Plot Medics 

“Disgusting little bugger,” the owner said, peering into the box.  “Thought there’d be more of ‘em.  You sure you’ve got them all?”

“You can never be completely sure,” Rob Stevens said.  It was what the firm told them to say, but it was also true.  “But if you take the precautions in the leaflet, and notify us straight away if you see any of the signs, then you shouldn’t have such a problem again. I’m just going to check the back.”

He went through to the rear of the building.  It was a lowering day, the light already seeping away, faster here among the blank windowless walls and seeping pipes. 

Rob had been an exterminator for going on twenty years.  He had developed a high tolerance for unpleasant smells, a respect for his prey’s amazing survival capacity, and an almost telepathic awareness of the dogs, druggies and rough sleepers he encountered on jobs who occasionally decided to make his life difficult.  Something tugged at this sense now, and he stood for a moment, head cocked, his heavily gloved hand unconsciously tightening on the rod he carried. 

Nothing.  No snoring breathing from behind the bins, no low growl or rattling chain. 

He poked the rod at a patch of shadow under the bin, but it crumpled.  Cloth.  He shook off his nerves, thinking it must just be the weather, the nights drawing in.  He started picking up the traps.  Heavy, heavy, heavy…light.  He checked.  Empty.  So were a couple more.  Surprising in this area; he got called out here so often he knew every yard, backdoor and bin store. 

The phone buzzed.  “Hi, Molly.”
“Rob.  Just to remind you about that four-o’clock in the City tomorrow, you up?”
“Yes, I’m just finishing here.” 
“Good to get another one so soon, it’s been thin lately.”
“It has.” Rob knew he was lucky to still have his job.  “Everyone’s trying to save money, I s’pose.”
***
The place in the City was one of those monumentally impressive structures built in a rush of monetary optimism.  Successive recessions had taken some of the shine off.  Rob shook his head at the damage to the wiring. 

“Tell me about it,” the maintenance manager said, gloom pulling his heavy features down like extra gravity.  “I told ‘em.  Rats, I said, do you a thousand quidsworth of damage overnight.  Ounce of prevention, I said.  But no, would have made that quarter’s budget look bad.  Well, wait till they see this quarter’s.  I told ‘em.”

Rob was used to the scutter and whisk of them all around him, especially on a late job like this, when they started getting active as the day faded.  But as he laid his traps and patched entry holes, he realised it was oddly quiet. 

He shone his torch into the corners, eventually highlighting a familiar double gleam, but the rat was already dead, buck teeth pathetically comic in its half-open mouth, paws scratching stiffly at the air.

“Where’s all your mates, eh?”  If there’d been a level under this one he might have suspected they’d all retreated down there, but there was nothing under him but earth.  Unnerved, he forced himself to finish up neatly, to do the job properly, but he was glad to get back in the van.

Headquarters was in Greenwich, right down past the Dome, near the Thames Barrier. It was crowded with operatives at the end of their shift, come to hand in report sheets and get their assignments for the next few days.  But the atmosphere was a little twitchy, the laughter a little too loud.  Rob trudged up the stairs to the office, but kept finding himself looking about, as though a savage dog or drugged-up yob was going to leap out of one of the cubicles. The place was a maze of them, and all of a sudden he felt like a rat in one of those old experiments, and felt an intense desire to get out of there.  They had the windows open, as it was a warm night, but he felt he couldn’t breathe.

He’d hand in his sheets on Monday.  Molly would scold, but she’d sort him out.

Rob was heading for the door when he heard a noise outside, like heavy rain, or gravel pouring down a chute.  It was a sound he’d heard a few times in his career, but never this loudly.  His first thought was that someone was mucking about, playing one of the training films at top volume.  But by the window one of the men was standing agape, his hands flapping like broken-winged birds.   Feeling as though his feet were caught in strange, electric glue, Rob walked to the window, and looked out.

The street was moving. 

It was black with rats, charging singlemindedly along the road, a great squeaking skittering tide of rats.  Rob’s gaze, as though tugged on a string, moved up.  From here, he could see a good stretch of the peninsula and its scatter of industrial buildings; and all across it, under the streetlights, he could see that same, relentless, pouring tide. 

Unwillingly, Rob’s gaze moved further up, towards the rest of London, but it was hidden behind the dome, only the hazy orange glow of light-pollution betraying its presence.  Even if he could have seen it, he wouldn’t have known what it was they knew, and why, as one, they were heading for the sea. 

There was a rose at the foot of one of the standing stones.

