This is a very old, unfinished story, disinterred, gutted, and refleshed. Red (1244 words) I was eighteen and as wild as the ocean when I met Maximilian. My sisters and I used to go barefoot into town, our hair blowing behind us like banners, sea salt on our lips. We were creatures of a different element to the people who herded their children past, burdened with rubber rings and windbreaks and lotions to block out the sun.
Max’s eyes were the blue of a summer sea and he strode the promenade with the assurance of a prince. His beauty put a hook in my soul; I felt it tugging at me as I dashed past with my sisters, pulling my gaze back to him.
I told my grandmother all about him the next night as she wove white flowers in my red hair and forced me into the high-heeled shoes that pinched my feet. “Handsome is as handsome does,” she said. “Now go along with your sisters, Stella, and sing your best.”
Our voices rose in the faded theatre, ebbed and flowed, rang out like ships’ bells. Max sat in the front row, a faraway look on his face. He waited for me outside the theatre.
“From now on, you’ll only sing for me,” he said. “And I’ll turn your voice into gold.”
My sisters laughed at him. They sung for whom they pleased. But I agreed, and he was right.
By our wedding day, he was rich, his music label famous. Max pricked his finger pinning on his buttonhole flower. As he placed the gold band on my finger, a drop of his blood smeared there, looking black in the stained glass light.
When I tried to sing at the reception, nothing but a croak came out.
“Never mind,” said Max, smiling at me. “It doesn’t matter now.” I looked into his calm eyes and knew he’d be my anchor. He hasn’t changed a bit since then.
The package of dye came in the post this morning. I don’t know where from. Perhaps one of my sisters sent it.
Yesterday I was sitting here, brushing out my hair, wondering when it got so grey. I wore the clothes that Max chose for me; grey wool skirt, grey cashmere jumper, pearls around my neck. I looked around our room with its magnolia walls, and beige carpet, and black and white photos and decided I was going to dye my hair red again. It took me half an hour to open the front door. I paced the shining parquet of the hall, and paused with my hand hovering over the doorknob, fear drumming in my chest. Finally, I went out.
I’m a long way from my sisters now, living in a maze of concrete and brick. Noone goes barefoot here. Noone strolls. I tiptoed along the streets like a woman walking on knives. The air tasted of rubber and tarmac and dirt, and I coughed and coughed until I was hoarse. I went into the chemist’s and read the warnings on the boxes of dyes, about rashes and open cuts and damage to your eyes. I wanted to ask the woman behind the counter about them, but she looked me up and down, and when I opened my mouth I couldn’t make anything come out. I tiptoed back home again as fast as I could go. So this morning, I smiled when I found the package.
I’ve made sure the house is spotless, except for the bathroom; I’ll do that after the dye. Max doesn’t work hard all day to come home to a messy place. I gather up the package, and some old towels and a comb and go into our white bathroom. I’ve never taken my wedding ring off, but perhaps I should for this? Max told me it was unique, specially made. I twist it hard, but it’s stuck. It doesn’t move with soap, so on it will stay.
There are instructions in the dye package, written in a copperplate hand. They tell me that once I put it on, the dye will take some time to work. For the first time in a long time, I get my battered old radio out of its hiding place at the back of the wardrobe, a little music to keep me company. My condition, as Max calls it, hasn’t changed since the wedding reception. When I try to sing, I can only croak like a frog. Sales of my records soared when he announced that there could never be any more. Max bought me a platinum ankle chain to celebrate. He told me the sales would only peak higher if I died.
Inside the package are several bottles. One of them smells of salt and breezes, seaweed oil I think. Another is sealed up with wax and I have to get a sharp knife from the kitchen to open it, and a bowl to mix in. I feel like a witch as stir the dye potion. I massage it into to my hair, and comb it through. The radio plays one of my favourite songs, and I croak along until my voice becomes a whisper. I’ve been been so careful, but there are red splashes all over the bathroom. It’s going to take a while to clean, but Max comes home late these days. He’s making a move from business to politics. His friends tell me he’s got a silver tongue, and he’s rising fast. He can talk anybody round.
I get into the shower to rinse out the colour. It is as though I am standing in a frothing bath of blood. I rinse it all down the drain and comb out my hair. I open the window to let out the steam, go into the bedroom and put on some old clothes. I bend under the sink to get out the bleach and the scrubbing brush, and when I stand up there is a young woman in the bathroom with me, hair redder than a danger signal. Just my reflection in the mirror over the sink, but her expression is furious.
“What are you doing?” she says.
I think about it as I scrub the walls and I turn the radio up louder.
I don’t hear Max come in until he is behind me in the room. There are still old towels piled about, the dirty bowl, the bottles, the knife. But he doesn’t even notice the mess. He’s staring at my hair.
“You’ll have to change that back,” he says. “It’s not the right look for the newest MP’s wife.”
“I don’t think I can,” I say.
“Never mind,” he says. “We’ll get it cut. Something sensible.” Max strokes my head gently, then there is a tug and a swish. He has picked up the knife and sliced off great lengths of my hair.
“No!” I shout. I shove at Max, surprising him enough to grab the knife. I make a cut on my finger above my wedding ring, blood flows and now the ring slips loose. I throw it to the floor, scramble away from Max’s grasp.
Max looks up at me, his eyes pleading. They are still the blue of a summer sea, but now I see the surface glitter and the cold depths. He opens his mouth, and nothing but a thin croak comes out.
Outside, the dirty air is filled with blackbird song. My voice rises to meet it, ringing like a ship’s bell as I go to find my sisters.
This is an old story idea, possibly revived by the fact that someone in my office is now off work with 'possibly swine flu', so the general sense of paranoia is rather higher than usual. Sinking (905 Words) “Disgusting little bugger,” the owner said, peering into the box. “Thought there’d be more of ‘em. You sure you’ve got them all?”
