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.
Another idea that's been with me for a while. I'm hoping that using up the old ones is making room for lots of new ones.
Lame (825 words)
Of course she didn’t really believe him. But it was Friday night and she was a little bit pissed and he was the sexy new American manager at work and he looked so worn out. So she put her hand over his, had to be her left on his right apparently, and repeated “I willingly take this curse from you”.
He turned up at her little flat the next morning, with a pile of books under his arm. He talked about guilt, but a smile lurked around his lips and his steps were dancing.
“The curse can’t be taken back,” he said. “Only passed on, and you know how to do that. The thing travels slowly, on foot everywhere, and it follows your path. It never sleeps. It never stops. Never.”
“And what happens if it catches you?” she asked, laughing.
He shrugged. “Who wants to find out?” He shoved the books at her. “Diaries. Some stuff on ritual magic and demonology. No help to me, but you never know. And here’s some atlases and maps. Get to know your oceanography; the Marianas Trench really slows it down.”
“So all you’ve got to do it stay ahead of it until you die. Can’t you think of something scarier?”
“I’d get going if I were you.”
“Whatever.” She shut the door on him. As a joke, or a hoax, it was totally lame.
She worked, she hung out with her mates and she ran on the treadmill at the gym. After a few months she felt itchy and jumpy. Her stomach got upset, and she’d be sitting in the pub and her heart would pound until she could hardly breathe. Stress, said her mates. It only made sense to take a holiday. She didn’t have much money, but Greece was cheap and she’d always wanted to go. The white ruins, bones of buildings against a delphinium sky. She brought back ouzo and cooked moussaka for her friends.
She felt better for a couple of months, and then it started again. This time she went to see the Northern Lights in Rejkyavik. The fluttering electric ribbons in the sky were worth the last of her savings. She listened avidly to folktales of elves and trolls and bought some anthologies to read at home.
When the feelings started again she saw her doctor, who referred her to a counsellor, who taught her relaxation techniques and meditation. She put a chain on her door and tried a protection spell from a book. But she still slept uneasily.
When she heard the thump-shuffle on the stairs in the night it was almost a relief. She cracked open the bedroom door and peeped. Something snorted, a blast of heat and stink. She became instinct and reflex. Her next thought was as she dangled and dropped from her bedroom window – shit I’ve left my purse. She didn’t notice the pain in her ankle as she stumbled into the road, shouting for a car to stop. She screamed once, in casualty when they reset the break. It left her with a shade of a limp.
She terminated her lease without ever going back to the flat; her parents collected her things. She had enough money for a ticket to Amsterdam. Everyone spoke English there anyway, there would be something she could do, and it was a place to start.
She didn’t talk about it until Tokyo, drinking beer in a little mirrored bar in a forest of neon, staring at her reflection and wondering who it was. A guy plonked himself down opposite, handed her another bottle and asked why so sad and she told him the whole thing, deadpan. Of course he didn’t really believe her. He reached out to put his left hand on her right. As he started to repeat the words, she jumped up, spilling beer and knocking over chairs as she bolted.
After that, she found she was lingering in places, long enough for the feelings to get strong. She came back to London, but her old friends bored her. When she wasn’t working, she wandered the city.
She heard the sound again on a dense, foggy night on the Embankment with the cold mud smell of the Thames in the air and the glowing balls of the Victorian lights hovering in the mist. Thump-shuffle. A towering shape shambled in the fog. She curled her hands into fists in her pockets and forced herself to stand fast. It dragged one crippled leg as it came. Silver droplets sparkled on its brindled shaggy fur. Two pairs of horns curled from a dog-like head, blocky and blunt like a Rottweiler’s. She looked into its bronze eyes, and they were a thousand years weary.
It never sleeps, she thought. It never stops. I doubt it chose this.
The demon held her gaze, dipped its head in an odd little gesture, but it still came on. She nodded back, then she ran.
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.
The Lego catalogue has a rather splendid troll warship, but everywhere the trolls are mentioned in the description, they are "evil trolls". Seems a bit unfair to slap that label on an entire mythical race just because you only hear about the club-happy ones.
Fantasy Date (718 words)
Remember, you have three minutes for each date. I’ll ring the bell when your time is up. Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats. #
You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re a troll. What are you doing here?