Margaret looked down at it.  Deep red, the breeze ruffling the edges of its petals.

Gulls wheeled against the blue, shrieking like souls denied heaven; the sunlight flared stinging-bright from the water. 

The sun felt as incongruous as the rose.  This was the Highlands, it was supposed to rain.  Had she, subconsciously, come here for that very reason?  Expecting the climate without to match the one within?

After all, it was only another failed affair, only another loss, only another emptiness in a life that seemed to have more gaps than substance.

And now someone had left a rose. 

He never brought me roses, she thought.  She realised she was actually, stupidly, about to cry at the thought, and a sense of her own self-pity swelled up, choking. 

Oh, for crying out loud, Margaret.  Snap out of it.  Stop wailing.

But I’m lonely.

She was still staring at the rose when the tourist coaches pulled up.

Margaret, flinching, hoped they weren’t Americans, prone to acts of sudden random friendliness.  She withdrew behind one of the stones as the two groups walked up the track.

Each group was led by a grey-haired woman.  One’s hair was set in the kind of rigid waves Margaret hadn’t seen for years; drenched in setting lotion and netted nightly so that not one hair escaped its assigned place.
The other had a careless bun from which wisps of silver escaped to wave in the sun. 

Their rich Lewis accents reached her before they did.
“…were going to build a factory here.  Unforrtunately, permission wasn’t granted, and the work went to the mainland…” Set Hair told her group. 

“…and there’s the Old Woman,” said the other Old Woman.  “Can you see her?”  she pointed at the range of hills opposite.  “She’s lying on her back, about to give birth.”

There were some nervous giggles among the tourists.  Margaret, almost despite herself, squinted, trying to see, but apart from a slightly breastlike roundness to the hills couldn’t see anything that looked like a pregnant woman. 

“We used to come up here as girrls,” said the bun.  “Daring each other.  Oh, we got up to some mischief!”  She gave a throaty laugh.

Set Hair, meantime, was pointing out to her group the place where there had been a tragic accident of some sort.

Margaret kept out of the tourists’ way as they photographed the stones, each other, the Old Women (all three) and a scowling toad.  After a few snaps it trudged grumpily off through the grass, blades waving behind it like the wake of a miniature, and very slow, tiger. 

“Oh, a rose,” someone said, and Margaret winced, as though it was herself, not the flower, that had been spotted.

“Och, that’ll be one of those new age lot.  They leave offerings,” said the bun woman.  “Leave it where it is eh?  Don’t want to be offending any gods, now, do we?  Never know who’s given us such a sunny day!”

Set Hair’s mouth thinned.  “Terrible mess, they leave,” she said.

“We’ve time for a cup of tea before the coaches pick us up.  And they do lovely cakes,” said the bun.  The groups set off over the hill beyond the stones.

Margaret hadn’t realised there was a tea-shop.  At least they’d kept it out of sight.  And now she’d heard about it, she wanted tea.  Slowly, aware she’d have to slog back over the hill to pick up her car, she followed the tourists. 

Waiting in line she overheard Set Hair saying to one of the coach drivers, “I’ve got my son and his wife coming over, so as soon as I get back there’s the shopping to do.  Oh, I told George, but he’ll have forgotten, of course.  And everything to be aired.  They’re bringing the children with them.”

“That’s nice, then.”

“They’re all rushing off to the mainland every five minutes.  The boy wants to go to some college down south.  And the way they behave, well, we wouldn’t have had it in my day.”

Bun was talking to one of the tourists.  “Met my Duncan up by the stones, sneaking out of school – oh, we were terrors.  Well, we thought we were.”

“Have you ever left Lewis?”  one of the tourists asked. 
“Och, yes, do you see a chain on my ankle?”

More embarrassed laughter. “We’d planned to go on a cruise, but he passed away not long before we were going to be married.”

Margaret winced again, but Bun didn’t seem distressed; her questioner was far more so. 

“Oh, that’s kind, dear.  Well, yes, he was a lovely man.  I could never fancy anyone else, somehow.  And I did go on the cruise, in the end; after I retired from teaching.  Saw some marvellous things.”  Her accent, and her enthusiasm, make ‘marvellous’ sound full and rich as chocolate mousse.  “I felt as though I had to look at everything more, you see?  Because I was doing it for Duncan as well.  And it was wonderful.  But of course it’s always good to come home.” 

Margaret turned the tea in her hands, looking at Set Hair; her drawstring mouth widening to spill out more miseries.  Behind her, Bun laughed.