“You can never be completely sure,” Rob Stevens said. It was what the firm told them to say, but it was also true. “But if you take the precautions in the leaflet, and notify us straight away if you see any of the signs, then you shouldn’t have such a problem again. I’m just going to check the back.”
He went through to the rear of the building. It was a lowering day, the light already seeping away, faster here among the blank windowless walls and seeping pipes.
Rob had been an exterminator for going on twenty years. He had developed a high tolerance for unpleasant smells, a respect for his prey’s amazing survival capacity, and an almost telepathic awareness of the dogs, druggies and rough sleepers he encountered on jobs who occasionally decided to make his life difficult. Something tugged at this sense now, and he stood for a moment, head cocked, his heavily gloved hand unconsciously tightening on the rod he carried.
Nothing. No snoring breathing from behind the bins, no low growl or rattling chain.
He poked the rod at a patch of shadow under the bin, but it crumpled. Cloth. He shook off his nerves, thinking it must just be the weather, the nights drawing in. He started picking up the traps. Heavy, heavy, heavy…light. He checked. Empty. So were a couple more. Surprising in this area; he got called out here so often he knew every yard, backdoor and bin store.
The phone buzzed. “Hi, Molly.”
“Rob. Just to remind you about that four-o’clock in the City tomorrow, you up?”
“Yes, I’m just finishing here.”
“Good to get another one so soon, it’s been thin lately.”
“It has.” Rob knew he was lucky to still have his job. “Everyone’s trying to save money, I s’pose.”
***
The place in the City was one of those monumentally impressive structures built in a rush of monetary optimism. Successive recessions had taken some of the shine off. Rob shook his head at the damage to the wiring.
“Tell me about it,” the maintenance manager said, gloom pulling his heavy features down like extra gravity. “I told ‘em. Rats, I said, do you a thousand quidsworth of damage overnight. Ounce of prevention, I said. But no, would have made that quarter’s budget look bad. Well, wait till they see this quarter’s. I told ‘em.”
Rob was used to the scutter and whisk of them all around him, especially on a late job like this, when they started getting active as the day faded. But as he laid his traps and patched entry holes, he realised it was oddly quiet.
He shone his torch into the corners, eventually highlighting a familiar double gleam, but the rat was already dead, buck teeth pathetically comic in its half-open mouth, paws scratching stiffly at the air.
“Where’s all your mates, eh?” If there’d been a level under this one he might have suspected they’d all retreated down there, but there was nothing under him but earth. Unnerved, he forced himself to finish up neatly, to do the job properly, but he was glad to get back in the van.
Headquarters was in Greenwich, right down past the Dome, near the Thames Barrier. It was crowded with operatives at the end of their shift, come to hand in report sheets and get their assignments for the next few days. But the atmosphere was a little twitchy, the laughter a little too loud. Rob trudged up the stairs to the office, but kept finding himself looking about, as though a savage dog or drugged-up yob was going to leap out of one of the cubicles. The place was a maze of them, and all of a sudden he felt like a rat in one of those old experiments, and felt an intense desire to get out of there. They had the windows open, as it was a warm night, but he felt he couldn’t breathe.
He’d hand in his sheets on Monday. Molly would scold, but she’d sort him out.
Rob was heading for the door when he heard a noise outside, like heavy rain, or gravel pouring down a chute. It was a sound he’d heard a few times in his career, but never this loudly. His first thought was that someone was mucking about, playing one of the training films at top volume. But by the window one of the men was standing agape, his hands flapping like broken-winged birds. Feeling as though his feet were caught in strange, electric glue, Rob walked to the window, and looked out.
The street was moving.
It was black with rats, charging singlemindedly along the road, a great squeaking skittering tide of rats. Rob’s gaze, as though tugged on a string, moved up. From here, he could see a good stretch of the peninsula and its scatter of industrial buildings; and all across it, under the streetlights, he could see that same, relentless, pouring tide.
Unwillingly, Rob’s gaze moved further up, towards the rest of London, but it was hidden behind the dome, only the hazy orange glow of light-pollution betraying its presence. Even if he could have seen it, he wouldn’t have known what it was they knew, and why, as one, they were heading for the sea.
An unfortunate reaction to antibiotics meant I spent about a week lying down, sometimes watching the ceiling spin round. It seems to have scrambled my brain too, because I had two flash stories die on me halfway through before I wrote this one. And this one doesn't meet our definition of flash. I hope you won't mind getting a bigger slice of fiction this Friday. Enjoy!
The Balance Sheet (1713 words) It’s all about the balance sheet, as Prentice told me in our last, strange conversation. I killed a man and I got caught. I had my reasons, but Explora Ltd protects its most valuable property, and Morgan was Project Manager. There’s no resources to bang up guilty men and feed them when they’re not earning their keep. They forced me into a armoured scuttler with a month’s worth of nutrition and sent me out into the Howling Wastes to look for Annabelle Tinker’s mobile base.
You want to set up in a place like this long term, you need someone who knows how to work with rocks and dirt and plants. That’s why I’m here. I’m a mason and a smith and a farmer. Everyone here’s got to be a multipurpose tool. The first thing they had me do was put in a well with an Archimedes screw for a water supply and start growing crops. Seemed pretty low tech, but I wasn’t complaining. I trust low tech.
Tinker’s an engineer and a biologist. She was out in the Wastes with boxes that beep and flash, looking for money. She might not see it that way, but you can bet Explora does. Prentice told me Explora had once made a fortune from some alien cocoon polymer, so it’s worth the expense of keeping a biologist on the staff. While she was out tracking some big, gliding creatures the worst storm recorded blew through, Tinker stopped calling in, and they couldn’t make her base come back by remote command. The company lost a lot of expensive kit. Tinker is Kate Prentice’s sister.
