BLUE MURDER
a collaboration with my father, Gordon Lewis (1922-2007)




Throughout my life I have been led into some bizarre situations — but none so bizarre as the one I recently experienced… not led this time, but into an extraordinary situation that seemed to materialise all on its very own.

It all began with a dream, a nightmarish dream from which I wakened, sweating so profusely, one could have supposed I had actually been running my heart out to get away from an angry mob that were yelling blue murder as they chased after me.

But why ‘blue murder’? There seemed some key to the mystery in these words. There was once a horse I had a flutter on — called Blue Murder — a horse which had, in the end, been destroyed, after breaking a leg during the very race in question. I won’t go into details, I’d spare you at least that.

Funny, it was only recently I realised Red Rum spelt ‘murder’ backwards. Did you know that? Anyway this is not getting us very far, is it?

The ‘bizarre experience’ syndrome did not really start with my dream. I’ve had some peculiar dreams, on and off, for most of my life (as we all do)... waking events closely following (by a short head) such dreams with uncanny logic... until I took it, more or less for granted that certain coincidences were inevitable. So, why had this recent dream of a pursuing angry crowd affected me so unduly?

I suppose I’d better start at the beginning. I struck up a relationship with Rachel Mildeyes. (Well, you’re right, that wasn’t her real name, but I guess it suited her). My name, you ask? Well, it is John Bello... and I shall make no secret of it, I am one of those blokes who mix and match various jobs, most of which are unmentionable, because Clink would beckon otherwise. Often barely on the wrong side of the law, I have to watch my back. You never know who you are talking to. And you may be someone I can trust. But maybe not.

Rachel Mildeyes, though, I trusted one hundred per cent. She was the first one to tell me of the recurring dream — one of an angry crowd. She had suffered it from childhood, in various guises. I wonder whether I’d been infected by knowing about it first. I shall never know.

It was not really a pursuit. More a race. I was not fleeing the crowd but rather competing with it. The race never seemed to finish — but was continuous from dream to dream.

There are those who make a hobby of interpreting dreams, even a profession writing reference books and forecasting the future. I thought about visiting the local library to check up on my dreams. But were they really my dreams? I suppose they had been imprinted on my sub-conscious mind by the oft repeated tales of Rachel’s own recurrent dreams. It should be her that ought to consult books about dreams and their meanings. But they didn’t seem to bother her overmuch, so why should I be bothered? In my dreams I had become one of her pursuers... and Rachel was certainly worth pursuing!

I shook off my meandering thoughts, and, on checking the time, I busied myself in getting ready for the day ahead. It happened to be the day for viewing the articles for auction (in the local auctioneers) that would be disposed of the next day. It was more than a hobby of mine, being the source of most of my income, selling my purchases on. I had become quite expert at spotting a bargain, even if some were not genuine antiques. They could be made to look genuine enough to sel1 on to the unwary.

Later in the day I had to pay a visit to the reference library to check up on a particular item I had become interested in. Whilst there I thought again about the pursuing dreams of Rachel. There was a section on running away and being chased. Being pursued was explained as the dreamer being unsure of oneself, running away from reality. But there was some comfort for Rachel... it went on to say: ‘if pursued without being caught, it meant quite the opposite.’

Rachel and I worked as a team at the auction rooms and we were quite successful in our collaboration which seemed to prove she was very sure of herself. We often posed as man and wife when we travelled around the area on the look out for profitable deals, not averse to cheating the uninformed, and making large profits on numerous occasions.

You would not have guessed that Rachel — with her sweet doe eyes — could even attempt to deceive another party. No doubt that was her strength. Nobody did manage to catch her. She would show her pretty little heels — and then gone! On to the next victim...

I was never her victim, though. In fact, I rather think she had great respect for me... saw that I was one of her kind. Fed at the same trough. Inscrutable. Undemanding people with latent powers. She pursued me … until she got me. And here we were again in yet another auction room, chasing that elusive cut price treasure which would eventually bring us our fortune. We were partners in ‘crime’. Never more than that… although I did harbour a deeper attachment… a hare I had sprung to tempt the sleek greyhounds of romance. But that, sadly was all in my head. As they say, the chase is far more pleasurable than the actual kill.

The most recent Auction we both attended was in Essex. It was run by someone who used to hold point-to-point meetings in Marks Tey but now, down on his luck, he needed to resort to the fast and loose games of quick bucks in seedy back rooms where literally everything was up for grabs. You of all people, must get the scene.

Rachel, despite her slight feminine form — lugged in our boxes of ill-gotten goods. As for myself, I ambled free-handed, with Rachel in my wake: I acted as her shield and spokesman. That was my excuse, anyway. So now let me introduce you to Bert — the erstwhile point-to-pointer — a man who spoke with a gruffness only those schooled in the hard knocks could muster.

“Hey I Let me see what all this is!”

I offered to lift the lid of one of the boxes — but Rachel only had to bat her eyelids and mew a plaintive couplet for Bert to become putty in her hands.

“Ok, Ok, Ok,! he muttered, the point-to-pointer indeed pointing towards the platform where various henges of bric-a-brac had been left. “Put ‘em up there with that little lot — I’ll give them the hammer when the best stuff has gone.”

Well, needless to say , Rachel and I made a mint from Bert’s gavel, that day. Followed by a chaser or two at an inn down Eld Lane. But, slowly, it dawned on me that Bert’s face seemed familiar — one I’d picked out from the recurring dream’s pursuing crowd; I then began to wonder if all the faces in that dream were people I knew, or more incredibly, people I was yet to meet.





