Stubs

Dot writes:

fiction isn’t happening for me and hasn’t been for a while. It’s not that I don’t have ideas, just that none of them go anywhere. They are sedentary ideas, reluctant to venture into the January wet, slumped in front of their computers. Is it worth getting any of these moving?

Quiche Lorraine

Quiche Lorraine is a heroine who works as a canteen lady at a tech firm. Once, helping to unload the Tescos delivery at the back of the office block, she spotted a nefarious character seeking to enter without a lanyard. Thinking quickly, she threw a quiche in his face and he gave up the attempt. Thus her name. Few people know how she got it but the ones who do recognise it’s a badge of honour.

Dazzle

The problem with Sean was that he had no real interest in anything anybody else said or did. He was very generous, very kind – he’d buy you dinner, or a jumper you liked, or tickets to a film he’d just seen and wanted to tell you about. He was popular with small children because he knew a few magic tricks and was always delighted to show them off. He liked to tell people things he knew, such as the way Teflon pans are made or how events were misrepresented in the currently popular TV history drama. However, if you knew more about that particular historical period than he did he was never going to find out. He would never stop talking for long enough for you to mention it.

So Louisa thought, sourly. The shine had long worn off him as far as she was concerned. Or, rather, she’d realised he was the sort of bright light that only made everything else seem darker – a localised dazzle that didn’t illuminate. And she herself was especially cast into shade, practically invisible, in fact – Sean’s sister and, thanks to personal setbacks, currently, reluctantly, his housemate – appearing briefly on the edge of his sociable evenings to boil a kettle and disappear again. But there are things you can do in the dark.

Knot

The girl under the lamp-post smiled happily. She knew she had done well. Duncan had only managed to get a bollard. Kelly was pretending a wheelie-bin was an achievement but, really, it was a flimsy thing and not even fixed to the ground. Look at her tying herself on with pathetic thoroughness, as though you could solve everything with a sufficiently complicated knot. Sometimes it didn’t matter how hard you worked or how clever you were; it was just about where you were standing. The girl under the lamp-post pushed against the belt that strapped her to it, to check it would hold firm.

 

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A Walk in the Dark

It was past 6 o’clock on Halloween and already dark as she crossed the road into the Yew Grove estate, the little duffle-coated figure trailing behind her. Oh, how tired she was, how she longed to get home and shut out all the posturings and jargon of her day, but he hadn’t wanted to leave his childminder – he’d refused to fetch his things, wanted to stay in the warm watching tv, and she’d got angry and said there’d be no trick or treating, since he couldn’t do what he was told. And certainly the idea of tramping from house to house smiling politely while hissing at him to say thankyou made her want to scream. But it was mean of her, she knew. She’d tell him he could go after all, just as soon as it was decent to relent. Meanwhile he was dawdling. He was in a sulk.

The houses in this estate were large and blank for the most part: neat blinds, trimmed borders, prosperous cars on brick-paved drives. There weren’t many children here, but a few people had decorated for Halloween, and they hadn’t settled for home-made cutouts or plastic skeletons from Centra. One house had a row of ragged scarecrows in the garden and a single pumpkin carved into a leering face; another had a giant black spider on the wall. “How clever,” she said to herself, but her pace quickened. “Hurry up!” she called to her son.

As she rounded the corner it turned quieter and far darker. Two of the streetlights weren’t working; instead of their yellow glow there was an intermittent white flicker which she realised after a moment must come from LED projectors. On the side of the nearest house a procession of stooped, bony shapes endlessly crept along the wall. Further on wispy ghosts scattered into the eaves. Behind, now the noise of the main road had receded, she could hear the stubborn little footsteps. Suddenly, a great shadow swept across the pavement, so dark she couldn’t help but jump and cry out – what was that? It looked like a clawed, grasping hand, but it missed her, thank god – and of course it must just be another projection, but what a horrible one! She scuttled a few yards more and then stopped and waited. “Hurry up! Run and hold my hand!” She heard him stumble, and looked back, but for a moment she couldn’t see him at all, and the dark lay over the pavement. Then there he was, walking on at the same pace as before. Well, be like that! If he wasn’t scared, he was tougher than she was. She turned and resumed walking.

Round another corner, and they were out of the Yew Tree estate and into the brighter and smaller streets of their own neighbourhood. Soon she’d be able to turn on the television, put on a kettle for pasta, make tea. She hurried to her front door, opened it and flicked on the lights. The small figure finally caught up to her; she let him in and firmly closed the door. And then gazed in horror at the blank white eyes of the creature that was no longer her son.

 

Door (revised)

[This is a revision of the story I posted a week ago. The main changes are to the end.]

