David Hadley's Blog, page 161

Better the Devil you Know

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Well, there you have it, not much to look at, but it does tend to frighten away many of those who seem to delight in coming to the front door in order to attempt to sell you stuff, up to and including a very dubious notion of an afterlife so bland, dull and humourless it makes you prefer a posthumous fate with all the charm of having your liver eaten by an eagle for all eternity.

Still, it is one of the advantages of making the pact with the devil, providing you can find a crossroads where the traffic lights let you hang around long enough for him to turn up. What with him being so busy arranging bankers bonuses, expense schemes for politicians and all the other things he has marked in his diary, it is a surprise he even has time for his demon-hire business.

Still, at least, he does – eventually - turn up, unlike some other supernatural beings I could mention. In particular, the one who buggered off as soon as He’d got this bodge-job of a universe up and running; leaving water leaking from the skies all over the place, lava appearing though all the shoddy cracks in the planet surface and far more insects than are really necessary.

Stick with the devil you know, that’s what I say, even if the demon-rental terms can be a bit steep. However, like I said, it does cut down all those annoying cold-callers, and what is the price of a mere soul compared to peace of mind like that?

Some New Furniture

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It was a bit odd, I’ll give you that. After all, domestic furniture is not supposed to breed – at least, not as far as I know. Although, I do tend to fall behind and miss out on the latest trends, fashions and so forth, I think I would have noticed something in the news about the spawning habits of furniture. At least, I’d like to think so.

Anyway, there it was. I opened the door to what others in the family call the lounge, and I call the front room, to find it there.

A brand new baby sofa.

It certainly looked like one of ours; we have two normal sized sofas in the loun… front room, rather than the traditional three-piece suite. But that morning when I walked into the room, while the rest of the family slept, there were our normal two sofas and on the rug between them another tiny little sofa about the size of a full-grown Labrador.

After standing and staring for a while, I did what any normal, sensible person does when confronted by an unexplainable mystery. I shut the door and walked away… into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, I busied myself with the kettle and the coffee-making equipment while that small part of my mind that functions in the early-morning pre-coffee state tried to make sense of what I’d seen.

The tiny little sofa was the same colour and design as our two, or rather both are leather three-seaters, but there are slight differences between them in the colour and design, not enough for a man to care about, but my wife and daughters still agonised over whether the two sofas really ‘went together’… whatever that means. All I know is that I can put the telly on, lie down on either of them and be asleep in a few minutes. Therefore, as far as I’m concerned they are fine – anyway, who cares what colour something is when you are asleep on it?

The little sofa had the look of being the offspring of the other two. A blend, like our kids look like someone has taken the essence of us two parents and whizzed it all up in a blender and poured the mix out, with their best features being mine, of course, and their bad tempers and general irritability down to their mother’s less, than perfect genetic inheritance, which – if you knew her parents – would certainly make sense to you.

I remembered, as the kettle boiled, the wife – Jenny – complaining recently about one of the sofas being lumpy in the middle. Perhaps that was why: one of our sofas had been pregnant, and now here was the little one.

Smiling to myself, I made my way to the stairs to tell everyone else in the family the good news.

Post-Olympic Legacy (with Pancakes)

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Of course, in this Olympic year – concerned as we now are with the post-games legacy issues – the fact that she was Nuneaton and District All-Nude Pancake Ignoring champion was something that could not be glossed over when her misdemeanour was discovered by a tabloid press eager to regain some journalistic credibility. As well as that tabloid industry’s desire to feature several prominent photographs of an undressed young lady in the prime of her sporting prowess blithely ignoring pancakes under competitive conditions - which as connoisseurs of the sport know only too well – can only enhance the erotic appeal of the lady herself.

The fact that she had been caught out not utilising the regulation lemon juice on her pancakes was taken as proof that the Olympian ideals were no longer paramount in the minds of today’s young athletes, for whom sponsorship and other such mercenary attributes of their calling have now become more important to them - in what has now become a career - than mere sporting excellence.

However, for those of us who know and understand the true erotic nature of lemon juice, further comment has become more than superfluous, especially when contrasted with the subtle tactical awareness of the use of nudity in competitive Pancake Ignoring and the concomitant strain it inevitably places on the contestant’s elbows.

They Call Me The Hunter

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They call me The Hunter. I moved between the shadows, between the trees, behind the bushes. I moved from place to place and the prey would never know I was there, they could only sense something was there; that there was something changed about the world they thought they were living in and only then when it was too late.

Back in my young days, I learnt the ways the prey took to pass through the woods and the forests. Then, when I grew older and the prey grew wiser to my habits and actions they began to create paths, lanes and then roads; still though the shadowed dark places existed, out on the edges of the roads and the places where the paths ended. I would be waiting there and the prey would come to me… eventually. It would fall into my grasp as easily as back in the days before the paths, lanes and roads existed.

Then they built their dwelling places. First, they made the hamlets with the dark shadows out beyond the flickering firelight, then the villages and the towns and then the cities. The cities became the most dangerous of all, for the prey thought they were safe in their crowded hives where their own kind could keep them company in the dark places. But as the cities grew, so did the dark places and the lonely places and the places where I could hunt and find the prey.