I always called in to the ‘Half Moon Inn’ down Eld lane, a 17th century building that had some modernisation in the Lounge and Smoke room bars. But the owners had had the sense to leave the, public bar as near as possible to what it was years before. I felt that I was stepping back in time whenever I entered the old world atmosphere enhanced by the log fire in the ingle-nook. There was some particulary good grub there too, my favourite being their steak and kidney pies with brown gravy. Another reason for my choice of pub was the type of person that frequented the old inn. They were the salt of the earth, providing local colour with their North Essex accents mixed with a bit of the Suffolk dialect, we being but a mile or so from that county’s border.

It was a new experience for Rachel who normally frequented the better class of hotel, but she was much taken by the quaintness of the Half Moon’s public bar. We sat on a bar stool for our first drink and ordered the food. When it turned up we sat at a small corner table for two. There was an old fellow seated in the opposite corner with an inch or so of beer in a pint glass, which he seemed reluctant to finish. Thinking he might have been short of the money for his next pint, I looked at him and smiled — not that I was feeling benevolent, but in my trade it was sometimes beneficial to make friends with the very old who had some antiques just sitting at home waiting for the likes of me to buy at ‘ridiculous prices. But my purpose that day was the ‘Albert’ chain and medallion sitting on his waistcoated fat stomach. Usually there would be an old watch on one end of the chain that could prove to be something he might sell if he lived in straightened circumstances.

“Same again old chap? Have the next beer with us,” I said with one of my best smiles.

“Thank ‘ee Zur,” he replied in a really thick accent. “Don.t mind if I do... Half and half be my drink, if you be so kind, Georgie at the bar knows as how I likes it.”

I ordered his drink and carried it to the old boy, who said another ‘thank ee Zur.’ Wishing us good health, he took a long draught of his beer, smacking his lips, as though he hadn’t had a drink for days.

Our food was waiting, so Rachel and I tucked into our pies with relish. By the time we finished the old man was once again sitting there with just an inch or so of his beer in front of him, but this time he refused the offer of another drink.

“That be me ration for today, got to get home for a bite to eat, or me Missus will have me guts for garters.”

We chatted a little and looking at my watch I asked our new acquaintance what time it was, having lied about my watch being stopped.

With that he withdrew a ‘turnip’ of a watch from his waistcoat pocket.

I restrained myself from gasping with surprise as I looked at the watch. I thought I recognised what looked like a very valuable old chronometer he held in his gnarled hand.

“It be a quarter after one o’clock,” he said, and before he had time to re-pocket the watch, I asked if I could just hold it for a moment.

“Twas my old granddad’s watch, it must be a hunnered years old, I reckons.”

My heart skipped a beat as I thought about the value of the watch; it must fetch thousands of pounds at the right kind of auction sales. Returning it to his pocket, he swallowed the last of his beer. Bidding us goodbye with another thank you, he waved farewell to George the barman, who answered by saying: “Cheerio Matthew, see you tomorrow.”

“If God be willing,” said the old chap as he left the bar.

I hustled Rachel saying we needed to be off, and, thanking the friendly barman, I paid the bill.

“That old man seemed a bit of a character... Matthew you called him? I seemed to have seen him before, do you know what his surname is?”

“His full name is Matthew Oxley, Sir, always comes in here early and gone long before this time, perhaps you might have seen him here before, he lives, just a couple of streets away.”

We left the pub hurriedly and I just caught sight of the shambling figure of Matthew Oxley as he neared the end of the road. I told Rachel I would meet her at the car park as I hared away to see where the old chap lived. Who knows? Perhaps he had some other antiquities in his home, but it was that watch I was after; anything else would be a bonus.

Abruptly, I stopped in the middle of Priory Street — my thoughts turning

turtle — Matthew Oxley? The name meant nothing. The name meant everything. It was if I had known the owner of that name all my life, without realising it. Races were timed by timepeices, weren’t they? In the old days, with the punch of a finger on a stop-watch were races determined. Now by the computer — exact to the microsecond — as necks craned forward to cross some frontier first. Matthew Oxley’s watch was the one that had me stopped — heart in mouth — and I gazed at the remains of a Roman wall (near the car—park where I was due to reunite with Rachel). I could imagine faces in the cracks and crevices of the ancient stonework, some staring out with a quirk of light and shadow, others more difficult to fix as I tried to fathom form from chaos.

Rachel, herself, suddenly emerged from these very shifting patterns and, before I was able to establish her identity, she grabbed my hand. Cold fingers clutching others that were mine.

We struggled through the rain-sodden dusk, passing turnings before inevitably, reaching East Hill.

“It probably wasn’t worth much,” she announced with no preamble.

I assumed she meant Matthew’s watch.

“I only wish he had not given me the slip.” I yawned, as I spoke. I looked at her face — the eyes so dim they sank back beyond her very soul. I shrugged. There was nothing… nobody.

I woke, panting for breath. Sleep is usually an ever engine of snores — but here I was literally hyperventilating. Gradually, my chest eased with diminishing traumas. I recalled a new crowd, a new chasing pack, Rachel among them. Dreams within dreams. Or was I suffering dreams that had no dreamer to dream them? Thankfully she was beside me in the bed, I turned to kiss her...

Once shaved, shaken, fed and watered, I listened to Rachel telling me that dreams were indeed chasing us both. Bert’s auction, the Eld lane pub, Matthew Oxley’s watch were all examples of some intrepid force that was trying to suck us back into a pursuing nightmare, a vast mouth with tablets of stone as teeth upon which were etched ancient faces, faces that had outgrown even time itself.

Today, though, she told me, we would find the all important watch in some shop or emporium or mart. Its fragile balanced jewelled movement... a delicate key or clue towards defeating those who chased us. Or something that acted as their magnet….?

“How about the pawnbrokers?” I asked. That’s an obvious place for some to have rid themselves of such a curse.”

She nodded in agreement. And I followed.

