Mild Christmas

It was a mild Christmas.

I had decided to go outside for a breath of fresh air - fresher than my mother’s parlour, in any event. Of course, Mum had originally been delighted with the prospect of having us altogether with her for Christmas. My family of wife and children lived with me on the other side of the country, if countries can have sides, or even fronts and backs. I had thus conveniently maintained it was difficult to sort out the logistics for more regular visits. She accepted this, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that she would have lifted up hills to let us through.

I sauntered down the garden path, where, as a small child, I had played at being Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Watching the lugubrious clouds curdle across the near benighted sky, I abruptly noticed a sleigh rough-riding upon an inverted cone of condensation, drawn by a flight of scrawny reindeers with knotted antlers. The occupant of the sleigh was a Plug-Ugly with a scar laddering down his cheek, designer white stubble and a bag marked SWAG on his shoulder. His snow-laced tunic was a syrupy red and thus mightily peculiar in the context.

“Oi! Oi!” he yo-ho-hoed in a snarl, “nobody’s getting presents this year, except for moi!”

I made my way back to my mother’s house thoughtfully. I was indeed somewhat sad because both my children had been killed only a few months before Christmas in a particularly gruesome road accident. My boyhood sweetheart of a wife had since run off with my oldest bestest friend. I wondered if there was anything in the superstition that bad luck came in threes. I vowed to break something valuable when I returned inside the house.

Mum had already made it abundantly clear that she wanted me to stuff the huge turkey ready for tomorrow’s festivities. Pity there would only be place-settings for her and me at the family table. Sellotaped to the front door was the usual three-dimensional plastic image of a jolly old man in a red cape with billowing white beard. Somehow, I could not summon up the rightful Yuletide spirit. Yet, before entering, I planted a false smile upon my lips, so as not to let the side down.

Later, as we prepared for an early night, my mother announced: “I’m going to leave a nice glass of Sherry and a warm mince pie in the fireplace for Father Christmas.” I nodded absent-mindedly.

(published ‘Drift’ 1998)

Green Twist


First published 'Shorts From Surrey' 1993

Hector spent most of his waking hours doing jigsaw puzzles. It never crossed his mind that he might be wasting his life, for he found the whole activity relaxing, absorbing, generally civilised and, yes, cathartic.

He became so expert, he speedily progressed from the large chunky pieces designed for the short-witted, towards those that numbered their pieces in thousands. Then there were the ones with bits bearing malformed joints and appendages. He even had puzzles which eventually formed pictures in scales of life to life and larger...

As the carriage clock on the mantelpiece kept the silence in rigorous shape and, with the heavy-duty curtains half-pulled across the net-choked window, he propped the huge purpose-built board upon his spreading middle-aged beer-belly of a lap, emptied the contents of a wickedly difficult jigsaw into the cracked china chamber-pot beside him and proceeded to fit the whole affair together... without recourse to the picture on the box-lid and working from the middle outwards. Years of experience had made him a dab hand, as wily as a snake.

He purchased spanking new boxes from the Dickensian toy shop nearby with the big bay window. There were always stacks of them on the shelves - in fact, the place seemed to sell little else. The toothbrush-moustached shopkeeper knew Hector’s little foibles very well and chose the next puzzle for him, so that Hector need not look at the box-lid. The shopkeeper was indeed one of those rare breeds who believed the customer was always right…even when he was wrong. He knew that the time was approaching when Hector would be entirely dissatisfied with straightforward jigsaws. One had to be cruel to be kind, even if it meant tempting Hector beyond the edge.

Back home, Hector excitedly stripped off the cellophane with blunt fingernails, whilst keeping his eyes tightly averted, and poured the contents with a sensuous jiggling noise into the freshened chamber-pot.

One day, he was particularly pleased, because the shopkeeper had told him that the new puzzle had a picture that was really awe-inspiring. Something about Eve and the Tree of Knowledge. Always pleased with religious themes, Hector was bound to be satisfied with the end result. And the box contained more pieces than any other that the shopkeeper had ever seen in his experience. No two pieces the same shape. More than life size, he wouldn’t mind betting.

As the innards of the clock gave out an uncharacteristic whirring, jarring noise, Hector began to pick out bits one by one from the chamber-pot. His ultimate knack was to be lucky with the first few samples. Then he built up the picture, detail by minute detail, gradually obtaining an overview of the subject-matter, colours blending, form from form, shapes born, evolving, extruding...