I crossed the border some time ago to -
I mean here in this room.
The invitation was made to all the fey in London. We too are part of the fey.
Yeah, the big, green tusky part.
I have heard tell of the courtliness of elves. It is justly famed.
Do you know the hot chick on the next table? She looks like my type.
Yes. Jenny took the fancy of the King, once. She is also green, all the way to her teeth. She would eat you for breakfast.
Heh. If she was lucky. I might even stick around for breakfast with that one.
Do you like to read?
What?
We have three minutes. We may as well pass the time in conversation.
I don’t know. I don’t really... Hey, are you vetting me?
I have not spoken to another fey in some time. You do not wish to talk?
Have you seen me? What else do you need to know?
Sigh. What brand of shampoo do you use?
#
Ladies keep your places. Gentlemen, move one table widdershins. #
I’ve never done this before.
Your first time? I will do my best to help you enjoy it.
I’m an ogre. You can probably tell. Heard you trolls can see straight through a glamour.
That is tr –
You won’t get any nonsense from me. I’ll come straight out with it. So, what are you doing over here?
I came to get away –
On holiday eh? I’m here on business myself. Import and export. I spend one month here, one month back home. I’ve got a big castle out in the Wildwood, acres of land, plenty of servants. I’m looking for a woman to share it all with me, someone I can spoil. All the dresses and shoes and shopping you want, never have to lift a finger. Got to be better than lurking around under a damp old bridge.
I live in Balham. In a studio fla–
Got any hobbies? I like to run. Won the seven leagues race five years in a row now, got the medals to prove it. A healthy lass like you doesn’t want a slob, eh?
I like origam–
Healthy body makes for a healthy mind. It’s all about the regimen. Early to rise, and a good diet. None of that fee fi fo nonsense with the state of humans these days. Far too much fast food, full of saturated fat. What you want is lean organic chicken breast, plenty of fruit and veg. Now, what else do you need to know about me?
I am sure you will tell me. There is nothing like good conversat– #
Gentlemen, move on. #
Well met, my Lady.
Well met, sir phooka. Is not the city too tame a place for you?
I have never favoured freezing my assets on a lonely mountain top. I heard there were many fey in the city. I came here seeking – something.
I believe we have met before. You wore a different form then.
I did not think you would remember.
I would not forget such a service. The King will bed whom he wishes and I did not wish to be dosed in my sleep with tincture of pansy. Your warning gave me a choice. I chose to come here.
You would have been in love, and happy.
Deliriously so, I believe. Dose an indifferent other and he is your slave. Dose yourself and burn with passion for your comfortable, dull husband. An instant remedy to all problems of the heart. I wonder why I do not trust it.
It is no reflection on your charms to say that the King’s butterfly fancy has flitted elsewhere. So why do you stay?
Sushi.
I do not understand.
It is raw fish, prepared in the Eastern style. Also, action movies, with many explosions. Broadband connection. The Tate Modern. And the city itself. It has its own life and character. There is much to explore.
I look forward to exploring the secrets and hidden places.
But not until our third date.
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.
The basic idea for this has been with me for a long time. I had a whim to write something seasonal, and grey skies and bare trees worked for this story. Despite the title, it's not very festive.
A Gift (695 words)
Brinn straightened slowly from chopping firewood, and rubbed the small of her back. The bare black thorn bushes around her garden scratched at the watery yellow and grey sky. A crow scudded overhead. Near dark. Time for someone to come up from the village if they wanted to scurry back to the the herd before it was full night. Sure enough, the bell at the gate clanged.
She rubbed her fingers together. Never could get warm, this late in the year. Ha! This late in life. The old injury on her ear throbbed in the wind. She hoped they’d left something spicy tonight, something with plenty of fire in it, plenty of meat. The cold had sunk into her bones in a way that spelled danger. She loped round the winding path to the gate, and then stopped. Whoever had brought the food was still there.
They were supposed to leave it and go. It had to be one of the little ones, on a dare or a game. Sometimes they just looked. Sometimes they threw stones. It made sense. Their parents threw stones if she got too close to the village. Sometimes they wanted a story. One day, one of them would ask the right question.