Margaret finished her tea, went to the counter, and got a slab of chocolate cake, and one of passionfruit.

She walked back over the hill, eating chocolate cake, licking icing off her fingers, rolling it around her mouth, under the brilliant sky, the birds white as angels.  The stones were silver, full of complex and subtle shadows. 

She put the slab of passionfruit cake next to the rose, saluted the Old Woman of the Moors, (she still couldn’t see her, but it didn’t matter) and walked back to her car, her lips tasting of chocolate and salt.

I think this came from various conversations about the state of the world.  And staring at my duvet cover when overtired.

Patterns by Gaie Sebold (747 words)

Maeve, Binty, Joachim, Frank.

“There  you go, dear, take your pills.  What are you making today?”

Maeve looks up, but doesn’t say anything.  Passively she swallows her pills.  But as the nurse moves on, Maeve and Binty flick each other a quick, impish smile.

Maeve’s fingers twist and weave.  The nurses bring her wool; before that she used whatever she could find, sometimes to the detriment of the hospital fittings.  They have decided a crochet hook is permissible, so long as they take it away from her at night.  She’s quite capable of making another one from the most surprising things, anyway.

She’s probably safe.  After all, she only really gets upset when someone asks her if she ever thinks about her old life, when she worked in the City.

Binty doesn’t crochet.  Binty weaves baskets.  It’s so traditional it’s almost embarrassing; but she makes baskets and placemats and needlecases as though she had a deadline, as though she were on commission.

“Hello, dear, oh, that’s pretty,” says the nurse.  For a moment she pauses, frowning, and glances back at Maeve.  Then, pills dispensed, she shakes her head, and moves on.  Binty used to work in banking.  Such a shame, they say, so bright, doing so well!  She’s another one who’s mostly co-operative, unless they ask her about her job.

Joachim is on another ward, with Frank.  Joachim fills in crosswords; but seldom all of one crossword, and not in words that seem to have anything to do with the clues, most of the time.  Or words that seem to have anything to do with language, either.  Joachim first saw Frank as he was frowning over a couple of Joachim’s crosswords that were lying side by side, looking at the exact juxtaposition of the filling in of certain squares, a sort of recognition rising on his face. 

They haven’t talked about it.  Frank does sketches; tiny, intense sketches, thousands of precise narrow lines.  There are no people in them, no monsters, from the id or elsewhere.  Just lines.  The therapists have theories.  That’s all they have.

Joachim was a stockbroker, too.  Frank dealt with computerised banking systems.

They all went mad within a few months of each other.  Are there more?  Each of them sometimes wonders, but it’s no longer really relevant.

A very young nurse is being tried out on the women’s ward; they’re considered slightly more easily handled than the men.  She deals with the patients confidently and well, and is eventually transferred to the men’s ward, which still, strangely, is considered a position of slightly higher prestige.  Just before she is transferred, however, she speaks to her supervisor. 

“You did say to report anything that was bothering me,” she says.  “It’s not bothering me, exactly, but I did wonder.  Binty, and Maeve.”

“Ah, yes, sad cases,” says the supervisor.
“They don’t seem sad,” the nurse says.  “Actually, they seem very contented.  But I just noticed that, well, the stuff they make…there’s a kind of similarity about it.  I couldn’t say what, exactly.  It just seems to follow a kind of pattern.”

“They’ve been on the same ward for months,” the Supervisor says.  “These things happen.  And sometimes we see patterns where there aren’t any.  It’s what the human eye looks for, after all.  Patterns.”

“I asked Maeve what she was making.”

“Oh?  Did she answer you?”

“Sort of.  ‘A new pattern’, she said. But it looked the same as everything else she’s made to me.”

“Ah well,” said the Supervisor.  “At least she interacted with you.”

On the men’s ward it isn’t long before the young nurse notices Joachim’s partially completed crosswords, and Frank’s sketches. 

One day she has a sketch laid side by side with three crosswords.  She’s glaring at them as though they were one of those magic-eye pictures, and can feel some kind of focus dancing just beyond the reach of her aching eyes.

Frank sits down opposite her, and pats her hand. “You’ll get there,” he said.  “It was trauma, for us.  Hope you find a better way.”

“But what are you making,” she says.

“The world,” says Frank.  “We’re making the world.”

And the young nurse feels a trembling in the soles of her feet. 

The next day the headlines announce collapse of the markets, trembles in the metal heart of finance. 

