This started out as one idea, about all the people who don't want to go to work in the morning getting their wish, and being stuck forever in a frozen commuter hell. But it changed on me. Sometimes things work better when they do that.
Headlines (940 words)
Mid afternoon. Gunshots, screams; an explosion, not nearly distant enough.
I’m pissed. Dulls the edges. Reduces the concentration. Not that it helps – maybe if the whole world got pissed, stayed that way for a week...
When did it start? No-one knows, any more than you can pinpoint the first ever case of anorexia or AIDS. Perhaps there was a time when we could have stopped it; but by the time we realizedit was happening at all, it was far too late.
See, when we began to be human, we were scattered tribes, all with different ideas about the way the world worked. A storm darkened the sky and thunder rolled; was it the roar of a jaguar, the beating of giant wings, the breaking of the jug that holds the rain? They believed, but they believed different things.
But we bred (boy, did we breed) and made cities, and began to live in big, big groups. Still there’s a wide range of ideas. So even if you've got, say, a million people all going, "the world is flat...." it won’t be. Something, some essential force, keeps it round.
The rise of literacy. All very civilised, I'm sure…but it was another step. Eventually, there’s the rise of electronic media, and we were half-way to fucked. English became a universal language. Even the French gave in – how I wish those arrogant bastards had held out. It might just have saved us. But now, you don't even need the pathetic level of literacy required to send a text message. If you can say it, pretty much everyone can understand it. Charities getting cheap computers to the third world. Universal communication, baby. Deadly.
There are lots of theories; I’ve heard them even though I don’t watch television or go on the net any more. Or talk to anyone. But you can’t avoid the information. That’s what did for us. Some think it was the population hitting some kind of critical mass; some claim it’s the Apocalypse – or they did. Last thing I saw on the news was that newsreader. He looked like guilt had him by the guts and was strangling his sleep with them. The arsehole on the discussion panel starts raving about how it’s the end times, and just what we deserve – and the newsreader up and shoots him, right there.
The two politicians and the sociologist on the panel just blinked the blood out of their eyes, and then they applauded. Not that it helped, but hell, all of us felt a little better for maybe five minutes. Because things were bad enough without the Four Horsemen joining the frigging party. The newsreader shot himself, too.
Plenty of people blamed them; the media, I mean. The journalists, the gatherers, and those who just passed it on. But I blame us too, because we bought it. We guzzled up those screaming headlines and the shocked reverent tones of the pundits. I read somewhere that we're hardwired to respond to threat, it's in the old lizard hindbrain; if we see something that yells danger we have to pay attention. But did we have to believe it? Did we really have to buy it all?
I think the thing that finally did it was the switch to World Time. It was supposed to save us from sliding further into recession – don’t ask me, I don’t believe economists really knew how the economy worked even before everything went to hell. But that was the Big Idea, that was going to save the world. World Time. All the markets operating at the same time, not a minute of financial grubbery wasted. Which meant, for the first time ever, pretty much everyone was awake at the same time. Thinking at the same time. Hearing stuff at the same time.
Believing all the shit we got fed.
We hit critical mass about a year ago. Consensus reality, they call it. Civilisation’s hanging on, somehow – though some parts of the world are worse than others. There’s a great smoking hole where Utah used to be.
Everywhere single mothers lie in the streets, babies crawling from them – two or three in an hour, sometimes. The babies grow up right before your eyes into feral, hooded teenagers. Still dripping with birth-blood, they develop clothes and knives, band into packs, and start attacking passers-by. And then there’s the terrorists. You can’t go out in the street without some screaming bearded guy with a rucksack appearing from nowhere, shrieking about Jihad and then exploding. They all look identical, of course. Paedophiles – always solitary, slightly grubby men in ancient brown coats, with shifty eyes and dirty fingernails – whisper in alleyways, offering sweets and puppy dogs. I mean, there’s like ten of them in my street.
There’s only one thing that offers me hope, if that’s the word. Before the shit hit the fan, there were rumours of a pandemic. A virus that would wipe out a huge section of the population. The rumours kind of got swamped in all the other stuff.
But if enough people believe it…well, you see where I’m going with this. If we can only make it true for long enough, there won’t be enough of us left for the consensus to work any more. This fucked-up reality we’ve built will fall apart.
It does mean millions will die. Possibly including me. Cynicism’s no defence, as I’ve discovered. But it might just be the saving of us.
All the information networks, somehow, they’re still there – maybe because we believe in them so much. So terribly much.
I’m going on the net now. I’m going to start a rumour.
This one was sparked by seeing a newspaper photograph of all those suddenly empty shops along the King's Road. Er..that's it, pretty much. Enjoy.
Empty (992 Words)
“Well?” Mr Gascone said, “Fred?” In the pause he scanned the security guard’s name badge in a manner that indicated Nathan Gascone certainly couldn’t be expected to remember a mere name, even if Fred had been with the firm fifteen years.
“He didn’t do any damage, Mr Gascone, honest.” Fred, sweating in his nasty powder-blue uniform, felt as though he were pinned facedown on a photocopier set to ‘reduce’.
“You should have called the police, let them handle it. It’s their job. You’re nothing more than an early warning system and you can’t even do that right. And how do you know there’s no damage? He’s probably pissed everywhere.” Gascone’s phone shrieked and he snatched it out of his pocket. “What? No, don’t. I’ll be right there. Bloody Health and Safety nazis.” He marched out.
Fred sagged, blowing out his cheeks. The phone had probably saved him from being fired, which, the way things were, he dreaded. Though the thought of another day working for Gascone made his ulcer flare like Mount St Helens.
He’d been watching the monitors out of the corner of his eye while he did the embroidery he hid in a drawer when anyone was around. He had checked, hand hovering over the phone, before going down. Once, he’d been up for taking on intruders. Now he was older, and heavier, and if he ever forgot the three robbers who’d pitched him seven foot down onto concrete, his hip reminded him on cold mornings.
But one poor old sod, muttering in his thorny beard, Fred could handle. He armoured himself with a mug of strong, heavily sugared tea.
When he got to the room, the tramp was running his hands over the walls, head cocked, as though looking for a secret passageway. “Come on, mate,” Fred said. “You can’t stay here. Private property, see.”