Today was a dark day. The sky lugubrious. The street lamps lit earlier than usual. At first, he couldn’t believe the outline which was emerging upon the lap board. Snake scales. Mottled hide. Winding coils of microscopically diamond-quartered skin. Hooked teeth, whiter than he could ever credit a jigsaw reproducing. As he headed out towards the straight bits, he felt sickness constricting his throat. He couldn’t account for his feelings. But, then, horror-struck, he realised there were no straight bits... and the chamber-pot was nearly empty.

He desperately searched for the box-lid in the gloom, finally discovering it in the coal scuttle. He barely discerned a rather picturesque view of St Paul’s Cathedral, a majestic landlocked square-rigger set against the bluest sky that could only be seen in picture-books.

The contents had obviously been stashed in the wrong box.

Hector rushed over to the chamber-pot to be violently sick.

There was merely a pause for tension.

As he began to sense the pulsing spirals of slime slide up his bare leg, he remembered he had forgotten to switch on the light in his puzzle-solving haste. However, he could see that his skin was a mosaic of green scales, wet to the eye, but dry to the forked flicker of his own tongue.

He fled to the mirror... but his by now could only reflect its own darkness. He thought he must have become a monster that had only managed to escape because there were no straight bits forming the jigsaw’s margins to keep it in. He spun back across the parlour on this one-leg tail and instinctively planted his fangs into his own belly, grateful that he was sufficiently double-jointed to recycle the venom.

****

Made Flesh
MADE FLESH

Dick Wiles' childhood Teddy was frayed at the ear-ends, threadbare in the belly, loose by the limb and more than a trifle doleful at the loose eyes. A sorry sight, but one he loved.

Some people said it might be valuable - such ancient toys were now part of the great revolution of memorabilia. In fact Dick had thought the whole thing was going too far, since nostalgia seemed to be catching up with the present day itself! He cringed at the idea of teddy bears, such as his, passing through the sparkle-nuggetted hands of antique dealers.

He stared at Teddy, its eyes brighter today. Tears made eyes brighter. Rotted the stitches.

Then, Dick had a girl friend called Val. A strange creature, if ever there was one. She pointed out that the jet liners skimming as close to the top of the blue as possible, with strung-out streamers of cloud, looked like Christian crosses - reminding those of us below that God was everywhere. Symbols of pantheism.

SHE was beyond charisma. She was evangelism incarnate, whose cause was merely self-evident. Her eyes literally beamed faith. Why she got hold of Dick Wiles was a mystery, but that did not matter: mystery was the bedrock she built herself upon

She wanted nothing from him, other than the sounding-board of his wide-eyed face. Dick shambled around, tending to her needs. He wanted nothing from her, only recognition and her acceptance. He'd never known what there was with girls, in any event. In the first blush of womanhood, Val was far more pretty than was good for her. She did not harness up her ripening breasts, merely expected everyone to ignore them, as they prodded the loose silk of her blouse. Her open leg stance was one more of innocence than flaunting. The short leather skirts were simply artefacts of convenience. She just had to wear SOMETHING, didn't she? The high heels were a trifle superfluous, but she preferred teetering to padding: made her feel more human and less like an animal. Also something to do with hair-shirts, not being able to balance properly, toes so compressed they became raging wicks of fire.


Hated Dick's Teddy, she did. Loathed the furry little bundle. Said it was worse than a false idol. If God had meant men to have comforters He would have made soft christs on crucifixes.

No doubt, Dick's Teddy hated HER.

Dick recalled the old days, far too recent for comfort. Val had eloped with Teddy. Her parting words were that it was the supremest hate-love-indifference relationship she could possibly hope to have. As the jumbo jets droned loneliness into the night, Dick Wiles tried to look down at his belly . . . with the stuffing coming out from below. His blunted hands couldn't even attempt to stuff it back in. Nor could his eyes look back up. Hanging by the thread. Nostalgia Disincarnate.