On a nice day out in the Wastes you get blue sky over grey dust, and it’s fuck-I’m-dying-of-heatstroke in the shade. On a bad day the roaring winds are freighted with grit that’ll strip you to the bone. If I go back without finding the gear, I’ll be shot. And if I die looking, the scuttler’s biosense will pick it up and stomp back on its pistoning legs to HQ, so no loss to them. They could send the scuttler out on its own to look, but there’s always the chance that a pair of human eyes will make all the difference.
It’s kind of restful out here. The first few days, I can’t see anything out the cockpit but roaring sand. Now it’s day twenty, the storm’s settled and it’s wide open blue and grey. I’ve thought over my killing Morgan, and I still don’t regret it. I know he killed Prentice. Our last conversation, she and I were playing chess in what passes for the bar, Prentice playing worse than usual.
She kept looking at me, taking in breath to speak, and sighing it out again.
“What’s up Prentice? Books looking bad? No bonus for us this turn? What about those big beasties your sister was following?”
Prentice stared at me, frowning fiercely. “Bonuses? Fat chance. It’s always about the balance sheet with this company. D’you know how much it costs to send a ship out here? S’a lot. More than all of us’re worth.”
“Uh huh. You’re pretty drunk. Want to skip the chess and get properly shit-faced?”
She shakes her head. I don’t think it’s no to the drink. “Remember the Nightside stock crash? Th’company took a big hit. There’s accounts for everything, if you look hard enough.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “I found something.”
“What is it?”
“The first time...” She jumped as Morgan appeared at our table, bad enough to spill her drink.
“Need a word,” he said. “Just got a message from your sister.”
That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Morgan proclaimed her dead of a heart attack. He’s also the doctor.
I knew enough to program the scuttler for a spiral sweep, starting at Tinker’s last known location. I’m now on the far arm of the arc, furthest from HQ and I am sick of rattling about in this metal pod. I open the door, and step down. The heat presses against my skin. The air is still, and it’s so quiet it makes my ears ring. I start walking, kicking up puffs of dust. I can see all around to the curve of the horizon. It’s stupid to talk about this place like it’s malevolent. It just is what it is, and it is completely fucking obvious that it’s a place in which people are not supposed to be. So why did I get out here? I look around again, and see the faintest set of caterpillar track marks in the dust. The storm didn’t get this far. I get back in the scuttler and point it in the direction of the trail.
At first I think it’s just a speck on the cockpit glass. High up, a kite shape, sailing in the breeze. As I follow the tracks, and the grey dust shades into red, there are more of the creatures, wheeling in a flock And in the distance, on the ground, something glints. It’s Tinker’s mobile base rumbling into the distance.
Puffs of dust spurt up in front of the scuttler. Some kind of volcanic activity? A tiny dust devil forerunner to a storm? No, Tinker’s base is firing on me. I don’t know if her comms are bust, but I buzz her anyway.
”What the fuck? Tinker, if you can hear me, it’s Crewkerne. I’m here to help you.”
No response. Tinker’s base squats on its tracks, motionless. For the second time today, I get out of the scuttler. I stand with my arms outstretched and turn around slowly, so if she’s looking she can see it’s just me, no weapon, no tricks.
A ramp lowers from the base and I let out my breath. A lean sunburned woman stands at the top, holding a gun on me in shaking hands.
“Pleased to see me?” I shout across the distance.
“Come closer. I’m not getting out,” she says.
I walk up to the bottom of the ramp.
“Crewkerne?” she says, squinting at me. “You’re, uh, you were Kate’s friend.” She lowers the gun a bit. “She said you cheat like a bastard at chess.”
I shrug. “How can you cheat at chess?”
She looks down. A drop of water splashes from her eyes to the metal of the ramp.
“So, what’s wrong with your base?” I ask. “Comms out? Nav busted? I’m not so great with that, but the scuttler’s repair systems can fix it.”
She shakes her head. “Comms are fine. And I took out the remote command. But you – you can’t fix this. ”
“Alright.” I wait in silence.
“I have to show you something. Come up.” I follow her up the ramp and into the cockpit. I see now that the tracks go on, she’s turned the base around to come back and meet me. It trundles on, and ahead of us is a thin, bright ribbon of water edged with flourishing trees. It marks the edge of the Wastes. In the distance, the land gets motivated enough to throw up a few green-furred mountains. And by the river is the scorched skeleton of a touchdown shanty town. The company usually sets one up for an initial exploration. Scorched, bent struts from semi-permanent tents and the twisted frames of flat-pack shacks poke out of a drift of red dirt. Bleached white branches lie scattered by the wind. When we are closer, I see they aren’t branches.
“I told Kate I found this,” said Tinker. “She called back. She said she’d looked into it and found some things out and I shouldn’t be here.” Tinker shivered. “I was on my way back and then someone told me...”
She lets me pat her shoulder, takes a deep breath. Then she lowers the ramp, and we get out.
There’s not much and too much to see. Blackened metal, melted plastic, scorched bones. Now and again, the odd remnant that survived, a cracked mug with “Sharon” painted on, a half-melted plastic horse on wheels. Tinker huddles close behind me as we look around.
“How did a fire get this out of control?” she asks.
“This site can’t have worked out. If they’d found anything worth having, we’d be digging here now.” I think back to the conversation with Prentice. “Remember the Nightside crash? Kate told me the company took a hit. It must have been cheaper to let people starve here than hire a ship to pick them up or drop more food. Especially if it’s not on a scheduled haulage run. When Explora could afford to come out here again, they started somewhere else. Then they burned this place and buried it in the dirt.”
“I was out here in that big storm. It must have uncovered it again.” says Alice. She bites her lip. “We’ve got to tell somebody.”
I think about the Archimedes screw, about the agriculture program, the stone buildings. Not a touchdown town. Things to keep the base independent of the yearly scheduled ship visits. Things a Project Manager would be responsible for. “Morgan knew. I don’t know about anybody else.”
Alice’s lets out a scream of rage. “I’m going to rip that bastard’s throat out.”
“Already done. I killed Morgan. But I used a knife. They sent me out here to look for you as punishment.”
