Lorenzo had booked the local pub, boasting to a few hopefuls that they’d win “oh fifty quid” and have the attention of a hundred people when they performed.
The worst thing that could happen was that they’d be laughed at, although this crowd tended to look away in embarrassment when a no-talent embarrassed themselves.
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Randolph Crow remembered his boy Martin as an excited ten-year-old, leaping out of bed Saturday morning and hurrying to the local library two miles away, before returning arms loaded with books on moths and roaches. His bedroom was transformed into a museum of mounted bugs.
An obsession that, Martin’s old man noted with some relief, was replaced with a love of chemistry in his teen years.
At an age when one should be sullen and moody, Martin had the bright-eyed look of a curious toddler, treating the world like a big playground, his bedroom now a laboratory of powders and test tubes.
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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.
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‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there isn’t any way out of this contract.’
Meg crumpled onto the settee and wept.
‘Thanks for taking a look, Andy, I owe you one,’ said Doug.
‘What we going to do Doug, we’ve no more money to pay them.’
‘Come on love, whenever have I let you down, something will turn up.’
‘But even if we default on the payment, that stupid clause states we are still liable. I couldn’t bear it if they take our lovely home.’
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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 .
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Unable to move, unable to die.
He couldn’t see, hear, feel, smell or taste.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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‘Do you swear to never rat on any of us?’
‘I do.’
‘Do you swear on your mother’s life, you’re committed to the gang?’
‘I do’.
Harry just played along and said what was expected of him, it had all seemed like proper boy’s stuff until Adam pulled out his knife.
Harry’s lower lip started to tremble.
‘We won’t have any cry-babies,’ Adam stated as he used his penknife to initiate Harry into his gang.
Harry winced.
‘We’re blood brothers now, there’s no turning back,’ announced Adam.
Harry had thought that it would be fun to be accepted into a gang at his new school. Now, after seeing the pleasure that inflicting pain gave Adam, he was beginning to have some doubts.
Continue reading“I mean,” she said, “clearly there’s something not quite right here, something’s missing.”
DI Jenkins sighed and bit down a sharp retort. Of course there was something missing. In fact, there were a few things – eyes, fingers, liver, lungs, kidneys, and, possibly most disturbingly, the victim’s trousers. His dentures had also been removed and were in the middle of a damp stain on the carpet.
He was just grateful that whoever had done this had stopped the mutilation there. After all, he already had one young constable throwing up in the back garden, and his sergeant was looking a bit queasy too.
Continue readingRose settled into her nest, another busy night, sighing as she turned to the others.
Lily poked her head up: ‘Hard night Rose. You wouldn’t believe it. I had to rummage under the bed to find the tooth, all those dust bunnies’ bits of food. It was disgusting’.
Marigold piped up: ‘Last time that happened to me there was a mouse there, eyeing me up.’ Gasps from the girls.
Lily shuddered: ‘What did you do?’
‘Chucked a bit of biscuit at it, grabbed the tooth and scarpered.’
Hyacinth joined in. ‘I had a fright not long ago when a dog came sniffing around sucked me halfway up his nostril. Thankfully it tickled his nose, he snorted and blew me across the room,’
Continue readingI was on my way home at last, I’d been counting down the days to my return flight since I arrived. The ‘Call of the Wild’ was overexaggerated as far as I was concerned. I just could not wait for that blissful moment of sleeping in my own bed. As it turned out, Africa had different plans for me.
The airport tannoy crackled into life.
“The flight to Nairobi has been delayed.”
There was a groan from all the passengers.
“More information will follow.”
I looked down at my dust-encrusted attire, I really needed a shower; even I could smell how disgusting I was. I just hoped that we would be aboard the turbo prop soon.
“Today’s flight has been cancelled.”
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It was a tragic sight, comical yet tragic.
As Harry waited by the bus stop, he gazed across the road at the crowd of hunchbacked goblins slumped in battered chairs, looking lost and bewildered.
Men in white coats walked amongst this sea of dithering heads, when one wrinkled nonagenarian cried out for her mummy. That soon set off the rest of those ancients, as they all wailed in incoherent distress.
God, it was a sin to keep them alive.
Continue readingA miracle; no other way to describe it. After the washing-up of Sunday lunch, she and Freddie had either taken a left out of the front gate and walked towards Mam’s parents, or turned right over the railway bridge to Dad’s. Attempted recall techniques had included a retracing on Google Maps of as much of the route as could be remembered by a failing 90 year old brain and cajoling her granddaughter to drive her on their weekly car trip along every exit of every roundabout in the town. Pris was giving up hope. There were over a hundred roundabouts and at least five hundred possible exits. Some she recognized; some not. Road realignments, estate clearances and the ripple-out expansion of shopping centres, had remodelled the once familiar. Every now and then something – the sight of an old industrial chimney, a stretch of stone wall, the metallic nose of rusting industrial archaeology blasting through the car’s air vents – promised to tug a distant memory chime, only to muffle, return into the unrecognisable and remain silent. Did she have 10 years?
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The cardigan with the paint stain on the elbow that she could never wash off: why had she kept it so long? She remembered touching up the sitting-room door, brush in one hand, Sylvie in the other, when a blob of gloss had attached itself to her sleeve almost as firmly as her baby’s fingers.
The uncomfortable wooden armchair that guests sat on, or rather, hovered above as though it were a large hedgehog. The enormous ghetto-blaster like a plastic-armoured beetle squatting on the windowsill. Rachel’s drum: memories of a small child marching around the sitting room like an infant platoon, noisier than a massed military band. She ought to let all this stuff go.
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Friday afternoon and Billy Thomas was daydreaming of all the things he and the gang had to do over the weekend. He was jerked back to reality by a piece of chalk hitting him squarely on the forehead. Mr. Jenkins was bellowing at him, ”Pay attention boy. ”
A knocking at the door and a head poked around. A groan rippled around the class. It was Nitty Nora who had come to look for nits; always bad news. No one wanted the pink note telling their parents they had nits.
One by one they trudged into the hall for inspection. Nearly all of the class had pink notes. Disaster! Nora came into class declaring an epidemic and sent them all home. The boys huddled together, scratching as they walked, knowing their plans would come to nothing, each knowing what the weekend held.
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Two words sprang to mind. Fat Chance. What were the odds on a crime scene being this neat? The victim, a message written in his own blood, and the murder weapon all within a few yards of each other. My gut told me something was wrong.
The boys in blue were happy enough to sign off on it. Even though the accused had a cast iron alibi, but I smelt a rat.
I went over the evidence again. There was only one fatal blow to the victim’s head. He’d have been dead before he hit the floor. The baseball bat had been wiped clean. The question was how could a dead man write his killer’s name in his own blood?
“Follow the money”, my instincts shouted. “Who was set to gain by this murder?”
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“Go,” Mother whispers, “you’re our last chance.”
I stand, confused, as she presses an activation key into my right hand, then runs along the corridor towards my father and the mob pressing against the hangar’s blast doors.
*
We’ve been spacers all our lives, living on the margins of existence. Trading goods wherever we can make credits, salvaging wreckage, fighting off pirates and raiders. The Federal Planetary Government doesn’t hold much sway out in the void, even though they’re becoming more authoritarian and imperialistic on the inhabited worlds. Rebellious types from beat poets to guerrilla militias had been crushed mercilessly according to rumour, but Father had dismissed the hearsay with a wave of his hand.
“No matter to us, girlie,” he’d said. “Go help your mother with the hull repairs.”
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