Furlough

Published 'Purple Patch' 1992

 Clive told me that he viewed life as a holiday from a far more serious and potentially sadder period that surrounds it upon all sides.  

 

On our frequent meetings together, propped up at the Turk's Head bar, I was subjected to the outlandish ideas that he'd harboured about our sabbatical from the after-life and so forth. I put it all down to pub talk, because men are renowned for jabbering gibberish over a jar - merely for the sake of macho bonhomie and easy badinage. Alcohol oils the wheels of the human cabriolet I always say, as it wends its lonely road between birth and death.  

 

However, where Clive differed from most men of my acquaintance, he was dead serious about the garbage he spouted. One pig ignorant statement for every gulp of best bitter... 

He eventually took his beer belly to Our Maker. It was sudden. He was killed by a pedestrian ,whilst driving his car! And, he wasn't  kerb-crawling either!            .

 

The story goes that he had stopped for traffic lights and some­one opened his door and jabbed a knife into his neck. No obvious motive. The murderer was apparently a man in an anorak who merely strolled away, meticulously obeying the pelican lights. 

The various onlookers were doubtful as to the exact circumstances and none of them chanced a citizen's arrest. In fact, one of them said the perpetrator was a young lady in a floral dress. It all seemed pretty extenuating to me.  

 

Well, I found myself arranging Clive's funeral, due to lack of anyone closer coming forward, and his will made me executrix.  

 

Now I sup unladylike pints on my ownsome and can often be dis­covered muttering to myself in the Turk's Head. Sometimes I think I'm Clive himself on a moratorium from death, but that no doubt is yet one more case of mistaken identity.  

The Man With No Name

Collaboration with MF Korn      

 

 

 

 

 

The cowboy slouched into the saloon, his tremendous girth waddling through the swinging doors.  His name--hidden from his peers--was Billygoat.  He traded under a different one. 

 

 

       He kissed the hot syrup neck with a slavering joy and told the bar-tender to deliver some more. He used to be the skinniest runt.  But wagonloads of beans and fixins, salt pork and jerky took care of that.         Everyone in the place looked over, some of the boys smirking.  He looked around, not caring.  The bar was festooned with dancin' gals, some better whores than others.

 

 

     "Hey, Tenderfoot, what's your poison?" said a gangster from a different side-step.

 

 

     Billygoat tapped his holster meaningfully; there was more shot in Laramie, he mimed, than the deepest gunsling backyard of any Prohibition era, bar none.

 

 

     The person who spoke to him had a strange mellifluous voice, as if it were an echo in a canyon.  His face was even stranger as well, the dark features, and odd oblong look to it.  He had dapper clothes, a real dandy, but the suit of clothes that hung on his skeleton frame was ill-fitting and no longer the well cut suit it once was.  There was a stentorian breathing

 

 

pattern, and a strange accent augmented the overall demeanor of the guy. He wasn't standing up straight, and Billygoat didn't like to be hassled by no city folk that didn't belong in those parts anyhow.  Hell, Billygoat thought, I hadn't even whetted my damned whistle before someone starts up on me.  He wondered, does this dandied dude have some truck with me?

 

 

     “I have juices that real thinking heads have a-plenty in their soft centres,” the dapper dandleprat announced, fondling his own finger as if it were a trigger.

 

 

     Billygoat couldn’t help but notice that a creature, of sorts, quite out of keeping with any traditional take on reality, had by now scuttled into the bar and squatted, preening itself, on the dandleprat’s shoulder.  Its body was tantamount to an arm’s length of  loose-limbed neck, with a single-spout snout, and resting between a pair of scrawny sack-like humps.  As the dandleprat stroked the creature, it spat a curd of see-through cream straight into Billygoat’s chump chops.

 

 

     "What in the hell?----" Billygoat said, trying to spit out the foreign matter.

 

 

     "Come here, my precious," said the diminutive.  "He does that sometimes.  Don't be alarmed, kind sir."

 

 

     On any given outlaw day, Billygoat woulda shot the man straightaways in the brain.  In the back, front, side.  But something kinda nice cleared his sinuses and pleasure sunk into Billygoat’s bulbous lard head, underneath a ten gallon duster hat.  He ended up swallowing the rest.  He looked around, dizzy.  The boys didn't see that, he reckoned.  Or I'da had ta kill a man.

 

 

     The creature winked at him, or was that his imagination?

 

 

     "Sir,” said the creature’s keeper. “My name is Winkencrump.  I'm a mortician.  Or at least I had a funeral parlor in Tuscon, but I want to set up a little business here in Laramie.  And what is your name, kind sir?"

 

 

     "Billy.  Goat.  My gang calls me that.  Born a two-midwives in hell itself.  A lot a folk is afaid o' me."  Something infinitely pleasureable sprang a fount in his cranium.  He couldn't seem to think about things. About watchin' his back.  About who's comin' after him with a knife, in his blind spot.  Outlaw thinking which was usually on his mind was clearin' out.

 

 

     "You feel strange, right?"

 

 

     The barkeep had been eyeing this strange diphthong of a man since he came in with his creature.

 

 

     "Mister, you'd better buy a drink or you is flat outa here...And there ain't nothin' like that allowed in my saloon.”

 

 

     One of the dancing whores tried to pet the creature.

 

 

     Billygoat sucked at a bottle of pother he’d garnered ‘stead of syrup.  He’d have to teach them a thing or two.  He’d have no truck with impostors from otherworldly gunslug wastes such as Cagney used to forest with his jugular twangs.  Only necks could be sliced at both ends and still live the half-life of a worm.  Camels, too, but they didn’t come out west till Wyatt Earp croaked.  And again that was never to be between the book-boards of  THIS dust-covered reality.

 

 

     The creature, meantime, was enticingly off the shoulder, snuggling now upon the buxoms of a well-heeled whore.  Its soft-boned helmet nuzzled into the deep chasm of her fleshy soul. It seethed with the breaking news of love as her painted claws ripped, in passion, its upholstered humps.  Loose covers were unwound turbans.  And slickness was the melting sorrow that exuded from conjoined pores.

 

 

     Billygoat took the dandleprat outside and said they had to see the sherrif about a bank raid.  It was as if they now both realised they were meant to meet here, today, now, then, forever.  Conspiracy was not even close enough a description.  And, with the creeping creature crumbling behind them like a spent whimper, they unwound their snickering steeds from the saloon’s biting-board and trotted towards the House of the Blinking Star.