Door

Once upon a time there was a boy who had a little door in his belly that he could put things inside. He was embarrassed about it and didn’t tell anyone, even his parents. He still ate food as normal but sometimes he knew he needed something for the door. Usually it was only something small. Once he placed the thing inside, It might disappear, or it might change, or it might wait. The boy worried about being so strange and he didn’t want to be laughed at, but he had to accept this was how it was for the present.

What does she see in him?

What does she see in him? He certainly doesn’t know. Her mam thinks he must be controlling. Her sister thinks he must be great at oral. Her friends go for pop psychology: he’s the manifestation of her low self-esteem, she doesn’t rate herself high enough to find a fella who’s actually attractive, or funny, or successful in any way. She wants to be wanted and he’s hopelessly needy.

They’re all wrong.

Look at them, sitting together on the bus: he fills a bit more than half of the seat, he’s got a summer cold and keeps sniffing honkily, you can see the roll of belly fat bulging in his blue t-shirt. He yawns, and at the peak of the yawn he also burps. She’s cuddled up beside him hugging his arm, with her blonde dye-job, brown roots, style-statement tilt-cornered glasses. She’s talking in his ear about nothing – oh look, the petrol station’s closed, was that one Maxol, nice new houses there, used to get off here to visit Lisa, did you ever meet Lisa, ah she’s gas, great craic altogether, in Manchester now or is it Bradford. He’s braced against his headache, leaning into the pain: left forehead, left sinus. He kept off the booze last night but at what cost. Trying to be a better man. Which man would that be, then.

Off with the fairies

Her hat and gardening gloves were on the bench, but Granny was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s wandered off again,” called Anne.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Martin called back from the conservatory, without looking up from the paper.

“I thought you were keeping an eye on her,” replied Anne.

“She’s fine,” repeated Martin. “Stop fussing. She wanted to do some weeding.”

“Well she isn’t weeding and I can’t see her anywhere in the garden. She wasn’t behind the bushes when I went to throw the scraps out. I’ll have to check the back lane.”

“She’ll turn up. Don’t worry about it.”

“Or maybe she’s gone off down the shops. On Tuesday she bought five boxes of After Eight Mints and a loo brush. You could at least help.” Anne had come back in and was standing over him reproachfully.

“Like I said, she’ll turn up. She always does. She’s indestructible.”

“She’s certainly vigorous. She’s stronger than me. But mentally – completely off with the fairies. It’s impossible – and just when I was starting to cook dinner. Look, Martin, she’s your mother. I’ll check upstairs in case she’s – I don’t know, painting magical swirls on the wallpaper with lipstick or something, and then I’ll go to the shops. You do the back lane.”

Sighing, Martin folded the paper. He stood up slowly. He went to the door, opened it, and ambled down the path to the sheltered arbour where, as it turned out, his mother was sitting on the bench with her hat on her head and her gloves in her lap.

“There you are, mum,” he said. “Perhaps you should come in now. Anne is fretting.”

“I’ll come when I’m good and ready,” said his mother.

“Fine, fine,” said Martin. He went back to his paper.

Granny waited a little longer until she was sure the sparkles from the portal behind her were completely gone and it was safe to get up from the bench. She patted her pocket. Wonderful stuff, this magic dust. Perhaps it was reckless to get the habit at her age, but it made her feel brilliant and my goodness she needed it living with that pair. As she walked back to the house she calculated she could nip to the shop after dinner. This time, the fairies wanted Milk Tray.

What’s up duck

On Noah’s Ark the ducks had started a jazz band and it was almost unbearable, though perhaps marginally easier to deal with at close quarters than the African Large Mammals’ Morris-Dancing Collective (to whom, after initial resistance, Noah had yielded the use of the foredeck every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. The rhinos were persuasive negotiators). Mr Duck had recently taken up the saxophone, while Mrs Duck fancied herself as a sultry crooner. They had recruited the moorhens, the geese, the female flamingo and a coot to be the rest of the band, with, on drums, a platypus from whom they would soon part owing to irreconcilable creative differences. They practised assiduously and promised to put on a concert as soon as they were ready.

 

“Is there any sign of land yet?” Noah asked Mrs Noah, as they huddled in their cabin, doing their best to relax with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

“My budgie had a look around earlier,” said Mrs Noah, “and she says there’s still twenty feet of water over the highest mountain top and aggressive mer-people have colonised the city of Uruk.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you learn from tweets,” said Noah. “But the dove said the same yesterday about the twenty feet of water. I wish I could get off this boat. The noise is appalling.”

“The hedgerow birds’ choral singing is quite good,” said Mrs Noah, who believed in positive thinking and was also slightly deaf.

“If only they didn’t do it at dawn,” groaned Noah. “Whose stupid idea was this ark nonsense, anyway?”