(published 'Hobgoblin' 1991)

They Never Told Me About Mary

THEY NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT MARY         

 

 

 

The past is often hidden amid the skirts of time, but I do recall that the room was broken.  Its ceiling was the only part that remained smooth, uncracked – although mottled with an archipelago of stains in the vicinity of the rose.  So you see, they never told me about Mary.  She could tempt anything, even fate.

 

            The ledge of the room’s mantelpiece was sundered, part of it thickly crumbled upon the lower hearth area whilst the other part – with jagged edge – was still proud to the chimney breast.  I merely described its bald state to Mary, as if to palm it off as customary.  She was barely out of her teens, in those days.

 

            “But,” she asked, “is the mantelpiece the only bit of the room that you quaintly call – what did you say? – broken?” 

 

I had not been led to expect anything of Mary other than cold objective logic.  Indeed, I cannot recall ever being warned about her at all. Despite her age, her maturity was unimpeachable.  I didn’t know she had been listening.

 

“No, Mary … as you can see,” (and I tentatively circled my arm like a compass pointer) “the floorboards have given way in several places … and the mirror leans at more than 45 degrees from its wall … and the window is twice as big and far more disjointed than it was when originally built - if gaps such as windows *can* be built.”

 

Mary laughed or, rather, gave a slight snicker. 

 

My shaky pointer made its way *through* the said window.  She evidently found my jokes rather crude, although, that day,  I felt myself nearly witty enough for her steadily growing maturity.

 

“There, Mary,” I persisted, “you will see even the washing-line is broken.”

 

“It’s not.  The washing  is still hanging on it and the rope is propped up by the wooden pole.”

 

            Her words, to my ears, were rather gawky if words can be gawky.  I shrugged off her response with my own:  “The washing-line is broken because something is missing from it.”

 

            “Do you mean there is a gap along it?” she piped, taking the wind from my conversational sails.

 

            I gave a brief nod.  There was certainly room enough for something small.

 

            Donkey years later, middle-aged Mary reminded me of this broken circuit: yet another pointer to something missing from the aging thread of memory.  Apparently, she had never been told about me, either.  I briefly nodded again.  And she slightly snickered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Innocent One

Published 'Vandeloecht's Fiction Magazine' 1992

 

THE INNOCENT ONE

 

I loved Robert.

 

If children CAN love, I cer­tainly loved him: little more than infants, me the ringletted, simpering one, him the boy I'd always wanted to be.

 

There was a large swing in the orchard garden which hung from a blossom-tressed bough, ever since that most poetic day in which my father so proudly erected it. Robert's father was too sad to think about doing such things for his son's pleasure. The mothers had gone off some­where together. MY father had shrugged off what he called an inconvenience of passion; Ro­bert's had grown all bitter in­side and lovelorn.

 

The wooden seat of the swing was almost too high for us to reach. I can recall Robert lean­ing backwards, his two palms pressed to the short horizontal plank, tugging up the rest of his unwieldy body in a combination of levered bone and sideways grav­ity. The first time he managed a wide swing, there were tears down his cheeks--in and out of the air like a puppet angel. The sky bluer even than his eyes. Joy on his face, his lips re­yealed snagged milk-teeth in a prolific smile. The ratio of swing-length to his effort grew greater by the second, making me, the mere spectator, jump up and down in childish excitement.

 

The fathers stood at the kitchen door, mine waving gener­ously, Robert's slowly stirring some thick pea soup he'd momen­tarily removed from the heat.

 

Now, my turn.

 

Robert, despite his size, helped to hoist me into position, my short frock riding up my thighs somewhat. But, at that age, neither of us cared, of course.

 

My father shouted for Robert to help push me. So he did. At first gently, then with gathering force. It was surprising, the de­gree of strength pent up around those tiny pumping bones of his. Higher and higher I lifted into the sky.

 

Today, I dream of those an­cient times. I'm much older now but living in the same house. My mother has returned for a short stay until she dies. Robert's mother is persona non grata, for whatever reason. The fathers dis­appeared one dawn on tiptoes. Ro­bert died of a broken neck. Sim­ple as that. HE didn't want any­one to help push HIM--relying only on the mysterious physical force that needed no firm surface for leverage ... until that point of no return where angels trawl for souls.

 

They say, whilst human beings reach out for Heaven, angels die the other way...

 

My mother was dying in the bed I'd put her, where she still en­joyed looking out at the orchard. Well, it WAS an orchard once upon a time, but now more like the Dev­il's garden for his green fingers to nurture.