 

 

     The dandy mortician’s horse was rather strange:  It had a covering of goldfish scales instead of regular horse hide.  The creature sort of floated besides the man as the strange trio of Billygoat, Winkencrump and sidekick kicked up dry dust on the midway. 

 

 

     “Here’s my new funeral parlor, The House of the Blinking Star.  I kind of would like to show you around.”  They dismounted.  The goldfish-scaled horse folded into a cube the size of a breadbox. 

 

 

     “How’d that happen?”, asked Billygoat, still numb from the fat neck wattle up. 

 

 

     “It would take a long time to explain.  Come on in.  Let’s talk about your bank robbery you would like to plan.”  They walked in after Winkencrump waved a wry skeletal paw at the smooth futuristic finish of the door, which made the door not open like normal, but wink, blink and dilate.

 

 

     “Shucks, mister, you sure got some fancy place here...”.

 

 

     The creature floated through the door backwards on its back, three feet off the ground.  The floor was that of a sort of living carpet which fanned like a field of wheat.  It made Billygoat feel real nice.

 

 

     The walls were splayed gossamer and ephemeral laser-melts showing vast vistas of unplumbed galactic space.

 

 

     Gangster films  and staroperas, however, got on Billygoat’s gruff. 

 

 

      REAL reality was wild west, whilst wraparounds of imagination seemd to steam them back and forth between quite different grips of genre.  He had to get a handle on why they were there.  The sad creature bleated at his feet, pangs of something akin to wistfulness gazing up from its sightless snout.  Winkencrump gave it a kick, which ricocheted around the flinching walls and even made the horsescales outside wince with ringing. 

 

 

      “Hey, Goat, why you’re too fat for ramraids,” said the mincing mortician.

 

 

      “All the better to head-butt any bank safe worth its salt,” rejoindered the now thoughtful cowboy.  Billygoat, indeed, was no pasteboard gringo.  He had emotions, even possessing depths that would outclass a right old rodeo of cross-currents and wild motives.  Indeed, he needed to ride his own mind as if its bucking would never stop, except by force of death in some derring-do.

 

 

      “The bank’s doors, Goat, are not as wide as those swing ones at the saloon.  And, what is more, they’ll know who you are even with your Lone Ranger mask on!” 

 

 

      Billygoat sobbed to himself, whilst stroking the crumpled neck-creature as a diversionary tactic.  He’d never make the bestest bandit, even in slices.  At least hardly no-one knew his name.  No name, no shame.

 

 

      “This little device will get your robbery going.  It melts any substance on your planet with one press of the substrate indention.”

 

 

                        “Subtrace wha-a-t?”

 

 

                        “Er, trigger or button.”

 

 

                        “Oh, let me see that thing.” 

 

 

      Winkencrump floated it across the surreal room of the futuristic funeral parlor.  Caskets of laser netting floating halfway up the walls, if they were walls.  Bodies of alien creatures all apparently deceased lay within these caskets.  One of these caskets appeared to be the size of a grand piano.  It was empty, too.  Billygoat didn’t do no wonderin’ about who that was for.  He just thought that green slivery aliens all spindly and blotched grey, and spidermonkey purple rodentoids laying prone in laser caskets were something to look at for a second or two.  He knew he never would understand about no creatures like that.  He was a wonderin’ if this here Winkencrump might be old Satan hisself.

 

 

      Billygoat pointed the device away from himself but unbeknownst to him he was pointing the weapon at his own fathead.

 

 

      “Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttttttttt! Popppp!”   The room of wispy natty strangeness lit up like a supernova for a second, and then cleared abruptly. 

 

 

      All that was left of Billygoat were his boots and a fused skeleton, in melting cauterized energy.  Little sensors in the wall cleansed the air.

 

 

      The stench went away.  Winkencrump smiled and pointed a device at the ectoplasmic blob of Billygoat.  It floated straight into the casket neat as those devices do.

 

 

      But scenarios fought the last battle.  Wild West versus Space Opera versus Gangster versus Surreal Arthouse.  And dust-laden Dodge City, if not Laramie, stood thankfully firm.

 

 

      Meanwhile, the creature took matters into its own hands and rode the bucking goldfish bronco straight at the bank’s vault doors, its six-shooters firing like it was intent on killing the whole crew. The set was only a frontage.  And the creature died a pulsating death in a spasm of premature ejaculation.

 

 

      The cowboy smiled.  He had seen the crumpled wink of a one-spout snout and felt tides of muscle within himself move the fat and lard into deeper ribs of gung-ho machismo.  The Man With No Name.

 

 

      “Billygoat, I love thee,” the creature whimpered at the end.

 

 

                        It must mean him.

 

 

 And even cowboy heroes cry.

 

 

 

Connie

CONNIE....... A collaboration with Gordon Lewis

         

The Tip-tap of a typewriter was clearly audible as the man climbed the stairs and, as he approached apartment number 34, the tapping stopped with a ring of the typewriter's carriage bell.

          The nameplate below the number was that of a Miss C.Josephs. With a rat-tat-tat upon the door the man stood back in anticipation but was rewarded with the sound of silence.

          Knocking once more, louder this time, he was rewarded with some response as a voice called out... "Who's there?"

          "I am John Prentiss, a telephone engineer from the telephone company. We're having to check all the phone lines in your block of flats. If it's inconvenient I could call back later."

          The door slowly opened to the extent allowed by the door-chain, and there in the space above, was the face of an attractive young woman.

          "Can I see your identity card please?" she asked.

          The man produced his card and handed it to the young woman.

          Satisfied with his credentials, Connie unlatched the door chain to open the door wider.

          The man pushed his way into the flat then shut the door behind him.

          Taken completely by surprise, Connie hadn't time to scream before a hand was clasped over her mouth.

          "Keep quiet Miss Josephs, this is not what it seems — I don't want anything that is tangible, like money or goods. What I'm after cannot be seen or felt. It is what you know. That's what I want."

          The man's voice had reduced to a harsh whisper. His features — hidden from Connie — creased more into the semblance of a mask than a real face.