“It was God’s,” said Mrs Noah.

The Saved

“I want to do burlesque,” said the hen. “A striptease. I’ll take my feathers off, one by one. Would you like me, like that? Would you think I looked tasty?”

The cat said nothing. Why did she have to say these things? It was the sacred rule of the Ark, the foundation on which everything rested – you didn’t eat your fellow passengers. Look, there was the lion, lying down with the lamb, not even drooling.

“Or a magic trick. Saw the head off the lady. I’ll keep on dancing. Oh, how beautifully I would dance, if I couldn’t think.”

“It’ll be over soon,” he said, without looking at her. “The waters are already receding. You can lay your eggs and raise your chicks and be happy.”

“Oh yes, of course. Repopulating the earth. The brood-mother of nations. What an honour.” She laughed bitterly.

“Look, we didn’t ask for this,” said the cat quietly. “We aren’t to blame for our luck or for what happened to the others. What kind of a world is it going to be if all we do in it is mourn?”

“I don’t want to mourn. I want to dance. I want to die of music.”

 

There were songbirds on the gunwales, blackbirds, starlings, swallows, finches, rising and calling and fluttering over each other with a constant rippling motion; below them, the sunlight dazzled on the water. There was no sail, because there was nowhere to go. Noah and his family were busy with the work of the ship, sluicing and scrubbing and tending their stores.

 

“I was a temple cat,” said the cat, “in the city of Uruk, at the temple of Ishtar. The front of the temple was faced with coloured tiles of white and blue and the white steps to the gate were washed each day. The statues were gilded and the temple women wore circlets of gold wire and gold rings in their ears. Men came to couple with the women, in honour of the goddess, and to make sacrifices. They killed doves and lambs. Then the bones and scraps were thrown on the refuse heaps at the back of the temple, which grew bigger every year and stank, swarming with rats and buzzing with flies. The dark ooze seeped from the rubbish and ran down to the river. There was always sickness in the city, but the people went on worshipping Ishtar, who brought them prosperity and made things grow.”

“It sounds horrible,” said the hen.

“It was a good life for a cat,” said the cat. “There was plenty to eat and the women were kind to me. There was one I remember. She would stroke me and share fish with me when she had some. She was trying to save the trinkets the men gave her so she could buy an inn when she was too old to work in the temple – she’d put them in an old oil jar she kept in the corner – but she never managed to save very much; she kept shaking the trinkets out again and exchanging them for new sandals or wine.”

“Was there music in the temple?”

“Oh yes, lots. Voices, flutes, drums, harps. Formal music for the goddess, worksongs for cooking and washing, lullabies for the babies, story-songs for the fireside. But mostly love-songs, because Ishtar is the goddess of love.”

“Will you sing me one of the songs?”

“My singing was never encouraged. But my point is, it was always going to end. They knew it. The woman I told you about knew she couldn’t live that life forever, that her youth was passing; and everyone knew that the stink and the filth were getting worse and worse. They talked about cleaning it up, they had a lot of quarrels and arguments, but they never changed anything. So, in the end, the change simply happened. And I suppose we have to make the best of it.”

“All my life I’ve loved music. I used to like to sit at roost and hear the people singing in the evenings. Entertainers would come to the village and I’d dream of all the places they’d been to that they were carrying in their music. I’m really not suited to be the mother of all hen-kind, you know. I’m dreamy and impractical, I was always quite low down the pecking order…”

“You’ll be fine,” said the cat.

“I wonder what we’ll find to eat, when we get off the boat? I just used to follow the flock, before. I guess there’ll be loads of, what do you call it, alluvial mud, and that makes things grow, doesn’t it? And bugs coming up, like after the rains? Well, it is after the rains.”

“I’m planning to stick close to the humans. There’s always something to scavenge where the humans are.”

“Yes, all the mice and little birds and things will stay around the humans. Have you ever had a bird as big as me?”

“To be honest I was more of a mouse man. And just stealing things and getting treats from the women.”

“Don’t you want me?”

“You’re a very fine hen.”

There was a silence and then the hen began to speak once more.

“It’s going to be hard, starting again. I’m frightened but I’ll simply have to try, because there isn’t any other way. There won’t be much time to think, I suppose – the humans will be building and sowing and chopping and making, and I’ll be fussing over my chicks and learning to forage for whatever there is to eat, wherever we end up living. But I want you to promise that one day you’ll come to me, when the sun is setting, and you’ll sing me the songs of Ishtar. I’ll dance for you, and then I’ll lie down, I won’t struggle at all, and you’ll eat me all up.”

“I promise. I’ll savour every bit.”

“I’m glad we’ve had this time together.”

