David Hadley's Blog, page 166

New Kindle Short Story: Twisting the Night Away

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(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?

Twisting the Night Away

‘What is it?’ I said, already thinking I knew the answer.

‘It's a carpet.’

‘Hmm....’

‘A magic carpet!’

‘Bollocks!’

‘It is... honestly... would I lie to y... well, it is a magic carpet. Not a word of a lie.’

‘What, you mean flying... all that Arabian Nights stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bollocks!’

‘Come on, then?’

‘What?’

‘Outside....’

‘I'm not going to fight you about it. If you want to think you've got a magic carpet... well, that's fine with me…. I'll just be off.’

‘No, not that. I'm going to show you....’

‘Show me what?’ I'd heard rumours about this strange little shop.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I'll prove to you that it is a magic carpet.’

‘I'll have to warn you...,’ I said, laughing as I followed him out through the back of the shop out into the loading bay. ‘... I don't like heights.’

We sat down together on the carpet in the traditional manner: him cross-legged at the front, me kneeling behind him, feeling like a tit, and giggling.

‘You won't be laughing in a minute,’ he said.

He was right.

A minute later I felt like puking over the edge of the carpet down onto the town far below us. ‘I told... I told you I don't like heights,’ I managed to croak in-between stopping myself from vomiting. It didn't help that there was a hole in the carpet I could look down at the town through, and that if I dared to look up I was immediately hit in the face by what seemed to be thousands of flying insects.

Not to mention the helicopter.

Not that I didn't try, but I'm sure he never heard it over the sound of the wind rushing past our faces, and having to fight off the swarms of insects.

Still, we – sort of – managed to land with most of the carpet intact.

Although, I'm sure the flight engineer will no doubt want to ask the pilot why he has fragments of shredded carpet entangled in his rotors.

In the end, I decided against buying the flying carpet after all, even when the price was reduced due to helicopter damage, like I said: I don't like heights.

There was one thing, though, that stopped me leaving his shop.

‘So, this being a… Magic Shop, am I to take it to mean that you don’t mean… er… conjuring tricks: rabbits, top hats and so on?’

The shop owner nodded. ‘I’m Morgan, by the way.’ He held out his hand.

I hesitated.

‘No tricks,’ Morgan said. ‘I promise.’ He smiled.

‘Tony,’ I said as I shook his hand. He held it for a moment longer than I thought really necessary while his eyes studied my face.

‘What?’ I said. ‘Have I got something on my face?’ As far as I could remember I hadn’t eaten anything that day which would leave a mark and usually I’m pretty good at getting almost all my food in my mouth. I wondered if one of those flying insects was smeared bloodily all over me.

‘No.’ Morgan shook his head as he let go of my hand. ‘You have the look, Tony.’

‘What look?’ I glanced around for a mirror, eager to see this look I apparently had.

Morgan tuned to a doorway which had one of those bead curtains instead of a door, he held it aside with one hand while he gestured me into the room beyond with the other.

‘You are a Twister,’ he said.

‘A what?’

‘A Twister.’ Once inside the room he sat on an easy chair and pointed to the sofa.

I sat. ‘A… twis… a twister?’

Morgan nodded. ‘This is not my world. I am out of place, far from home.’ He smiled at me. ‘I twisted another world to the shapes I wanted, took the facts of it and altered it... and, well, I ended up here.’ He sat forward, his elbows on his thighs. ‘Look, all the worlds we inhabit are much a creation of our minds as they are, separate and apart from us.’ He raised his eyebrows.

I nodded, feeling relaxed in his company, despite the fact he was talking utter bollocks. The magic carpet, though, had not been bollocks. It had been real. Far too real, I still felt queasy and had to keep touching the solidity of things: my hands on the sofa arms, my feet on the floor, my body pressed against the seat. I needed that reassurance of solidity.

‘What most people do not know though..,’ Morgan said, leaning back in his chair again. ‘…is that the world is not only a creation of the mind, it can also be changed, re-created by the mind.’

I nodded slowly, not really believing, but wanting him to go on.

‘Most people do not know how to change, how to alter, this world to make it turn into something else: some new land, some new country, some new planet, some new plane… into some new reality.’

As Morgan told me this, I – of course – did not believe him. I knew magic was something only ever found in stories and this world had physical rules, laws of nature that bound everything in it… despite my magic carpet ride.

Then, Morgan took me out onto his flat roof and twisted the night with one broad gesture of his hand and we were suddenly living in some far exotic land I had never seen, never heard of before. We were in a land of exotic sounds and smells, hot and spicy, a land of languid heat and shimmering diaphanous robes worn by dark-skinned women who looked at us though veils and scarves that kept all but their eyes secret from us.

