“This is your first time, right?”
The knife slid from my already-sweaty palm onto the ground with a thud. Someone had seen!
She was perched on a branch above me, swinging her legs. Behind her, gossamer wings sparkled in the half-light.
My heart stopped. This was it. I’d gone mad with the stress of it all. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
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The postmistress had a bad reputation and specialised in being irritable with everybody. She was perhaps in her fifties, but almost of a geological age. You were put in mind of a slab of granite behind the serving hatch in the corner of the mini-supermarket. Her face was stony, her resentment hard.
‘NEXT!’ she barked from behind her counter. ‘First or second? Put it on the scales. ON them, not under them. Where’s it going? WHAT? Gib-raltar?’ She pronounced the word as though it were the most awful place on the planet. Then she forked the parcel off the scales with a plump paw, eyeing her customer in the manner of a prison guard with a felon.
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Carmichael’s curse came true.
She proclaimed in her base voice that Angus, Sean, and Ian would never see their twenty first birthdays.
“You’re all going to die,” she cackled.
And sure enough, they did.
Angus was the first to go, dropping dead in Spain, whilst partying with his college chums, Sean meanwhile died during his missionary work in China. Both croaked at the stroke of midnight on the eve of their birthdays.
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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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Click, click, click of the invigilator’s hard-soled shoes on the gymnasium floor. Bob’s head full of clicks and empty of ideas. Cursing Philip Rees for their back row antics in maths. Both sending notes to Amanda in the front row, while on the board algebra was explained one last time. The clicks louder as the invigilator approaches, and then silent, as she looks down with a smile at the blank answer page in front of him, pristine as freshly fallen snow. Phillip in town with Amanda watching Star Wars. London Calling, lost in the supermarket, heart of glass, and the years pass. The sound of shock and awe on the news, the territorial trumpeting of ducks on Regent’s Park lake, Theseus nearby proclaiming his greatness from the Open Air Theatre, and then silence, as Titania sleeps, and dusk falls over London. Tick, tick, he waits 59 seconds for the next tick. Tick and he waits again. He looks away and looks back at the question. It hasn’t changed. He writes a paragraph, tears it up, writes the same paragraph again and tears it up. He waits for the tick. The sound of muffled traffic along the Strand, the tick louder than ever. Trisha, the environmental lawyer from Boston, queuing for the photocopier in the basement. Standing behind her with blank sheets of paper turned downwards. The clunk, clunk, clunk of the copier. Spending the next morning in the queue, getting to the front and starting again, front to back, back to front, more reliable than the machine, which splutters to a halt. Just as she steps out of the lift. Sitting together in the pub, her dark hair draped over an unfamiliar pint of bitter, Simply the Best on the jukebox, old guys in the corner looking on with grumpy or wistful eyes. Book marking that moment in time and portending the future. Decades pass. His grandmother wheezing, pouring him a tot of whisky in her toothbrush mug from her secret bottle that all the nurses know about, asking him if he thinks she will get better. Telling her she will outlive them all. The ensign draped on her coffin, the sound of Santa Maria sung in a beautiful soprano, the priest hurrying after the secular congregant who has pocketed the host as a souvenir. The silence of her room. The whisky bottle gone. Years pass. The gentle snore of his wife. The day time sound of his neighbour playing Bach on the piano. It could be worse, he thinks. Drugs parties, feuds, not fugues, the acid sound of blame. Then one night, another sound. Not from next door, but upstairs. And so it begins. Months pass and the past unravels. The present vanishes. A box there in the middle of the room. He peers into see if hope still resides there. Something at the bottom stirs. The sound of wings flapping. It circles the room twice and then out through the open door. He looks again into the box. It’s now pitch black. Like a black hole which allows no light to escape and sucks in all around it. Pitch black and bottomless.
He strokes the canvas. With his eyes closed, and with a gentle enough touch, he can almost convince himself that he is feeling her skin, petal-soft, beneath his fingers. How he misses the feel of her. He can look at photos, listen to recordings, smell her perfume. But the sensation of his skin on hers, that can never be revisited. He swallows the lump in his throat.
In front of him, a meticulously mixed palette of colours – her colours, matched to the exact shade of her eyes, skin, lips and hair – glistens in the hazy garage light. It is as though she is here, all the parts of her, just waiting to be put back together. The thought brings him comfort. She has not gone, not really. Not when she can be re-created again and again, each time a greater likeness. If he just keeps going, perhaps he can conjure her back from the dead. He wields his paintbrush like a magic wand. A super-power, that’s what this is. This artistic gift of his. Dare he say it, he’s a God of sorts, if you really think about it.
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Fortuitously, the window was wide open when Greg hurled Alexa through it.
‘I’m so bloody sick of that voice that knows everything and patronises me and drives me completely round the bend. Good riddance. I hate you, Alexa.’
Poor Alexa. She had understood that things were not going too well, but this was beyond bad. Leaking and whining she fought her way, with the remains of her power, to a small grove which offered a bit of protection.
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Billy Thomas and his little gang were sitting around a table at the back of the rugby club sipping their shandies.
The steward was keeping a watchful eye, the club was busy after a local derby. Both teams were strutting their stuff to impress the girls. They in turn were pretending they weren’t interested while quietly sizing them up.
The gang looked on from afar. Finally Owen Parry piped up.
”Don’t know why they bother, bitches all of them.”
They nodded as they knew Owen had fallen heavily for a girl, showering her with gifts only for her to turn him down when he asked for a date.
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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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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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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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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.”
He frowns somewhat puzzled.
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My love for her echoes the unconditional love she has for me. She has watched me laugh and cry from the day I was born and made sure she raised me as a sensitive, loving person. There has always been respect for decisions I have made in life and she has corrected many mistakes I have made. Her guidance has made me a more rounded person. The commitment I have for her will always be there.
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Light from the hallway shone through the glass of the door. A signal to say it wasn’t safe. She turned away straining to stay calm when time was running out. The next place was easily a mile away. Not too far in daylight, but in the dark and with what she carried under her cape it would be difficult. Nudging the weight into a different position, she cautiously moved on, her arm numb. The road was quiet, but sensing danger, she slid into the shadow of the wood. It wasn’t much safer. If she was caught it would be said that a woman alone at night was asking for trouble.
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,’
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Charlotte takes another sip of champagne and tilts her face towards the sun, letting the chatter and children’s laughter wash over her. The annual Easter festival at the Red Lion is always a blast, bringing everyone in the town together. But this year feels extra special with the unseasonable heatwave.
She’s jolted out of her reverie by a sharp poke in the ribs from her daughter.
“We’re going on an Easter egg hunt!” Meg giggles, trailing a chocolate-covered hand over Charlotte’s lap.
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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Celebrity biopics sell movie tickets, although it’s never a guarantee that any particular superstar has led an interesting life. So, if you’re a Hollywood scribe, you can squeeze your subject into a readymade template. Celebrity had a career decline? That calls for a Citizen Kane style rise and fall. Your famous figure OD’d? Great! Turn it into a tragedy, driving home some point or other about addiction. What if their life involves an unsolved mystery on par with the Mary Celeste? Dream up a solution.
Norma Rankin, twice grammy nominated singer-songwriter from Chicago, comfortably slotted herself into category three by vanishing off the face of the earth in 1992. Thus, esteemed director Ivan Shanks, auteur of such classics as “Your Mother and a Cow” (1985) and “Die Slowly and Painfully” (1988) made the acclaimed, highly speculative “Rankin Vanishes” (2000), which nabbed three Oscars, and a golden globe.
It did so by fudging the facts.
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