 

Noah’s family had finished their chores and the sons sat down to rest on the deck while the women went below to cook the evening meal. Noah had gone into his cabin. Now he came out with a dove on his hand. He whispered in its ear. Then he raised his hand and sent it forth, and it went out to search the face of the waters, looking for the first rebirth of land.

A Ghost Story

At the waning of the year I gather my ghosts. This is their time, in that dark pause, when between the bustle of Christmas and the trudge of January the memories return, drifting from familiar walls, pooling under lamps. Like the living, the dead want to be heard, but they are more confused than the living and fainter, thinner – shreds of old love and pain. I try to listen and piece them together. I give them four walls to stop them wandering.

There’s the lost child. “Mother, mother,” he calls, from very long ago. “Here I am, dear,” I say. It’s all he wants. It quiets him for a while. And then there’s the angry ghost who cries “Justice!” and makes his case to me – oh, it’s only jabberings now, and the dream he gives me of the scaffold and the noose – but there is no justice, only time. Some are faded to whispers with the centuries; some have stories I’ve tried to complete, with discreet researches in the newspaper archives. The detective side is fascinating, though I don’t like to travel and go into the city rarely. The poltergeist shook itself into nothing in the pantry when I gave it jars to throw. I swept out the glass and was glad this is such a big house, so far back from the road.

It was in the road I found some of them, chilling the hollows or rattling in the hedges, or rather they found me and followed me back. The ghosts recognize a listener. A sensitive, as some would say, though I’d almost say an insensitive, for they don’t frighten me and never have. I can comb through their pangs and terrors and stay apart. I confer a little order. It is my work now.

The Dressing-Up Box Nativity Play

This is a nativity play designed for the needs of the modern parent i.e. it uses only costumes that the average time-poor, pointless-crap-rich family already owns. It preaches a message of love, acceptance and extreme laziness highly pertinent to our frantic society.

SCENE ONE

A generic nativity play set with stars and stuff. Enter Mary (a princess) and Batman. All their luggage is piled on the back of a patient grey zombie.

Song: “Little zombie”

Mary We need somewhere to rest. I am about to have a baby and our zombie is very tired.

Batman knocks in mid-air.

Batman Is there room in the inn?

Witch No, but you can sleep in the stable where I keep all the ghosts, vampires and ghouls.

Enter ten children in their Halloween costumes.

Song: “A Wraith in a Manger”

Narrator (a knight) Mary had her baby and she called him Jesus. She laid him in the manger.

Ghost Wooooooo, what a beautiful baby!

Count Dracula He looks tasty.

Mary (indulgently) Count Dracula, you need to learn about the spirit of Christmas!

SCENE TWO

Still the same generic nativity play set, only now Mary, Batman and all the Halloween characters sit down at the side of the stage to indicate we can’t see them.

Narrator And there were superheroes abiding in the fields, keeping watch over the city by night.

Enter six or seven superheroes.

Song: “O little town of Bethlehem, how full you are of crime” 

Narrator Suddenly, the sky was full of princesses.

Enter fifteen princesses. Fourteen of them are Elsa from “Frozen”. The fifteenth is Xena, Warrior Princess, as she has a geeky mum who does cosplay.

Song: “The people that walked in darkness have Xena great light”

Xena, Warrior Princess Be not afraid! A child has been born in the city of Bethlehem who will save everybody much better than you do. However, he is being menaced by Count Dracula.

The superheroes have a quiet but intense argument among themselves.

Spiderman We will go to see him and bring him presents.

SCENE THREE

Same as Scene One but now with all the superheroes. The superheroes present the baby with a random selection of cuddly toys, weapons, pokémon cards etc.

Count Dracula This baby must be important, but I am getting very hungry.

Superman Don’t you dare try it, Dracula! We defeated you before!

Song: “Last Christmas, we skewered your heart”

By the way (thanks to Comics Alliance):

SCENE FOUR

Nothing about the stage has changed, except perhaps a small ghoul has fallen off it. Enter three wise Jedi: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Song: “We three kings escaped the Death Star”

Obi-Wan Kenobi We felt a disturbance in the Force and set out to bring gifts to the newborn king.

Luke We bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh-derous lightsabers.

The Jedi lay the lightsabers beside the crib.

Count Dracula I admit it, I can’t harm this baby. There’s simply too much peace and goodwill around. From now on I will give up sucking blood and eat only foil-wrapped chocolate coins and chestnut stuffing.

Everybody Hooray! Count Dracula has discovered the spirit of Christmas!

Song: “Dracul, the sharp-toothed vampire”

Darth Vader Jesus, I am your father.

Teacher Stop it, Nathan, that’s not in the Bible.

Song: “Have yourself a very mixed-up Christmas”

 

THE END