She looks right into my eyes. Hers are a bright silvery grey. Then she says, “So we can go back?”
I shrug. When Alice and I go back to her base, my scuttler has gone. HQ have called it back.
“No going back then,” says Alice. If she hadn’t disabled her remote command, her base would be gone too. Somebody else knows, and if we go back they’re going to kill us.
We pick up tools and collect metal and anything else that looks useful from the ruined site. There are plants and animals on the green foothills. We haven’t got much food left, but I can grow things and build things and Alice is a biologist, with a base full of analytical kit. The haulage ship isn’t owned by the company and will be here in six months. Maybe that’s enough to add up and tip the balance our way this time.
This probably won't be the last story I write set around the Callanish Stones; I'd never heard of them before visiting last year. I discovered they were strange and inspiring and peculiarly beautiful - though this story isn't precisely about them.
A Rose at Callanish (976 words)
There was a rose at the foot of one of the standing stones.
Margaret looked down at it. Deep red, the breeze ruffling the edges of its petals.
Gulls wheeled against the blue, shrieking like souls denied heaven; the sunlight flared stinging-bright from the water.
The sun felt as incongruous as the rose. This was the Highlands, it was supposed to rain. Had she, subconsciously, come here for that very reason? Expecting the climate without to match the one within?
After all, it was only another failed affair, only another loss, only another emptiness in a life that seemed to have more gaps than substance.
And now someone had left a rose.
He never brought me roses, she thought. She realised she was actually, stupidly, about to cry at the thought, and a sense of her own self-pity swelled up, choking.
Oh, for crying out loud, Margaret. Snap out of it. Stop wailing.
But I’m lonely.
She was still staring at the rose when the tourist coaches pulled up.
Margaret, flinching, hoped they weren’t Americans, prone to acts of sudden random friendliness. She withdrew behind one of the stones as the two groups walked up the track.
Each group was led by a grey-haired woman. One’s hair was set in the kind of rigid waves Margaret hadn’t seen for years; drenched in setting lotion and netted nightly so that not one hair escaped its assigned place.
The other had a careless bun from which wisps of silver escaped to wave in the sun.
Their rich Lewis accents reached her before they did.
“…were going to build a factory here. Unforrtunately, permission wasn’t granted, and the work went to the mainland…” Set Hair told her group.
“…and there’s the Old Woman,” said the other Old Woman. “Can you see her?” she pointed at the range of hills opposite. “She’s lying on her back, about to give birth.”
There were some nervous giggles among the tourists. Margaret, almost despite herself, squinted, trying to see, but apart from a slightly breastlike roundness to the hills couldn’t see anything that looked like a pregnant woman.
“We used to come up here as girrls,” said the bun. “Daring each other. Oh, we got up to some mischief!” She gave a throaty laugh.
Set Hair, meantime, was pointing out to her group the place where there had been a tragic accident of some sort.
Margaret kept out of the tourists’ way as they photographed the stones, each other, the Old Women (all three) and a scowling toad. After a few snaps it trudged grumpily off through the grass, blades waving behind it like the wake of a miniature, and very slow, tiger.
“Oh, a rose,” someone said, and Margaret winced, as though it was herself, not the flower, that had been spotted.
“Och, that’ll be one of those new age lot. They leave offerings,” said the bun woman. “Leave it where it is eh? Don’t want to be offending any gods, now, do we? Never know who’s given us such a sunny day!”
Set Hair’s mouth thinned. “Terrible mess, they leave,” she said.
“We’ve time for a cup of tea before the coaches pick us up. And they do lovely cakes,” said the bun. The groups set off over the hill beyond the stones.
Margaret hadn’t realised there was a tea-shop. At least they’d kept it out of sight. And now she’d heard about it, she wanted tea. Slowly, aware she’d have to slog back over the hill to pick up her car, she followed the tourists.
Waiting in line she overheard Set Hair saying to one of the coach drivers, “I’ve got my son and his wife coming over, so as soon as I get back there’s the shopping to do. Oh, I told George, but he’ll have forgotten, of course. And everything to be aired. They’re bringing the children with them.”
“That’s nice, then.”
“They’re all rushing off to the mainland every five minutes. The boy wants to go to some college down south. And the way they behave, well, we wouldn’t have had it in my day.”
Bun was talking to one of the tourists. “Met my Duncan up by the stones, sneaking out of school – oh, we were terrors. Well, we thought we were.”
“Have you ever left Lewis?” one of the tourists asked.
“Och, yes, do you see a chain on my ankle?”
More embarrassed laughter. “We’d planned to go on a cruise, but he passed away not long before we were going to be married.”
Margaret winced again, but Bun didn’t seem distressed; her questioner was far more so.
“Oh, that’s kind, dear. Well, yes, he was a lovely man. I could never fancy anyone else, somehow. And I did go on the cruise, in the end; after I retired from teaching. Saw some marvellous things.” Her accent, and her enthusiasm, make ‘marvellous’ sound full and rich as chocolate mousse. “I felt as though I had to look at everything more, you see? Because I was doing it for Duncan as well. And it was wonderful. But of course it’s always good to come home.”
Margaret turned the tea in her hands, looking at Set Hair; her drawstring mouth widening to spill out more miseries. Behind her, Bun laughed.
Margaret finished her tea, went to the counter, and got a slab of chocolate cake, and one of passionfruit.
She walked back over the hill, eating chocolate cake, licking icing off her fingers, rolling it around her mouth, under the brilliant sky, the birds white as angels. The stones were silver, full of complex and subtle shadows.
She put the slab of passionfruit cake next to the rose, saluted the Old Woman of the Moors, (she still couldn’t see her, but it didn’t matter) and walked back to her car, her lips tasting of chocolate and salt.
Oops. After a little blip with the flash fiction, we're back. I wrote a long version of this that wasn't working at all, so instead I've distilled it down to 100 words. This is inspired in part by a New Scientist article.