“It was empty,” the tramp said, turning wide, surprisingly bright blue eyes on him.
“That’s right.”
“They move in,” he said, his hands whispering over the plaster.
“Yes, well, I’m afraid you can’t, old son.”
“They move into the empty places. But you’re here, aren’t you?” The tramp nodded.
“Yes I am. You want a cuppa? Then I’m afraid you’ll have to go.”
“Tea?”
“Here.”
“I don’t often get tea.” Close to, he didn’t smell as bad as expected: damp, and not completely fresh, but no acid reek of urine or alcohol.
“There’s a hostel up the road a bit,” Fred said.
“Oh, no. It’s all right.” The tramp finished the tea, and handed back the mug. “I’ll be off then.”
That had been easier than expected. “Where will you go?”
“The next place. This one’ll probably be all right now, so long as you’re here. You won’t leave it empty, will you? They love places like this. The emptier it was before, the more likely they’ll move in.” On his way out, he paused. “That one,” he said, pointing. “It’s just the sort of place they love.”
It was an empty shop, For Sale signs obscuring the windows. It had sold ugly vases and mass-produced artwork, pink glittery pencil cases and obscure dvds. A downmarket Aladdin’s cave. “Now you’re not going to break in, are you?” Fred said, but the tramp was already shuffling away.
Fred shook his head. Where did they all come from? He was sure there hadn’t been this many nutters around when he was a kid. There hadn’t been so many empty shops either; nor so many shops selling stuff that was, frankly, crap. The building he guarded had been one too, only bigger, and with more expensive crap. Gascone had bought it to sell on. He bought buildings the way other people bought bad vases.
Fred had written up the tramp in the log book. He hadn’t expected Gascone to come in and check it, but as the market got tougher, Gascone was getting more obsessive and even less pleasant to work for.
On his way home Fred passed the other empty shop, and on impulse peered in the window, to see if he could spot the tramp.
There was nothing except some dead post and a long dark streak on the dusty floor. Fred wondered if he was in there, listening for ‘them’, the ones who liked empty spaces. He felt a hard shudder twist up his back.
The next couple of nights he found himself, every now and then, raising his head from his embroidery and listening; for what, he wasn’t sure.
Two days later Gascone had bought the empty shop; even in a recession the man couldn’t stop grabbing.
“Well at least it’s close,” Fred’s supervisor said. “There’s no-one to cover it and His Lordship won’t budget for another guard. Just keep an eye on the place.”
“Was there anyone in there?”
The supervisor glanced behind him; a gesture common to Gascone’s employees. “They found a body. A tramp. Himself had it hushed up so they wouldn’t arse around with enquiries, maybe delay a sale.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Fred couldn’t concentrate on his stitching that night. His gaze kept going to the window. Finally he got up and looked out.
Big surprise, there was Gascone, swaggering down the road. Didn’t the bloody man ever sleep? Fred straightened his uniform – but Gascone unlocked the door of the empty shop over the road, and went in.
Fred stayed at the window, his tea growing cold. Eventually Gascone emerged. He seemed to stagger slightly.
Fred, his heart pounding, straightened the log book, emptied his mug, and waited. He heard the door open, heard Gascone’s feet on the stairs; moving uncertainly. Moving like something that wasn’t used to having feet.
They move into the empty places, he thought.
The feet were closer. Fred unfroze, grabbed his coat and his embroidery bag, scooted down the service stairs, and out into the clean and chilly dawn. He didn’t look up to see what might be staring down from the window after him.
This story is the long-delayed result of this odd little snippet first passed around the T Party writers’ group more than a year ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5186722.stm
Memories of Tiffin (992 words) “Tea,” said Howard. “He always wants tea, and cake. He seems to like tilkut. Have you tried it?”
Joanna nodded. It was a local speciality, but as with most Indian sweets that she tried she found the sesame-and-sugar combination a little sickly for her taste. She took a picture of some passing monks in rich umber, terra-cotta and purple-crimson robes, with enviably serene faces. Tomorrow she really ought to go look at some temples.
“He likes pedas,” Howard went on, “but he won’t touch burfi. I think someone told him they’re given out when girls are born.”
“Well, he’s old fashioned,” said Joanne. “Hardly surprising.” She took a photo of the tomb. The solid grey slab was strewn with crumbs; someone had even left a battered pewter teapot behind. A leaf spiralled silently down and she picked it up, twirling it in her fingers. “Cholera, wasn’t it? That’s so sad.”
“He’s doing all right now, though,” Howard said, with a hazy grin. “The locals don’t mind him, and ever since the story got on the Beeb tourists have been trying to get a glimpse. Some of them bring English biscuits, hoping they’ll, you know, tempt him out.”
“Amazing what ghosts can do for the local economy. Not to mention the rat population, probably. Are you selling more pictures?” Howard had dropped out of their German course in college, to go to art school, then to India. She’d envied him, even then.
“A few. I tell you who hates it though,” Howard said. He nodded towards a skinny figure who was waving his cane in irritated fashion at passing insects – or possibly just at the world.
“Who’s he?”
“Our oldest British resident. Living, anyway. Loathes the whole business.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t like an English ghost caught up in a local superstition. Oh, watch out, here he comes.”
“Lot of nonsense,” the figure said, shuffling towards them.
He seemed entirely untouched by his surroundings; English from Brylcreme to brogues, with cheeks red as Sunday roasts and an aroma of pipe smoke and gas fires. He was at least eighty, and driven by the sort of intense irritation that explodes in the letters page of local papers. “Howard,” he said, with a brisk nod. He looked at Joanne narrowly, as though he suspected her of being American.
Howard introduced them, casually. Joanna shook the old man’s hand carefully, thinking of arthritis. “So what do you make of it?” he said.
“I think it’s rather, I don’t know, charming. I mean, if you’re going to have a ghost, one that asks for tea and cake has a certain something, don’t you think?”
“Don’t see why they couldn’t have one of their own. Got enough gods and so forth, you’d think they could spare one.”
Joanna, whose knowledge of any Indian religion was a vague fog of reincarnation, naughty temple carvings, and navy-blue demons with lots of teeth, didn’t think it quite worked like that; but she just nodded.