The young nurse reads the headlines, and knows that on the wards, Maeve and Binty, Joachim and Frank, are weaving and stitching and sketching and smiling.

Shortest one I've done, I think.  This a 'subtext' challenge - thank you Sarah for providing the both the challenge and the situation - or there wouldn't have been one this week.

A Housewarming Gift - 514 Words 

“What do you think?”  Marcia peered at a black glass and marble table lamp. 
“Very…um…designer,” Suze said.  “So, have you seen their place?  I mean is that the sort of look they’re…”
“No, well, I don’t know.  It’s Barry’s sort of thing, though, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.  Yes.  He likes things like that.”
“It’s not just for him, though, is it,” Marcia said.  “The trouble is I don’t really know what she likes.  I’ve only met her a few times.” 
“Oh?”  Suze said, picking up a paperweight and weighing it in her hand, looking at the flower frozen in the glass. 
“Well, you know.  We’re all so busy these days!”
“That’s the twenty-first century for you,” Suze said, putting down the paperweight, and absentmindedly rubbing her left arm.  “Everyone rushing about, no time to pay attention.”
“Well quite.  I feel a bit bad,” Marcia said, “I mean my own brother, you know, and I hardly see him.  Anyway Deirdre seems nice enough.”
“I’m sure she is,” Suze said. 
“So anyway how are you?”  Marcia said, abandoning the lamp and moving towards a basket full of eggs made out of marble and onyx and steel.  “These are rather fun.”
“Quite expensive, though,” Suze said.  “Unless you buy one a year, and build up a collection, like a charm bracelet.  I’m fine.”
“Funny running into you like this.  So, are you getting them something?”
“Oh, no,” Suze said.  “Barry and I…we’re not really in touch.” 
“That’s a shame,” Marcia said.
“What’s she like?  Deirdre?”
“Well, like I say, she seems nice enough.  I mean the couple of times I’ve met her. Lively girl.  She’s younger than him, of course.  Well you were too, weren’t you?”
“I still am.”
“Well of course, you know what I mean.  She’s a bit like you, actually.  If you don’t mind me saying.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,”  Marcia said, turning and looking Suze up and down, with a marble egg in one hand.  Suze’s eyes followed the egg, watching it as Marcia gestured.  “Yes, she’s slight, and dark, like you.  Wish I knew your secret for staying so slim.”
“Stress,” Suze said, with a half-smile. 
Marcia turned away and put the egg down and Suze’s shoulders relaxed. 
“Oh, and it’s funny, there’s another way she’s like you.  Accident prone!”
“Oh?”  Suze moved to a shelf full of thin glass vases, and stared at them.
“Yes!  She was laughing about it.  Great bruise she had, all up her arm.  Shut it in the car door, silly girl.”
“Funny,” Suze said, “well, they say men go for a type, don’t they?”
“I suppose so.  Oh, dear, I can’t make up my mind.  Maybe I’ll buy that lamp after all.”
Suze looked at the lamp.  It was big, dark, heavy.  The base had brutal corners.  “No,” she said.  “No, how about…” she cast around for something else, grabbed one of the vases.  “How about this?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Marcia said.  “That doesn’t look like Barry’s sort of thing at all.”
“He likes fragile things,” Suze said.  “He doesn’t worry about breakages.”

This is an idea that has been around for a while and decided to surface today.  It was written in about an hour - which may be obvious. 