          Connie had bangs — and dressed in a long red over-all, with black boots poking from the bottom. She had been cleaning the bathroom before clattering the keys of her typewriter, in an attempt to record a few notions that had just drifted, unannounced, into — and then from — her mind. She wrote novels, some of which had done reasonably well, although not yet hitting the big time. Her mode of creativity was first doing the household chores followed by the opening of her imagination's valves and simply waiting for the next machinations of her latest plot to reveal themselves.

          Yet, today, nothing had really flowed. And certainly nothing had stuck. She had gazed longingly at the telephone's handset in its cradle, hoping it would spring into life, with, say, an old school pal wanting to chat. That would absolve her, at least for a while, having to stare at the frighteningly empty page which, by then, should have been full of fruitful words.

          It had, therefore, been quite a relief to hear knocking, followed by her own automatic 'Who's there?' although anybody would have done — almost.

          A telephone engineer seemed to be the optimum interruption. She fleetingly recalled Samuel Taylor Coleridge entranced by writing the visionary poem KUBLA KHAN — only to be sent off course by that now famous 'Visitor from Porlock.'

          But this seemed no friendly visitor from a nearby town. This was someone who wanted evidently to do worse that merely prolong the agony of a writer's block. This seemed more like a plot from one of her own vicious thrillers.

          The man swivelled her round to face him; removing the cruel mask in one fell swoop of a wink, then a smile.

          There seemed to be no menace in the face revealed. His harsh voice had changed to soft comforting tones as he urged young Connie not to cry out because he had no intention of harming her in any way. He hadn't hurt the girl, and as he slowly released her, anger boiled over and her eyes flashed as she said:

          "Why didn't you just say you wanted to talk to me? To pick my brains you say. I don't know you and I should merely ask you to leave, but you have stirred the author in me. What do you want from me? It better be good enough reason for your violent intrusion."

          "It has to do with your most recent novel, the one entitled 'AN AYE FOR AN AYE'. The plot had something so like something that happened to me it could well have been the biography of part of my life. So much so, I would like to know where you obtained the information. What happened to 'Frank Lloyd' was almost word for word my experiences of a year or so ago — so startingly similar you must have someone in the know with the local police force."

          "It has to be merely a coincidence," she replied. "I can assure you all that was written in the novel was entirely from my own imagination. But what you have said intrigues me. Perhaps you can tell me what has happened to you subsequently. Perhaps it will give me some inspiration for a sequel to 'AN AYE FOR AN AYE'."

          Connie could not believe what she had just said. Playing along with someone who was probably a dangerous lunatic was bad enough — but actually, beginning, as she were, to believe there was some element of truth as to his stated reason for the frightening intrusion at number 34 was a lunacy even greater, perhaps, than his.

          "The sequel, you say, Miss Josephs."

          She nodded, wishing desperately that she had not mentioned a possible sequel. Frank Lloyd — who first appeared in AN AYE FOR AN AYE — was due to meet, she was sure, a nasty end in the sequel she'd only, as yet, vaguely considered writing. It may well turn out to be her next novel, the one due to be written after the plot with which she was — between household chores — currently tussling, with false start after false start of wasted A4 sheets. She glanced at the bin of crumpled shapes.

          She had, even now, tried to avoid using a word processor. An old-fashioned typewriter was more her thing — temperamentally. Yet, naturally this created far more work without the facilities of 'saving' and 'amending' which a computer-driven contraption would have provided. Indeed she was satisfyingly closer to the action with keys clattering against the paper one after the other, in quick succession, like tiny fists.

          She shook her head. It was strange what thoughts come in the unlikeliest of situations. The man, by now, was sitting at her typewriter, staring at the paper that was curled into it — paper which was not empty at all, but full of a jumbled words she had been fooling herself were worthwhile additions to the fitfully developing scenario in her head.

          "This is not the sequel, then?" he said with the soulless mask returning like a caul.

          "No, Frank Lloyd is due to regather his existence" — a strange turn of phrase, she thought — "in the novel after this one." She sounded calmer and more sensible than she felt. She was determined to ride the storm. She felt faintly ridiculous in the red overall.

          "What's going to happen to him, then? You got it planned out, yet?" He abruptly appeared fidgety, even panicky.

          "No, I've not even given it a moment's thought, I'm afraid. I'm more concerned with what I'm doing now."

          "This doesn't look much good to me Connie. (I can call you that, can't I?) Doesn't seem to make much sense, given the words you've written." He closely pored over the paper, as if he were short-sighted.

          "It's only a draft, You interrupted my..."

          "Your brainstorming?"

          "Yes, That's a good word."

          The conversation was flat, forced — but it was genuinely becoming a fluid exchange between the autonomous individuals, human beings extremely wary of each other.

          "You know my name," said Connie, "I feel disadvantaged not knowing yours, and I am still puzzled as to your first approach. I have to admit I would probably have kept my door on the safety chain had you not pretended to be a representative from the Electricity Company."

          "My name is Roger Prentiss and I am truly sorry for that show of violence, but I had to see you to find out about the novel you wrote."

          "As I had never met you before," said Connie, "you have to believe the part that coincided with your life was simply that, an astonishing coincidence."

          With that there came a knocking on the front door of the flat. Connie went to open the door, and as she expected, there stood David Thomas, a man friend of hers.

          "Hello David," she said as he entered the apartment, and turning to Roger, she went through the formalities of introducing him, and, without mentioning the forced entry, she said:

          "It is possible we may work together on a sequel to AN AYE FOR AN AYE."

          "Surely," said David, "you'll not need a collaborator — I'm not at all sure that would be a good thing for you to do."

          "He'll not be a collaborator in the strict sense of the word, he is merely going to provide some suggestions for part of the book. I have had some difficulty in starting to write as you can tell by the screwed up pieces of paper around my desk. Some fresh ideas may kick-start me off in a follow from my last novel, which ended leaving a way open for a further novel using the same characters, maybe some new ones too."

Connie indeed failed to mention Roger Prentiss' forced entry. She could not even fathom her own motives. David — who had just arrived — was someone she liked, might even grow fond of (one day), but she could not find it within herself to reveal Roger's initially unwelcome visitation to No. 34. David was ostensibly her saviour from this potential maniac, this imputed character from one of her novels — yet she did not, could not come clean. What was going on here? Not only was the entry forced, but the conversation since David entered the flat had also been forced… even false. None of the words in the exchanges had rung true. They failed to convince. She decided to change tack… but David intervened with a conviction none had yet managed to muster:

          "What the hell are you talking about, Connie? Who is this bloke?" David stabbed a finger towards so-called Roger Prentiss. "Are you actually telling me that he's a writer? He doesn't look like any writer to me."

