Tag Archives: he

A Darker Side of Life

Posted on by under 2023, May 2023 - Commitment

‘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. 

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Only six minutes late

Posted on by under 2023, May 2023 - Commitment

“Where the hell is he?” growled Mike, as Lenny’s phone pinged with a message.

“It’s ‘im, it’s Dave,” Lenny said, unlocking the screen. “Says Be there in a minute, had another commitment to deal with.”

“Another BLOODY commitment?” Mike yelled. “Who’s ‘e fink ‘e is?”

“Itchy,” moaned Two. He’d also been christened Dave, and the group didn’t have much imagination.

“Oh, bloody shut up,” Graham snapped. “Don’t you think we’ve got better things to worry about than your sodding skincare regime at the moment?”

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The Piano Killer strikes again

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

“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.

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Still Cooking, Still Kicking

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

Wednesday

“I still take her a cup of  bed tea every morning and cook the evening meal and do all the cleaning…”

Chess looked at the blob-blank faces of his 2 drinking companions and raised a glass of Best.

“Since that first morning of our honeymoon….” Faces kindled in anticipation of the oft repeated salacious details to come. Except they didn’t.

“35 years I’ve done it. She just lies in bed all day.”

Deprived of oxygen, interest flickered then died. Disclosure time, Chess decided.

“Our sex life is dead. That’s why I’ve booked myself a flight to Bangkok. One way. After Friday you won’t see me till I’m fully re-trained.”

Eyes focussed, necks lengthened, ears strained, cheeks rosied. Gratified he continued but in a conspiratorial voice so low I could catch only occasional words –

“Jade Buddha, temples, lady-boys, kick boxing, massage parlours,” -plus “Ohs” and “Ahs” punctuated with laughter.  

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Life’s little pleasures

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

A little cafe in the centre of a large park was popular with the locals for its friendly staff and cakes you could die for. Amongst the regulars was an elderly gentleman, always smartly dressed in shirt and tie, trousers with a crease you could slice bread with, his shoes shining, not a smudge on them. He would arrive promptly at 10am and leave at 2pm and was always popular with the more mature ladies. The staff would watch amused as he charmed them, the ladies simpering at his flattery.

            It was assumed that he was just lonely, enjoying the company. Over time the staff learned his name was Gerald and his wife had passed away some time ago. He had recently moved into a retirement complex. During the summer months he would sit on the bench outside talking to an old drunk, buying him a sandwich and drink. They would sit and chat for a while till the drunk disappeared off into the park. Wondering why he took the time, Gerald replied to his questioner that it could easily have been him .

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No more waiting

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

After long years of working on tedious and inconsequential office  tasks, Bob was still rather puzzled about the end purpose of his job. He realized that he was a cog, but it was much harder to grasp which wheels he was helping to turn. So when the all-staff email asking for volunteers for redundancy slid into his inbox, Bob was uncharacteristically jubilant. He was first to volunteer.

‘What am I waiting for?’ he mused, ‘even if the deal leaves me a bit shorter than usual, it’s a relief not to do another 200 years on the same treadmill with no prospects’

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Blue

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

I can’t finish the game on my tablet. Usually I rattle through Patience, but tonight I’m flustered and keep putting the cards in the wrong place.

            My mind is at the pier where two fifteen-year-olds scan the stars. ‘Way things are progressing that might be you and me one day up there in a spacecraft, Jade,’ he says. I feel again my shuddering at the thought of darkness, of being eternally lost in the void.

            There’s a clicking noise. The monitor’s coming on.

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He would wait

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

The day that Sergei became a soldier, Ivan felt the same fierce foreboding that he’d felt the year before when he watched his brother hurtling towards what looked like certain death.

Ivan remembered a snowstorm so heavy and ferocious that all that could be seen was a blinding sheet of white. During the whiteout the two boys spent time in the basement of their building cobbling together a few pieces of old wood to make a rickety toboggan. When they could finally go out, they’d carried it along a path flanked by piles of gleaming snow to a slope nearby.  Ivan rode first, screaming with laughter at the freezing air slapping his cheeks as he careered downwards. Sergei did the second run, but the flimsy cart shattered halfway. Ivan watched as his brother was tossed in the air and catapulted to the bottom. Fear driving him, he ploughed frantically through waist high drifts to get to Sergei. By the time he got there Sergei was already standing up and brushing snow from his clothing. He shrugged away Ivan’s concern. ‘Nothing has happened. Wait before fearing the worst.’

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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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Soul Mates

Posted on by under 2023, January 2023 - Infatuation
Angry man observes young couple

Michael closed the door of his adoptive parents house for the last time.  Now was the time to make his way in the world. 

He was to transfer to his firm’s sister company in South Wales.  It was a long way from Scotland but he felt that he needed his own space.

As far as he was aware, he had never been to Wales before, but he felt that he had come home.  He knew that he was adopted when he was three.  His birth parents had been killed in a car crash, which he had survived, but had been left with both physical and mental scarring.  He couldn’t remember anything else.

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Wintry

Posted on by under 2023, January 2023 - Infatuation

In his mother’s bedroom, Christmas Day. He puts the cup of tea and mince pie by her. She stirs. ‘Thank you, son. You look after me, don’t you?’ Then she’s asleep again. Worn out, she lays there like an old sack, split, on the verge of falling apart.  

            His mind shifts. Boxing Day races tomorrow, eleven venues, seven races at each. Kempton, 2.30pm, Energy Supply. That boy’s a flyer. He opens the top drawer of the dresser, takes out the credit card, hesitates. Guilt like a barbed wire suit pricks him. He hates these tricky moments.