Out of Mind - 697 Words

Jacob Frimley examined his soft, manicured hands.  “I do hope everything’s clean,” he said.
“Of course,” the woman in the starched white uniform said.  She had a slightly 1940’s look, her hair in a smooth roll, her lipstick bright red.  She also looked tired, and older than she’d sounded on the phone, her eyes sunken, lines cutting down either side of that gleaming mouth.  The label on her lapel said; ‘Letitia Bramling, Supervisor.’
“At these prices…” Frimley said.
“We endeavour to provide complete satisfaction.”
Frimley snorted.  He knew those kind of words, he’d used them himself, they could be a neat way of avoiding responsibility while pretending to take it.
He looked around.  Outside, the ‘Golden Acres Retirement Home’ was a brute concrete box, like so many of them; little more than a storage facility.  Inside, once you got past the outer rooms, it was done out like a classy hotel: fresh flowers, staff with just the right level of obsequy.  Only a few of the residents were visible; pottering gently around or sitting blank-faced in their chairs.  It was a beautiful spring day; he could see a few staff taking the sun in the grounds, but no residents.
Bramling stood with her hands folded, a monument to patience. 
 “Let’s get to it, then,” he said.  As they walked along the corridor he marvelled at the size of the place; it seemed to go on forever.  “Where do you get them all?” 
“An ageing population, Mr Frimley.  They have to go somewhere, and where better than here?  Here, at least, they are still able to be of some value to the working population.  Earn their keep, as it were.”  She was moving too slowly for him, walking like an old woman herself.
Frimley felt the warm build of excitement in the base of his stomach.  Some value, indeed.  Most of them were probably having the time of their lives here; if they were still capable of appreciating it; he wouldn’t mind betting that the circumstances they lived in now were a damn sight more comfortable than their previous miserable little lives.  The place had to be kept nice, of course, for visitors like himself.
“You’re absolutely sure,” Frimley said, “that there can be no complications?  No backlash?”
“So long as you followed our instructions,” Bramling said, “there should be nothing.  And a man such as yourself, with your expert financial experience, should have had no problems making sure the donation was not tracked.”
Was that a dig?  Frimley decided, magnanimously, to ignore it.  Donation, indeed.  That was one word for it.
“And we know you weren’t followed,” she said.  “It’s quite all right, Mr Frimley.  Really.  No-one knows you’re here at all.”
She opened the door.
The room was clean and fresh-scented: the old woman lying in the big bed looked tiny, dried up and fragile as a leaf, ready to blow away on the wind. 
“The agreement was for two hours,” Bramling said.  “If you decide to stay longer, we will require a larger donation, obviously.  The items you requested are in the cupboard on the left.”  She folded her hands again. He hadn’t noticed before but her hands seemed veiny, rootlike, ancient.
“And I can…” he swallowed.
“Mr Frimley, you have paid, I know, a great deal of money.  You can do anything you like.  That’s what we’re here for.  That’s what they’re here for.  Now, is there anything else you require?”
“No,” he said, looking at the figure on the bed.  “No, thank you.”
Bramling smiled, blandly, and closed the door.
Frimley walked towards the bed.

***

Letitia Bramling opened the door, and rolled her eyes.  The place was a state.  Blood everywhere.  “Ethel,” she said.
“Oh, hello, dear.  I’m sorry about the mess.”  Ethel sat up.  She was plump, bright-eyed, juicy as a steak. 
“You’re a disgrace.  Where is it?”
Ethel got out of bed, her bloodsoaked cotton nightgown clinging to her rounded belly, and kicked something towards the supervisor.  It was a dried brown husk, in a suit.
“You look tired, dear.  I’ll get the cleaning crew,” Ethel said.  “And then, I think, it will be your turn for the next one.”

This is what happens when you catch a bit of a programme about tomb-robbing when you're doing the washing-up...

A Place of Rest (943 words)

Hengst eased himself through the gap, into the familiar scents of stone and earth.  He was cautiously triumphant.  He had not been at all sure this tomb actually existed, and worried that someone would have got here before him.  But although there had been some disturbance around the entrance, it was old and minor; it might have been animals. 

He lit his torch, looking for curses.  A good curse meant there was something here worth taking.  The wall-paintings alone were some of the best he’d seen.  He paused to admire a pair of blonde lovelies bearing platters of fruit no less perfect than their breasts. 

Ah, and there was the curse. May death enfold him who would disturb this resting place.

Somewhat unimaginative, that.  Hengst went deeper, experience allowing him to ignore the dead-ends and false doorways. 

When he finally broke into the central room, he stood gawping, the torch drooping in his hand.  The space was dominated by a great bed supported on two carved lynxes inlaid with shell.  All around, on tables of fine wood and coloured marble, stood boxes of cedarwood thick with gold, their seals promising spices and jewels.  A throne gleaming with agates and silver.  Lamps of pierced brasswork fine as lace.  Statues of cattle and soldiers and servants in finest work.

Hengst’s heartbeat sounded loud in his ears as he wandered around the room, the torchlight dancing on gilding and jewelled caskets. So much to get out!  He’d left his horse tied some distance away.  He needed a cart.  How would he stop anyone else suspecting what he’d found? 

Should he take one or two of the smaller pieces now?  A jar of rare spice; no.  Too big.  And too obviously a tomb-piece if he were seen with it.  The tiny perfect statue of a general, glaring furiously above his beard?  Hengst picked it up.  Where it had been the procession looked gappy, like a mouth missing a tooth.  He put it back.