          Connie knew this at least rung true. Roger did not indeed look like a writer. Perhaps more like the Electrician he had originally claimed to be. Yes, thinking about it, Roger would be well cast as an odd job man rather than one of the arty set with whom Connie and David usually mixed. Something had gone wrong with Connie's story. She kept a straight face, though — managing to splutter out a few words which bore a provenance of truth.

          "Roger's a fan of my novels, David. He wrote to me... and after a few phone calls I invited him over since he seemed to have some wonderful ideas. I knew you were coming here today, David, so I invited Roger over at the same time. I meant to tell you. Roger arrived a little early… also you were late."

          She held her breath. It had taken a lot to lie so convincingly. She even believed what she had just said.

          Roger nodded. David shrugged, before saying:- "Well, you better get on with it. I thought we were going to the zoo, today."

          "Yes, the zoo. Why not? I'll finish off with Roger, then we can go." Connie smiled, relieved that her words continued to hold water.

          "The zoo?" interrupted Roger. "The zoo, yes, it could be a significant part of our plans. Perhaps I'll go there, too. Not together with you two. But separately — and we can compare notes later."

          Agreement was reached; Roger left with a deft reference to AN AYE FOR AN AYE, proving he was not an ignoramus regarding the intricacies of its plot... Convincing a surly David as to a genuine claim to be Connie's fan.

          After Roger left, Connie and David said very little of significance to each other — a set piece of small talk. They, too, left No. 34 for the zoo, after fitful sips of coffee.

                      * * *

                     

The couple's visit to the zoo was a pleasant experience, but to Connie it was more than that. She had started work on her next novel which had as its theme a zoological gardens, something she had hinted to Roger Prentiss. Whilst Connie and David meandered around the zoo they were surprised that they had managed to avoid bumping into Roger, for which David was more than thankful.

          Roger Prentiss wondered, too, why he didn't encounter David and Connie, as he traipsed around the smelly zoo, so it was simply a series of coincidence that the protagonists kept missing each other amid the maze of cages. Roger speculated on how such a zoo was allowed to subsist — especially with terribly small cages and crowded enclosures. Even the seals seemed to writhe in and out of each other like eels.

          He mopped his brow. Why had he taken upon himself to visit Connie? It was ever dangerous for characters such as he to approach potentially vulnerable women...

          Roger felt himself to be almost a nonentity and he needed the self-confidence granted to others simply noting his existence. He had tried many writers before approaching Connie Josephs. They had all supplied a tiny bit of himself. Now Connie was to be resposible for the final version of Roger Prentiss... as an electrician or handyman.

          He had not, however, accounted for her friend David. The latter's arrival at No.34 had put the cat amongst the pigeons — a complete shock, although Roger hadn't appeared to show it at the time. He could not even recall feeling such shock. Perhaps, David had been like him… once. A barely sketched out individual, yearning for fruition as a fully fleshed-out fellow.

          Roger idly watched one of the zoo-keepers sweeping down an elephant... one which idly tried to bust a concrete block with its hefty wallop of a foot. Then — from the corner of his eye — he saw a camel stalking primly across an expanse of grass which didn't seem enclosed. Had it escaped? He vaguely glimpsed — after directing his gaze upon the beast — a rider bobbing up and down, arms wrapped around the hump. But then Roger shook his head. There was no rider at all. The camel indeed was a joy-ride being led by a young girl towards a queue of little people.

                      * * *

         

David left Connie at the zoo gates. He was due to carry out some investigations in the library for the next part of her current novel. He often did such jobs for her. An amanuensis — or, even a ghost-writer,

          Connie waved at him. They had just seen a sight which had left them with an impression of magnitude and mystery. A stuffed mammoth in the museum part of the zoo, a beast that the owners had called Kubla Khan. It was one of the big attractions. She wondered if it were real. Mammoths, surely, had been extinct for almost forever, hadn't they?  She shrugged.

          She eventually arrived back at No.34, still breathless after running from the bus. She half-expected Roger Prentiss to be there. She entered and found her writing which had been interrupted earlier. Who knows where the plot would have taken her...

          She touched the light-switch. And a vast charge coursed through her body. She zig-zagged. The last thing she heard was the trumpeting as of some jungle bememoth.

David Thomas had stopped writing in the library. And smiled. The novel was finished. And already the next plot was forming in his head. The next plot, that is, for his 35th novel. Another blockbuster.

         

         

Beyond Belief

I imagined the ghost. This was because I knew such phenomena did not really exist - so what else could it be but a flip of my own mind, or a flick of the light on its last legs ahead of darkness, or a flap of a weathered window-shutter, or the flop of a dropped dressing-gown, a fleck of reflection, a flippety-gibbet that deserved less credence than a dream?

But, then, when my colleagues at work started small-talking about the ghost in my house, without me having breathed a word to them about it - in fact becoming a topic of conversation taken more for granted than that of the weather - I began to have my doubts. Not that doubt is tantamount to belief. But doubt is the next worst thing, surely.

So, I began to doubt the ghost, rather than imagine it was a freak of my mind. Its existence wavered upon the edge of tangibility, true. But it was still something I locked away in the depths of silent sleep, come the fullness of night. My dreams were full of routine matters, such as the ledger at work and colleagues who spoke as if they knew me - and a boss who did. Call him God, if you like.

Then I gradually grew aware of matters that most human beings never encounter. One was indeed the ghost. A real one, this time. No doubt about that. I had died in my sleep, you see. It was only natural. I could not claw my way out, past the dragging fingers of jealous colleagues. But a wisp of me managed it. A mere wisp. Call it the ghost, as I say. The nearest you will come to believing. The nearest to proving the old Cartesian maxim: "I doubt, therefore I am." Or was it a flip of someone else's mind, or simply an unpredictable fluke of the weather?

(Published 'Wearwolf' 1994)

It Must Have Been Toddington

The sky hung in warm wet blankets. Tim Overdale wiped threads at sweat from his hair-line, as he turned off the car's engine. He had gratuitously steered into a lay-by off the A426, not to get his bearings so much but to assure himself that the air pressure had not dropped - he had an obsession with the tyres: a deep dread of blow-out or unexpected seepage of their firmness.