Now, I sit here up on a high roof watching the street below and I sense something coming….

Then I see her strolling from lit area to lit area and I see the shadows she will pass through, so I crawl down to wait in the place she will enter, but never pass beyond into the light ever again.

The Hunter – Free youtube:

Other Uses for a Parachute

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Still, it was not as if we’d made any real use of the parachute, so even if it was second-hand (or, rather, previously-owned) there was not much danger of it failing through over-use.

However, as with all such things you don’t tend to want to use them until strictly necessary, unless your idea of fun is falling out of aeroplanes.

Anyway, that wasn’t the reason why we’d wanted the parachute, as those of you who have read past chapter 86 in the Big Boy’s Book of Advanced Sexual Perversions, or – purely in the interests of research - glanced at the accompanying illustrations (especially fig. 234b).

Although, I suppose if you were attempting to perform the exercises from the aforesaid chapter on the upper part of a bunk-bed, then I suppose there would be times where a parachute could be used for its intended purpose.

Anyway, it all became a bit moot when she accidentally turned over two pages at once and utilised the pineapple without slicing it into rings first. So, for the next few months - at least, according to my doctor – I should avoid attempting to climb into the top bunk at all… even with a parachute.

So, all-in-all we decided – in the end – it would be best if we could see if we could sell the parachute and, at least, get some money back that we could – perhaps – us to buy an automatic pineapple slicer.

It would – we both agree – be for the best.

Doing the Decorating

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Still, despite a rather unusual approach to wallpaper hanging, she did get the decorating done, even if it did mean the full erotic capabilities of the stepladder were not quite as extensively explored as her apprentice would have wished. Still after that particular half an hour of her more than expert ministrations with the pasting brush, he should consider himself lucky to have escaped with only a slight limp.

Although, he was not the first – and will not be the last – she has left with a limp of one sort or another. She does tend to demand the best from her underlings and when they are – indeed – under her on the pasting table, then they are going to have to give her their all, of that we can have no doubt.

I – for one (well, for several, if the truth be told) know the wot of which I speak. I still have the scars from her over-enthusiastic wielding of the emulsion brush on the backs of my knees… even after all these years.

However, no matter what she says and does elsewhere, you know you are in for a hard day when, in a dust-sheeted room, she walks up to you dressed only in her peephole overalls, hands you a wallpaper scraper and says: ‘strip!’

The Diary

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Sometimes it is as though the time we live through has all the appearance of some kind of dream: as though this is not our real life, as though this is some kind of practice for the main event, a rehearsal. At least, that was what Beth thought as she sat up on the high headland, looking out across the beach way down below her, where the rest of her family were living through their summer. Beth had her diary open on her crossed legs in front of her. She had picked a few daisies and buttercups and left them lying on the blank page of that day when she began to wonder if this was really some kind of diary she was writing after all.

After all, if this was not her real life, as she was becoming increasingly convinced it wasn’t, then this could not be her diary, her record of her days as she lived through them. Rather it was… it was… what was it?

It was not fiction, at least not in the accepted sense, but neither was it fact.

This was not real life, nor was it invented. It was not a play; it was merely the rehearsal for a life… and one that she could see was not going well.

Now she came to think of it, Beth sat up straighter with a start; it seemed that none of her family, with all their secrets they kept so imperfectly from each other and all their ruses and stratagems they played out against each other, really thought this was real life too. All of them knew – or seemed to know – that this was just some elaborate dress rehearsal for some play that had yet to stage, where they were all both actors and audience.

Smiling, Beth clicked her pen, ready to begin.

At the top of the blank new page she wrote:

ACT ONE.

Something for the Weekend: Free Short Story – Twisting the Night Away

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Available FREE this weekend for the Kindle. Twisting the Night Away (Short story – 5,000 words approx.)

If you want to get an ex-girlfriend back, what could be a better way of impressing her than a magic carpet ride through the night to a romantic evening together in some alternate dimension?

[…]

I looked at my hands, they didn’t look that powerful. I had trouble opening a new jam jar with them, let alone creating a world out of nothing.

Morgan took my right hand in his, holding it just below the wrist. ‘Relax,’ he said.

I tried to relax as he manoeuvred my arm around, outlining some weird shape in the cold night air.

I felt something in the air change, as though the air around us had grown thick and heavy, then an instant later the feeling was gone. He jerked my hand back with a short sharp tug and let my arm drop.

‘Ah…’ he said.

The duck quacked.

Up until then there had been only the two of us standing up on the cold damp roof.

Now there was the two of us… and a duck.

The weather may have been suitable for ducks, but the duck itself seemed far from happy. It quacked and stared up at us.

‘That….’ Morgan said. ‘That doesn’t usually happen.’

I was staring at my hand. It had done a lot of things that hand, sometimes some very strange things, but this was the first time it had produced a duck out of thin air. I didn’t know how I expected my hand to look different, just that I was disappointed it didn’t.

Meanwhile, Morgan was walking around the duck with the cautious air of someone half-expecting the waterfowl to explode. He glanced up at me, keeping half an eye on the duck ‘It’s definitely a duck,’ he said.