It was only when his stomach groaned that he realised he was ravenous.  At some point he’d lit several of the lamps; the oil was still good, and they cast a warm rich light scented with herbs.

Hengst reluctantly blew them out and made his way back towards the entrance. 

When he peered through, white light hurt his eyes.  Daylight!  Not only daylight but a bright midday, cloudshadows scurrying like the ghosts of sheep across the green hillside.  How long had he been there?

He hesitated.  If he went out now, he would be as obvious as a fly in a mug of beer.  All it would take would be one passer-by. 

He had some water and a little food.  He could wait.

Hengst wandered among the offerings.  Everything here was so perfect.  He lived simply himself, not wanting to draw attention; this dark torch-gilded richness was like nothing he had seen in a long career of plunder. He realised he was tired.  Not as young as he was.  He looked at the bed, and thought, with a little surge of resentment, Why not?  Never in my life have I lain on such a bed, and if the priests are right, in the afterlife I’ll not either; more likely have my liver torn out by wolves or some such thing.  Personally, he thought at death you got a few feet of earth to lie in, no more.  Wolves probably did eat your liver, but you would neither know nor care.

Still, he felt a little daring, as he lit two of the lamps, blew out the torch, and laid himself down.  He had never had such a mattress; it was like lying on water, or a cloud. He drew the thick fur cover over him.

Two life-size statues of women leaned above the bed, their arms outstretched, their breasts gleaming.  He imagined how it would be to be served by such women.

Some time later Hengst woke, and went up to the hidden doorway.  The bright afternoon had turned to a windy, rainspattered night.  He couldn’t take anything out in this; exposed to the weather, things might be ruined.  The thought of the beautiful carvings stained and cracked, the spices losing their scent, was painful.  He withdrew again, to walk, murmuring, among the treasures, his fingers tracing curves of stone and silver. 

The next day it had stopped raining, but Hengst saw a distant figure walking along the hillside.  Did the figure look his way, searching, greedy?   He scowled and withdrew.

***

A carpenter’s apprentice was trudging along the lane when he saw a good, broad-backed gelding, tied to a tree.  It had eaten the grass bare in a circle around it, and started on the bark of the tree.  Its reins were worn almost to snapping where it had tugged at them, trying to free itself.  The boy called out a few times, for duty; but it was obvious the horse had been there several days.  He was good with horses; it came easily to his hand when he untied it.   

The boy mounted, and tapped the horse with his heel.  His master had told him he’d found a horse wandering this lane before, some years ago, and had sold it for a good price.  He’d be pleased, and maybe show the boy how to carve the wonderful lilies he was making for the old King’s burial-casket.

They rode off into the darkening afternoon.  Above them, on the hill, a patter of earth loosened by recent rain fell into darkness, and a stone tumbled after it.  In the fast-growing summer, soon there would be no sign there had been an entrance there at all. 

Due to the vagaries of public transport, I ended up sitting on the DLR for an inordinately long time, on a wet, dark morning, on my way to being horribly late to work.
 
This is the result.

The Remains of the Clay (600 words)

The rain is still falling.  It has soaked through my heavy woollen coat at the shoulders.  A good coat, well-greased, but it can’t keep out the rain of this winter. 

My father made me take it.  “I’m old,” he said, “the rain’s never managed to kill me
yet.”  No, it wasn’t the rain, in the end.

He was a good man.  Stubborn as a brick, absent-minded, exasperating, but a good man.

His studies were meant for everyone’s good.  His clocks and engines, his toys and mechanisms, and finally, his monster.  “Think of it!”  he said.  “My darling girl, think!  No more bodies crippled by toil.  No more days and nights of brutal labour.  And think,” he said, waving his spatula and spattering the walls with wetness, “of what can be achieved if we have no need to work for our mere bread!”

I looked at the cat.  She had no need to labour, as she lived well on our leftovers, and caught mice only, it seems, out of habit.  I didn’t notice that she’d achieved a great deal, but she seemed happy enough.  Humans, on the other hand, are not so simple.  Even at fifteen, I knew that much.

Some of it was the winter.  A wet, thin harvest.  Sickness.  Pirate raids along the coast.  Young men back from yet another war, too crippled to earn but still hungry.  But some of it…some of it was just people. 

Father laboured over his beloved creation, and led it out into a dank grey morning with all the pride of a man whose child is learning to walk.  Its huge, blocky body and nearly featureless face had some of a child’s solemn concentration, though it was never going to laugh with delight if it triumphed, or weep if it fell.  In my own way, I had become strangely fond of the thing.  I stood out of the way, as was my habit, and watched, smiling.
 