Tim turned over the cassette and pushed it back into the slot on the dashboard. He began to listen as the static hiss became music, a Stabat Mater by a composer he had forgotten. Fumbling for the case, he forced himself to read his own untidy handwriting., finding that it was by Dvorak.

"Four-Jack," he whispered to himself.

Time enough to test the wheels later; he was early for his appointment anyway.

He grabbed hold of the Guardian purchased earlier in a motorway service station. Watford Gap, he seemed to remember: or had it been Toddington? Probably neither.

There was some news in the paper that the American president made all his decisions in the light (or rather, thought Tim, the dark) of Astrology. Something. to do with the alignment of planets determining whether he should venture out of the White House or not. Wonder what the man on the other side of the world thought of that, having summit meetings dependent on the cusp of Uranus!

Bored, Tim let his eyes wander: he looked out of the car window at a blurred factory chimney reaching. up into the sticky grey of the sky. Smoke started to belch from it, as if it knew it was being watched...

A sharp tap on the rear window made Tim jump - he swivelled around in his seat to see a woman staring in at him. She was smiling at him, but there was more than a hint of sadness in her eyes. He got out.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

She was in her mid to late twenties, dressed in a uniform of white blouse and navy-blue pleated shirt that came to just below the knees. Her hair was windswept, or perhaps just untidy, in view of the lack of' wind, thought Tim.

A flicker of recognition lit a dim memory in his mind - only to be snuffed out as she replied.

"I wanted to tell you that one of' your tyres is flat." Her voice was husky, as if she was suffering from a sore throat, or perhaps from trying to reach him over the loud music. She pointed to the rear nearside wheel.

Tim cursed. His immediate thought was to the spare in the boot, would that be flat too? He had not checked it for at least two days. "Thank you..."

He did not question the arrival of the woman, next to the middle of nowhere as they were. The only sign of life nearby was the factory beyond the roadside field that was speckled unnaturally bright. yellow in the gloom.

"You have a spare, don't you?"

"Yes, I think so... Don't let me keep you, I can manage. Thanks again, I might have done some damage If I'd driven off with that thing...." He pointed to the ugly rupture, the flesh of the tread splayed out on each side of the hub. Cringing, he knelt to examine the damage, inserting his finger into the various holes. This was no ordinary puncture - the whole thing had been flayed.

"Nasty business." The voice was above him.

Tim looked up. She was a peculiarly attractive woman; the outline of her bra showed vaguely through the sheeny blouse in the steel light. Her face was round, a bit puddingy perhaps, but the well-defined curves of' the lips and the spearmint eyes...

Tim wondered why he was studying her to such a degree. He had more than enough trouble on his hands now to be spending time sizing up a potential pick-up. Years ago, he was always on the look-out for female hitch-hikers. But now, what with aids... He was older too, more mature, less over-sexed, less eager. Still, his hands flexed involuntarily.

"You sure I can't help?" The words seemed to breathe into his ear.

"No - no, thanks all the same. It's a simple matter these days. Jacks are much easier to handle..."

Hearing the faint strains of music still coming from inside the car, he stood up to go and switch it off.

"I'll do it." As if reading his mind, she opened the driver's door and disengaged the cassette.

It was strange how quiet it was out here. The sky had even started to brighten up, the drizzle relenting just before he had climbed out of the car. The heat was still oppressive, damping down any sound, including the footsteps as they negotiated around each other. She was, he thought, trying to get in the way.

"You know we were meant to meet here today."

Squatting by the blow-out, Tim stared up at her, at a loss for words. What could you say to a statement like that. So he ignored it.

He went to find the jack in the boot.

The afternoon was far brighter, for the sun had burnt off the morning mists. Tim's white car was still in the lay-by. The yellow field, despite the sunshine, was no brighter, it seemed, than it had been in the morning. The colour was true. You no longer needed to study the sky to see the factory chimney - it was just plain there and not worth the notice. The odd cars that pounded along the road were merely reminders of other human beings.

Tim had the driver's seat leaning right back. A gluey heat seeped down his face, so that he could hardly see through the sticky eyelids or breathe out of the bubbling nostrils. A twitching lizard's tail peeped from between his lips.

Music played. He had not put it on, he was sure, for he did not like jazz: a husky, bluesy voice, a mix of Elkie Brooks, Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin. He could not easily decipher the words, for his ears were fast waxing up with yellowing brain...

His lower parts stank: he could not smell them, of course.

Tim suddenly realised something he had known all along - he had seen that woman before today: she had once been a hitch-hiker, unlucky enough to get the younger Tim Overdale as a lift.

The car slowly sank to its chassis.

Yes, it must have been Toddington...

***
Published 'Flickers 'n Frames' 1990

Jack The Cutter

As Therm thumbed his way towards the meanderable lanes of deepest Surrey, he maintained a picture in his mind's iritic eye of his old stamping-ground: the lamentable one-way gutters and blind alleys around St. Paul's Cathedral. He knew a dosser had to do what a dosser had to do - and that was probably die as soon as possible, both to rid himself of the world and vice versa. But death was never the easiest way out.

Of course, he could've used the services of another dosser called Jack who wielded knives in the dark like shooting stars just for the hell of it - but Therm decided he could think of better deaths than at the business end of one of those. Furthermore, he rather resented popping his cork beside some damnable City Bank. He wanted to taste sweet countryside, not only upon the pan-handle of his tongue but also with the very ends of his teeth. Only the twittering birds would suffice, he deemed, to attend his swansong, those in the beck-dripping woods further south. Not that he thought with such poetical turns of phrase and there was some doubt whether his mind generated such ill-cut gems of English prose, in any event, since he felt a larger than life force acting upon his mind - one that not only controlled his destiny like a Christian god so out of control it had forgotten about the free will of its flock, but one that also loved and hated him, in equal measures, more than any god of any religion ever could.

The lorry driver chuckled. She glanced at the hitch-hiker who was a mass of melted mutter in the passenger seat. She had never given lifts to thumbers like Therm before, so she couldn't comprehend why this old toothy toper of a tramp had managed to halt a reluctant juggernaut on the hard shoulder and wheedle his way into the cab for a lift to Ruffet Wood (where its route didn't lie, anyway). So, all she could do was chuckle: humour being the only cure for life's absurdity that humankind could ever find. The tall lights gradually faded from the sides of the road, whilst she steered between them, Therm thought, as if she were on a fairground ride. Gradually, humps of indistinct trees blackened the night around - leaving only hazy fleets of stars in the narrow inky channel above.

