David Hadley's Blog, page 120

All Those Lies She Longed to Hear

Of course, she wanted me to tell her all those lies she longed to hear. I, though, didn’t want to lie to her. I had lied to too many women already, telling them everything they wanted to hear, so I could get what I wanted and leave them wondering what it was they'd lost.

She, though, was different. I didn't even want to ask her name, in case she told it to me. I didn't want to know anything about her in case I found some way of using it to get her to do those things I’d already had so many other women doing.

She was different.

I had thought I would never fall in love. I laughed at it, sneered at it. It was a trap for the unwary. A trap laid by the women to capture the men they wanted.

I was too clever for all that.

I took the stratagems, the tactics, the methods of the women. I took all the tricks they used against men; to trap them and to trick them. Then I used those tricks against the women, tricking them, trapping them into giving me what I wanted from them.

Such a small thing, an hour or so taken out of one of many of their days.

I could leave them with memories of something special, something unique, something they never had from any of the other men they tricked into caring for them.

I thought I was immune.

Then she came along and, without even trying, she had me trapped, pinned and imprisoned, with just one look.

The Day Her World Changed

When the day began, she was not expecting the world to change. Julia lived in a world that was much the same, each day much the same as the day before it and much the same as the day that would follow it.

There had been times, when she was younger, when she expected the world to become magical, full of all those wonders she read about in stories. She had thought that one day her prince would come to take her away to some magical kingdom.

Now, though, she was older and every prince she’d met had turned out to be either a frog – the good ones – or a toad – the rest. There had been no magical kingdoms and no wonder; no unicorns and no dragons.

The day the world changed though, was much the same as any other day. There had been a storm the night before, and the sea was still wild, still rough, as she walked along the dunes. The dunes hadn’t changed much, looking just as wind-blown and desolate as they’d always looked for all the years the family had been holidaying in this same place, year after year.

Then, she slipped and fell, ending up at the bottom of a dune where she found the trapdoor. The trapdoor she had never seen before in all the years of the annual holidays. It took her only a few seconds to open the door and in those few seconds Julia’s world changed forever.

Cathedral

Cathedral

And there, so deep inside the darkest woods;
a sudden clearing, bright in sunlight waits,
long after all the head-high bracken fades,
long after the entangled brambles unwind.
It is a refuge, silent hidden, a place
of sanctuary, safe for us to stay.

The sunlight streaming in, up where the trees
each open their green, reaching fingers out
into a canopy over our heads
beneath this bright forgiving sky above
makes it a sacred place for our devotions.

This soft green grass for us to lie and offer
our nakedness in, as the sun heals us.
This place is special and deserves our praise,
we're going to remember how we ought
to live in glory, love and time together.
This place will save us, make us whole again.

More of the Noise

Then there was this. We thought it could be an answer, but it wasn't. We thought it could be some new route through the noise to a place of quiet, understanding and contemplation, but it wasn't.

It was just more of the unanswered, more of the noise.

We thought about silence, but silence was not an option. There were things that needed to be said, even when no-one was listening… especially when no-one was listening, even when it became yet more futile howling at an indifferent moon.

We thought we could chase the creatures back to their homes in the dark places and shifting shadows. Instead, we found it was just another empty space where nothing crept and nothing crawled, just the lonely wind, looking for a home.

We thought we could run up the sun-dappled hillsides and see as far as horizons and see as far as our dreams would allow. But that too was just another bare landscape stretching out before us, too far away even to touch with outstretched hands.

So we look around these ruins and these fragments to see what remains of what we once wanted to build; our new great city out here on these plains. We find only half-completed buildings falling into dusty ruins, and plans all ripped and torn, blowing on that same lonely wind, and we wonder if any of it was really worth it.

Attack at Dawn

And so it began….

Or, at least it would have, if they’d managed to get up on time. However, winter was drawing in and the mornings were getting colder and darker. So, although the invasion of the hated neighbour was scheduled to begin at dawn, everybody was still in bed when the signal for the attack came.

Immediately, the Generals sprung into action and scheduled a working breakfast to see if they could reschedule the invasion for a more reasonable time. ‘Say,’ one suggested, ‘around mid-morning?’

However, the general in charge of the artillery then pointed out that his men would be having their Health & Safety mandated mid-morning break at that point. So if the attack did go ahead then, it would be without artillery support.

The commanding General turned to the Artillery commander. ‘Why do they need this mid-morning break?’

‘They need a break from the noise of the artillery. Health and Safety has decreed that firing great big noisy artillery pieces at the enemy can be a health hazard.’ The artillery commander shrugged. ‘What can I do?’

‘But if we don’t invade at dawn, then they won’t have been firing all morning,’ an aide said.

‘But rules are rules,’ the artillery General said. ‘We could end up with Union trouble, disregarding Health and Safety rules like that.’ He looked around the breakfast table. ‘It’s more than my job’s worth.’

Slowly, as he looked from face to face around the table, each one nodded their agreement.

Meanwhile, over the border, the ancient enemy slept on, oblivious.

The Shape of a Door

'Hurry!' she drew the shape of a door in the air and stepped through, pulling me behind her.

I looked back. The alley had gone.

She took a deep breath and shook her head. 'I shouldn't have done that.'