 

I looked at the bare bough and, then, as the golden shafts of sunset (frequently so rare) leant through the scrawny trees like Heavenly eyesight, I could see a swing again hanging from it. Rock­ing to and fro, gently, silently, it beckoned me with an inborn importuning. This time, I re­quired no helping hoist. I sank my seat into the cushioned arch of cantilevered bone. Robert, now the grown-up man he never was to be­come in real life, gripped the bough tightly with both hands, his feet curled round the bark as they held it further along. I pushed calmly out upon this human swing, pleased that his straining face was still smiling.

 

 

 

 

The Terror of the Tomb

 Published 'Heart Attack' 1992

 

The village of Emoss Crack could be discovered down a country lane, now forgotten, near Hoax Hill, way into the Southern Mysteries of this our green and pleasant land called England.  Those who lived there had grown accustomed to isolation ... and only one still continued to commute northwards in the mornings, for work in the City.  Most lived off the soil as best they could, whilst  some village idiots were given special tasks such as closing up holes after others entrusted with spades and shovels had dug them.

 

            It had one long main street, where the pubs and bank-fronts huddled close to the gossip shop and the pork butcher's.  But, unlike other country communities, it had back streets and sunless alleys more fitting for a run-down city ... and, at night, if one wandered haphazardly, one may have seen misshapen kids playing dibstones in dark corners, cretin faces on the look-out from badly drawn top-floor windows and lurching red-eyed men in capes heading for somewhere they never seemed to reach.

 

            Richard Wiles came to Emoss Crack the year before the War and, as he drove down Main Road in his clapped out Ford Popular, he could not help shuddering.  It was something relating to the grey slate roofs and the people lingering outside the inn.  He felt ill at ease, as one loafer, unbidden, offered to take the luggage from the boot.

 

            "Thank you, my good man," said Wiles, but not without preventing a hint of suspicion in his register.

 

            Wiles was deceptively tall, whilst his little pointed face seemed out-weighed by heavily framed glasses, giving the impression of a mime artist on a self-conscious crusade to find a wide-brimmed hat that actually fitted — unlike the one he now wore.  He was professorial in his manner, sharp-witted in his after-thoughts, above all, lean and unswaying in his attempt to get from A to B, but via C.

 

            The loafer with the luggage, grunting with the faint click of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, did not seem to want to look at Wiles,

 

            Wiles followed him up the teetering steps of the inn and, forgetting most of what happened in the lobby, he finally reached his allocated room: Q-shaped, to encompass the ensuite toilet, with a square bed covered by a dirty brown eiderdown.  A wardrobe that had the outline of the Devil's visage in the grain of the wood stood squatly at the back of the Q.  Blocking most of the only window was a rifle chest with one fully cocked piece behind the grimy glass door.  The wallpaper was frayed and drooping, ripe for the picking.

 

            "This will do fine," Wiles said to the man who was even now placing the luggage on the only other piece of furniture: a green comfy chair with open arms and a fresh antimacassar.  The loafer again grunted inconsequentially as he left the room.

 

            The bed was hard and too short for Wiles' gangling body, but this drawback did not prevent him from falling into a deep sleep.  He had come to Emoss Crack on behalf of a national newspaper, for there had been rumours that tombs were being mysteriously rifled.  The Crack community had tried to keep this quiet, but information had seeped out into the surrounding area and, later, to pre-tabloid Fleet Street itself.  Wiles was here to write an article on the desecration of tombs and, as he slept, he dreamt of keeping vigil in the Crack churchyard.  He had a job to do and he would do it.

 

            The next day, after having stretched his body to its normal length, he asked the way to the local police station, over breakfast served to him in a desultory manner by the village schoolteacher, who evidently helped out at the inn when it happened to have a guest.  As Wiles knifed into a humourless fried egg, he heard the teacher state that the police station had been closed down and its uniformed staff moved to nearby Jester's Cross.

 

            "Perhaps you can tell me," ventured Wiles, turning over his fried bread to see what was crusted underneath it, "I'm visiting Emoss Crack to write an article on ... its church history.  Can you tell me the best sources..."