That evening, back in her hotel, she leaned on the balcony and felt depression drop over her shoulders like a winter coat. She was no longer quite sure why she’d come out here. She’d left teaching that summer, sensing she was on the verge of complete disintegration; it was an exhausting enough job even for those who actually liked it. For her, every day had got more and more like wading through cold mud. Howard had been in the back of her mind, an inspiration, someone who had cast off the shackles of everyone’s expectations and gone all out for what he wanted. She’d blown some of her rapidly shrinking savings to come and see him.
And here he was, selling his paintings, and tutoring to fill in the financial gaps. That was no crime, but he was also getting stoned pretty much every night, from what she could make out, and did nothing but reminisce about their college days; old stories and jokes worn thin with retelling. Where was the fulfilled free spirit she had come out looking for?
Joanna didn’t want to be stuck with her thoughts any longer; she decided to walk out to the little graveyard.
At night it still wasn’t scary; just sad. So many of the graves were those of children; looking at them made her want to cry. She walked up to the tomb of the Englishman, ran her fingers over the cool stone slab. “Tea and cake,” she said. “You wouldn’t think anyone would hang around just for that, would you? Why are you hanging around? Were you deprived of cake in life?”
She heard a noise behind her and jerked around, her heart thudding uncomfortably.
It was the other old Englishman. “Shouldn’t be out here, this hour,” he said, “young woman like you. Hunting ghosts.”
“What are you doing here?” She said. That sounded ruder than she meant, but she was too distracted to care.
“Just walking. Don’t sleep much these days.”
“No cake for the ghost then.”
“Certainly not. You going to take your friend home?”
“What, Howard? Well, no. I mean, I just came out to visit.”
“You’re not planning on staying yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Good,” he said. Then shook his head in irritation. “Sorry. Sounded rude. But people come here, and get stuck. I did.”
“You?”
“Yes.” He glared at the tomb. “So did he. No choice, in his case.”
He nodded at her, and stomped slowly off, jabbing his cane into the ground. Joanna sighed, and patted the tomb. On a sudden impulse, she bent down and scooped up a little earth.
She’d take it home with her, and hope no-one at customs thought it was drugs. It might not do anything for the ghost, but it would makeher feel better, to put a little of it in an English garden.
She’d make a garden, somewhere. Sometimes, she thought, home’s not where you need to get away from; it’s just where you start.
The first writing exercise I picked said; 'follow the course of a ten pound note for a day'. Given the current circumstances, it seemed appropriate.
Money (914 words) Someone got a bonus today.
The notes slide out of the cashpoint as though dealt by a croupier; their temporary owner tucks it into an Aspreys wallet; initialed, (not on the outside, that would be vulgar) but under the flap.
The man pulls a tenner out again in low light, flattering to ageing complexions veined, like port-soaked stilton, with overindulgence. He is surrounded by men in suits, all nearly identical to his own, all very expensive. Their shoes, brogues to a man (women are rarer than trainers here) have a subtly lavish gleam. He leaves the company credit card in the back of the wallet - it's use is not considered appropriate in the current climate. Until the token few have been thrown to the wolves, until it’s business as usual again. He nods at the other members of the club as he hands the tenner, with a bunch of its fellows, over the bar.
It goes as change to a younger man – his wallet is initialed on the outside. He doesn't know there's a wolf at his heels. He's seen the mess all around him, but he's confident he can continue to walk the tightrope. Other people may fall, but not him. He has a highly expensive, professionally decorated flat, a highly expensive, professionally decorated girlfriend, and a car that makes other men shudder with envy. He's a survivor; he calls for more champagne. He's just the sort of irritating, brash young fool the tabloids love to rage over; someone will slip them a copy of his drinks bill.
Next the tenner goes as a flashy tip to a weary waitress, who puts up with the accompanying grope because she needs the job. Off shift soon, thank god. She hides the note. The boss isn't beyond swiping their better tips, and she's bloody earned it tonight. Her arse feels covered in smeary fingerprints. Leaving, she transfers the note to her purse, next to the receipt for the designer jacket she bought last weekend; she's going to have to get a new credit-card, that one's hit the limit. She’s heard they’re not handing them out like sweeties any more, but it’s never been a problem before. And she’s bought so many clothes partly because she can fit into a size ten now; the one good thing about serving food all day is that it's ruined her appetite. Just to make sure she doesn’t get hungry, on the way home she buys a packet of fags.
There aren’t many other notes in the till at the newsagents; he takes most of them out as soon as there's £100 in there, shoves them under the floor. He has safe, for the more persistent, professional criminals; it holds £500 which is the most he reckons he can afford to lose. The insurance bastards still haven't paid up after the last robbery. He wishes he could give it up. His back aches, his wife is too scared to work the nights; but the kids like to have the same stuff as their friends and he hates to deprive them. Why shouldn't they have nice things? Though last Christmas he looked at the presents, stacked up and spilling across the floor, and he did wonder. He'd had a stocking and one big present, when he was a kid, and glad to get it. But he’s doing this so the kids can have a better life than he did. He’s been socking the odd tenner away in a Christmas club – it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
The woman buys cheap wine and bananas. The note gets shoved into an ancient purse, held together with a rubber band. She managed to save a bit this month. She’s hoping to afford a holiday next year. She sometimes wonders if she should put the money in a pension instead but a tenner a month is hardly worth it; besides, she's only 30. She hurries to get home and tries not to see the man sitting on the pavement. There's so much dirt on his face the lines look as though they've been etched with acid and oh, God, his feet are bare. It's November and brutally cold. His filthy feet are shaking with it.
She shouldn't give him money. He could spend it on drugs and die. She'd have to get close to him, he’ll smell awful and he might be dangerous. And she was saving up to go away, somewhere warm and pretty. It’s the feet that do it, the horrible pathetic feet. Angrily, she snaps off the rubber band. Angrily, she opens her purse, digs out the tenner, leans down. She wants to say something pithy, something that will penetrate, make sure her tenner, her tenner, dammit, doesn't go to waste.
"Here," is all she can manage; she shoves it into his hand and stalks away, before he can pull her in, make her try and do more.