Brinn crept a little further, crouched painfully. A scrawny boy, a knife in his belt. Old enough to be fancying himself a man. Even now, she could see the way to be on him and snap his neck before his knife cleared its sheath. The beautiful economy of movement, the angles, the pressure needed. What he’d expect her to do, what she’d make him expect, and how she’d strike him all unfurled before her, with the clarity of a fine engraving. She knew too, how to pull the fire up from her depths to power the actions, even with these old bones. She’d always known. It was a gift. But soon she would be too weak, she knew that too.
“I want some gloves,” Brinn shouted, making the boy jump. “Some other things to keep me warm. Tell them that.” He backed away a few steps as she approached. She grabbed the pot left on the shelf by the gate, took the lid off and sniffed the steam.
“You’re old,” the boy blurted. “But they said you killed the raiders only three years ago.”
Brinn shrugged. She didn’t need or want conversation. But she had to see if he’d ask the question. She unlocked the gate and went into her cabin with the casserole. She could hear the boy shuffling his feet at the gate. Brinn ate and waited. After a while, he came in.
”You’re not even that big,” said the boy. “They said you tore them up with your hands.”
“Yes.” Ah, that’s when she’d last been warm. The fire blazing through her. The blood singing from their torn flesh, washing her arms and face in its heat. The raiders would come back. They always came back. And she would be too weak.
“They said you killed Rachel Turner’s uncle. That’s why you live up here.”
“Yes.” The first time. A blazing June day, and she had been chilled to her bones. Elfric Turner leaning against a tree, laughing with his head thrown back. The fierce joy as she beat his skull against the bark until it cracked. So easy then, so much strength. They’d branded her and sent her up to this cabin with the daily offering. When the old man shuffled to the gate, she’d asked the right question. After that, for Brinn, the raiders didn’t come often enough.
“I suppose you want to know why I did it,” said Brinn. “Or how.”
“They say you’ve got a demon.”
“Ha! They like to think that. Some of them could do it. Maybe even you.”
The boy smiled. “I want to know - what did it feel like?”
Before the boy knew it Brinn had him pinned to the wall by the neck. She ripped a small chunk from his earlobe with her teeth. His eyes were wide, but not with terror. She tipped her head back to expose her throat.
“Find out,” she said.
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.
There's a long and convoluted story behind this one. It started when I noticed that an advert in my local paper offered "TTWF for naughty boys." Strangely, the internet couldn't tell me what "TTWF" stood for in this context. But it led me to some interesting places. Tea and Vigilance (973 words)
Edna saw her opportunity, concentrated her will, and gently put Florence in a half nelson.
Outside the wrestling ring, Rose watched them from her chintz armchair, eyes sparkling. “The Turning of the Snake.” she said. “I used it to win the League of Vigilance national in ‘66, you know.”
Betty waved impatiently at Edna and Florence from a nearby table. They climbed out of the ring, and as they passed Rose she said, “You did remember to do the other half, didn’t you dear? State of mind is so important.”
“Don’t keep Edna, dear,” said Betty. ”We’ve got important things to discuss.” Florence and Edna sat down, and Doris poured their tea.
“She’s getting dottier,” said Florence.
Edna tinkled her teaspoon in her cup of Earl Grey. “She really did win in ’66. I looked it up. There must be something in what she says, about using your mind for the moves.”
“Load of mumbo-jumbo,” said Betty, reaching over to grab three scones. “It’s addled her head. It’s all about concentrating and keeping up your form. Building up your constitution so the Pink doesn’t poison you.” She patted her substantial tummy.
“I expect you’ll want some cream with those,” said Edna, pushing it over. Betty favoured the belly splash and other moves that allowed her to throw her weight around.
“Rose was the best in her day,” said Doris, “But she won’t be here forever. And we lost poor old Jessie last year. We need new blood. Who’s going to fight the Cabal when we’re all gone?”
“Buck up, Doris,” said Betty, dolloping cream on her scones. “We can’t have that kind of talk.”
“I’m just saying,” Doris went on. “Someone’s got to keep the Lore.” She glanced over at Rose. “She can’t even remember what she had for breakfast.”
Rose noticed them all staring. “It’s just a half nelson if you don’t do it in your head,” she said. “I’m going to use it on Freddie tonight.” She grinned. “He likes it.”