 

            The teacher was no doubt one of the few people in the village who could maintain conversation at more than half-pace: "You could go and see Mrs Picklow at Grain End — she's been our local historian since anyone can remember.  She comes on Thursdays to teach all about the past ... but she can't use the blackboard for fear of the scratching and the dust ... and of Uncle Hairlip who the kids have told her lives inside it."

 

            The teacher explained the whereabouts of Mrs Picklow at that hour of the morning and, giving up the rest of his breakfast as a lost cause, Wiles strode down Main Road, dodging between some lame children scratching chalk-marks on the pavement for a hopscotch game.  He did not go straight to Mrs Picklow, for he sat down on a bench to rest and gain his bearings.  He would need to retrace a little and then sheer off towards...

 

            ...imperceptibly, a woman, about 50 or so, with a prune-like head, had sat down beside him: she gave Wiles a boss-eyed look from below a scalp that twitched noticeably every few seconds, her loosely curled hair moving up and down like an inland sea.

 

            "Are you new here, deary?" she asked with a curious lilt in her voice.

 

            "Well ... yes ... I am," he answered, half mesmerised by the hair.

 

            "Oh, we don't see many new faces round these parts, ducks, we really don't.  Such a pity, I always think, new faces brighten up a place, don't you think so, pet?  Course you do.  Everybody does.  Stands to reason.  You've come here to visit someone, I dare say?"

 

            "Not really ... I am a student of history ... of church history, really.  I'm here to study why this village has more churches than shops..."

 

            "You're a writer, then ... give me a break, I can't even read meself."

 

            "What do you spend your time at, madam?" he asked, beginning to be interested in perhaps extracting some local gossip from her, probably less unreliable, if more outlandish, than that to be gained in the shops.

 

            "I'm a ... well, let's call it a seam-stress, a tail-oress..."

 

            "And your name, if I can be so forward?"

 

            "Mary ... Mary Fluck ... I live in the Fish Station..."

 

            "The Fish Station?"

 

            "Better than me saying, would you like a look round the Station?"

 

            "That indeed sounds like a jolly good idea," answered Wiles, pleased that he was becoming friendly with one of the villagers.

 

            The so-called Fish Station, unexpectedly, was not a half-way depot for Billingsgate Market in the City, but an old pub converted into a homestead.  It was down a blind alley called Oats Farm.  The pub sign still hung above the door, depicting some baying hounds, and Wiles recalled, unaccountably, the old nursery rhyme:

 

                                                 

 

 

 

 

 

                                            Beneath the Sign of the Dogs that Whine

 

                                            Their tongues and scissors flicker;

 

                                            Within the inn there grows a skin,

 

                                             And the stew is crusting thicker.

 

            In two minds, he followed Mary Fluck into the old pub, while enquiring about the derivation of "Fish Station".  Her answer was vague:  "It's where those that can't breathe in air end up for a while."

 

            Inside, it was too dark to see much at all, but a large grey kettle was already simmering over an ambitious fire and a cat curled gently round his calves.

 

            "I'm afraid it's not much, not what Mrs Picklow..." she began.

 

            "Ah, don't worry, Mrs Fluck..."  Wiles began to smile.

 

            It took several seconds for Wiles actually to take in that the Fluck woman was beginning to divest herself.  And before he could say Knife, she stood stark naked, her breasts drooping like bulbous onions with thick, blackening nipples.  All her body hair coiled and crinkled.  She began to attack his shirt with dress-making scissors snicker-snackering...

 

            "Christ!" he shouted and rushed out of the door, the woman's curses following him into the street.  Mrs Picklow was a much nicer woman to meet, but what she had to say did not permeate the state of shock the Fluck woman had instilled.

 

            Wiles felt he was losing the ability to maintain a demarcation line between dream and reality, since arriving; but as he crouched in the Crack Church graveyard, absently watching the clouds and sportive moon, he recalled the night before in the Q shaped room, when there was scratching at the window...  However, tonight, he was safer out here in the open, he thought, but couldn't quite rationalise why.

 

            The tombstones, tilted sentries set against the moonlit sky, marked time.  He had ensconced himself behind one such...

