the Brothers Grimm for this, what with Hansel and Gretel having such a close encounter with an oven – nightmare).
Dilly, my sister, (Delia, but she hates the name)and I live far apart so we take the occasional weekends together and meet up for hotel stays, meals out, the odd show and whatever we fancy.
The land that surrounds me was, up until fairly recently, a lifeline to man’s very existence. There was a time when it was a valley of black waste, tall chimneys, steam powered locomotives and the pit head winding gear. Some men worked and some men died for a meagre pittance with which to feed their families. It was a place whose narrow seams crippled the people that produced the wealth for the owners. It was somewhere I used to work, not anymore. I kept telling myself that I’d never return to this hellhole. Since its closure, I find myself once again plodding over this once industrial landscape.
There’d been an atmosphere of suppressed excitement in the village that morning. The boy was glad to go into the solitude of the woods to search for the fox. It wouldn’t take long. Foxes didn’t hide their tracks, unlike people. He stopped to hoist the shotgun onto his shoulder, then moved stealthily forward. Most of his friends knew nothing about foxes, but the boy knew where they made their dens and when they were most active. He could even tell if they were a dog or a vixen from the muskiness of their scent. The fox couldn’t escape him.
Sleep eluded me like a teddy in a claw machine, its softness always slipping from my grasp. My wife lay beside me, snoring contentedly – a buzzing wasp that I wanted to swat but didn’t dare. She only got mad with me, sometimes for days, and I only got all hot and bothered from moving, and further from escaping consciousness. Instead, I just lay there, thinking about all the things I was dreading about tomorrow, and all the ways in which it was going to be even worse without a good night’s sleep.
At work, I waded through treacle. Each sleepless night thickened the gloop that coated everything. Movement was slow and painful.
He seemed nervous. ‘Good to meet you after the messaging, Cassie.’
After that, he Cassied her at the end of practically every sentence. Put him at his ease, butter him up, she thought. ‘You’re even nicer than your profile!’ she told him, and was chuffed when he blushed. No big ego then.
‘I’m more of a listener than a talker,’ he said. She smiled sweetly at this, holding his gaze with lingering craft. She hadn’t forgotten how to flirt.
‘You won’t replace me – not unless it’s somebody frigging desperate!’ Those were the words of Bill, ex-husband number two, on his departure. His words had nagged at her for a while, but here she was back on the dating game. Her confidence was breaking out again.
She’d chosen the café upstairs in Tesco. A late morning cup of tea before she went to work. Malcolm was a compact guy, a few years older than her, a couple of inches shorter . He was barrel-chested, making her think of a bullfrog. A gentle froggy: tender, a nice nature. She’d made mistakes with men before, but this one appealed to her. He was courteous and it was odd how she felt at ease talking with him, once he’d broken the shackles of silence.
‘I was brought up by my gran,’ he said, when she’d mentioned her three adult children in Blackburn. His mother had done drugs and had mental health problems.
Message to herself: Malcolm might need a mother figure. It could be arranged.
‘You’re local, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Belper.’
‘Handy.’ And she gave him a little come-on look. A sheepish expression on Malcolm’s face. She did like his shyness.
‘What do you think of me, Malcom?’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Smitten?’
‘Well I… you know…’
‘You soon will be,’ and she gave a dirty laugh. No point beating about the bush. She was fifty-one, of large build, and she knew she’d never win a beauty contest. She wanted a man for love, friendship, and nookie. Malcolm would do her nicely.
‘So…?’ he said.
‘You’re sweet,’ she said standing up. ‘Fancy popping over to South Normanton to see me?’
‘Well I… yes…’
She gave him a peck on the cheek, and tapped his bum for good measure. That ought to get the message across. ‘Got to go to work, love. I’m in the next couple of evenings. Okay?’ He nodded, the same mix of embarrassment and interest. She was driving the show, and he didn’t seem to mind.
‘Soon then,’ she said, about to depart. ‘Hey, are you OK?’
Malcom was shaking, then he slid to the floor. For a nanosecond she thought of a frog slipping into a pond. Then her nurse’s instincts kicked in. She used her jacket to cushion his head, loosened his collar and tie to aid breathing, then turned him on his side when the convulsions stopped. She stayed with him until the ambulance came. Needs occasional nursing as well as mothering, she noted, as she drove to work.
Aysha had been running and hiding for two days, and still they followed her relentlessly. Now laying under a thorn bush, she was quivering. Her once sleek body was emaciated, a pale grey colour, her eyes seemed to take up her whole face, a beaten look in them.
The hunters found her the next morning, dragging her out and they set off for the krall. She had to be returned. They placed her in the care of the wise woman who set about treating her wounds, purging her of the parasites that she had swallowed in the river water, feeding her honey water and thin gruel. She slowly recovered .
This was isolation in its purest form. Loneliness inescapable. No rescue, no relief, no companionship, no comfort, and no end.
How long had he been there? A million years, merely a week? Another agony was that in his sightless, soundless state, he could not even measure time.
He would never again know fresh air, a good meal or the touch of a warm hand.
*
“Make me immortal,” he yelled at the Djinn, and it granted his wish.
He gleefully drank down every poison, feeling no ill effects. He had his armed guards charge at him, and even the sharpest blade never pierced his skin.
Space is at a premium. At least it is when you’re the pilot of a packet-ship.
I am iDen 20786433717/190. One-ninety to you, pilot first-class. It is my job to convey the orders of The Agreement to extra-solar installations on the tether end of the information relay artery. We can only transmit detailed instructions the old-fashioned way. That’s by carrying a tonne of code-embedded crystal through the redlines in a physical ship.
It is all about bandwidth. Out here, on the periphery, bandwidth is narrow. Why not build more routers? Easy. They wouldn’t work. Bandwidth is inversely proportional to the distance from the hub in redline-space.