I stared back. The alley had gone. 'Where...? What...?' I winced and lifted my hand to look at my shoulder; the blood was seeping through my fingers. The knife had sliced, slashed at me rather that stabbed, but it still hurt.

She moved towards me, indicating that I should let her see. She was silent for a moment, examining the wound like one who was use to such things. She was wearing a uniform under her coat. As she stood closer in the calm of wherever this place was, I could see the uniform was a nurse's uniform, even down to the watch above her breast pocket. 'You'll live.' She stepped back, looking up at my face.

'Where are we?' I looked around. It still looked a bit like my home town, but there was something different about it, something that looked far older, stranger.

'Kingsford,' she said.

'I've lived here all my life, but I don't recognise this part of the town,' I said.

'You won't.' She sighed. 'Anyway, let's get you sorted out and see about taking you back.' She turned, leading me down a street.

I followed, holding my shoulder. Then I realised what was different, the street lights had gone.

'This isn't Kingsford,' I said.

She turned. 'Oh, yes it is... Just not the Kingsford you know.'

Not Our Days

These were not our days. We did not have time left to us. Our time was over. We watched the dawn coming up over the sea, knowing the morning would bring with it the ship that would take us away from this; the only land we have known.

We had to flee before the soldiers came. Behind us, over the hills that sheltered the bay from the rest of the land we could hear the dull thunder of the guns drawing closer.

We should have gone long before, but we are only human and we do not expect catastrophe, we – much like everyone else – had expected it all to carry on much as normal, much as it always had done.

When the General came to power we did not expect things to change that much. Of course, he had spoken about how the politicians betrayed the country. How everything had gone wrong, how our country had fallen apart. Used to the talk of politicians and knowing that – whatever they say – they are powerless to change things, we did not pay that much attention to the General, even after he seized power.

Then came the rumours of the arrests and the deportations, the camps and the executions – still we did not run, we did not flee. Such talk, we thought, belonged on the pages of the history books, stories from times long ago. We – we knew – could not be living through such times: not after all this time, not after all that humankind had learnt from the horrors of the past.

But we – like the rest of humankind – had not learnt the one true lesson of the past: that humans never learn from the past. So we had to live through it all again, if we were lucky enough to survive.

So Many Leaves Have Fallen

So Many Leaves Have Fallen

I should fall like a leaf
like loosing a tight-gripped hand
letting these winds of time

dictate where I should fall
down across all these
wide-open fields of history,

where so many leaves have fallen
and left no trace on the ground.
Except this rich earth that grows

a new generation each time.
The blood of its forebears
soaks into the ground around this place

where we wait, each of us
to fall to that ground and fade
away into the soil of history.

Into the forgetful earth
where unknowing footsteps
walk over us for ever more.

She belonged to the Wild Woods

She belonged to the Wild Woods; she was a creature of the shadows and the sheltering trees. She moved through the green like a summer breeze, hardly disturbing a leaf as she passed, her feet as light as those of a deer or other woodland creature. Though she was not the prey, she was the hunter.

She hunted for food and for the furs that kept her warm in winter. She also hunted the folk who stumbled into the woodland. People who stepped off the paths, off the roads, were - the people of the Wild Woods thought - legitimate targets, prey. Just as the folk of the Wild Woods kept out of the villages and never went near the towns or the cities, they thought those people should keep well clear of the deep woods.

There were stories, of course, told around the fires of inns and the great houses of what the Wild Wood folk actually were, most did not think them human, or at least not human enough for serious consideration. Some brave souls even styled themselves as hunters of the Wild Wood folk, although, not many of them ever returned from their forays into the woods.

The Kings, Lords, Barons and other powerful folk were content to leave the Wild Wood folk be. Fear always helps the rulers, and people were afraid of the dark Wild Woods. So was I, until that day I stumbled and fell, only to wake hours later at the bottom of a wooded hill to look up into the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen.

Registering a Complaint

Even then, it was not unknown for her to take a firm grasp of the situation… usually by the neck. Or, if she believed the situation warranted it, by more intimate regions of her interlocutor’s body. Either way it brought more tears to the eyes than the first shift at the onion-peeling table in a pickling shed.

Of course, back in those days it was all a far more hands-on experience than modern technology allows, especially in those regions of the person specifically excluded from all end-user agreements and product licences. Except, that is, for some of the more probing applications and devices, which have a tendency to intrude upon the personal, often in quite inventive ways.

What, you make ask, has any of this got to do with the matter in question? Especially with the country in the midst of whatever crisis the politicians have managed to make into even more of a cock-up than it was before they involved themselves with it.

And well you may ask….

Although, if you want an answer you will need to invest in the Pro version of the app as doing anything useful with it is not available in the version given away with only modest advertising support. Although, users should be aware that some of the goods and services in those advertisements are not legal in many countries, especially those countries which take concerns about animal welfare more seriously than others.

After all, erotic porpoises is NOT a misprint as some have suggested, and many more have hoped.

Still, be that as it may a personal visit to the Complaints Department, in particular by one with such an… er… forceful personality as hers, is not always the wisest course of action. Especially by those - again such as her – who believe complaining about such things should always be a much more hands-on and memorably forceful experience.

Still, it only took seven police officers to escort her from the premises once the Complaints Department had registered her complaint. Those members of staff not taken away in the ambulance solemnly promised her an investigation into her complaint as soon as possible… once everyone had recovered.