He stares at it. A tenner. He has problems thinking straight, always has; there’s a lot of noise in his head. He used to be in a place where they gave him stuff to keep his head quiet, but it closed. There wasn’t any money in there; but he knows a tenner when he sees one.
It gives him the impetus to get up. He walks on feet he can’t feel, remembering that somewhere in a nearby street is a place where he can get tea.
Someone got a bonus today.
This was partly born out of an old idea that's been hovering waiting for a voice, and partly sparked by one of Sarah's pieces - wonderful thing, creative partnership, innit? The Temple ( 985 words) The temple stood in the desert; a small, plain building, baking in the sun. An acolyte, tall and shaven-headed, bowed Javed in to coolness and soft light. Javed left his guard in the outer chamber, and walked to the altar past the wooden screens carved with processions and sacrifices. Though he always came here at the same hour, it seemed the light fell, every time, on a different carving. He paused, and frowned.
The priestess appeared. She was like a carving herself, cool, ascetic, smelling of some pleasantly astringent soap, her robes falling in simple folds.
“Look there,” Javed said. “That caddell, spirit of battle, urging the men forward.”
“My Lord?”
“She is wearing a mask. See?”
The priestess bent closer. “Why, I believe you are right, my Lord.”
“It is slipping. Look, she is weeping under it. That is no spirit to send men to war!”
“Perhaps that is why she wears a mask. So they will not see her tears.”
“Hmmm.”
The priestess often remained silent, unless he asked her a direct question. He found it restful. But today she broke with custom.
“What troubles my Lord?”
“The barbarians,” he said. “Trade is all very well, but they are a corrupting influence. I’m told their howling music is heard now even in our own villages, and their customs…” he looked at her calm pale face, so untouched and pure. “Well, I should not mention such things to you.”
“Many people come here to tell me their troubles, my Lord. I am not quite ignorant of the world.”
“Their women choose their own mates, and fight beside them in battle!”
He saw one of her eyebrows rise a little, but that was all. “Indeed?”
“Yet they none of them read. Not one. They despise it. Why, even our women are taught to read! No man wants an ignorant wife! How they ever run a household…but of course, they don’t have households; they live like wild dogs.”
The priestess said nothing; but she, like him, was looking at the caddell, with her frantic gestures and downturned, sobbing mouth. A young man lay broken at her feet. “She is like their women,” Javed said.
“Perhaps, my Lord, they lack the refinements of mind that an education can bring.”
“Perhaps…”
***
Biradex cracked his head guard across the jaw. She had been about to go into the temple ahead of him, checking for trouble. “Stay out here.”
She stepped back. “Lord,” she said, through swelling lips.
“No respect,” he growled to the acolyte. “Let ’em raisin in the sun for an hour.”
The priestess lowered her painted eyelids, the acolyte bowed. Biradex eyed him with disapproval. The man couldn’t have done much today but sweep the temple floor, yet his bald head was gleaming with sweat and his breath came short.
Biradex followed the priestess, eyeing with appreciation the ample hips dressed in not much but gold. He’d wait to be asked, though; he knew priestesses. Sink your dick there when it wasn’t wanted and you might not get it back.
Outside, the temple was plain as a skin tent; inside, it was rich night. Heavy carved screens across the windows kept out the sun. The air swirled with incense; the carvings flickered and danced in the torchlight.
Biradex flung the deer on the altar. The priestess sunk her hands in its guts, and her eyes rolled back in her head. “You are troubled, great Lord,” she said, her voice gutteral and somehow insinuating. Biradex felt a shudder up his spine, but squared up to the spirit that possessed her; it wasn’t in his nature to do otherwise.
“Yes, by the balls of Lodek, I’m troubled. We should have attacked as soon as we arrived in this land.”
“After that trek, with your warriors half-dead of thirst and gut-rot? A fine show you’d have made.”
Biradex growled. “Well, well, I admit, your advice then was good. But these soft city dwellers are sucking the life out of my people. First, it’s trade; fine goods and furbelows. Now…we have to invade, and soon.”
“And what has given you this panting eagerness to stick your head out for the axe?”
“You think I don’t have reason? Listen to this. Adrek, my own sister’s son, came to me asking for permission to go study in the city! My own blood, a scribe!”
The thing possessing the priestess growled. “And for this you will invade? I never took you for a fool, Biradex.”
Biradex snarled; he didn’t like being called a fool, even by a demon.
“A scribe?” the voice went on, “a spy! A gatherer of secrets! The scholars in this city know more than its battle leaders. You’d have the place in your hand in a month, without a fight.”
Biradex opened his mouth, and shut it again.
“Hmm.”
*** The acolyte brought another jug of water and poured it over the priestess, scrubbing the scented oil out of her hair.
“Gaaaah,” she said. “That’s good. No, I’ll do it, I can tell your back’s hurting.”
“We need lighter screens,” said the acolyte. “That was too damn close. Javed’s rearguard had barely got out of sight. One of these days they’re both going to be headed this way at the same time.”
“We managed in Travisten.”
“Only with the help of a handy rainstorm and thirty-three runaway mules.”
“We should have kept those mules,” the priestess said, stretching.
“If all it needed was stubbornness, we’ve got thirty-three mulesworth right here.”
An undignified tussle resulted, in which they both got very wet.
***
Two days later, the young man eager, his female guard glaring and suspicious, with one hand on her knife, the first two barbarian students entered the university.
A year after that, the temple stood abandoned; and in a distant town, two short-tempered twin queens, and one anxious warlord, began to hear rumours of a new shrine to their favourite gods…
This came out of a picture prompt of an incredibly complex machine. When I thought about the picture there was a small human figure staring up at the machine, dwarfed by it; but when I went back and looked at the picture the figure wasn't there. Funny thing, the mind. Thomas and the Machine (992 words) Thomas frowned. There was a smudge on a pipe he was sure he had already cleaned. He sighed. Once, he had been able to keep up. It seemed that the older he got, the bigger the machine got.
This was, of course, true. When he first began to work on it, it only covered one wall of this underground room…at least, so he thought.
He stretched, to ease his aching back, and looked around.