As we were walking away from our car, we retraced our footsteps until we could see the three gold balls of the pawnbrokers office. However, for security reasons, one had to ring a door bell for access to the broker’s department. As we had nothing to pawn, we had to go into an adjoining shop that disposed of unredeemed articles. First we looked in the windows of the shop to see if there were any watches for sale. There were none and I supposed there would not be one as rare as Matthew’s watch in the shop either. Entering the retailer’s I was immediately approached by an assistant — obviously not the pawnbroker but a rather threatening lady who asked if she could help.

“I am interested in old watches,” I replied, “particulary gold or silver Hunters or even the rarest chronometers.”

“All we have at present is a Silver half Hunter, and I have never seen a chronometer, they are very rare indeed, not things that are pawned for they would fetch many thousands ot pounds in up-market auctioneers such as the world best, Christies of London for instance. I doubt if you would ever. see one at the local auctioneers. She spoke as if she had learned this spiel by rote. Her eyes were semi-glazed, looking as if she was dreaming about me.

Pretending to be interested in the watch she produced, I said...

“It looks an interesting piece but not one that I would like to buy. Thank you for showing it to me.” I handed it back and thanked her once more, and made to leave the shop. Then, as if I had a sudden thought, I asked if she was local, to which she replied in the affirmative.

“Do you know an old gentleman by the name of Matthew Oxley? I did have his address which I have mislaid, all I know is that he lived very near the car park and actually, he told me his home was near a pawnbrokers shop. He seemed to me he was some kind of local character.”

“I have heard the name before,” she replied. “I don’t know where he lives but I think I know a man who does, I’ll go and ask the manager.”

She returned quite soon, and with a smile she said: “He lives in James street, the road that runs parallel with this one, but Mr Grimes doesn’t know the number, but if you knock at any door in that street they will be bound to know where Mr Oxley lives.” Her eyes by now, had returned to some semblance of normality.

I thanked the lady again and, as we closed the shop door behind us, Rachel was the first to speak, saying exactly what I expected her to say.

“I thought you were on a wild goose chase, and anyway, you’ll never buy such an expensive watch from a legitimate source, you’re more likely to cheat someone who doesn’t know the real value of such antiquIties.”

I frowned. Why was she bringing our dubious deeds to the fore? Was she getting cold feet about our ventures together? Of course she was right and we both eventually agreed that old Matthew’s watch was something we ought to try and wheedle out of the old chap. Perhaps we would meet him again in the ‘Half Moon’ pub… or perhaps there was another way of relieving him of his treasure if we tried to find the house he lived in.

It was only gradually that events took on a pace that reminded me of a race, a human race... a rat race! It was not really that I believed in the whole of life being a dream — only to be woken at some godforsaken hour to face another existence (for better or worse). No, it was none of this. The unspoken love that John Bello and Rachel Mildeyes had for each other was all-important. You (of all people) must have realised that there was more to our wayward relationship than simply ripping off people in two-bit car boot sales or auctions.

In any event, you will understand when I tell you that the day we met up with Matthew Oxley again was an even rainier one than that memorable occasion round and about the Roman wall. We were nearer the Old Heath Road part of town where a huge expanse of grass — strangely — a ‘Recreation’ ground gave well-needed scope for exercising young town-bound limbs…

Why we had ventured there remains a mystery but Matthew led us down Port Lane towards Scarletts, pointing out the peculiar carved faces on some of the roofs thereabouts. (I’m sure if we returned there another day, they’d be merely the years that the house had been built etched as numbers in stone plaques). But, then, that dark day it was a veritable rite of passage which both Rachel and I would remember for the rest of our time on this spinning planet. And the kindness in Matthew’s eyes as he donated to us (gratuitously, it seemed) the priceless chronometer... Well, what can I say?

We waved farewell as the increasing rain sent us speeding for the nearest shelter. The lugubrious Recreation ground seemed simply an empty space where nothing (not even dreams) could vender. Needless to say, we did not sell the chronometer. We kept it as a… memento?… symbol?… anchor...? We did have it valued, however, at the pawnbrokers who said it was worth far less than we imagined. The lady (the one, I guess, we’d met there before) had eyes, though, that were agog: I suspect she really knew its true worth... at least to Rachel and I.

* * *

We still often sup in the Half Moon, but the Oxley chap never turns up. Bert, now and again, pops in with a tip for the gee-gees. Indeed, Rachel and I nigh made a small fortune on a ‘Fourfold Accumulator’ as a result of — not a tip, as such — but more of an instinct. The four horses that galloped in for us (streets ahead of the field in each of their races at extremely good odds) were called Blue Murder, Bric-a-Brac, Brown Gravy and Lover’s Hare. This spot of luck compensated for our — what shall I call it? — new¬found honesty. Any dreams we had, we could merely side step — allowing them to career off into some empty space neither of us intended to follow. You will understand.

SPINAL LURCH

Published 'Sivullinen' 1995

 

 

 

The streets were blurred with rain.  Sebastian Kite was wandering the backwaters of a town he thought he knew like the palm of his hand.  But, as the forthcoming night brought the skies closer to ground-level, he found himself in quarters impenetrable - which, in warmer, less foggy days, were speedy with the hard-limned faces of the Undergones.

 

            He had been employed as agent provocateur by forces unfathomable.

 

            "Go and find those who need sympathies to latch on to."

 

            "I'm not the sort to have followers."

 

            "Just smile, Sebastian, because we've replasticked your image into a likeness they're bound to have drooled over in the walkin-walkouts."

 

            Sebastian looked askance.  He could not recall his own childhood, as if he had always been a VR junkie, with no home or mother to speak of.  His brain turned over with tolerances and margins-of-error that had been built into the flesh-corroded metal of his skull - whilst the resultant tunnel-vision cranked hard to keep pace with moving targets.  He was not perfect, but if he had been, he'd've been even less so.