Nocebo (100 words)
She sashayed by, perfectly groomed and eight moves ahead. “You see why I’m choosing her?” he asked. “It’s for the best.”
“Yes,” I said. I always said yes to him.
“You do that Voodoo,” he says. I don’t. A little Tarot reading, that’s all. But he won’t listen. We all told him what she was.
“Lift the curse”, he says now. As if I have any power.
“If you still love me...” he says. He has lost his home, money, identity. It’s not my doing. But he believes it, and that is voodoo. All I have to say is no.
Lucy's Toy (1077 words) The day after my wedding my wife told me that she decided to marry me even though Captain Clucky told her not to. Of course, I thought she was joking. As long as I’d known her, Lucy had been carrying that silly-looking toy around with its mad junkie eyes and that beak with the tongue sticking out. In fact, it was how we met.
I’d glimpsed her a few times at the SciPhantastiCon, sitting in a talk on designing steampunk mechanics, and playing the bongos in a filk session, always with the toy beside her. So when I found myself next to her at the bar, I said “Nice dinosaur, er duck chicken thing. What does it drink?”
She tucked her shiny brown hair behind her ear. “Absinthe daiquiri if he gets the chance,” she said, smiling. “But it’s a bad idea to give him anything with alcohol, caffeine or sugar. Captain Clucky, I’d like you to meet....”
“Will.”
She pushed out one of its wings/arms for me to shake.
“And how about you?” I asked.
”Oh, I’m fairly safe with caffeine,” she said with a naughty glint in her eye.
So I bought her a cup of tea and we talked for hours while I tried not to notice her fantastic tits.
The first time I met her parents was the first time I saw Lucy without it.
“Where’s the Captain?” I said as she climbed into the car.
“God, no. I’m not taking him anywhere near...” She smoothed her demure, grey skirt and tried to tuck some stray hair back in her plait.
“Hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to be nervous.”
At her parents’ house, Lucy sat bolt upright with her knees together and answered like a robot as her father asked her questions about promotions and her mother handed around tea and biscuits. I assumed it was just some moody girl thing with her dad that she hadn’t got over. He was nice enough to me, asked about my work at the local council and gave it his approval as a sensible choice. I didn’t mention my band, or the urban exploring.
Captain Clucky had his own tuxedo for the wedding, and sat in the front row. Lucy got one of her nieces to pretend she owned him. Lucy glanced at him before she said “I will”. He - no for frak’s sake – it, was sitting on a chair next to Lucy’s sister, Caroline, with some other mad-looking tuxed up toy with long rabbit ears and a sharp-toothed grin. I grinned back.
Lucy got her promotion. She got up at six, dressed in grey, and came home at eight looking as grey as her suit. Some nights she’d grab the Captain, make herself a huge gin and tonic and sit in a knot in front of the fire, clutching him. Other nights she’d look at him, and say “Damn good idea”. She’d pick him up, and her drumsticks, I’d get my guitar and we’d all go down into the basement and make a loud kind of music.
“Are you ok, Luce?” I asked on one of the gin nights.
“This job,” she said, slurring. “It’s like I have to shut off one half of my personality. Just like the old days.”
“The old days?”
“Caroline knows.”
After a year, the gin nights happened almost all the time. I found myself watching Kelly in accounts, the sway of her tight little arse and the swing of her long blonde hair, and wondering. One evening I came back from my nine to five to find Lucy already home, dancing around the basement, swigging beer.
“Are you ok, Luce?”
“Oh, yeah. Much better.” She was red in the face, her hair wild. She looked great.
“Did you take the day off?”
“Kind of. The Captain was right, that job was killing me. I quit.”
“What the hell Luce? You should have talked to me first.”
“Look, don’t worry. I’ve got enough savings to pay the mortgage for a few months. I just need a bit of a break. Alright?”
I grabbed her, and she grabbed me back. It was a good night. It was a great month, until Luce told me that she was starting a mechanic’s course at the local college. Captain Clucky had told her to go for it.
“For God’s sake Luce, you’re a grown woman. You don’t need to hide behind a toy to make decisions. If you want to do this course, great. It’s nice to see you happy again.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’ve got some problem with your Dad, you’re old enough to sort it out. You don’t need some stupid prop.”
“I’ll be able to get work at the end of the course, fixing things. It won’t be as much money, but I know I’m going to like it. Until then I’ve got a job, at the supermarket,” she said. “It’ll cover most of my half of the bills. It’ll work out.” And she looked at that bloody toy again, for reassurance.
It was like a switch flipped. My head spun, I grabbed Captain Clucky, and I flung him into the fire.
“Just fucking grow up!” I shouted.
Lucy howled, a sound of raw agony. She reached towards the flames. I held her, struggling, in one arm while I tried to fish the toy out with the poker with the other. It was no good, whatever the Captain was made of burned too fast. Lucy got up and brushed herself down.
“Sorry,” she said. “That was really silly.” She went upstairs, into the spare room and I followed.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she booted up the computer.
”Job hunting.”
Lucy found one. She got up at six, dressed in grey, and came home at eight. When she got in she cooked the dinner, and cleaned the house, and went to bed and got up and did it all over again. That’s all she did. Finally, I realised she wasn’t punishing me. There was nothing else left.
I phoned Caroline. “Can you come over? I think your sister needs to see you.”
“Of course. Is Lucy ok?”
“I burnt... look, that rabbit toy thing at the wedding. Is that yours?”
“You may address him as Cedric the Wise.” There was an echo of Lucy’s old teasing tone that made my eyes sting.
“Bring him too. Please. And I hope you and Lucy used to share your toys.”
I think this came from various conversations about the state of the world. And staring at my duvet cover when overtired. Patterns by Gaie Sebold (747 words)
Maeve, Binty, Joachim, Frank.
“There you go, dear, take your pills. What are you making today?”
Maeve looks up, but doesn’t say anything. Passively she swallows her pills. But as the nurse moves on, Maeve and Binty flick each other a quick, impish smile.
