Mike Hoban was sitting in the armchair of his apartment in Finchley, London. At his feet, Amanda Abraham, his girlfriend, was working on a quilt she’d started just before Christmas. Mike is reading “The World According to Garp”.
“Is that good?” Amanda asked without looking up.
“Very,” Mike replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it.”
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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I have reached the age where wraiths of the dearly departed,-siblings, parents, babies lost before birth, partners, friends,- slip unbidden into the monochrome days and restless nights. They dart and hide at vision’s edge, ever eluding the spotlight of full consciousness. Yet as the procedure progresses, notwithstanding this lack of clarity, they appear more substantial, more tangible, than the creature standing beside me on hind legs.
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 readingIn the park she said: ‘Tell me a story.’
He looked at her round red face that had once suggested an arse. Then he had fallen in love with it, and all he could think of were apples, strawberries, ripe fruit, things sensuous to the tongue. Lately though a falling off, and rotting and withering slithered about his brain.
‘There was a man who considered his life was like a jigsaw.’
‘That it?’ she said.
‘You want more, Rebecca?’
‘Have you got more in you?’
‘A couple lunched out on a death anniversary. He, Bren, was thinking of a childhood conversation with his late mother. “That’s Nanny in Ireland,” she’d said as a sound like a distant earthquake rumbled in her belly.
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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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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.
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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.
Continue readingJack was woken up by the sound of his mobile’s bleep. Bleary eyed he raised himself off the bed. His mother’s voice message jolted him awake.
‘Jack love, I know its early but I thought I’d better let you know, we’re coming home a day early, problem with airline strikes tomorrow. Just giving you the heads up. Put the hoover over will you. Bye love.’
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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 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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