"Where do you want putting off, exactly?"

Therm thought her voice to be saying something quite different, since he replied: "Yes, I love you, too". And the lorry plummetted headlong into a massive tree which seemed to be planted smack in the middle of the carriageway, causing the trailer to jack-knife violently - rattling the bodies inside the cab, floppy dice in the game of Fate - and then tinning them like pig spam within a blood sump. Evidently, the Christian god hated one of them more than he loved the other. And there was very little poetry in that, other than the fact that the two iron-clad corpses of Therm and the lorry driver were discovered hand in hand by the cutting crew.

In a fleeting after-life, Therm was a woman, one without his teeth. The end of the world came suddenly, as the sun fell from the sky (faster than gravity could dictate) becoming smaller all the time, crunching towns in the near distance as it finally came to rest.

Once an undead always an undead - and Therm quickly regained his body's pigsweat. The most disturbing part was an after-life where he was female. The teeth didn't matter so much. He clutched at himself below the bedcovers in a sudden irrational fear which the resumption of reality had brought with it. Somewhat relieved, but further disturbed by the fact that he had actually seemed to need such relief, he turned over on his side to find his wife staring at him, with Jack the Cutter's luminous eyes. Her two hands each had a knife that looked like an elephant tusk.

Then he glimpsed a real after-life one which would eventually become his wife's. A Christian heaven was meant to be a home from home, wasn't it? How many times did they want telling? Her son had spilled all the cornflakes over the formica table. *And* her husband had done his favourite trick of making only one cup of tea - for himself.

"I didn't think you were getting up yet," he claimed.

"You could've brought one up, then," Therm replied in the shrill voice of his wife.

"Good job I didn't, as you're already up."

There was no winning of arguments with a pig, especially a man's man such as Therm's husband who had become a fire-officer by means of countless acts of bravery. Therm shrugged and turned her attention back to her son the piglet whose rummaging in his satchel finally gave birth to yesterday's sandwiches which he said he couldn't eat because they had too much blood inside. She was halfway through spreading a thin plasma extract on a new set, as if she were priming the surface for another generous smoothed-out dollop of fresh blood, in turn reminding her of the skidmarks on the underpants with which she was presented every other day by husband and son alike. She could not help thinking she was mad - because a mind in after-life automatically imported its own disbelief.

The house was dead quiet. Therm's husband and son had both gone. There was staccato twiddling with the wireless. Housewives' Choice was announced this week by one of her particular favourite disc-jockeys. What was his name? She couldn't get the station. The dial she twirled fine-tuned nothing but high-pitched whistles or a voice that called itself Jack. She wound herself up into a frenzy. Tying a scarf around her head in that pixied way most women did in the fifties and sixties, Therm released the heavy overcoat from the broom cupboard and bustled with it into the street. The sky was pink like the underbelly of a pig, with an aureole of teats around a faint white splodge where the moon had once been.

Organic spaceships. Unidentified Fixed Objects in the sky, sprinkler systems for a world about to catch fire. The words buzzed in Therm's head as if her bee brain had broken loose. She was Queen for a day. Nobody else about. She wandered the empty streets, weaving between the ill-parked cars, feeling herself undeserving of the senile dementia to which she had been abandoned by the head-lease dreamer. She was the tenant in a fleshy bivouac which could be sub-let no further down the scale of reality. She almost wished her two menfolk could return. At least, they presented some form of sanity, even if in the shape of teeth-tusks. The pink in the sky turned slowly black...

Therm woke from every conceivable after-life, including the one where he actually had a wife with his own name. Dressed in a cardboard suit, he levered himself over beneath the cold dark dripping arches. In the near distance sat the hunched silhouette of St Paul's Cathedral. He was alone in the whole world, neither demented nor sane. That was the worst thing of all. He tried to get back to sleep and retrieve some of the feminine wherewithal that he seemed to have in the after-life. There had been a Charles Lamb story about how civilisation invented roast pork. Such stories were almost sufficient to warm the cockles of his heart, like memories of his sandwich-making mother. He once loved the cold waking he had of it. The songs on the wireless still buzzing in his head. Would sleep never return? Could flesh be made palatable by freezing? Existence was like being encased in sheet iron which moved with the body, unfelt for most of the time. He poisefd his two protruding teeth upon the engorged arteries in his wrist. The yellow street-light flickered out, making it easier to sleep - and to welcome the cutting crew that rescued the undead from life itself.

Blacked up ready for the night, the Devil sat in his dressing-room, staring mindlessly into the mirror. His pointed face was ringed with flickering coloured light bulbs, so he could not fail to fathom his own eyes. They were staring so hard it seemed as if he were playing a make-or-break game with himself: the last to blink would explode.

Then, he plumbed such a long way, he saw a thought, an idea, a concept, a caprice, one which he did *not* want to see. Deep deep down in the dungeons of his soul where the funnel of his sight ended - deeper indeed than Hell itself - was a doubt. And never had the Devil doubted before. This doubt gnawed at his vitals and tempted him to believe that he was not the Devil at all, but a dosser called Therm: nothing but a wine-bibbing tosspot who spoke to himself in nonsensical rhyming couplets, to blot out the nagging loneliness in his heart....

There came a sharp rapping at the door: "Five minutes!" The voice was deep but heavenly sweet.

The Devil fled back up towards his sight, tussling through the blubbery membranes and red threadworms which surrounded the eyeballs. He would soon be on - if "on" is a word sufficiently weighty to convey the performance he was about to undergo, with no rehearsal, no other actors, no props, no stage to speak of, no audience....

Therm woke briefly from an undead's unnatural sleep. He sat up straight in the darkness, startling the other cardboard-suited dossers who had been lightly dozing nearby under the midnight moon. But now the moon was nothing more than an artist's careless smudge. This was because, upon the blackdrop of the sky, a circle of flashing fairy lights slowly revolved as they grew bigger or came closer.

"Blimey, they're piggin' spaceships!" muttered Therm who proceeded to squeeze his eyes shut tight like a child making pretend he was sleeping. Perhaps dreaming of tin-openers again. Or an after-life in Hell.