 

            He caught the sound of scrunching footsteps as they approached up the church path, slow and arrhythmic.  He tried to pierve the gloom with his eyes ... but, still, the footsteps shambled, louder, perhaps faster.  Then he discerned the shape of a man, welling into view, clad in the shadowy wings of a large cape and with an arm that grew into a shovelhead.  He came to a halt at a particular tomb and squatted to read the evident etching upon it.  He then shovelled away at the soft soil, planting the earth in a heap behind him.  Wiles watched, with shortening breath, as the dark outline of the ghoul clawed at the ground in stricken glee.  He dragged the corpse from the fresh hole, and Wiles could no longer credit his faculties as he witnessed the ghoul hug and kiss it, delving his hands into rotting flesh.  Then came the horror beyond all horrors heretofore: Richard Wiles finally sensed what freakish thing was clad in that cape: not a man at all, but the foul-grinning visage of one Mary Fluck, French-kissing the cold clayey lips of a corpse — the recognisable corpse of Wiles himself.

 

            Wiles felt himself losing purchase upon his other body which had been crouching behind the tombstone.  He floated in the air...

 

            Staring up into the red beast eyes of Mary Fluck, he discovered himself fighting for her precious breath ... as the wagging fishtail tongue probed the corpse's throat, only to find the almost undigested remains of its earlier breakfast.  Still crusted to its throat and even deeper.

 

            This was the working through of one of Mary Fluck's curses — the terror of the tomb — whilst the village dogs whined distantly in pitiful mimic of hounds deeply baying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Mary Fluck was not exactly just another village idiot, nor someone who could simply play a flute louder than a fish-horn.  (For God’s sake, how many pukka village idiots could one village have, anyway, without its whole culture as a village being corrupted?)  But she was someone who could double-tongue a flute, not side by side, but end to end.” 

 

Rachel Mildeyes (THE ART OF TELLING A STORY WITHOUT ACTUALLY TELLING A STORY vol ix Grooves and Guppies)

 

 

 

 

The Slippery Pearls

THE SLIPPERY PEARLS 

A collaboration with Hertzan Chimera

Published 'Masque' 1995

EVENTUALLY TO BE PUBLISHED IN A COLLECTION OF DFL COLLABORATIONS: <A href="http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/long-term-project-to-find-an-independent-publisher-for-a-selection-of-my-collaborations-from-yesteryear/" data-mce-href="http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/long-term-project-to-find-an-independent-publisher-for-a-selection-of-my-collaborations-from-yesteryear/">http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/long-term-project-to-find-an-independent-publisher-for-a-selection-of-my-collaborations-from-yesteryear/</A> (26 Sep 12)</P></FONT></o:p></SPAN>

Charade
 

THE CHARADE...... by Gordon Lewis and D.F.Lewis.

 

 

 

 

 

There was something about the blonde woman accompanying my wife and I as we rode upwards in the lift from the ground floor of a large exclusive department store. From a distance there probably would not have been any cause for suspicion, but, because of the close proximity, the hair was all wrong for the face, and the make-up, too, wasn’t just as it should be. When the response to my pleasantry about the weather came in a masculine tone, my wife glanced my way with a quizzical look. I believe at that moment we both came to the same conclusion; we had a man dressed up as a woman. It was my first experience of being close to a transvestite, and I felt distinctly ill at ease.

 

Previously we had lunched well in the ground floor restaurant. The spaghetti bolognese had been washed down with drinks and the final cup of coffee and we were in a hurry to reach the comfort rooms that we knew were on the tenth floor of the building. My wife had heard they were quite sumptuous and being pernickety about such things she wanted to avail herself of the facilities there rather than use the more public toilets on the ground floor. The tenth floor was reached and as we left the lift we were dismayed to see the other passenger followed us. We lingered a while to make sure he wasn’t heading for the toilets, and it was with relief my wife and I went our separate ways quickly as our need had now become most urgent.

 

Having done my duty, I left the loo...and it was with some surprise that I noticed the tall figure standing with his back to me in the hallway. He was looking from one of the store’s windows. His head of blonde hair began to bob as if he were acknowledging someone outside. But we were on the tenth floor! A window-cleaner in a cradle, then? I could not see anything over his shoulder beyond the plate-glass, merely the reflected cosmetics of the strange face to which my wife and I had stood so close in the lift. I even imagined hearing the slight hiss of what I guessed to be a whisper from his lips. Surely, he was not trying to talk to someone outside the sheer-faced building.