The machine now covered three of the walls; a great intricate mass of pipes, joints, valves, and dials. It crept up into the echoing darkness of the roof. The ladder Thomas used to clean the upper reaches stood, in narrowing perspective, ready for use. When had he got the ladder? Who had brought it?
Thomas shrugged. The same people who left his food, and his clothes. It wasn’t his concern. He could see no more smudges, so he could go to bed, now. “Respect the machine,” he said, and went to the bathroom cubicle. He always shut the door, even though there had been no-one else there for as long as he could remember. To do otherwise would be disrespectful.
He folded himself neatly onto the bed in the corner of the room. The machine hissed and creaked, thudded and roared. It had grown louder at the same pace as it had grown larger, so Thomas barely noticed, and usually slept easily amid the cacophony.
Tonight, though, he found thoughts chasing themselves around his mind. He was getting stiff in the joints, at the end of a busy day the small of his back had started to develop a hot, low ache. How long would he be able to keep up with his duties? And what happened when he couldn’t? He knew, of course, what should happen; the machine would take care of him, as he took care of it. But sometimes, other, treacherous thoughts crept in.
The new boy appeared one morning; he had messy hair, hazel eyes so bright they almost seemed to glow, and a dazed look. Thomas was pleased; obviously someone had realised he was getting on, needed help.
“Right then,” he said. The boy only looked puzzled. He raised his voice. “Over here!” He showed him the cloths, polish, wrenches, all neatly laid out. He took pride in his tools.
The boy nodded, but didn’t actually do anything until Thomas put the cloth in his hand, showed him a smudge, and set him at it.
Another bed had, of course, been provided; but the constant presence of another being took some getting used to. And the boy, James… the boy was sloppy. Thomas caught him more than once sitting on his bed, staring at the walls, running his hands through his messy hair, when he should have been working.
And he asked questions. “Where does this pipe go? What’s this dial mean?”
Thomas didn’t like these questions. They weren’t respectful.
The machine, however, seemed to like the boy’s presence. It roared louder, the windows into its raging heart glowed hotter, it thudded and steamed with enthusiasm. And it grew faster; whole new sections appeared overnight.
James quieted, eventually. His hair settled down, he started to comb it neatly. The light in his eyes dimmed to something more appropriate. He stopped asking so many questions.
Thomas was pleased to note the way James began to copy his own methods; the way he laid out his tools, the way he folded his cloths. Sometimes he heard the boy scream, in the middle of the night, but he would settle down. Thomas had done, after all.
Thomas felt himself slowing. Not only his back, but his hands ached; his knees weren’t up to the ladder any more, and though he didn’t yet quite trust James to do it properly, he had to let him do the climbing.
One morning Thomas was carefully polishing the face of one of the big dials, the one with a needle as long as his forearm; the dial was glossy with health. Thomas’s hand looked ancient; the knuckles swollen, blue veins standing out under the fragile skin.
He looked up to see James swarming down the ladder with dangerous speed. Thomas felt his heart speed up. “What is it?” He shouted. “Is something wrong?” He imagined a leak, a break, steam from a joint, water dripping…rust, decay…
James shook his head, and pulled Thomas towards the bathroom cubicle. Thomas went, protesting, his polishing cloth still clutched in his hand.
James shut the door and leaned against it. His hair was on end again, his eyes furiously bright. He beckoned Thomas close.
“What is this nonsense?” Thomas said, carefully folding his cloth.
James beckoned harder. Thomas, sighing, went closer. James bent and whispered, “There’s a window. Up in the roof. I reckon we could get out.”
Thomas gaped. There was a strange feeling in his chest, pain, like something cracking open.
He pushed past James, without a word, and went back to his polishing, concentrating on the face of the dial, on its mysterious numbers. What did they mean? It wasn’t his business to ask. He went on polishing, until his arm hurt, until the dial gleamed like teeth.
James pulled at his sleeve, but Thomas ignored him. The machine got louder; all around them, there were roars and thuds and gushes of steam. James pulled at him one last time, and then ran for the ladder.
The floor shook. Up in the roof, things clanged. Thomas kept polishing. In the corner of his eye James’ thin legs were scrabbling higher, higher.
He kept polishing.
The dial glowed for a moment with a strange new light that stung Thomas’s eyes; a light from outside, an errant beam, finding its way all the way down to the depths of the machine.
Then the light was gone. Thomas kept polishing. His tears soaked his collar, but he ignored them.
They’d send someone else, eventually.
We can all find excuses not to write. Sometimes, if we're lucky, someone might not take no for an answer... Font of Inspiration (984 words) “Pay what I ask or you’ll never see your baby again.”
This is not something you want to see.
I looked at the note again. Big letters, six different fonts.
Obviously it was intended to worry me.
But I don’t have a baby. Feeling more than slightly idiotic, I did a quick check; cats, two, for the use of. One was waiting with eternal optimism by the food bowl; the other perched on top of the printer, helpfully shedding hairs into it. And I’m not the sort of person who refers to my cats as my babies. Usually. Not when anyone else can hear me, anyway.
It wasn’t even as though the message had arrived through the door in a bloodstained envelope. It had just appeared on the screen, right in the middle of my ruddy novel. ‘Ruddy’ being the least of the epithets I’d recently been applying to it.
Obviously I was going mad. Trying to finish this benighted book had finally driven me round the bend.
I wondered about the origin of the phrase ‘round the bend’, and looked it up on Google. It wasn’t, in fact, very interesting. I looked at the manuscript.
“This is exactly what I mean. Pay up.”
Just one font, this time. Comic sans, bold, 18 point. Still pretty threatening if you ask me.
I looked up ‘signs of nervous breakdown’ and only succeeded in confusing myself and feeling even more paranoid. Back to the manuscript.
“Excuse me!” Impact, 24 point.
What was I going to do? Phone the NHS Helpline and tell them I was writing myself anonymous threatening notes?
Maybe it was a poltergeist. If I waited long enough, I might see the keys depress. I hovered the cursor over Google again, about to look up poltergeists, when it happened. No depression of the keys, just the words:
“DON’T YOU DARE!”
I had one hand on the mouse, and the other on a cat, for reassurance. So it definitely wasn't me.
I made a noise like ‘gblah!’ and leapt out of the chair. The cat glared at me.