There was a raucous orchestra tuning up in the pit. Tap-dancing with cloven hooves was a deafening act to under-perform. So, he tip-clodded in, flowing mane coiffured by Hell's finest stylists, skewed antler-horn painted out against the scenery, forked tongue being tasted by its own guardian teeth. His mascara eyes were blinded by the searing twirling spotlights from above the seats in the gods. His innards felt like lolloping eels still alive, but he jabbed away desultorily with his furry hind-limbs. As the spots faded, he spied a spare pair of sparkles in the audience - like eyes on spikes. And Therm the vampire, thankfully, was consumed by a sleep like delicious death - too numb even to feel Jack the Cutter's preparing hands ... except from inside such hands like fingers in gloves.


Published 'Stygian Articles' 1996

The Philosophy of Love
Published 'Momentum' 1990    

‘One’s life is in itself a form of apprenticeship’, said the sailor to the girl, as the tardy afternoon began to slip on its eveningdress.

 

He was on leave from his ship: the Captain’s favourite, for his more than just a spark of intelligence compared to the rest of the crew. He had often been invited to the Officers’ table, to spin a yarn or two, to plait a tale, to hold forth on all matters philosophical, spiritual and mundane.

 

The port which the ship was visiting on this occasion was an occidental one, well beyond its beaten track seeking new customers. The arrayed cranes, lifting from the docksides, were huge stick insects, totems to some higher industry quite beyond the compre­hension even of one sailor with the uncommon nous.

 

His bearing-place was tucked away cosily within the gleaming gulf of the Home Territories, easier than the ship’s customers could even imagine; so it was unsurprising that the recipients of the ocean spice trails here in the waters of Upper Europe and the providers of such from the Home Territories could never meet cultures eye to eye.

 

Our sailor had discovered the girl lolling against a large bollard, mooning the time away till she could ply her trade more properly, she said, in the darker hours. He was immediately attracted to the uncanny planes of her face, compared to his own high cheekbones and sunken narrow eyes: her eyes were wide and innocent-seeming, he thought, also reading the lines of her features as he would a mandala or natal chart at home. In short, she was to him, a dreamboat

 

‘Wha’ d’ya saaay?’

 

Her voice too, was deep for one so fair, with a lilt and dialect fit for a fairy-tale princess. He found it difficult to follow her drift, because of the unusualness of the speech rhythms; but he took it with a pinch of salt, got the bit between his teeth and carried on without bothering to backtrack, confident that her all-encompassing mental nets would be able to trawl any­thing with which he could sow her feminine tides.

 

‘And being an apprenticeship, one shoud learn everything one can before embarking on the voyage beyond death.’

 

‘Aaay?’

 

Our sailor winced. This was the first time he had come across one who answered so readily. It was almost off-putting to talk along the knife-edge of such a sensitive audience. Her responses were so very much to the point ...

 

But then he continued: ‘By logic, there can only be one religious faith, that which represents the belief in the positive aspect of death. A faith without this as its paramount tenet would not be worth the parchment it s written on. Accept that as an incontravertible premiss, and all religions become one in such a faith. God is that faith. Faith is that God. God is not an entity with omnipowers, not an anthropomorphic puppet master ...’

 

‘Gor blimey mate, ‘as yer ‘ed swallowed yer tung?’

 

By now the sun had risen elsewhere in the world, probably in the Home Territories he surmised; the mist was gathering apace linking sea and land with trans­lucent mountains of dream, the coloured decklights of our sailor’s ship still seen bobbing spasmodically in the uncertain tide. A chill clung to his bones.

 

He deci’ed it was now high time to offer some spice as a reward for her kind attention. After all, it was in the nature of his race to chat up the local population in new client lands. The spice would no doubt hotten her bland stews ...

 

He passed her a free sample packet, with a smile. ‘I hope this complimentary gift supplements thy already warm heart ...’

 

‘Ey up guv, I don’ wan’ any of yer bleedin’ smack. It’s comin’ out our ears ‘ere, any rate. I only per­form for hard loot…’

  

She hesitated, then snatched the packet and darted off into the dirty underclothes of the night.

 

 

As our sailor rowed himself back to the ship, the gentle rippling of the oily sea as music to his ears, he determined to retain at least some of the wisdom he’d heard in the Upper European land for the benefit of the Officers’ table. The natives’ arcane rituals of gift-taking were a sight for sore slits.

 

Fanblade Six

A fable that has disappeared when it’s its time to be read and be absorbed and tested for truth or for life’s applicability is a fanblade fable. Yet when one can hear it sighing flickeringly in the background like Debussy injected straight into the vein, it becomes soon enough une jalousie sur le vent de la mer..

< Anything in French is a fable without even reading it! > thought Hiver Jawn, if he became a grown-up thinking back to when he was a child, and the sea was his real mother and his bedroom’s venetian blind a rattling that he never heard because it was always a rattling.

 

Ursula Urquhart
URSULA URQUHART

First published 'Inkshed' 1989



Mrs Urquhart was a woman who thought she knew everything about everything. But she knew nothing about imagination. Either things were or things weren’t.

But, eventually, she was to discover that between either “either” and the “or” was a space large enough to hold a whole ocean of things that neither were nor weren’t.

Mrs Urquhart, let’s he honest, was not a strikingly pretty woman, though it is not too far beyond the bounds of belief that she was once passably attractive when she finally left the school that had been the whole of her life up to the age of 14. Her headmaster - and only the memories of some of those ex-pupils who attended that school (none of whom I have been able to track down) would he able to remember his name - patted her on the head and said: “Ursula, one day. I have no doubt...” (but he did have some doubt, as all have who say “no doubt”) “…you will get married and have a clutch of bonny babes...” (his turn of phrase had much to be desired. for a headmaster) “…but always remember your old headmaster’s advice, beware of easy virtue, there is many an evil man who would do anything to catch a sight of your unclothed bosom - spurn them, I say, give them no truck. And, if they only want to feel them through your clothes, I have no doubt that you will give them the edge of your tongue and the look of your old-fashioned eves...” (and at this point, the headmaster would always stare up at the ceiling) “…and may Our Saviour Lord Who looks ever upon His flock and about Whom We have spent all our time here teaching you - may He cast plagues upon those who accost you in such an unseemly manner...”