I stood up on that roof, which had been one roof among thousands in a dark damp and cold town and found myself in a place far away from everything I’d ever known. One of those dark-eyed women sauntered towards me, her long fingers, stroked my cheek as though I was the exotic one… and then Morgan twisted the night again with a gesture that brought us back again, back to the cold and damp and lonely, with only the fading pressure from where those long fingers had stoked my cheek to remind me that it had all been so very real. As real as the magic carpet, as real as that helicopter.

I shivered….

Morgan turned to me. ‘And you, Tony are one who can do this. You, like me, are a Twister.’

‘Fuck off….’ I said.

Morgan laughed. ‘No, it is you that can fuck off…. He reached out and took my shoulder in his hand as he looked deep into my eyes with his eyes that seemed, suddenly, to be filled with infinite distances. ‘You, Tony, my friend…. You can fuck off anywhere… and everywhere you can imagine…. You have the power….’

‘Yeah…?’

‘Yes.’

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.

[….]

*

[Continues here (UK) or here (US)]

All a Bit of an Embarrassment

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It was all a bit of an embarrassment really. They hadn’t known what to do with him since the day he’d failed his R.E practical exam. The walking on the water module had been a complete disaster, especially when they had to call the lifeboat out, and the thing with the loaves and the fishes… well, he’d ended up with two slices of white and a tin of pilchards. Although, the water into wine had gone very well, except he’d drunk it all straight off and then called the girl at the next desk a lesbian for refusing to go out with him that evening, threw up all over the invigilator and fallen asleep across his question paper.

All rather embarrassing for the son of a god.

Since then, no-one had dared mention him going into the family business. One of his uncles had suggested they could make him the god of some primitive tribe somewhere, the god of something small: the god of moss or daises or something. The god of something, somewhere where the people wouldn’t expect much and gods only really existed as something to blame for their tribe’s misfortunes.

Another uncle suggested sending him to Valhalla or somewhere like that, somewhere where they’ knock a bit of sense into him’, but his mother didn’t want him falling in with the wrong sort of god, and she refused point blank to send him to her cousin to learn the trade. ‘Not after that business with him turning into a swan… that poor girl,’ she said shaking her head. ‘I just don’t know what he was thinking.’

So, in the end, they found this rather dull blue-green planet out in one of the unfashionable galaxies where the people liked to wander around in the desert claiming they were on speaking terms with all manner of gods. After all, his parents thought, what harm could he do in a place like that?

Thursday Poem: The Shape of Words

The Shape of Words

I learn the shape of words and how they make
these things become so real by making shapes
and giving edges that will form a break.

The space between the words and things they name
are silences we fall through to the world
that spreads around us. Nowhere is the same

as where we stand between the sound unfurled
across the possible, that makes it real
apart from which unreality swirled

becoming like a ghost of thought we see
as shaping form around a space unnamed
and out of reach, beyond both you and me.

When I’m Right

Still, as you know, the carpet wasn’t all that much use, especially in the places where the Great Plains tended to undulate a little too much, and there was always the problem of getting it to fit around the edges of the water holes. The wear and tear associated with great migrating hers of wildebeests, zebras, gazelles and so forth was also something that needed to be taken into consideration.

The wife was pretty keen on having the whole thing carpeted, as I said, but once I’d got her to accept the practical difficulties, she reluctantly accepted I was right. Although, I knew I would be paying for that later.

She doesn’t like me being right.

Luckily, though, the problem doesn’t often arise and even when I am right, she usually finds some other reason why – even though I am right – I am still wrong.

Anyway, once I asked her who would be vacuuming all this carpet, and told her about the way that wildebeest hairs especially seem to have a way of entangling themselves into the weave of the carpet, she reluctantly agreed that we could - after all – have the grass… as I’d originally intended.

Although, she did say that the way I’d arranged the trees did make the whole place look rather untidy.

As I said – according to her, anyway - in the end I end up wrong even when I’m right.

The Poem and the Autograph

The gallery was quiet except for the echo of my footsteps on the wooden floor. I stopped in front of some large Pre-Raphaelite painting, not really looking at it, just lost inside my own thoughts.

I heard someone else’s footsteps, without paying much attention to them, the sound of a woman’s heels. The footsteps stopped next to me. I could feel her presence without looking around.

‘You like this one, I can tell,’ she said. ‘You seemed so absorbed in it.’

‘Mmm….’ I nodded, not really wanting a conversation.

‘I wasn’t sure about speaking to you… I know what you… people like you… you need privacy, silence.’

I turned. She was young, smiling, wearing a long raincoat and a beret. I noticed high-heeled shoes and bare legs, before I turned back.