When I approached the computer again, the words were still there. I didn’t even recognise this font, but it was in bold and at least 30 point. Someone was shouting.
Tentatively, feeling surreal, I typed, “Who are you?”
It came out in good old Times New Roman, 12 point. The editor’s favourite.
“Who’d you think, idiot? I’m your muse.”
For a moment I didn’t think I could breathe, never mind type. “But you sound like a gangster,” I managed.
“How else was I going to get your attention? It’s not like you’ve been listening to me lately.”
"Oh,” I typed. “Sorry.” Was I really having this conversation?
“Sorry my arse. Do you want to finish this book?”
“Of course I do.”
"Then why do you run off to bloody Google every five minutes?”
"Research, I…”
She cut me off. The keys actually wouldn’t work. Damn, it was annoying, like someone putting their hand over your mouth during an argument.
“It’s procrastination. I hate the internet. Do you know you spend at least three times as long on there as you do actually writing?”
“But sometimes I don’t know what to write until I’ve looked it up,”
She did it again. I bashed the keys fruitlessly.
“If you actually bloody listened to me you’d know what to write!”
“But didn’t you help the guy who invented the internet?” I ventured.
“That was one of my sisters. We’re still not speaking.”
“Oh.” I was not going to get into a family argument between deities. I mean, that sort of thing always ends badly. “So what was all that about paying up and my baby?”
“Work it out! If you didn’t have an imagination I’d never have turned up. I don’t appear for people who are already lost causes, you know!”
I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. “OK is the baby my career?”
“Oh please.”
“My plot?”
“Duh.”
“So what about the payment thing?”
“DO…YOU…NEED…ME…TO…SPELL…IT…OUT?”
“Er…yes?”
This time the word was not just in 30 point, it filled the entire page. It was bright scarlet, 3D, and in no font I’d ever seen before. It vibrated.
“ATTENTION!” It said.
Then, just as big and shouty, “PRESENCE!”
Then, bigger and redder and even more 3d, “CONCENTRATION!”
My eyes hurt.
“Get it now?”
“Yes,” I typed.
“Then get off the internet.”
My hand hovered over the mouse.
“Do you want me to SHOUT?” she typed.
“No! Just, may I make a suggestion?”
“What?”
“You could use the internet. You do already.”
“I do NOT!”
The font had gone red again. I winced, but ploughed on. “But I’m always finding inspiration! Pictures, discussions, things other people have written. OK, some of the time I’m just faffing about, wasting time, I know. But not all the time. And it could help you, too. I was thinking - rather than turning up in the middle of a manuscript, which is, you know, a bit scary, how about instant messenger? Or you could have a look at Wikipedia…there’s all sorts of places you could give people a nudge. After all you’re on my computer. It’s all part of the same technological revolution.”
Blank. No words.
“Hello?”
Oops. Obviously I’d pissed her off. I hardly dared try and get back to my story, in case she’d left for good. But I did unplug the broadband cable, and something worked, because I got to the end of the chapter, and some of it was even usable.
And a few nights later, when I was just about to close down after a surprisingly productive evening’s writing, my Skype went ‘bloop’.
The name on the message was ‘Aganippe’.
There was just one word: ‘Thanks.’
Aganippe is a fountain associated with the Muses – but I made sure I finished my chapter before I went and looked it up.
This is what comes of going for a run while you're desperately trying to think of this week's flash piece, and hearing strange noises. Some of which were probably just my joints objecting to the exercise...
Tempus Fugit (997 words)
Before he finished the first circuit Terry’s hip was grinding with pain. He had reached the far corner of the athletic ground, where the bushes grew densely below the railway embankment. Then he heard a sigh; smelled a brief waft of something sweet.
Young’uns, smoking dope, probably feeling each other up. Plenty of them around, kicking a ball about, showing off for a girlfriend on the sidelines. Girls playing these days, too; he tried not to be obvious about looking. A pretty arse could still brighten his day, but he didn’t fancy being beaten up for it.
He wasn’t, refused to be, some Daily Mail knee-jerk old fool who thought all the young were villains; but he did get angry at the ones who just seemed to hang around, looking threatening, wasting time that they’d never have again.
On the second circuit he caught the scent again. He slowed without realising. A throat-catching sweetness that made him think of religion, or mystery. He wondered where that had come from. He wasn’t even a lapsed Catholic; wouldn’t know what church incense smelled like if he sat on a censer.
Sometimes he wished he was religious. It had been a rotten week; an old friend had gone into a nursing home. Terry was working up the courage for a visit, dreading the smell of baby powder over pee and the bemused and whimpering occupants.
The third time around, he caught the same scent, and a sound; maybe a sob.
This time, he stopped, pressing his hand to his hip, half-glad of the excuse. “Who’s there? Who’s messing about back there?”
Whispers. His spine chilled, but he walked forward into the green darkness, cursing himself for an old fool.
There were two of them, a boy and a girl. Both inhumanly beautiful, like the Taj-Mahal or the moon, gowned for a costume party. “Who?” Terry said.
“Hello,” said the girl. She had silver bells on her gown, and in her voice.
“Hello,” said the boy. A golden voice, summer flowers, glades filled with light.
“Who are you?” Terry managed.
“We’re…” they looked at each other, and back at Terry. Their movements had a languid dreaminess. “Visitors,” the boy said. “From across the ferny brae.’”
“Tell me, why do you run?” said the girl. “We see you, running, but you just go around, then you go away.”
“To stay fit,” he said absently. The phrase about the ferny brae reminded him of something. He wasn’t afraid; they were frail-looking, small, and seemed half-asleep.
“Fit for what?” said the boy.
Terry laughed, abrupt and bitter. “Wish I knew. Trying to hold old age off as long as I can.”
“But you’re already old,” the girl said.
“Yeah right. I want to stay active, is all. Not that it makes any difference. Age is a bastard. You’ll find out, if you stop smoking whatever you’re smoking long enough to live past fifty.”
“Smoking?” They looked puzzled.
“Why is age a ‘bastard’?” said the boy.
“It hurts. Everything stops working. If you’re lucky you go out like a light, if not, you end up dribbling your days away, not knowing your own name. Enjoy your youth while you can. You youngsters seem to think it lasts forever, but it doesn’t.”