 

            Heavy drizzle was easy.  Though when the shoreless slanting skies opened up later, Sebastian closed his eyes and took heed of the gyre-needle within his shell hat.  They had said that if all else failed, he could try that particular reality-gizmo, tipped towards winning within its loose-oiled gambleworks.  The needle, indeed, would be necessary when beyond the end-scenarios of the city in vicinages that neo-teens and sub-fogeys roamed in whatever weathers.

 

            Sebastian had been told that grown-ups, in the old sense, had realised that it had gone on all along, but, in rebellion against the inevitable bid-and-offer gaps of the various generations, they had constructed histories which only they could control ... until, too late, they died out, leaving exactly nobody in control.  Their youngsters had discarded all feasible histories, even the false ones.  Mutant gangs of these ill-grafted souls ranged the now leafless suburbs.  Mind-spinning less than their forebears for fear of religious rust, holding on to their identities along with their dreams, thus the trouser-head culture was spurned.  Sebastian found one such, crouching in the gutter's flow.  He then prised the microbone from the dry area of his ribcage and thrust it under the nose of his first target.

 

            "Those at home will be interested to know what made you come here?"

 

            "Where's thy spunkin' camera?"

 

            Sebastian pointed to the helicopteroid the churning blades of which raised the spray.  He then thrust a finger up his left nostril to take control as the huge hosepipe that had lurched from his spinal column thrashed to and fro as it docked with the pulsing belly of the helicopteroid.  It was a live programme of which Sebastian Kite was the celebrity of ceremonies.  His mind had once belonged to a craze-crossed youth, so he knew, or thought he knew, what made their innards tick.  That was why the adult breed had employed him: they needed someone who straddled the cultures.  Sebastian had taken on the job, for he wanted to be in the mainstream of the media, to strut his stuff under timechecks, quickflash captions and transverse-screen news-futures.

 

            Sometimes, the interviewees failed to behave, as they would have done in real time recordings.  Today was one such occasion.  Sebastian was only a little older that those who stalked for the benefit of the armchair brigade - those couch potatoes and sofa sausages that had square souls.  But nothing seemed to tongue up this particular guttersnipe.

 

            "Hey moosh, git that spunkin' makeen outta the air, clattrin and splattrin like a spider biggus a nigger's igloo."

 

            "Hold on, hold on, there are millions watching from that thing up there, wanting to know, to understand the culture you represent.  You see, you are a derelict, an underclass, and they want to learn about you before Sunday Dinner."

 

            "Underclass?  Undieclass.  Spinning-glass.  Yep, I'm a grunthead, but more flesh and bone than ever the likes of you, Kite-shite.  The rain fogs me bones, but rather that than be like you, O TV Man!"

 

            Sebastian carried the gaze of millions upon his back, which he now tried to shake off like a dog fresh from dunking.  He watched the young refusenik crawling away along the gutter and he signalled desultorily for the helispider to hang lower.  He took the mouthpiece between his gritted teeth and tried to sound off between the ratchetting of the carapace rotors, as if he were commenting live upon the needle match of his own existence.   Meat versus metal.  The rain clouded his face like interference on an old recording.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to Shrug and Go

TIME TO SHRUG AND GO

 

Published 'Eulogy' 1995

 

time to shrug and go

 

 

 

A packet of pain.  That seemed to be the most understated description possible for what was delivered to me that otherwise sunny day last June. 

            "Hello, Mr Gardner." 

            I stared at the mailwoman's spriggy face, guessed she must be a holiday stand-in for postman Dan and I accepted the sticky-taped wad that she proffered with a sweet surreptitious smile.  I unaccountably resented it, because Dan was the regular feeder of my letter-box with all manner of orange envelopes containing rejections or contracts, jiffy-bagged packages with returned manuscripts or contributor's copies of magazines, adverts, fan mail , bills and, more infrequently, billets-doux from potential sweethearts.

            "Thank you," I said, wondering how she knew my real name—until I looked at the label on the missive's bubbly wrapping.  Gardner wasn't my  pseudonym.  Yet nobody in the publishing world could possibly have known I was called Gardner, especially as I hadn't called myself that for many years: a closely guarded secret, between self and a certain certificate I kept in a casket along with other private papers—simply waiting for the bio-riflers at some indeterminate point in the future.  Although death was the most certain thing about life, it also remained the most uncertain.        

Yet why was she loitering on my doorstep following the delivery of that snap-pod packet, too big for the door-slit?  She seemed to await a reply for taking back to whomsoever had instigated the parcel's path through the mail maze.  Her peaked cap suited her complexion, however—as did the bristly uniform, navy blue pleated skirt above even bluer stockings and shiny high-heels.  Must have been a sore job tramping the post round in those patent leather teeters.  The hair was as colourless as human hair possibly could be, and in endearing clumps.  The mouth kissable but, in the context that day, decidedly unwelcoming, despite the half-smile.

            I started to shut my door.  A thank-you was the most she was getting from me.  I hardly passed the time of day with postman Dan, at the best of times.  So, she'd had her ration of pleasantries already, especially for a new face in the neighbourhood.  I was eager to open the packet, in any event: to see who had the nous and, yes, effrontery, to address it to a Mr Gardner: felt like a book inside, a paperback.  My work had never appeared in a pukka book: mostly magazines to date, albeit, in some case, posh ones. 

So, I was quite excited to see my work printed in something that somebody might pick up at an airport and read on a journey ... which was not usually the case with the magazines I had previously frequented: frequented like an unshakeable demon.