“Look!”  Father called to the neighbours.  “Look, this will free you of all your toil and hardship!  Look!”

I don’t know who first cried ‘witchcraft!’ though I know that Spitty Lumer, whose hands I’d been fending off since I was ten, joined in early and loud.  Then they closed in.

One of Father’s few friends grabbed me and clapped a hand over my mouth, dragged me out of sight.  When it was over, nothing left but my father lying silent, with his eyes staring puzzled up into the rain, surrounded by thick grey shards, he let me go and told me to get away before they thought to look for me.  I suppose I should be grateful.

I managed to get to the house before it occurred to them to look there; I collected the cat and some of Father’s books.  I didn’t run; I found a cellar to hide in.

I came out at night.  Someone’s taken Father’s body, I don’t know where to, and it hardly matters now.  The rain hasn’t let up: what’s left of the golem has sunk to thick lumps and smears of clay.  I grub it up, cold and gritty-slick in my fingers.  Some of Father’s blood is mixed with it.  That will help.

It was very easy to smash, for all its size.  Father made it gentle, made it to serve these people, this rain-drenched pen of slinking cowards and murderers.

I have enough.  I wrap the clay in my skirts, to take back to the cellar where I hide, with my cat, and my candles, and my books.  I can make it again.

But Father was good.

I’m not.

I was without an idea in my head last night, rang Sarah in a panic, and she had the brilliant idea of reading song titles from a CD to me in the hope they would spark something.  Fortunately it was a CD by They Might Be Giants, thus providing plenty of weirdness.  I recommend the method. Kudos to anyone who can guess which TMBG title set this story off...

Dummy (990 words)

The shop has yellow cellophane in the windows to cut the bleaching sun; Ralph hasn’t seen that stuff for years, not since the ‘ladies’ boutique’ in his parents’ village, with its two headless mannequins in powder-blue twinset and pussycat-bow, cream rayon blouse.  He puts his hands against the glass and peers, but the only thing in the window is an old-fashioned ceramic doll’s head with a chipped mouth and its wig slipping; the window is closed off from the shop by louvers which are probably cream, but in the cellophane’s glow they are the colour of processed cheese.

In Ralph’s childhood, a new window display in that ladies’ boutique was an event for excited gossip. He’s made a career poking fun at that life.  He even had a sniff at a television slot, but he didn’t get it.  His agent says his material is becoming dated, and Ralph, resentfully, agrees; his village-green, women’s-institute references, a sophisticate’s jabs at the rural doom he’s escaped, are no longer enough. Ventriloquism, presumed dead, is undergoing a revival; and if he wants to ride the wave, he needs a surfboard.  He wants to ride it all the way to a studio and his own series, where he can sneer at his younger, softer, kid-friendly  rivals.  Idiots, the lot of them.

So he’s looking for a new dummy.  Blue-haired Winifred with her jam-making and unintentional double-entendres, cardiganned Clive with his slow-voiced, garden-shed pronouncements on human behaviour, are the past.  So is the man who made them; an old-school craftsman, who lived alone with his children of wood and cloth, and reviled humanity with a piercing cynicism that supplied Ralph with reams of material.  Sometimes, in the chill small hours when sleep is stubborn, Ralph thinks of him dead in his chair, surrounded by random limbs and stray eyes. 

Ralph could order a new dummy via the internet, but he wants to find a personality that works for him, and he can’t do that at a distance. It’s taken him months to find this place, and he’s beginning to think he should have ordered online after all.  He pushes his way in.

The door has a bell over it.  Its chime falls flatly into the yellow gloom. 

The shop is tiny, and incredibly crowded.  The walls are lined with shelves, and another set runs down the middle of the room.  The shelves are populated.  The dummies swing their legs like schoolchildren on chairs too high for them.  Unmoved by the weight of their silent stares, Ralph walks along the row.  Looking back at him are queens and clowns; slaves, burglars, tarts, tramps.  It’s a hell of a collection, but all these are too obvious.  He wants something more subtle.  “Hello?” he says.

He thinks he hears a faint shuffling from somewhere in the back, where, presumably, there is a counter, a proprietor, maybe even, if he’s very lucky, equipment modern enough to handle his debit card; but no proprietor appears.