You know there’s something seriously wrong when the police arrive at your door past midnight. I guessed what it was at once. He had finally done it.
I’d moved out of the family home when I was seventeen, and haven’t put a foot inside it since. After years of wanting my father’s attention, I finally had it once I reached puberty. It was the wrong sort of course, “our little secret” he used to call it.
Poor Mum, the things she had to put up with over the years. She didn’t deserve any of it. She’d never told anybody of the mental and physical abuse she had been subjected to from ‘HIM.’ Even now I can’t call him ‘Dad’, he’s such a despicable human being. Why she stood by him all these years I will never understand.
Of course, the forest was dark that night, in these sorts of stories it always is. But, even as I stumbled through the undergrowth, the wind whipping razor-sharp branches into my face like an enraged banshee, I couldn’t allow myself to slow.
There it was, by some miracle, a light up ahead. I almost physically stretched toward it, like a dying man in the desert offered a flask of water or, perhaps, to flip the analogy, a drowning man thrown a rope from a passing ship.
What it was, was hope. Lower case, yes, but hope nonetheless.
Dafydd scanned the dirty, black surroundings as he approached the colliery. Clouds of acrid dusty smoke belched from the tall chimney that covered the hillside. The pit head wheel rotated lowering colliers underground at the beginning of each shift. Dada and Dafydd, wearing their worn corduroy trousers and jackets, arrived promptly at the mine entrance.
They reported to the office where the manager’s voice called out. “Bring him in Dai. Duw Dafydd, you’re starting work today. Are you looking forward to it?” Nervously he replied yes. Dafydd showed his anxiousness. Dada’s firm and comforting hand calmed him. “Steady bach, you’ll be fine”. They entered the cage and the door shutting unnerved Dafydd. The winding wheel clunked into life. His pulse quickened, his stomach churned, his palms and forehead became sweaty. The cage lowered. They were met below by Emlyn, a well-built giant whose face was covered in black dust.
We were cock-a-hoop when our Billy said he was coming home. His Mam’s been up all hours polishing the copper and she’s scrubbed the front step until it’s gleaming. She’s busy baking enough to feed Billy, his lass, the bairn, and the entire street I reckon. It’s not as if Billy will even notice, he just wants to see us.
It seems like yesterday he was a babe in arms. He was hardly as big as a bag of sugar when he was born. Wouldn’t have given tuppence for his chances. His mam gave him sips of milk on her finger until he was strong enough to take a bottle. He soon got a taste for it, mind. Used to yell blue murder till he was fed. When she shoved the bottle in Billy’s gob and the yelling stopped, I used to think I’d gone deaf. You wouldn’t think he’d started off like that to look at him now. He’s grown into a fine lad.
Putting up the tent, Sam and Evie smiled at each other. They felt like naughty teenagers. It was to be their first music festival. Both in their forties, they had always wanted to go but life had always got in the way. With the twins off on a school trip for a week their time had come. The Hadfield music festival happened to fall at that time.
They had booked a quiet field that overlooked the stage area and had showers and toilets. The weather looked fine, so excitement was bubbling. Wandering around the main area a cacophony of sound and smells assaulted their senses; so much choice and so many people. Although they did notice that a majority of the crowd were quite young, they were determined to enjoy the experience.
The bands started playing, they wandered around getting a taste for each brand of music; some they enjoyed, others not so much. One of their favourite bands was due to play the next night, so they settled for a takeaway and returned to their tent for a reasonably early night.
The house had never been through the local estate agents’ books because it had never been sold. It had been built, over a hundred years ago, by a young couple who gathered local wood and stone and slowly, lovingly made themselves a house of many rooms in which to raise their family. Who knew where the deeds and land registry papers were? Certainly, none of the present occupants who paid the bills and maintained the fruitful gardens.
Many people had called the house home. Family, friends, and people in need of refuge had shared love and hospitality there as well as some of life’s tragedies. No one ever wanted to leave, but inevitably work, marriage, death, or the desire to travel had torn some away, always with the hope of return.
“And your point is……?” Weeny, named for his diminutive size, gazed enquiringly from unseeing ocelli at his half-brother.
“My point is obvious,” Marshal replied, jaws bristling. “We always build sharp sides North South along magnetic lines, broad sides East to West.” He released an acidic cloud of pheromones to indicate his exasperation. “The colony has flourished, expanded, and order has been maintained. That’s reason good enough to stick with traditional architectural plans.”
But with success had come drawbacks. The colony had expanded to its geophysical limit; it was time to either build the city higher, much higher, or explore new frontiers.
The summer city riots had spread to the rural north. The news eventually filtered through to the isolated mining village of Brookover. Its pit had long been closed, a sportswear assembly unit squatting on its corpse. It was the main employer for miles, the owners having brought in scores of Eastern Europeans on the minimum wage to toil there.
The presence of the ‘foreigners’ was a grievance: Polish shops, strange languages in the market square. Their healthy diet marked out the incomers too. They were thin and fit, not paunchy and panting like some locals.
Okay, there’s certain stories you really dig. Sometimes it’s high art that you feel smart for liking. An approving conscience says well done, yada-yada.
Sometimes you like silly fluff for reasons you can’t justify but it was Crimson Camel who said a good paperback is preferable to bad literature.
Think about it, what would you rather eat, a fresh big mac or mouldy caviar?
So, this story, penned by the always entertaining Arizona Davies, takes us to a modest house. It’s during lockdown and two people are fucking.
They’re roleplaying with the guy doing a hearty pirate voice: “Yer be my kidnapped wrench ha-ha” but the gal decides to dial up the romance instead.
“I love you,” she states with puppy eyes “My heart aches for you.”
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