            I was intensely angered when the young miss had the bare-faced cheek to lodge one of her high-heels in such a position that the door jammed open, upon my trying to slam it shut.  I felt the woodframe judder up my bad arm—the one with twinges of tennis-elbow—a snagging that made my teeth on edge, as if the heavy-duty doormat had sufficiently swollen to jar the hinges loose.  I was crazy enough to look down to check it out—to see if my beaver-hair welcome mat was engorged with something other than boot-muck or, even, to gauge its capacity to incubate a bristly soul.  No, the effect was purely due to the positioning of the post-lady's left ankle-joint, heel-drumming, impatiently sole-scraping.

            "Would you mind..." I began.

            This time the smile was broad—in the open.  She doffed her cap, in a moment of mock politeness.  The mouth's kissability was tangible, tasteable in sheer anticipation.  The eyes spoke volumes or, rather, simple stories of fate and fatality.  Here was stirring stuff to startle the most seasoned fiction writer.  The words almost spoke for themselves.  A bestseller before I'd bought off the worst.  I had never been in a story in real life before.  Everything, to date, had been from the inner workings of imagination, if thinly sown with nuggets of experience.  And, like history, there was no arguing with it.

            Mesmerised by her actual ability to exist outside the story which I was about to write, I invited her into my sanctuary with the merest tilt of the head.  Since I had no better judgment left, I could not even act against it.  She knew how to behave; after all, I was the one making her do what she did.  I only had myself to blame.  I wished postman Dan wasn't on holiday.  I would've chinwagged with Dan for ages, simply to keep Dan on duty.  All was forgiven, Dan.  Come in for a cup of coffee, Dan.  Have a freshly baked scone, Dan.  How's Dan's wife?  We should have a chat like this more often, Dan. 

            Nobody had been in my parlour since ... when?  I could hardly remember.  I saw my word-processor on the desk, just waiting for the imprint of my fingers: keyed up for the words to be delivered in description of the events now being physically reflected upon its black screen.  Me and the thickly tweeded mail-woman.  Dan's stand-in.  Coming closer.  Tongue speaking to tongue with spittly gutturals.  My mouth wedged wide with a thicker, tougher wad than a simple human tongue.  The front-door could go hang.  I imagined the missive's bubbly prophylactic wrapping popping as the pods ruptured against the teeth.  Tantalising the soft palate with snapped air-pockets.

            I felt my mind's words slime down the gullet full of so much meaning they would burst that mind soon as they got back there.  Slither words.  Burst blood-blister words.  Sex words.  Reaching to the very backscreen of the brain, by-passing the eyes and, even, all the other senses.  Yet I knew I was the perpetrator of the evil done to that poor lady who was postman Dan's substitute for someone else.  Now her front door was to be lodged open by the porkiest pink parcel she'd ever likely to receive... 

            But, instead, the engorged gland bent back into his own rear-end, impregnating his tiny unsphinctered precinct to the point of lateral blow-out: bearing a sticky-label addressed to a man too mean to be me.

===     

When postman Dan arrived with the same day's delivery, he discovered corpse fingertips straining through the letter-box, as if trying to escape the house.  The fingers led to a man dressed in a navy-blue skirt and peaked cap, as if he had been playing at something to do with trains or airports, perhaps role-playing for real.  A toy post-office set was discovered on the kitchen table, its rubber date-stamp dated with a date past the death-by date.  Also sheaves of scrawl, evidently in some act of self-perpetuation or was it map-making?  All gobbledy-gook.  The man often received a lot of post—in really tiny pink perfumey envelopes from a strange woman (or so Dan naturally inferred, judging by the recipient).  But, as Dan gradually became to suspect, they were all self-addressed and sealed with a loving kiss.  Dan shrugged and went home to his wife who was interested to hear what had happened.  Dan kept the grisly details secret from her and, in time, even from himself.  Certainly a suicide, or as certain as one could be without the corroboration of a primary source.  Suicides were, in any event, more unmemorable than murders: fewer participants.  

            And Mr Gardner had always been out of his arse, even at the best of times, hadn't he?  Time to shrug and go. 

 

 

Bottom Line

Published 'Glimpses' 1994 

 

Matthew occupied the garden, accompanied by a half empty bottle of Muscadet on the white table.  He had the world's horrors on his shoulders knowing deep down that if he didn't visualise the downside, somebody far more evil would take up the mantle and dole out even nastier helpings from the dregs of man's barrel.  Matthew's duty was almost like setting the bottom line.  So, his thoughts had pain and sorrow as their marker.  Furthermore, the monstrous hauntings that filled his mind had all the gore left in - mulchy corpses lying in wait with few shreds of flesh in place, then the mincing, the putrifying, living cadaver-swamps.

 

            He was just visualising such a fate for his wife Amelia.  Yet, she looks with a wan face into the garden, her dress picked out by an artist's palette, greens, blues and gorgeous reds.  She stands at the kitchen door, empty wine glass aloft, as if intent on her share from Matthew's bottle.  He tries to ignore her.  Real people had this knack of creeping up on one and masquerading as ghosts.  He'll have no truck with it.

 

            She walks towards him, forcing a smile against his efforts.

 

            He cringes.  A small item has fallen from the sky into his wine, one with insect legs.  He fishes it out but does not throw away the mouthful he is about to take.  No such insignificant member of God's creatures will make Matthew lose out on any wine.  Amelia pours herself a glassful and sits down in the other folding garden chair.

 

            "There are dark places that I dare not clean," Amelia said.

 

            Was she the woman Matthew had hired to keep house for him?  Not a wife, but an employee?  He could not be sure.

 

            "I know the landing is dark, Amelia.  I understand your fears."  He does not understand his own, however.

 

            "Not only the landing, the broom cupboard, too.  And the main bedroom at the front of the house."