Maeve’s fingers twist and weave. The nurses bring her wool; before that she used whatever she could find, sometimes to the detriment of the hospital fittings. They have decided a crochet hook is permissible, so long as they take it away from her at night. She’s quite capable of making another one from the most surprising things, anyway.
She’s probably safe. After all, she only really gets upset when someone asks her if she ever thinks about her old life, when she worked in the City.
Binty doesn’t crochet. Binty weaves baskets. It’s so traditional it’s almost embarrassing; but she makes baskets and placemats and needlecases as though she had a deadline, as though she were on commission.
“Hello, dear, oh, that’s pretty,” says the nurse. For a moment she pauses, frowning, and glances back at Maeve. Then, pills dispensed, she shakes her head, and moves on. Binty used to work in banking. Such a shame, they say, so bright, doing so well! She’s another one who’s mostly co-operative, unless they ask her about her job.
Joachim is on another ward, with Frank. Joachim fills in crosswords; but seldom all of one crossword, and not in words that seem to have anything to do with the clues, most of the time. Or words that seem to have anything to do with language, either. Joachim first saw Frank as he was frowning over a couple of Joachim’s crosswords that were lying side by side, looking at the exact juxtaposition of the filling in of certain squares, a sort of recognition rising on his face.
They haven’t talked about it. Frank does sketches; tiny, intense sketches, thousands of precise narrow lines. There are no people in them, no monsters, from the id or elsewhere. Just lines. The therapists have theories. That’s all they have.
Joachim was a stockbroker, too. Frank dealt with computerised banking systems.
They all went mad within a few months of each other. Are there more? Each of them sometimes wonders, but it’s no longer really relevant.
A very young nurse is being tried out on the women’s ward; they’re considered slightly more easily handled than the men. She deals with the patients confidently and well, and is eventually transferred to the men’s ward, which still, strangely, is considered a position of slightly higher prestige. Just before she is transferred, however, she speaks to her supervisor.
“You did say to report anything that was bothering me,” she says. “It’s not bothering me, exactly, but I did wonder. Binty, and Maeve.”
“Ah, yes, sad cases,” says the supervisor.
“They don’t seem sad,” the nurse says. “Actually, they seem very contented. But I just noticed that, well, the stuff they make…there’s a kind of similarity about it. I couldn’t say what, exactly. It just seems to follow a kind of pattern.”
“They’ve been on the same ward for months,” the Supervisor says. “These things happen. And sometimes we see patterns where there aren’t any. It’s what the human eye looks for, after all. Patterns.”
“I asked Maeve what she was making.”
“Oh? Did she answer you?”
“Sort of. ‘A new pattern’, she said. But it looked the same as everything else she’s made to me.”
“Ah well,” said the Supervisor. “At least she interacted with you.”
On the men’s ward it isn’t long before the young nurse notices Joachim’s partially completed crosswords, and Frank’s sketches.
One day she has a sketch laid side by side with three crosswords. She’s glaring at them as though they were one of those magic-eye pictures, and can feel some kind of focus dancing just beyond the reach of her aching eyes.
Frank sits down opposite her, and pats her hand. “You’ll get there,” he said. “It was trauma, for us. Hope you find a better way.”
“But what are you making,” she says.
“The world,” says Frank. “We’re making the world.”
And the young nurse feels a trembling in the soles of her feet.
The next day the headlines announce collapse of the markets, trembles in the metal heart of finance.
The young nurse reads the headlines, and knows that on the wards, Maeve and Binty, Joachim and Frank, are weaving and stitching and sketching and smiling.
Just so there's no misunderstanding, I love "Pride and Prejudice".
The Unadventures of Mary Sue Flowershine (1096 words)
“There she is,” said a fake-tanned blonde, standing in a little group of friends. “The new girl.”
Mary Sue kept her head down, letting her soft shiny brown hair swing forward to hide her pensive face with its snowy skin and unfathomable green eyes. She had been dreading her first day in the new sixth form. So far she’d made it to lunch.
“What has she got on?” asked another girl. “I mean, who wears ankle-length skirts?”
“Someone more interesting than you,” said a male voice, thoughtfully.
Mary Sue didn’t dare turn her head to see who was speaking. She’d find out soon enough. She strode purposefully on her long legs out of the college gates and down into the town.
It was a typical new town; its heart was tied into a tedious little circle inside a ring road, fenced around with red-brick insurance offices hemming in a shopping mall. Where were were the woods and fields that she spent hours wandering, composing poetry, her soul soothed by the scent of grass and whisper of leaves? No gentle deer here to come to her hand. She lingered in front of a florist and gazed through the window at the deep red roses, severed from their roots.
“Are you lost?” said a familiar male voice.
“Yes. And no,” said Mary Sue. A tall, slim boy with silver blond hair and glacier blue eyes stood looking down at her. He wore a leather jacket and black jeans.
“You are interesting,” he said. “But you look sad,” he said.
Mary Sue blinked back tears. Why did her father have to die? Why did her mother have to move to this miserable town? And why did her life have to be like this?
“I... ”
A screech of brakes, a girl’s shriek and a thump drowned out her voice. Mary Sue sped towards the noise. The fake-tanned blonde was lying on the pavement, bleeding from her thigh. Her friends huddled around, screaming and crying.
“One of you phone an ambulance,” said Mary Sue, tearing a strip from the bottom of her skirt to bind the blonde’s leg.
The girls gawped at her.
“You heard her,” said the boy. He gazed at Mary Sue over the prone blonde. “I’m Xavier," he said. "I’d like to see you again. Under less extreme circumstances.”
”That would be nice.”
“Th – thank you,” stammered the blonde. “You helped me. None of my so-called friends did.”
”That’s what I do. Apparently,” sighed Mary Sue.