“Freddie’s dead, dear!” Betty shouted, then hissed to the room in general, “Don’t let her have more sherry.”
“Oh leave her be,” said Edna. “Where’s the harm?”
Betty pursed her lips. “We have intelligence that the Cabal is making a push,” she said frostily. “I don’t suppose your Emily’s turned anything up.”
Edna’s granddaughter worked at the local paper, and visited often. “Not unless the library book amnesty is an evil plot,” said Edna.
“Your report, Florence.”
“Last week there was all those young men going round, selling cheap electricity. Some company called Powermongers. Never heard of them.” Florence sniffed. “One of them knocked on my door. Shifty so-and-so, talked to me like I was daft. He told me I had to sign up then and there. I told him, I’ve been with my company thirty years, why should I change? I sent him off with a flea in his ear.”
The ladies nodded. It sounded like the work of the Cabal.
Florence leaned in and lowered her voice. “Now someone’s set up one of them fancy pastry shops in the High Street. It’s ever so cheap. There’s Battenburg cake in the window. And...there’s French fancies. Proper ones.”
”They wouldn’t dare!” said Betty. “We’ll go in for a reccie tomorrow.” #
The patisserie was painted in pale blue and gold, and set with dainty tables covered with pristine white cloths.
“I can feel it already,” said Rose.
“Quiet, now dear,” said Betty patting her arm. But Edna could feel something too, nagging at her like a toothache. She helped Florence escort Rose to a table while Doris paid.
The Ladies ordered Battenburg and French fancies, and just to be on the safe side, the strawberry cheesecake. The Cabal had been using the Pink for centuries, but they couldn’t change its colour. They’d slipped it into kings’ cakes, merchants’ wines and peasants’ jams, anything that was sweet and had a rosy hue.
“Rose is right, said Doris with a mouthful of cheesecake. “There’s Pink in this.”
Edna bit into a French fancy and felt a lovely warm well-being wash over her, the feeling that all was right with the world as long as there was more cake. She focused her mind and imagined a sequence of moves, half nelson, arm lock, twist of the wrist, tying up the pacifying influence of the Pink in steel bonds of her will. She snatched her hand back as she found it reaching for another pastry.
Rose patted her arm. “Well fought,” she said. “Your family’s got the gift.”
“How are the funds, Doris?” said Betty.
“We’ve got a bit put away from poor old Jessie’s house. And our shares are doing alright.”
“There’s only one thing for it, Ladies,” said Betty. “We’ve got the training, and we’ve got the constitution. We’ll draw up a duty roster. Four of us will come in every day and bear the brunt of it. That should upset the Cabal’s plans.”
“I’ll do for the Battenburg,” said Florence.
#
Doris poured the tea while Florence spread the local paper out on the table and poked a finger at an article. “There. I told you they was shifty.”
Betty put on her glasses and snatched up the paper.
“My grand-daughter wrote that,” said Edna. It was a report about Powermonger. Their customers hadn’t got the deal they thought they’d signed up to. Powermonger lost paperwork, claimed the salesmen responsible had left the company and routed all complaints through their call centres with half-hour waits and ‘accidental’ disconnections.
“It says here that the customers are outraged.” said Betty, triumphantly. “So we did our bit. If the Pink had got to them, they’d all be happily paying up. Humph. It also says your Emily’s getting them all together to take Powermonger to court.”
“What a clever girl. I must speak to her next time she visits,” said Rose. “The Lore must pass on. And Freddie likes her.”
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.
I've been given a very specific Friday Flash challenge, and I put a few hours in on it when I realised it wasn't working at all. I've concluded that it's because it just isn't silly enough. I hope to produce a suitable tale of tea and wrestling in a couple of weeks' time. In the meantime, here's one I prepared (quite a lot) earlier.
Swimming in the Electric Ocean
(100 words including title) Yellow and orange scribbles on black, the city’s reflection scattered on the waves. Below luminescent colours answer as the creatures rise. Their language is written on their skin, pulsing in spots and patches. My own skin itches with the changes we have made, the new growth under the surface. I see the eyes of the clever hunters like saucers of ink. Deft arms weave the dark water. My thoughts fire new connections, electric pulses that are seen on my surface. Glowing like the city, I slip into the black water to learn to say hello.
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