Ralph ventures further into the shop, past bishops and witches and lions.  No.  There’s something, to his mind, faintly perverse about animal dummies.  Further in – the shop is bigger than he thought - it gets better.  There’s a city type in a bowler – but still too old-fashioned, he hasn’t seen a bowler in years.  A plump middle-aged woman, with a small hairy brown dog under her arm; he considers her for a moment, but though she doesn’t resemble his Winifred she’s of the same type.  He needs to get away from that.

Further back.  And here he starts to get excited.  These look like people.  A man with limp grey hair and a Big Issue.  A plump, weary policewoman who looks as though she’s spent her day dealing with drunks and domestics. “Well,” he says.  “Let’s have a look at you.”

There’s no resonance, as though silence has thickened the air somehow; his voice tumbles flat among the dummies. 

He reaches up – the shelf is a little high for safety, he thinks as the policewoman tumbles into his hands.  The weight makes him stagger; she’s almost as heavy as a two year old child.  The dummy next to her, a teenager with unpleasantly realistic acne, tilts forward, and before he can free a hand to stop it, hits the floor with a thud.  Heart racing, Ralph props the policewoman against the shelf and checks the fallen girl.  The teenager looks undamaged, but her heavily-made-up eyes stare accusingly. 

No proprietor rushes out to see who’s interfering with his goods.  “Hello?” Ralph says again, ready to prepare his defence, but there is no response.

He lifts up the teenager dummy to put her back on the shelf.  She’s even heavier than the policewoman, it’s ridiculous, no-one could work with something that heavy.  He grunts as he tries to haul her back to the shelf, but he can’t reach.

He feels silly.  He got the policewoman down, he should be able to get the teenager back up.

But the shelf is too high.  He can’t even reach it with the tips of his fingers.

“Uh?” he says.

He looks down at the policewoman.  Her head is tilted back, and her weary eyes look past him.

Rudely, he grabs her, but she’s impossible to lift.  Her jointed limbs flop.  Ralph looks up at the shelf that’s now high above his head.  He whimpers, and turns for the door; but his legs betray him, going loose and strange at the knees.  Sprawled on the dusty carpet, he reaches down with numbing fingers, and pulls up his trouser leg.

Somehow, he knew that the limb beneath would be plastic.

Ralph tries to crawl towards the door, but his arms won’t work.  He feels a strange, dark, emptying sensation; the small of his back is collapsing inwards, making a hollow.  Levers and hinges form and lock into place.  He hears something shuffling towards him.   I wonder if I’ll get on television, he thinks.   
 

I was going to write something vaguely festive, but I'm feeling a little Christmassed out, so instead I used one of the writing exercises suggested this month (well, last month now) and went to http://www.wefeelfine.org/

The title was about the third quote to come up. 

I feel food about all of it so far…(357 words)

When he left I was burnt toast.  Scalded, smoking, scraped raw, then dumped in the bin with the used teabags.  Damp.  Squashy.  Rubbish.  Nothing but crumbs and seepings.

In self-defence, or sheer retreat, I turned into a bag of ice.  Chunks of nothing, kept in the back of the freezer, unable to thaw out, waiting for the special occasion when I would be able to be something again, waiting for someone to throw a party and fling me back into life.

Eventually I stopped waiting for the party and threw myself into the drink.  It thawed me out, a little, but it wasn’t champagne, it was shampagne, a false celebration, empty bubbles.  And afterwards, dregs, urine-yellow in the morning light.

I started trying to go out again, but I was unleavened bread, flat, saltless, I bored even myself.  I added a little salt, and became olives.  Sharper, a little more interesting, but too bitter for many.  Not to everyone’s taste.

Not to mine, it turned out.  Cynicism ceases to be interesting once it’s become a habit; at that point it’s just spreading the misery.  I added some cheese, mellowed out a little.  Amazing what stupid music can do for your emotional state.  When I found myself dancing around the living room perfectly sober but for the endorphins, I realised perhaps I was on the way to recovery. 

Then I got a little sugar. Oh, boy, does a girl benefit from some sugar.  That rush, that sense of self indulgence. But after the first bites there was nothing under it, it was candyfloss, and so was I; all colour and surface, no substance. 

Going, perhaps too far the other way, I became potatoes; solid, earthy, substantial.  Nourishing but plain.

But I kept moving.  I became crisp at times, a little bit tart; a Granny Smith. Goes surprisingly well with cheese, I found.  Threw in a few olives.  Bread; but leavened, and pleasant enough when there’s something with it.  Now and again a little sugar, now and again a little champagne.  Life’s about balance, and it helps if you remember to rescue your own toast before it gets burned.