 

            He seethed.  He had told her not to venture into the master bedroom.  There was nothing that could be cleaned properly in there, after all  -  and she might see the thing in the bed with which he slept.

 

            Tom now stood at the kitchen door, another empty wine glass aloft.  All Matthew's visualisations had now reverted to type.  Tom used to be Matthew's son, before he grew too old to have him as a father and left home to be a teacher.  Amelia beckoned Tom to join them in the garden.  The grass needed cutting (still does), but Matthew had ensured that nowhere was there available anything that could cut it: to be on the safe side of the bottom line. 

 

            Tom helped himself to the wine and sat in another garden chair which had unfolded like a yawning stick insect before their very eyes.  Tom's long legs took stretch and splay as if they yearned to escape the body they were tired of toting.

 

            "Hiya, Dad, lounging around again, thinking up those thoughts of yours?"

 

            "My thoughts, son, are more real than you'll ever be!"

 

            Amelia, by now, had taken stock of the grass and urged someone, preferably not her, to cut it.

 

The people had returned to the house, leaving Matthew to think away to his heart's content.  Where was his daughter?  She was probably visiting one of those dark places from where no children ever returned.  Better than watching soaps on TV.  She had yearned to marry a fruit-stoner, but Matthew had said that a tinker, tailor, teacher or suchlike were beneath her.  But she'd gone off to find the beggarman or thief, no doubt, to fulfil ideas she kept like ants' eggs in her head.

 

            For all Matthew knew, his real thoughts are even now being acted out inside the house, whilst their alibi sits out here.

 

            He puts the wine to his lips and is slightly amazed to find it treacly red, ripe for a midnight feast at noon. 

 

            He'd soon discover that the bottom line had been snatched away.

 

JAMMED

Published 'Onyx' 1994

 

The wheels jammed.  The car seemed to possess a volition of its own or, rather, positively lacked such a volition – since no amount of throttle, pumping the clutch, squeezing-unsqueezing the foot-brake, tussling with the hand-lever, twirling the steering-wheel and, finally, thumping my head gently on the windscreen could budge the damn machine.  I cursed the traffic lights which had stopped us in the first place: the red-eyed God of our stopped civilisation.  You see, I was quite maddened with rage, and would have blamed, given half the chance.

 

I suddenly realised that the car was growing smaller.  Otherwise, I was enlarging, which did not seem at all likely.  I felt each hand with the other and the bone shapes were just as I recalled them.  How could bones grow?  A child suddenly skipped in front of the car, because, after all, the halt was  intended to cater for the need of pedestrians.  Not walking since beeing a child myself, I retained very little sympathy for this particular breed of humanity.  On top of that, the child made a face at me as it reached the opposite pavement.  And this face was not its own!

 

The light has been green for so long it readily resumes its red state, via the amber mode.  The car growled.  I turned off at the ignition, in the hope that restarting would cure the gremlins.  But the engine still turned over, with an even gruffer undertone.  I switched on the radio in order to outblast it, but I could only find cheap chat on some phone-in, where the participants whispered together, in view of the nature of the subject-matter.  I opened the car door, but couldn’t unclunk the safety-belt.  Safety belt! I managed to run the toes of my boot along the gutter, in some desperate attempt to join up with the earth in some life-giving short-cut circuit, whereby the car...

           

What did I believe? In any event, the child had returned.

 

"What you doing, mate?  The light's gone green ten times since you been here."  The diminutive figure indicated the line of traffic that had grown behind me.  They had been remarkably patient.  I had peeeds quizzically several times into my rearview mirror to discern the next in line - with large staring eyes and the closest possible resemblance to a woman I knew without really knowing her.

 

"I can't move the blighter - please fetch someone to help push."

 

"I'll push if you like."

 

By this time, the car had taken to rehearsing tiny jolts backwards.  My neck was gradually suffering a pain that felt remarkably as if I had undergone whiplash injuries, from a sudden jolting motorway shunt.  I could turn my head neither way - nor drag my leg back from its feeble clawing at the tarmac outside the car.  By now, the child was heaving itself against the front of the car.

 

"No! The other way!"

 

"I'm not blinking well going to get all that muck in my face." 

 

 

Yes, I had not been able to turn her head left or right, but I now found I could pivot it upwards as if my neck was hinged.  With my chin pointing towards the backseat (where I could see I now had passengers with ugly-looking scars) I established the child's meaning.  Black smoke belched into view at each articulated judder of the faltering engine.  However, what shocked me more than anything as the evident absence of my original passenger - my daughter in her safety harness whom in the process I was taking to school: the whole purpose of the current journey from A to B, in fact. I always hated wasted journeys.

 

Several ingredients of humanity should have fitted into the slowly evolving jigsaw of this particular experience.  It all could be explained, everything, that was, except my inability actually to solve the very puzzle which I knew was so very easily solvable.

 

"Hey, mate, I'm getting my dress  filthy doing this malarkey."

 

 

I scowled at the child, then growled.  The lights changed to a combination of red, green and amber I had never seen before.  And the onset of an incessant nagging hooter from behind sent me quite mad with irritation.  I put my hand down my throat as far as it would go without it ceasing to be consistent as a hand - and began to trawl around with webbed fingers.  At last – phew! – I got it started, having unapplied the liver-pads from the heart-stop and unclogged the lung filters for the red octanes to flow through some back-double arteries and rat-run intestines, pushing unwanted silt towards the exhaust, via the bilge sump and the ovaries. I unsteamed my two-faced windscreen and swept off, through the blood-fest of the child, who has done so little to assist.  On second thoughts, I hope it avoided me. Cars’ hearts, you see, are in the right place – they don’t really like leaving human droppings jammed on the tarmac, nor can they even abide cruelty to squashed hedgehogs.