He realised the girl was crying, tears slipping like silver down her perfect pale skin. “Hey, don’t,” he said. “You got years yet.”
“Yes,” said the boy. “We have years. Endless years before us and behind us; and we cannot change. We are as we are, and all that happens is that we thin, and fade. We have no children to carry the future, only a past that lies on us like lead, crushing the sunlight, silencing laughter.”
He got it, finally. “You’re…what? Fair folk? Fey?”
The boy shrugged. “If you will.”
“And you don’t age?”
“No. And there have been no children for so long…” the girl looked out at the field, where a young man with dreadlocks was shepherding eight or nine small children into a noisy game. Her face showed almost no expression, but her ache echoed in Terry’s own chest.
“And you can’t die?”
The two of them linked hands. “Only by iron, and it takes more courage than we have,” the boy said.
He brushed Terry’s cheek with a long, cool finger. “You,” he said, “you are so beautiful, do you not know it? It is your briefness makes you so.”
“You burn so bright and fierce,” the girl said. “You blaze.”
“Hah.” Terry looked down at his hands, rivered with blue veins. “Beautiful, eh? Well, there’s a thing.” He looked up at them. “Can you make me young again? Sprinkle me with fairy dust?”
“No,” said the girl. “We could only make you last longer.”
“Don’t ask,” the boy said. “Please.”
“Fairy gifts come with a price, don’t they?” Terry said.
“Always.”
“Well then.”
Terry was never sure how long he spent there, talking. Nor sure what was said. Only that he left feeling touched with mystery, feeling winged with joy and drenched with a profound sorrow that was almost sweet. #
He kept running as long as he could, though he never saw them again. He visited his friend, and took an old book of fairy tales, and read them aloud, while the nurses gathered in the doorway, listening.
Terry died, in the end, swift and clean, collapsed on his kitchen floor while he made tea.
The trains continued to rumble along the embankment, and in the bushes, the scent of somewhere else still hung. Two pairs of eyes watched the playing children grow, and the children after. Eventually the athletic ground was dug up and boxy houses grew where the bushes had been. One morning, the driver of the 8.15 froze in his seat, thinking he’d seen two figures on the line, standing with their hands linked, but when the train reached them they blew away like smoke, and the iron wheels pounded on, into the future.
Foreign Student (955 Words)
I could feel someone standing there.
I wasn’t used to being disturbed. I like this café because, for central London, it’s not that crowded. It’s also comfortingly cavelike, there are plenty of other women, and the sirens are muffled.
“Do you mind?”
Something about the voice, or the emphasis, suggested she was foreign. Probably why she’d chosen to sit at my table when there were still empty ones. But I’d already made that non-committal hand gesture that says, sure, there’s no-one else in the seat, sit there if you must, but don’t expect any kind of interaction, OK?
I waited for the zone of interference caused by her presence to fade, but it got worse. I could feel her looking at me, getting ready to speak.
Obviously the book wasn’t enough. Damn. Should have had the laptop out, it’s a much more effective barrier. I bent my head lower, glared at the page, but of course I couldn’t concentrate. When she finally spoke it was almost a relief.
“I would like to ask you something.”
Oh, no, not a god-botherer. Please. Not today. I looked up, bared-teeth smile ready to fend her off, but there was none of that shiny earnest look they get. She had her head tilted a little, and nothing but polite interest on her face. A neat, pale, not terribly noticeable sort of face, although her eyes were a little, I don’t know. You don’t stare into a stranger’s eyes so I’m not sure what made them different.
“Mmm?”
“I am studying this place.”
Ah, a student. Definitely foreign. Well, OK then, if it didn’t take too long. “All right,” I said.
“When I sit down;” she paused, the head-tilt altered slightly, then she went on, “when I sat down, you were uncomfortable. May I ask why?”
I was suddenly embarrassed. Such an obvious question, but I never thought about it. It’s the way you are, in a public place. Isn’t it? “Well, I don’t know you. I thought…um…”
“Please. I am studying behaviour. I would be most grateful if you would explain to me.”
“You’re a sociology student?”
“I am,” pause, head-tilt, “an anthropologist.”
“Oh.” I thought anthropologists just studied Amazonian tribes and stuff, but presumably there weren’t that many Amazonian tribes left, maybe nowadays they had to do normal people. Then I thought how patronising and generally obnoxious that thought was. Damn.
I felt I should apologise for something but instead I said, “Um, OK. Well, I suppose, I’m wary of getting into a conversation with someone I don’t know.”
I expected her to take out a notebook or some nifty little electronic gadget, but she didn’t. “What is it you fear?”
“That they’ll be boring. Sorry.”
“You fear boredom.”
“Yes. I only get an hour for lunch, and I don’t want to have to listen to someone going on.”
“What else do you fear?”
“They might ask me for money.”
“You object to being…touched up? No. A soft touch? Is that right?”
“Well, yes, it’s annoying. I mean, some of them are genuine, but I hate being hassled when I’m having a quiet coffee. And I’m worried that they might get nasty if I say no.”
“Nasty.”
“Yes, you know, yell. Go for me with a knife.”
“Are there other fears?”
“They might come on to me. I mean, not usually, with women, but, you know.”
“A sexual approach?”
“Yeah.”
“Why is this worrying?”
“In case they don’t want to take no for an answer. Make a scene. Or turn out to be a psycho and follow me home or something.”
This was becoming a little disturbing. How paranoid was I, for goodness’ sake?
“Interesting.” Head tilt. “You have had these experiences?”
“Well, I’ve had people ask me for money.”
“Did you refuse?”
I could feel myself blushing. “Yes.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. They went away.”
Head tilt. “Sexual approaches?”
“Well, maybe. I wasn’t actually sure.”
“But in any case, you were disturbed by the possibility?”
“Um, sort of. But nothing happened. He just went back to his newspaper.”
“Thank you,” she said. “That is very helpful.”
“So what are you writing about?” I said, wondering if I’d turn up as some sort of case-study, “Subject A,” pinned in words like a beetle under glass.
“Societies on the verge of…” head tilt, “disintegration. Certain behaviours, certain responses, are indicative. Generalised paranoia. Fear that even those who appear to conform to the societal norms are concealing violent intentions.”