#
After Xavier’s tragic death on their wedding night, Mary Sue moved to the big city. On her very first day, she came out of a coffee shop and bumped into a man running down the street. They were both knocked to the ground and covered in a fountain of hot cappuccino. The man sprang up with supernatural speed, and helped her to her feet. He was tall, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail, and bright green eyes over angular cheekbones.
He looked her up and down. “There’s something about you,” he said. “Can you run?”
Mary Sue shrugged. She’d always been fast on her feet, although she never trained.
“Then help me. I’m chasing someone. Well, something. You go that way. We’ll trap it in the alley.”
Mary Sue ran, dodging pedestrians and cars and blurring past windows, with bemused shoppers gawking out. She cut round the city block to the other end of the narrow passage.
Something huge, green and slimy slashed a claw at her. Mary Sue leapt aside, and threw the remainder of her hot coffee, still clutched in her hand, in the creature’s eyes. It howled and writhed.
The tall man appeared from the other end of the alley and drew a sword from beneath his black leather trenchcoat. With one swift blow, he struck off the creature’s head.
“I could use an assistant with your... talents,” he said, green eyes sparkling. He held out his hand. “Arial Bold. Private Investigator. Amongst other things.”
Mary Sue shook hands.
”Well, how about it?” he said. “Do you want the job? It’ll be exciting.” His eyes smouldered with unspoken promises.
“Let’s see,” said Mary Sue.
#
She and Arial parted, heartbroken. A chance discovery revealed her daemon heritage, and with his elven blood, a moment of ecstasy between them would have killed them both. She moved back to the quiet little village where her mother still lived, and where she’d wandered the woods as a girl. She applied as an assistant in the bakery. The baker said she’d never seen such light fingers with pastry. Mary Sue sighed, but took the job.
The first morning she was working there, the door opened with a merry jingle, and a tall, handsome man with sad brown eyes came in, holding the hands of two little blonde girls.
“How can I help you today?” asked Mary Sue, waving at the girls. “Are you looking for something sweet?”
“Do you have anything that will tempt me?” said the man, raising an eyebrow. “A wholemeal loaf. And two chocolate cookies for my girls.”
Mary Sue danced the cookies over the counter and the girls giggled.
When he’d gone, the other assistant Becky rushed up. “Do you know who that was? That’s Darcy Huntingdon-Black, from the manor. It’s so sad, his wife died two years ago. He’s very rich, but terribly haughty. He almost smiled at you.”
“Oh great hairy arses on fire,” said Mary Sue. She took off her apron and threw it on the floor. “I’m not going through all that again.”
“But where are you going?” said Becky.
“Back to the city. I’m going to get a job as a sales executive and be bad at it and be bored out of my mind. I’m going to screw up an account and be reprimanded and be terrified that I’m going to get fired, because then I’ll have to go and look for another shitty job that I don’t want. I’m going to get unattractively drunk and in that state I’m going to finally get laid, probably by a bloke from marketing who farts and forgets my birthday and cheats on me. Maybe if I get lucky I’ll find out what I actually like doing, meet some women who have their own lives, and be best friends with the IT guy who’s totally right for me if only I’d notice.”
She left, slamming the door behind her.
“Wow,” said Becky. “She’s right. Why let our lives be defined by men?” She sighed. “I wish I was more like Mary Sue.”
Shortest one I've done, I think. This a 'subtext' challenge - thank you Sarah for providing the both the challenge and the situation - or there wouldn't have been one this week.
A Housewarming Gift - 514 Words
“What do you think?” Marcia peered at a black glass and marble table lamp.
“Very…um…designer,” Suze said. “So, have you seen their place? I mean is that the sort of look they’re…”
“No, well, I don’t know. It’s Barry’s sort of thing, though, isn’t it?”
“I suppose. Yes. He likes things like that.”
“It’s not just for him, though, is it,” Marcia said. “The trouble is I don’t really know what she likes. I’ve only met her a few times.”
“Oh?” Suze said, picking up a paperweight and weighing it in her hand, looking at the flower frozen in the glass.
“Well, you know. We’re all so busy these days!”
“That’s the twenty-first century for you,” Suze said, putting down the paperweight, and absentmindedly rubbing her left arm. “Everyone rushing about, no time to pay attention.”
“Well quite. I feel a bit bad,” Marcia said, “I mean my own brother, you know, and I hardly see him. Anyway Deirdre seems nice enough.”
“I’m sure she is,” Suze said.
“So anyway how are you?” Marcia said, abandoning the lamp and moving towards a basket full of eggs made out of marble and onyx and steel. “These are rather fun.”
“Quite expensive, though,” Suze said. “Unless you buy one a year, and build up a collection, like a charm bracelet. I’m fine.”
“Funny running into you like this. So, are you getting them something?”
“Oh, no,” Suze said. “Barry and I…we’re not really in touch.”
“That’s a shame,” Marcia said.
“What’s she like? Deirdre?”
“Well, like I say, she seems nice enough. I mean the couple of times I’ve met her. Lively girl. She’s younger than him, of course. Well you were too, weren’t you?”
“I still am.”
“Well of course, you know what I mean. She’s a bit like you, actually. If you don’t mind me saying.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” Marcia said, turning and looking Suze up and down, with a marble egg in one hand. Suze’s eyes followed the egg, watching it as Marcia gestured. “Yes, she’s slight, and dark, like you. Wish I knew your secret for staying so slim.”
“Stress,” Suze said, with a half-smile.
Marcia turned away and put the egg down and Suze’s shoulders relaxed.
“Oh, and it’s funny, there’s another way she’s like you. Accident prone!”
“Oh?” Suze moved to a shelf full of thin glass vases, and stared at them.
“Yes! She was laughing about it. Great bruise she had, all up her arm. Shut it in the car door, silly girl.”
“Funny,” Suze said, “well, they say men go for a type, don’t they?”
“I suppose so. Oh, dear, I can’t make up my mind. Maybe I’ll buy that lamp after all.”
