Hitting Home

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing

The immediate situation facing us was frightening.  Dank weather summed up the predicament perfectly.  On the way to collect Melanie I knew with certainty that both our lives would dramatically change.  Whether we could endure the physical and mental anguish was questionable. Could we overcome such an event? It would test our  love for one another to the limit.

          I arrived near the entrance to the room but was afraid to enter.  What could I possibly say to her. Someone in authority caught sight of me and came to chat.  Her words were powerful and I felt more at ease. ‘Come in Mr Thomas, you’re both going to need all your strength to recover from this.  Melanie is extremely fragile at the moment but with time you will both get through the ordeal. It’s not going to be easy but  you can give each other great comfort and support’.  My hands trembled as I entered, palms sweating, eyes focusing on her.  She was dressed and ready to leave. Her face tearful with unhappiness. 

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Councillor Consuela

Posted on by under 2023, April 2023 - Missing
Councillor Consuela addresses a gathering of supporters

Consuela Edda Luisella Maria Beneventi always wanted to be a councillor, and not just for the amusement of being Councillor Consuela either. Although, in inebriated moments at the pub after a tiring branch meeting, she admitted it had a bearing. But mostly it was because Consuela thought she could “sort things out”.

She was, everyone admitted, a bloody fearsome woman, and quite capable of sorting things out. But no-one ever thought it would actually be a good idea to let her play with council powers. Far too dangerous.

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Waiting for Mr Right

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

‘Happy Birthday Liz,’ Jane and Amanda chorused.

‘Thirty five, it doesn’t seem that long ago we were all in Uni.’

‘I’m really glad we’ve stayed in touch,’ Amanda confided.

‘The Three Amigos’ Jane toasted, ‘may we stick together forever.’

‘Liz, are you still seeing that guy, John or something, the librarian?’

‘No, another one that didn’t quite work out.’

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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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Mirror’s Eyes

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

We wait, biding our time.

Such patience tests us, but this interlude is worth it, especially considering the prize on offer.

You barely even acknowledge us; we are the passing glance in the morning, the image used to check that makeup is applied correctly, or your necktie is straight, before you head out of the door to your dreary, coffee-fuelled, miserable, worthless lives.

We are your reflection in more than just the shallow sense of the word; we mark the passing of your years, day by day, second by second. Yet it is only in moments of occasional lucidity that you see us, shake your head critically and wonder where the twenty-eight-year-old that still lives in your head has disappeared to.

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Waiting for the Bus

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

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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Have You Reached A Verdict?

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

Him

The waiting is the worst thing.

Worse than police officers knocking on your door while you’re having dinner with your wife, informing you as the steak in your stomach liquefies, that you’ve been accused of rape. Worse, even, than the look in your wife’s eyes when you admit that, yes, you slept with someone, but it meant nothing.

Worse than protesting your innocence to a bunch of strangers, like that stuck up old woman with the pearls. Her lips curled into a sneer when I called that bitch out for what she is. When I said she’d been pestering me all night in a slutty outfit, then jumped into my taxi uninvited and took me back to her place. When I described her saying she loved me afterwards, and going hysterical when I said I’m married.

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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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Waiting

Posted on by under 2023, March 2023 - Waiting

 Dirty needles, paper cups and cigarette buts lie strewn across the cold concrete floor.  The pungent stench of urine hangs heavy in the air.  Nausea rises and I quickly move away.  Tramping the streets in search of a place to rest my weary body, I settle inside a doorway for an hour or so on the edge of a seedy street with many empty buildings.  I sit alone inside my well-used grubby sleeping bag and wait, waiting for a kind stranger to spare me a little change for a hot cuppa. I  stare vacantly into space with nothing to occupy my mind. A few people scurry by occasionally throwing the odd penny or two onto the surface of the bag and I thank them for their kindness in a gruff voice.  Strong feelings of loneliness combined with tiredness and fatigue weigh heavy. I am hoping that tomorrow might be different. Tired of the daily fight for survival, I begin to wonder if there’s any hope. I soon get moved on by the police.  “You can’t stay here. You’ll have to move on”.  I’ve become desensitised to this sort of treatment.

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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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Phosphorescence and The Barque

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

A 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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Back from holiday

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

“Fantastic imagination your kid’s got,” the emergency plumber said. “Reminds me of my two when they were ‘is age. Always makin’ things up. Really convincin’ too, told our vicar that the people next door was wanted by the coppers! That took some explainin’, I tell you…”

I smiled, mostly to hide the grimace at the amount it had cost to get him out on a Sunday morning.

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The Aftermath

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

Jack 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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Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on by under Feb 2023 - The Stain

They say curiosity killed the cat, well my curiosity is well and truly dead. Here I am standing in a multi storey car park looking at a patch of wall with an orange stain on. The whole place stinks of human waste, petrol fumes and damp .What brought me here you may well ask.

            Having lived a comfortable life with my grandparents, I quickly learned not to ask about my real parents. All they ever said that was they were dead to them. Years passed and, as with all things, the grandparents passed away. Now I was the owner of the house and with sufficient money to keep me in comfort, I set about making the place my own. 

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The Stains of Life

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

Reticent is a good word to sum them both up. Not shy, not shy at all, yet in each you could sense a certain unwillingness to reveal more personal information than necessary.

When the pair, Ellie and James, arranged a meal out in a smart Italian restaurant, it was cause for some mirth and speculation amongst their small circle of friends.

‘He’s bound to slurp his spaghetti and get it all down his front,’ someone suggested.

And this wasn’t an outlandish idea, because James was well known to be rather clumsy.

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The Myriad Benefits of Darjeeling Tea

Posted on by under 2023, Feb 2023 - The Stain

“Go into business with your twin,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.

If you call sweating in a café, cleaning up after customers while your twin sister’s gallivanting overseas in pursuit of new teas and coffees to sell, “fun,” then they were right.

I sigh. Where to start with this clean-up operation? I watch the stain spread across the pale wood floor, seeping into the grain. It was her idea to get wooden floors, of course. Wood the colour of her platinum blonde hair that she insists on bleaching to look as different from me as possible. “Mousey,” she calls our natural hair colour. “Classy,” I always reply.

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Hi, I’m Lucy

Posted on by under Feb 2023 - The Stain
Devilish woman in the background. Stain Devil bottle in the foreground

Cold seeped into her limbs as the breath from her sobs erupted in clouds of vapour curling under her hanging head. She wasn’t sure if she could take any more, but going back meant facing him. An icicle stabbed through her.

“You okay, chick?” A woman’s voice. Jian looked up. Standing opposite the bench on which she sat was a tall white woman. She seemed to be made of shadows, all darkness and shifting folds of fabric, except her eyes, which were gas-flame blue. The woman stepped forward into the light cast by the row of takeaway shops on the other side of the low railings surrounding the park. “Hi, I’m Lucy. You’re Jian Zhang and I’m here to help.”

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The Cardigan

Posted on by under Feb 2023 - The Stain

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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