 

 

 

Private Patient

Published 'Fresh Blood' 1993

 

He entered her throat with his teeth.

His teeth were so long they easily by-passed her own teeth and, after gouging the inevitable divots in her tongue and via careless abrasions upon tonsils and the throat’s soft lining, their jagged tips soon found even softer, more blubbery obstacles, beyond which they could not possibly reach, despite the wide-yawning creak of both pairs of jaws. This was the only method for him to suck a body’s juices without doing permanent damage to it. Otherwise, the punctures would have been wall-to-wall.

This had been a particularly heavy feed, resulting from his own uncommon hunger together with the woman having recently been bloated by unnecessary blood transfusions from over-zealous doctors with too many donors on their hands. The vampire sat back on his haunches, formed a bubbly red smile, retracted his sharpened jawbone (along with the teeth) and licked his lips with the rough flannel of a tongue.

The woman returned the smile. Her body felt far less tight, her clothes hanging as if she wasn’t really inside them. The vampire was sliding on all fours towards the exit, casting desultory comments behind him about the weather, the general election, late night TV and so forth. She did not answer. Small talk was never her bag. In any event, she was too exhausted to speak, having, as it were, given birth to a large bouncing baby of blood.

The ever attentive doctors would no doubt return with their donors and hangers-on before the night was out, so her relief was only temporary. It was a pity you couldn’t get vampires on the National Health Service these days. She supposed it was because they themselves needed to pay exorbitant prices for cosmetic bone extensions, with the present Government in power. But if the fees were high, the fangs should be exquisitely long and stake-sharp...

Her smile became an empty sigh.

Strangling a Snowman

Strangling A Snowman

She had a jar by her bed – to catch the dreams, she said.

I was a neutral scanner. I was once her sinner, but now her sin-eater. I did not know her name, although I seemed to know everything else about her. Her scanty future. Her even scantier past. Her childhood. Her shadowy parents and those other shadowy figures and less shadowy figures that populated her life. Some were friends, some enemies. Many were neither. 

 

I never guessed that I was one of her dreams - a dream that the  jar could never catch, because the emptiness it held and used as bait to catch her dreams did not entice me as much as other dreams.

 

The others were caught by the jar.

 

And their punishment? To form the emptiness again … become no more.

 

Dreams were nightmares. Every dream, even nice ones, became nightmares in the end. The jar caught them and neutralised them. Except me. I was already neutral – that's why the emptiness could not entice me.

The figures were white – and she knew she was right.

The shadowy figures that populated her real life I – as her scanner - left her side to follow.

 

I took advantage of the time she was in deep dreamless slumber to leave off guarding her and followed shadowy figures that had populated her waking hours. These were her many exes. Those who had loved and left and broken her heart. These shadowy figures were white, a fact that was disguised by the shadows that covered them like religious veils.

 

The shadows themselves were white. Therefore I had to recognise them as real shadows from their aura.

 
When I was gone – she snored along.

Despite hating them all, there was one among the shadowy figures who really tried to dig deep beneath my veneer of ordinary hate to turn it into extraordinary hate. He was a cheat. A cad. A blackguard. Worse than I'd ever been. His wispy drapes were more like embedded china clay than shattered shadow.

 

He hid himself beneath a white frozen mould of misshapen humanity, a pipe stuck in his mouth as a disguise, and eyes that had once been spent as shillings. I followed him in earnest. I wanted to spend my misspent youth in stealing his age or experience (once filtered of its evil) to give myself back some semblance of life or of provenance. Then I could truly love her as she deserved to be loved, once woken into the snowlit world that surrounded the house she slept within. She would then refill the jar with emptiness and sleep again, a peaceful sleep of the innocent, with me inside her bed, instead of out. That was an innocent ambition with which even one like me beset by the diversion of extraordinary hate could foster.

She stirred – what she heard?

I had lost track of my prey amid the other shadowy figures that innocently acted as subterfuge or decoy for that dire cad's own re-tracking to the room where she slept, without me knowing. The forest of night was cliffed with sheer wastes of frosty smoothness. I drifted amid the wide white beacons of shadow, seeking the one I wished to strangle with my own bare and frozen hands to rescue my heroine.

The jar was not just empty, it was no jar at all but Cone Zero.

She had awoken out of it – herself  become her own special hero.

 

I crept away from him, not wishing to interfere with a bad love poem – especially with my extraordinary hate recognised as motiveless madness too late.

 

I had not even been a good scanner, judging by the forced half-rhyme with sinner. Not even an excuse for alexandrine or assonance. No-man, snowman.  Even I couldn’t strangle sense from nonsense.

 

 

 (unpublished)

Of Horny Nabras

Of Horny Nabras

In a long forgotten mythology lived a nabra and a nabra wasn’t a snake or a bull. It rather resided between the two.

Dunsany was a descendant of a famous writer, one who spoke of charwomen and Spanish dons and things like gods and unicorns and dolls houses and model ships. He did not even need mythology to shelter such conceits of wonder and magic. He conjured forth hills, beyond which hills were further hills as far as the mind could stretch. Between these hills sat lesser hills … and mounds and inverse dimples: and on these flatter parts lived the folk who harvested reality from fantasy.

Sybil was one such.

 

Murton another.

 

They were in love. Stories need two people who are in love. But these were not storyfolk. They were as real as you and I. Sybil, of course, was beautiful to look at (with soft contours), beautiful to hear (with rounded vowels) and beautiful to know (with huggable smells). A heroine through and through.

 

Murton – on the other hand – was no hero, being sallow, surly and salacious. What could one expect from a herdsman of the pale yellow nabras? The se creatures carried similar tides of tumescence.