Ursula Maybury (as she was then known) did not reply. But as she ironed her aprons. come her fifty-first year, she unaccountably recalled that interview, so strange in retrospect. She also recalled many other things that queued up for recalling…

Her craft of life had often hit reefs since leaving school and had been sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where other half-putrid fish-heads such as she was fast becoming would drift and dangle where the tides took them in and out of the darkest sea-caves of’ desolation and dissolution.

She rubbed hard with the edge of the iron to remove a particularly stubborn crease, but her mind was elsewhere. If she actually thought about what she was doing, she would no doubt not do it at all: probably true of all women who end up ironing aprons only so that they can wear them.

The men in her life had been many and various. One had led her into parts of the city she previously didn’t know existed, where fire escapes were bent and twisted into painful sculptures around living ghosts of those that once had failed to climb down them in time. Another took her from those parts to a town by the sea - and on the pier she played bingo and, come winter, when it was all boarded up. she took herself along the prom, seeking out those men of whom her headmaster had once warned her.

Each lover (if that word is not too kind to describe those to whom I refer) had a way about him that distinguished him from the others. One with eyes like dark pools caught heron his hook, line and sinker and showed her what else lurked along the sea-bed of his soul. The next had no soul at all, but what he had instead was nothing of which Our Saviour Lord could have knowledge, she thought, for it had sucking sides and utter emptiness...

And many others, each different from the next, but each with the similarity of hating her as much as they loved her.

Then. one day (exactly when I’m not certain), there came Urquhart. whose soul was even emptier than the one with sucking sides.

But, first, let me put us in the picture: she left the seaside town because she could no longer stand the stench of the fish. She bid farewell to the men she’d known, one by one, and it goes without saying there were a few words of recrimination and a thousand if onlys...

She played her last game of bingo, which turned out to be her first win: a cuddly teddy hear - which she immediately named aftter her late headmaster - was passed over to her with a few souvenir beer bottletops (that were used to cover the numbers called). Thrusting it into her bosom, she fled with ne’er a backward glance.

She tramped to the edge of town where she hitched a lift back to the city ... and he who picked her up on that fateful night was none other than Urquhart.

He was not going to the city but, to cut what is a long story short, he took her the whole way. wrote a farewell letter to whom he called his girl friend somewhere on the south coast and set up home with the future Mrs Urquhart.

But Urquhart had a secret: a secret of which even now his wife is unaware and, I suspect, he himself does not fully comprehend it. He does not exist. He never existed. And he never will. She did not guess for he acted quite normally, bringing in a goodly wage by selling policies to the dying, but filling her bed with fishy farts, teasing her up with his timely foreplay, widening out her defences (which were still spinsterish despite her many seaside lovers), entering her mouth with his searching tongue, splicing the mainbrace of her innards, dreaming of her, making her dream of him, and all manner of such devices to make her believe that he was as real as the next man.

Either she was a fool or she cared not at all whether he existed or she cared even less whether she herself existed ... or tickling her teddy bear into fits of telling laughter or seeing her headmaster in bed with her tut-tutting between her breasts or Urquhart becoming, if nothing else, a vision of Her Saviour Lord...

But more than one “or” after an “either” makes no sense at all. She was indeed a fool to believe that either things were or things weren’t. And now even she had no doubt gone, leaving nothing but an empty apron crumpled on the kitchen floor.

Madame Claudia

The first indication I had of Claudia’s arrival was the fuss and bother in the foyer. I was despatched to represent management - yet imagine my trepidation at the reputation that went before Claudia.

My speech had been instantly prepared as the fast down lift proceeded to turn my stomach over: “I welcome you, Madame Claudia, to our small but prestigious hotel wherein the mind is as important as the body. No untoward entertainments, such as the bonzo on an electric organ playing ‘A Bird In A Gilded Cage’ to a samba beat, nor the ugly belly dancer wobbling her oversized bosom to an amplified accordion accompaniment nor, even, the unmitigated tides of inconsequential musak that all other hotels allow to infiltrate their lobbies, lifts and powder rooms.”

 

I had another section of the speech to make where I would have invited her to try every bed in all our rooms to find the one, if any, that fitted her best - but I was loudly and rudely interrupted by her male companion. I was previously unaware of his existence this side of nullity, mainly because he hid among the concertina pleats of her voluminous skirt.

 

“Fetch me the manager!” he whined. “My mistress here has in fact a great interest, both spiritual and financial, in the provision of the subtle wallpaper harmonies and melodies to which I take it you have just referred so pejoratively as musak.” He paused to take on board his Claudia’s approving look, which she accomplished with an indistinguishable flick of the peacock mask that she held up before her face. “My mistress who even now stands before you as she has graced so many hotel foyers in the past is indeed the daughter of the inventor of the music sublimator device that allows the tape-loops of popular, catchy tunes (such as ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’ and ‘Que Sera, Sera’) to be played without surcease directly into the consciousness without the need of passing through the ears first.”

 

He gloated, but not for long, since I replied: “My dear sir, I can only agree. I assure you that we have managed to reap the full potential of your Madame Claudia’s Father’s excellent sublimator. We have so painstakingly refined and worked it into the characteristic acoustics of the soul, that we can all now relish its pure, golden and incontrovertible silence which was no doubt the ultimate nirvana of its purpose.”

 

It was my turn to gloat. I breathed, in waiting. The lady did not remove her mask but I could tell she was surveying me with great interest. “REALLY?” Her voice was one I imagined a fat goose would have if its neck was a musical instrument and it was afraid of Christmas. She held up her hand as if to prevent me speaking again, but it was really her way of casting curses, as I was to discover soon enough, since all my orifices (alimentary, respiratory, sexual, optic and aural) clammed up with thick impenetrable hymens.

 

And, then, of course, I endured consecutively: suffocation, hunger, bladder rupture, bowel upheaval, a menses-surge into the lungs and, consequently, a little less hunger from being force-fed my own loose innards. But the real horror was the incessant minimalist singing music caused by my body’s own processes within the ears dammed-up cavities. Or was I being kept alive for something far more insidious, far more soul-wrenching than all this mere apocalypse of the flesh?

 

Yet all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. The lady, if not Claudia, turned out to be the lumpy belly-dancer, with her midget accordion-accompanist, whose private performance had been specially requested by the honeymoon couple in the Royal Suite - between the pate-de-­foie-gras starter and the main course.

 

(published 'Daarke World' 1993)