 

By this time, my wife having taken longer upon her ablutions, as is customary with those of the fair sex — had joined me in the hallway. She, too, gazed quizzically at the sight of someone conversing, apparently, with a tenth floor window! Abruptly, as if sensing we had both arrived, he swivelled upon precarious feet — and I noticed he was shod in the highest of heels I’d ever seen — and spoke quite kindly to us:-

 

 “Do you want to be a millionaire?”

 

A Millionaire? What an odd question to ask of a perfect stranger, particularly from a man dressed in woman’s clothing. Still more than a little embarrassed I didn’t know what to say in answer to his question. I wasn’t about to tell him that I regarded myself as a millionaire already. But intrigued now with the whole situation I managed an answer to humour him, someone I now regarded as a bit of a nutcase.

 

“It would be rather nice to be a millionaire, what would I have to do to qualify for such a large amount of money?”

 

A question I knew I was going to regret as soon as I uttered the words. In little more than a conspiratorial whisper he said:- “There is an article on sale in the art department that is worth such a fortune. It seems obvious to me the store has no inkling of its true value. All I need from you is that you go in with me to purchase the painting which we could then put up for auction at Christies or one of the other auctioneers for valuable artifacts.

 

Now I knew I was dealing with a bit of a crank, and wanting to end the whole silly situation, I turned to Sarah, my wife, to say:- “Are you ready to go down to the ground floor dear?”

 

Then, turning back to face the ridiculous figure of a man in a woman’s garb, I said I wasn’t interested in his offer.

 

Moving quickly, in spite of his high heels he left the window and was confronting us, actually barring our way to the lift.

 

His eyes were pleading as he spoke.

 

“I’m not mad, this is a genuine offer, a once in a lifetime chance to make some real money.”

 

But why the charade of dressing up as a woman? If he were not mad then he was surely an eccentric of the highest order. It was as if my mind was being read.

 

“It is not a charade, you know.”

 

“Wait!” I said in a tone of voice that was quite out of character for me. I sensed that there was more to this ‘gentleman’ than met the eye.

 

I then questioned what I previously somehow ‘knew’ (as I had then put it) to be a ‘crank’. But my wife , by now, had seen I was faltering in my retreat from the outre — and she tugged persistently on my sleeve to remind me where I was and where I might be going if I didn’t beware.

 

“A charade is a party game and has no real drama.”

 

I forget, now, which of us said these inscrutable words, I then realised, though, that we were enacting some kind of ritual, needing to make certain predetermined movements before the puzzle could work itself out.

 

My wife, now half-forgotten, sank further into the back of my consciousness. If she were fidgetting with fear or irritation (or both), I no longer knew. Whatever the case, I ceased to feel the gently tugging at my sleeve.

 

I left with the ‘gentleman’ (a word that seemed supremely apposite) and my mesmerised wife, no doubt, followed in our wake.

 

“Who were you talking to through the window?” I asked. The very wording of my question implied that I knew he must have been talking to some person or something, rather that the otherwise emptiness of the darkening sky. Perhaps it was only his own reflection!

 

“Does it matter?”

 

I shrugged. We were trapped, I guess, in some variety of stage play, where our lines had been learned. My co-protagonist was not exactly a pantomine dame — the costume and its effects were far too stunning for that. No, I was faced with more than somebody in drag. It was almost as if a spy had assumed a disguise and women’s garments had been the only accoutrements available. They now neither suited nor looked ungainly. They simply were.

 

We reached the art department where there were a few late-night shoppers.

 

It was definitely curiosity that was driving me along with the oddly dressed fellow moving ahead.

 

“Why are we following this absurd creature Harold?” This from my wife Sarah as she tried to keep up with events. “I think we ought to turn round and leave him to his crazy scheme. This is something we ought not to get involved in.”

 

“I’m just interested in seeing this masterpiece he says is worth so much money. I have no intention to play along with his proposal. It’s obvious there has to be a catch in it somewhere.”

 

With that we came to a halt as our crazy companion stopped to look at a bizarre painting on the wall. For the life of me I couldn’t see that it was worth the asking price let alone such a vast amount of money according to the fellow we were accompanying.

 

“It looks a poor copy of a Salvador Dali,” I observed.