Dunsany -- fantasy writer in the shadow of the hills of his great ancestor -- failed to see the mismatch. He had simply taken his eye off the ball. Too much in the high-flown aether. Sybil and Murton were already in love; she for real, he for show. Dunsany had somehow lost his grip.

Murton bought Sybil a dolls house.

"You can give it to our daughter, when she arrives," said Murton, with a smile, knowing full well Sybil would play with it day and night, keeping her mind on small things, rather than the big issues from which all women, he thought, should be kept.

Sybil was blind to motive. She was as excited as a new Princess. She jabbed the figurines up and down the stairs and lifted up secret roofs to reveal the attic systems tilting into infinity.

"Thank you, sweet Murton? Where did you buy it?" Her voice was lilting like fairy lark.

"Dunsany made it for me to give to you." Murton's skin wrinkled like an ox, as if the words lifted fitful air pockets beneath it.

"Dunsany?" Sybil wondered where Dunsany had been all this time, indeed forgot that she hadn't seen him since she was a small girl. That was the extent of a god's inattention.

 

Murton was a good man, at heart. Anything told about him before was really written to deceive. Nothing is told right when the author’s inattention is part and parcel of the plot that the same author writes. So, having bestowed of his best, Murton scuttled away to tend nabras: herds with spiralling horns. Horns like snaky figureheads on the prows of boats. Or things that burst out of dolls house roofs.

 

(unpublished)

The Rocking-Horse

Published 'Auguries' 1993

 

Little boy Gordon called it Roken*Horz, a name from a large book he once read before he was fully able to grasp the meaning of the words in it.

 

Although he did not fully appreciate it (for this was the only one he’d seen), the version that seemed to move gently of its own volition (by the light of the flashing red advertisement sign outside the nursery window) was a gloriously old-fashioned rocking-horse with spit-polish saddle and whinnying lips drawn back from glinting, real-like teeth.

 

Gordon Picton would often lie awake (having been put to bed far too early for his age) and watch Dusk creep into the curtains, accentuating the rhythmically intermittent darkness with its groping fingers of Night. Roken*Horz, in the window bay, looked more alive than ever at those times.

 

During the day. Gordon would have rocked himself into reveries of the future (not having much past to call his own), with tiny legs wrapped round the glossy ivory-like midriff of the toy horse.

 

The lands they visited together were far beyond those depicted in the books that Gordon had available in the nursery, their frayed pastel spines ranged along the bookshelf above the hearth.

 

One day, he was put to bed even earlier than normal. Gordon had some oblique instinct that he had been naughty, but he could not comprehend the words shouted at him by someone who did not look like his mother.

 

So, not understanding, he did not even try to understand. He crept unquestioningly between the tight covers of his bed, with sunshine still shafting through the window upon the patchwork counterpane... for the curtains yawned in the evening breeze.

 

There was a deep ague in his calves, but he put it down to too much rocking during the day. When it increased, however, he put his head under the covers and crawled down to massage them. Whilst he was down there, he heard a snicker. A stifled bray. A call of matching pain.

 

He dared not come back up for air. Roken*Horz was moving about the room, as if it owned it. Gordon felt it snuftling at the lip of sheet. Frothing on the bolster. Grinding its teeth on the elongated curlicue of the bedpost. Long hot tongue curling down, down, down between the covers.

 

At last, the hooves clopped to the window bay. There was eventual silence, punctuated by the loudest heartbeat Gordon Picton had ever heard. Though, his pastern-joints felt better now. The air continued to pulse with blood-light.

 

 

All I want for Christmas

Published 'Atsatrohn' 1993    

 

“You’re very naughty, messing about with my sewing basket," said the Nurse to the girl.

            It was the time of the year when evenings were drawing in, the roaring coal fire stood out in the penny-pinching gloom as if Hell were homely.

            "Sorry, I didn't mean to get it all mixed up."  The girl was too old to simper, but simper she did, nervously threading her fingers into her ringlets. 

            "It will be the devil's own job to disentangle the silk cottons, colour from colour. The knots seem to be created merely by the act of looking for them." Nurse tugged impatiently at the misshapen inspirals of black noodles which the coloured strands had become.  Out came a clatter of trawled thimbles, needles and tiny scissors.

            "I'll help you unravel...."

            "No point, I'm leaving here tomorrow. There'll be a newer nicer Nurse this time tomorrow evening."  Dark tealeaf tears gathered at the silver strainers of her eyes.

            But the girl smirked behind her hand, as she whispered:  "I'll help you pack, then, instead."

 

            The fitful wind gulped in the chimney. 

            Nurse had long since retired for her last night in the large rambling house. 

            The girl died, but was so hungry she needed to eat her own body, which had become easily digestible through the process of decomposition.  She hadn't died, of course.  She wasn't even dreaming.  She merely enjoyed exercising her vivid imagination which the lack of playfellows had engendered.

            She wasn’t scared of the dark.

             Nurse sat bolt upright in the truckle of her bed looking back and forth from the faintly glowing curtains of her top storey room to the dark mouth of its empty fireplace.  Only one more night to endure, then she'd be free of this insidious unnatural love, a love which she couldn't live without.  Being besotted with a younger girl was not very dignified, after all.

            She watched skeins of jet-black tubing erupt from the chimney into the grate, as if the corpse of Santa Claus had blurted out spools of its innards in one last foul spasm of many such spasms since Christmas, attempting to unbudge himself from the tight flue.

            Would morning never come?

            As dawn spread itself behind the house like a backdrop in a pantomime, smoke began to curl from the many chimney-stacks—thus a sign that the servants were up and about, if nobody else. 

            A small face had already been staring wistfully from the nursery window above the orchard garden for some hours.  She was praying that next Christmas she'd get the best present of all—a playmate.