Suze looked at the lamp. It was big, dark, heavy. The base had brutal corners. “No,” she said. “No, how about…” she cast around for something else, grabbed one of the vases. “How about this?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Marcia said. “That doesn’t look like Barry’s sort of thing at all.”
“He likes fragile things,” Suze said. “He doesn’t worry about breakages.”
I'm a little over word count again this week, but I'm letting the stories run to their natural length at the moment instead of cutting them to the bone. Ball and Chain (1058 words)
The humans always brought the new inmates in in daylight. No matter if a monster could bulk, shift, fade or speed their powers were diminished under the blazing eye of the sun. Tapito squinted at the latest batch from inside his cage. He recognised a curtain-lurker, a closet-hider and a big chupacabra. The last human dragged a huge shaggy beast, red-eyed and sharp-clawed at the end of a thick chain. It was something Tapito hadn’t seen before. It had to be one of the wild, outside things. A rare one.
The beast thrust his face against the bars of Tapito’s cage, drool spilling around fangs in his out-thrust jaw. “Hello lunch,” he growled. “If the human wasn’t here, I’d eat you.”
Tapito bounced up on all four feet, pulling himself up to his full twelve inches. He thrust out his chest and lifted the spines down his back. “Come and try it big boy!” he yipped back. “I’ll rip off your balls. Heuvos rancheros for breakfast.”
The human yanked on the chain, and the big monster shuffled on. “Hur hur hur. We’ll see, little mouthful.”
“I’ll be waiting. My teeth are like knives. I will bring you pain!” Tapito shouted until the other monster was out of sight. It was slow and shambling now, but they were all like that when the humans brought them in, dosed with potions to make them weak. Tapito had been dragged out from under a little human’s bed, snapping and trying to speed. Blackness had hit him and he had woken up behind bars.
Tapito ran around his cage, sniffing at the locks, sharpening his teeth on the bars, scrabbling at the floor. It was a routine. Any weakness that showed, he would use it. Another human approached the row of cages with the feed. The new inmates and the stubborn ones howled and roared and threw themselves against the bars. The humans jabbed with shiny sticks and the roars and howls became screams. Tapito remembered the shiny stick. He’d taken two of a human’s fingers the first time he’d been fed. The pain had been worth it.
He bared his teeth as a matter of principle when it was his turn. The human unlocked a small door, and poked in a bowl with the end of the stick, then locked the door again. If it was dark, Tapito could have sped through the gap. But the daylight sapped his energy. He had the scars to show what would happen if he tried. Instead, he sniffed at the offering. Pocket lint. What he would give for a juicy dust bunny. As he chewed he thought, as always, of escape.
After the feed, they were let out, watery-eyed under the sun’s fire, to exercise. The bogeys and the lurkers clung to to the shade of the guard-towers and the high, concrete walls. The wind blew in the smell of the desert outside.
As Tapito trotted aroud the dusty yard, the new chupacabra hissed at him, threat vibrating all down his scaly body. Tapito bared his teeth in a manic grin and hunched down for a pounce. Another chupa, an old lag butted the new one aside. “No trouble, Tapito,” she said, keeping her eyes low. “He just got here.”
“Looked to me like he was asking for trouble, Surita,” said Tapito.
“He’ll learn. Leave him his cojones.”
“Ok. For you.”
Surita hurried the new chupacabra away.
“Hey ‘Pito,” Elmer the bogeyman shuffled up. “Seen the new boy? Big ‘un.”
“Yeah, I met him. He threatened to eat me for lunch.”
They looked over to where the shaggy beast had cornered a key-stealing gremlin. The little creature cowered, long ears drooping. Shaggy looked around to make sure the humans weren’t watching, plucked up the gremlin and swallowed him whole.
”Hey!” yelled Tapito, streaking across the yard. He barrelled into Shaggy’s stomach as fast as he could, head first. “Spit him out!”
Shaggy bent over, retching. The key gremlin rolled out of his mouth, covered in ooze. It scurried away to hide behind a Black Dog. The humans were paying attention now. They barked at each other, and one of them ran in with a shiny stick.
”Big mistake, little mouthful,” said Shaggy. “I’m the Swallowing Shadow. You think this prison will hold me after nightfall? I can go wherever I please. I’m coming for you. And I’ll be hungry.” He howled as the human prodded him and dragged him away on a chain.
“The Swallowing Shadow. Huh, never heard of it,” said Elmer.
“Big mouth, no balls,” said Tapito, but he was worried. Maybe he’d never seen one of those monsters before because they didn’t stay caught. Maybe what it said was true.
Tapito circled in his cage as the sun went down and the stars blazed in the black sky. His sharp toenails clicked on the metal floor as he paced. He would not fall asleep. Now it was dark his big ears could hear every sound, his big eyes tracked every movement.
“Hello supper,” growled a voice in his ear. Tapito leaped so high he banged his head on the top of his cage. Shaggy pushed his head through the bars as if they weren’t there, and opened his mouth like a giant scoop. He shovelled his jaw relentlessly towards Tapito. Tapito scrabbled backwards, feeling the cold steel of his cage pressing against his spine. He couldn’t slide through solid things, like Shaggy. There was nowhere left to go. He gathered his strength, and sped straight down Shaggy’s throat. It was black and sticky. Thick muscle squeezed around him, cracking a rib as he was forced down into the huge monster’s stomach.
Tapito held his breath until a fizzy black tide rose before his eyes. Then he started slashing with the teeth he sharpened every day on steel bars. Shaggy bellowed and howled, but Tapito kept it up until he could smell the clean night breeze. Good. He’d held on long enough for Shaggy to slide out through the prison walls.
Tapito crawled out of the tattered hole in Shaggy’s belly. The big monster moaned weakly.
”I must keep my promises,” said Tapito. “But since you set me free, I will only take one of your balls.” The Swallowing Shadow’s shriek was still echoing off the hills as Tapito sped into freedom.
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