 

“Don’t talk so loud,” he hissed. “It is not a copy. I am sure we are looking at the real thing. All we have to do is lay a deposit promising to pay the balance tomorrow. All I want from you is a promise to share the cost and we will make a bundle out of our purchase.”

 

Now I was sure we were mixed up with someone touched in the head, so, turning to Sarah I said:-

 

 “I think we will take the lift to the ground floor now dear.” Politely

 

saying cheerio to our transvestite we hurried off towards the lift doors.

 

As we arrived, luckily there was a lift waiting for us. I hurriedly pressed the button for down, but, as the doors were closing our erstwhile ‘gentleman’ slipped in before the doors closed and, turning to face us, we could see he was not pleased. In fact he was positively menacing and as if by magic a knife appeared in his hand.

 

It was then I realised he wasn’t truly menacing — he was simply acting out the role of one of the tapering human-like figures in the painting, that Salvador Dali pastiche he had just dangled tantalising in front of our noses. Time almost melted, as my limbs turned jellier and my eyes mistier. By his actions, now, he was stressing the intrinsic artistry of the artifact, its drama, its provenance — its haunting quality, its transposability to reality...

 

The creature — how else can I name him? — was indeed one of the shifting shapes that had lived in the painting and, now, having stepped out of it, was taunting us with its beauty. At heart, I knew he was a force for good. But how, then, to explain the knife, the evil glint in both eye and blade, the increasingly tawdry garb strung on a stick-insect frame, the sleazy pose...?

 

To my surprise, it was my wife who broke the near silence (sliced the silence with her sharp tongue) as the lift hummed lower on its seemingly interminable journey.

 

“You looked through the glass — the tenth-floor window frame… as if the world were a frieze...”

 

Yes, I nodded, I knew exactly what she meant. The lift ground to a halt and we froze, too. Any seemly relief was beyond reach. A tableau of fear. Or a tableau of foregone riches. A missing millionaire.

 

The charade may continue any moment.

 

 

 

 

Born From Night

"Nothing to suck."

The voice filled the room, despite being no more than an infant's - or so it seemed. The darkness hid the true identity. In fact, he imagined he was dreaming. Maybe he dreamed he was imagining. Whatever the case, he slapped his head back into the pillow as if that were the secret of sleep.

"I can't suck straight."

This time, a mistake was impossible. He sat propped against the headboard, listening with more than half an ear. In fact, even his heart had heard - beating twenty to the dozen, as it was. Yet the lungs were quiet, daring not to disrupt any possibility of silence - for which their owner yearned - with the faux pas of breath.

If only an untimely dawn would now soak the curtains in a spillage of orange light. He might have excused this mistake in the course of nature, in order to camouflage an even greater and more frightful hitch such as the voice which spoke of sucking as well as sounding as if the words themselves were syphonned up from a sump that had sucking as its second nature.

He could have felt for the light switch as second best. But manmade illumination was far from dependable. He did not know that. There was little else, however, in the midst of night. Even if the lamp broke into that yellow incontinence which was its shade's habit of casting after the dull click of the switch, it owed him nothing and, furthermore, felt no need to have truck with a ghost. He had sensed many such facts following the arrival in his new home. In any case, the ghost (or whatever it was) might be a chameleon and only the changing hues of daylight could throw up any figment of its presence...

He had no purchase on such considerations. He dabbed at the switch in his side and recognised the dull pin-click with a sigh.

"And now my teeth are cast crooked."

There, etched against the wallpaper, were two swelling tusks of black light, snagged one upon the other.

Silence was deeper than the empty space that quickly filled with a crumpled edge of cot-blanket.

Only with a blotted moon, of course, and the least tenable permutation of nature's secondary quirks, could vampires strut and stalk - freshly born from teething babies such as him.


Published 'Roisin Dubh' 1994

Talkback

He stored up words for future use. Relished insults aimed at himself. Nurtured slips of the tongue. Incubated resentments in the actual shape of glib sound-bites.

And then, at the optimum moment, he would tighten the key and take careful aim at the unsuspecting victim, a victim who, more often than not, had earlier acted as the very source of the barb's power.

Until, one day, there was a ricochet.

And the poisoned dart he had himself blowpiped did pierce his vocal screen-bytes with a bit of his own viral medicine.


Published 'Braquemard' 1996