I raised my eyebrows….

‘Sometimes a duck is not a duck,’ Morgan said with a tone to his voice that suggested his caution about the possibility of the duck exploding was based on some personal experience.

I took a step back. ‘What are we going to do with it?’ I said, watching the duck carefully. ‘Can’t we send it back?’

Morgan looked at me. ‘Back where?’

‘Back where it came from?’

‘Do you know where it came from?’

‘No… I thought….’

Morgan raised a hand, while he stroked his chin with the other. ‘Tony,’ he said in a universe-weary sounding voice. ‘It is not that simple.’

‘Oh….’ I said, knowing it wouldn’t be…. Nothing ever is.

Morgan stepped back from the duck and moved his hand in a gesture that seemed to slip sideways out of this universe and into some other place.

The duck looked at him. ‘Quack?’

‘Bugger…,’ Morgan said. ‘I thought that might be it.’

I pulled my sleeve up. ‘Maybe if I….’ I tried to copy Morgan’s gesture as well as I could. I glanced over at him and noticed he was cowering back away from me with both arms crossed in front of his face.

He warily opened one eye and looked over his protecting arm. ‘Yes,’ he said, letting his arms fall and standing up straighter. ‘Now take hold of the air around the duck and turn it as thought the night is some large sheet or blanket you want to fold into another dimension.’

I nodded, even though I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. Then I felt the night twist.

‘Quack,’ said the duck. The woman didn’t say anything, just stood there staring from me to Morgan and back again as she tried to cover her nudity with a completely inadequate towel.

Morgan sighed. ‘An improvement on the duck, I’ll give you that.’

The woman stared at me, eyes widening. ‘T… Tony?’

Quickly, I tried to recreate the gestures I’d used to somehow bring Suzi here from what looked like her shower.

I felt the night twist again.

‘Quack,’ said the duck.

‘Shit,’ said Morgan.

‘Bollocks,’ I said.

‘What the fu…!’ Suzi stared down at her towel, which was now a nan bread and covering much less of her. She glared at me.

I recognised that glare. I did the thing with the night again, this time as fast as possible. Suzi was a martial arts expert.

The night twisted.

‘Quack,’ said the duck as it waddled over and began nibbling on the nan bread that had fallen to the ground when Suzi vanished.

[…]

[Twisting the Night Away - Free for the weekend - here (UK) or here (US)]

A Taste of Freedom

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We had little time, we knew that. The security police would be alerted as soon as we made any move towards opening it.

It had been hidden away down in this disused cellar for weeks; each of us taking time on a rota to come and check that it was still here, still working away and still hidden away.

Now we were all here, at great danger and probably at great cost.

It was ready.

We were ready.

For some, this would be their first time, for others the older ones like me; it was a chance to recapture the past and a chance to see if the reality of it matched those golden memories of what we had lost.

We looked around at each other.

I wondered if those others there were wondering the same thing as me. Was there a traitor amongst us, was there a spy here, reporting back to the security police on our every move?

I knew that if there was a spy, an agent here, he would have to make his move soon.

We all glanced at the clock, watching the time count down. I nodded over at Stan who sat, holding the remote. He switched the TV on, just as the final pre-match adverts were coming to a close.

As one, we all stood up, clutching the glasses that seemed to sit so awkwardly in out hands, unfamiliar and strange even to those of us who remembered when it was not illegal.

We queued up, suddenly, eager not to miss the start of the match as Pete opened the tap on the barrel and the first pint of illegal beer began to pour into Andy’s waiting glass.

It looked good, golden brown, pure and clear with a soft foamy head on the top. Those of us behind in the queue licked our lips as the memory of pints drunk in freedom came back to us.

Soon, I knew, I would be drinking my first pint of beer for over five years. It was five years since they had made beer illegal and it seemed ten times as long; especially when there was a match on.

I turned to face the TV, as the whistle blew and they kicked off, holding the glass up to my lips and smelling that smell of malt and hops and yeast that had once been as familiar a smell to me as my own wife’s hair. I could feel the bubbles of the head, soft against my upper lip as I was about to drink.

Then the sirens sounded and the scream of brakes outside told us it was too late.

It Was a Thursday

It was the best of times and it was the wor….

Well, to be honest it was a Thursday, and you know what Thursdays are like, especially in the summer, when her from three doors down comes out into the garden on her afternoon off and starts oiling up those thighs of hers and you can’t help wondering about all those coconuts and what happens to the rest of it.

Just how do you drill a coconut for oil, anyway?

Sudden visions of a coconut uncontrollably spouting oil – workers fleeing in panic as someone puts in an urgent call to Red Adair.

You don’t get those smug environmentalists wittering on about the dangers of a coconut oil slick either, and the price of Bounties suddenly going through the roof.

Considering the amount of thigh surface area involved there has to be some sort of environmental impact, if only in the number of Third World countries turning into a coconut-based agricultural monoculture economy just so some pampered Westerners can slap some gloop on their thighs instead of doing the sensible things and coming inside for a bit for a nice cup of tea.

As I said, though… it was a Thursday.