“That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?”
“Strong?”
Weird how she could cope with these complicated terms but the simple ones threw her. “Yes. A bit extreme. I mean, it’s just normal caution.”
“For a society in this stage, yes.”
“This stage?” I said.
“Thank you, you have been most helpful.” She got up, and I realised it wasn’t just her eyes. There was something odd about the way she moved, too – not as though she was disabled, but as though she were just put together slightly differently.
“What do you mean, this stage?”
“I must go now,” she said, and headed for the door. The oddity of her movements was slightly more obvious from the back.
I got up, grabbing my coat. “Wait! What stage?”
People were looking up from their newspapers, a swift glance, and back again. Don’t get involved with the potentially crazy person.
She paused, hand on the door, tilted her head. “Goodbye,” she said, and the door closed.
“Wait!” I yelled. “What stage? Who are you?” And I ran out into the street, but I couldn’t see her anywhere, only a lot of people giving me a wide berth and carefully not looking at me as I stood there, yelling, with my coat trailing in the road.
Stories about writers are often seen as a little self-indulgent - stories about genre writers by genre writers, perhaps even more so. But having met more than one version of George, let's say I'm just...yeah. I'm being self-indulgent.
Sue me.
Ghostwritten (999 words)
At the launch party, gossip moved to Clarice Meadows, the author considered single-handedly responsible for reviving the moribund horror genre.
“She’s a hack,” George Fordyce said.
“I read one of her stories,” said the author whose party it was. “Not my sort of thing, but it definitely had something. She’s had some good reviews.”
“From grubby little populists desperate to look ‘down with the kids’.” George gulped his wine.
“ ‘Down with the kids?’ George, if you can’t keep up with the current slang, please don’t try.”
“I was trying to make a point.”
“Look, I need to talk to some people. I’ll see you later.”
George glared after her. Of course, she’d been published, now, hadn’t she? Soon she’d be like Meadows, churning out pap for the masses, while a writer like George, a serious literary writer, was left out in the cold.
He went home, stuffing a bottle of wine in his shoulder bag.
A parcel was jammed in his letterbox. George wrestled it out, and tore up the rejection letter. Hacks and grubbers, the lot of them. He didn’t pander, didn’t give readers nice little fictional lollipops, he took them by the scruff and forced them to stare into the blinding light of his unique vision.
At least he would, if he could get any readers.
He opened the bottle, and thumbed the remote.
“And next on Booklist, we’ll be talking to publishing phenomenon Clarice Meadows…”
George stared disbelievingly at the TV.
There she was. A slight woman with a nervous half-smile.
Oh, the faux-timidity of that smile, the calculated softness of that voice, forcing the interviewer to lean in, as though he were really interested! Perhaps he was, perhaps he had been taken in, but George wasn’t. George knew.
He threatened her with the remote, sneering. He could turn her off any time. But he wanted to hear what sort of rubbish she talked.
“You’re not what people expect of a horror writer. Why did you decide on this particular genre?”
She laughed. “You mean I should wear black and have really long fingernails?”
“Something like that,” the interviewer said, laughing too, how chummy they were. Bile rose in George’s throat.
“I look terrible in black and gardening wrecks my nails.” Oh, this was good, she was trying to look serious. “Horror was my first love. I think it’s a way of finding patterns in the terrible things that happen to us. But really, I feel as though the stories chose me.” She shrugged. “ ‘The tale, not he who tells it.’ Some stories have an energy of their own. They want to be told.”
George spat. Stories, indeed. It was about style, about impact. Stories were for kids.
“I’m not generally a horror fan, but I read Shadowfold, and I could not put it down. When’s the next in the series coming out?”
“Not for a while! I haven’t finished it yet.”
“But now,” the interviewer twinkled, “we’ve a special treat – an extract from the unpublished manuscript!”
She started reading, stuff about living eyes in a dead tree, and footsteps without feet.
“Bollocks!” George shrieked, leaping to his feet and aiming the remote at her. He accidentally hit the volume control, her words boomed out like the Voice of God, and his neighbour thumped the wall. He turned it up full, just to show them, then turned it off. Eyes in trees, and stories that wanted to be told, indeed.
Two days later, George was at another launch party for a Robert somebody. He’d never read the book but the editor was supposed to be there. He had already rejected George’s novel, but George wanted to talk to him face to face, convince him he could improve on the rubbish he was currently publishing. George’s temper hadn’t been improved by staring at an advert for one of the wretched Meadows woman’s books all the way on the tube.
The editor wasn’t there. Instead, there was a flurry at the door and no, it couldn’t be.
“Clarice!” Robert whoever said, “I can’t believe you made it.”
“Robert, I’m so pleased for you, you really deserve this.”
They hugged. George felt like vomiting.
He glared at Clarice Meadows’ back. She ought to be able to feel his contempt, burning a hole in her spine, but no, she was chatting away, oblivious.
Later, after the idiots had smarmed over her, he watched her leave.
He followed.
He only meant to tell her what he thought, but somehow, in the alley, thinking of the poster, the recognition, the money, that should be his…his temper got the better of him.
And he got away with it.
He didn’t think he had at first; there were footsteps behind him, and he’d waited, fear clogging his throat, for the shout, the hand on his shoulder, but when he turned, there was no-one there.
He waited for a guilt that never came. He watched the reports of her weeping fans with chilly derision. He’d rid the world of a creeping poison; and the experience would surely deepen and inform his own writing.
But now he was having problems with his work. Things were sneaking in, things that didn’t belong there.
Stupid, melodramatic things.
He found himself, in the middle of a scene where two people sat in a car park discussing the failure of their relationship, writing about footsteps. Footsteps with no feet.
He was tired, that’s all. Stressed. It wasn’t surprising, with rejections still piling up. She was dead, surely people should be turning back to real literature?
He went back to the scene. There were trees around the car park.
Some of them were dead.
They had eyes in them. Living eyes in dead, rotting wood.
George yelped and hit delete.
And started again.
***
Eventually his neighbour found him, rigid and whimpering at his computer, staring at his hands as they typed words he loathed, words that he could never even sell.
But words that insisted on being written.
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