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Laurie, Alice, and the paycheck Senator

Posted on by under 2023, January 2023 - Infatuation
vague outline of a mna holding a glock pistol

Laurie threw the empty Bud can onto the couch. It skittered among the discarded cigarette cartons, magazines, and sandwich boxes, creating an avenue of disruption in its wake before resting against the curled edge of an old Simon and Garfunkel album. His eyes crinkled, and he fingered the black shape strapped to his waist.

“I am a Glock,” he sang, laughed at his joke, and gazed out of the window at the streets below. There was no silent shroud of snow, but there was a sedan with darkened windows under a streetlamp on the corner of 3rd. He drew the Glock and sighted on the driver’s window.

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The Doctor

Posted on by under 2022, December 2022 - The Stranger
Man on house back riding through snow-laden western tow. A red scaef lies on the ground

Snow fell in clumps the night the Doctor rode into town, carpeting the cobblestone streets. It was as though God himself had poured clouds out of the sky to welcome him. Lit by a full moon, snowflakes gilded every surface and our stricken community glowed with hope.

He had come to save us.

No-one had visited since the plague had hit. And we were forbidden to leave, succumbing to the sickness one by one.

‘I am The Doctor!’ he said, tipping his hat to the gathering crowd.

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Back from the war

Posted on by under 2022, Oct 2022 - The Visitor

I feel the air in the room change suddenly, like the slightest breath of a breeze on a summer’s day. The candle flames flicker briefly, almost imperceptibly.

He’s here. Soft, silent, catlike, he crosses the floor, and I pretend to ignore him, pretend he’s not there. After all, I’m not expecting anyone today, least of all him, who I sent off to The Great War many months ago.

He’d promised to come back, in that way that young soldiers often do, filling the hearts of those they leave behind with love and hope. Hope that, sadly, is all too often dashed on the rocks with a letter from whichever Government minister it is these days who’s happy to send others out to die, whilst he sits in restaurants with carefully curated menus spending public funds.

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Going Back

Posted on by under 2022, Oct 2022 - The Visitor

Kelleher was struggling to remember. He’d been walking for ages. Days? There’d been a wide river, a bridge, cars strewn across it, some in flames. Or had he dreamt that? There’d been towns, wrecked, as if a colossal foot had stamped on them. Fields, miles of them, just cinders. And his brain had just kept saying: go west.

            Was he in shock? He’d hunger pangs, felt as numb as a corpse, and his mouth was dry, aching for a drop of water. And now before him a road with a line of stationary lorries, some kind of building, and the sea. Was it a ferry port?

            At the entrance was a gaggle of humanity: fearful eyes, pinched faces, everybody seemingly distracted. Was that how he looked?

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And he didn’t live happily ever after

Posted on by under 2022, Sept 2022 - The End

“That’s,” Mrs Lupin said in her soothing tone, “the end.”

Five faces of varying comprehension looked up from their slender copies of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, rewritten for the under fifteens. One kid was interested, two were indifferent, another was confused, and the last was… well…

This classroom was nick-named the Retard Ward, or Spaz Town by the normal kids, and to be sure, some pupils were hopeless. Jake Mears, for instance. Fourteen years old but already in trouble with the police for hot-wiring a motorbike.

Other kids were struggling with Asperger’s or dyslexia, and a few were… not that bright. They’d probably slide through the school system to start work at the local firestone factory because who else would take them?

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Will It Never End?

Posted on by under 2022, Sept 2022 - The End

I hadn’t meant to do it. I guess I’d just had enough.

Looking back over the years we were married, it’s hard to pinpoint when it all started. He’d always been a bit of a moaner, it’s just that I didn’t know that he would turn into a professional one.

Nothing was ever really good enough for him. That included anything and everybody. He could find fault where there was none.

I really don’t know why I went along with it for all those years. I suppose I thought I could change him, eventually bring him around to my point of view. I was wrong.

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Burial

Posted on by under 2022, Sept 2022 - The End
Priest with glowing eyes in front of crying children

That time in the quays when his da had gone to the toilet. O’ Flaherty, his smirk as big as the froth on his stout, had put his hand on his knee, then moved it higher to his genitals. Keegan had had the sense to stand up and follow his father.

            ‘Full bladder, son?’

            Keegan told the old man what had happened. The latter’s face became hard, dark like the exterior of Kilmainham jail. ‘And him a priest!’ On returning, he said, ‘There’ll be no more welcome in our house for that bastard.’       

            Now Keegan was the sole mourner at his burial. Why had he come?  

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Paintings of the Mind

Posted on by under 2022, August 2022 - Envy

Your two-up two-down is in a row of terraces on a scratch of land between Manchester and Stockport: a molehill overlooked by high-rise concrete. A secret pleasure is flicking through channels while he’s out at his club. A hundred stations yet nothing on. Then you are held by a figure, grey hair, less a face than a tombstone resting on a neck. An air of gravitas in that stony apparition. You pay attention.

            The figure, well-spoken, a smoker’s cough like brown smog, is talking about his ‘artistic evolution’. The Slade, the teachers and influencers, the bohemian friends: names are dropped like Pollock paint splashes. A commitment all his years to art and sculpture; up at six a.m., seven days a week. He mentions the well-off family he’d rebelled against. They’d come round when fame’s sprig had bedecked him. He could afford to rebel, of course. Opportunities in his palm like a purse of ducats.

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Chancer

Posted on by under July 2022 - Chance

A group of boys were pouring over the local paper, gasping as they read the article. ‘Local Boy Jailed For Armed Robbery.’

            Reminiscing, the boys thought back to their school days. Owen had always been a chancer. Selling cigarettes to anyone behind the bike shed for tuppence for one, nicking them from his brothers’ hoard in the shed. He unscrewed the clasp on the door, bypassing the padlock put on after an unfortunate incident with some mushrooms.

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