‘Only I saw you, last night… at the reading.’

This time when I turned back I looked into her eyes. ‘Oh, you were there?’

‘Yes,’ she smiled this time. ‘I loved it. I’ve always loved your work, always wanted to meet you.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. This time I meant it when I smiled.

‘I….’

‘What?’

‘It seemed a good idea at the time, when I saw you come in here.’

‘What did?’ I noticed, for the first time she had a bulging shoulder bag, she put it down on the floor. She took a pen out of her pocket.

‘I wanted you to sign one of your books for me, but they are all at home.’

I shrugged, apologetically and she handed me the pen.

‘So could you sign this, instead?’ she said, unfastening he coat with trembling fingers.

‘I thought….’ Underneath the coat she was naked. ‘Like that poem of yours… the one you read yesterday, at the reading?’

I nodded, recalling the poem about once writing a poem on a woman’s naked body; then I signed her body.

Later that same night, I wrote a new poem, just for her, across her naked body and then, much later, I signed her copies of all of my books as well.

At the Holiday Resort

‘For all intents and purposes,’ she said. Which, do to the howling gale at the time I didn’t quite catch, so I had to wonder why anyone would wish to keep a porpoise under canvas – apart from the obvious – of course, but then I find people from that part of the world are rather a funny lot. She was typical of them, I suppose, although she a greater interest in some of the more esoteric sexual practices than most of the women I’d met from the region Most of whom tended to regard anything that involved the removal of their cardigans, before they had filled up on at least twelve rum and blackcurrants, as a bit beyond the pale, especially if you neglected to offer to buy them the obligatory bag of chips afterwards.

Still, as to keeping the porpoises in their tents – to be honest I wouldn’t put it past them. I had seen one of them doing something rather unmentionable with a dolphin one morning, and it was wise not to ask the local fisherman why the catch of the day often seemed to have rather a haunted expression on their faces when set out on the stalls later that morning.

Still, as British seaside holidays go, despite the howling gales and torrential rain of a traditional British summer, it was rather a pleasant few days, provided – of course – you didn’t enquire too deeply into what they’d been doing with the sticks of rock in the beach-front gift shop.

Cabbages and Kings

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Never let it be said that we – as a proud and noble country – have never looked askance at those who would hold a courgette aloft in the presence of a minor member of the royal family in a manner unfitting for the occasion.

Sometimes, of course, minor royalty can be acknowledged by use of the proffered broccoli, as protocol often demands.

However, it should always be remembered that the 21-courgette salute is for the Queen or King themselves, or their immediate heirs and successors, The current monarch’s consort however, should only be acknowledged by a 12-carrot Salute by members of the Household Cavalry, and even then only on formal occasions when the Monarch is not present.

It is very important to remember – as well – that the only crime still punishable by the death penalty on the English statute books is Pointing a Cucumber at the Royal Personage. However, carrying a lettuce in the presence of the heir to the throne still carries a 25-year sentence.

As for cabbages and kings, the less said about that the better, especially in a forum such as this which may be witnessed by those of a nervous disposition.

Still, though, the matter of what the young Queen Victoria got up to with that marrow back in the early days of her marriage is still covered by the Official Secrets Act, despite rumours of an etching of the event doing the rounds of the Houser of Lords at the time.

Casual Semi-Nudity

She’d invited me around to her place for the evening. I’d already heard the rumours. Apparently, the postman had seen her sitting knitting – stark naked – in her conservatory, and there had been frank talk of her cupcakes in the newsagents. So, I went there prepared, taking my Ludo board and a bottle of sherry, just in case. I also wore my lucky mittens in case things got intimate later on. It was a cool night, right in the middle of the English summer, so the rain was pouring down and my wellies were not as pristine as they once were, so I had to leave the majority of my clothing in her porch.

Still, casual semi-nudity is – apparently – all the fashion in metropolitan areas these days and we here – out in the sticks – are not ones to let these fashions pass us by. So, when she came to the door to let me in, she was wearing only a string of pearls and a pair of ankle socks.

All this – as you must realise by now – made the Ludo board superfluous. Up until that night I’d always regarded a game of Strip Ludo as the ideal ice-breaker for all manner of social events, from these intimate dinners for two right up to and including meetings of the local council planning committee.

Anyway, the rest of the evening was spent engaging in some of the most unusual sexual activities I have ever become involved in, and I once spent an evening with a folk singer in Stoke-on-Trent, but I’m sure that you would find any further revelations about that sort of thing all rather tedious… so I’ll end it here.

In Quarantine

Sometime during the dark ages of the last century some poor deluded fool came up with the slogan ’everything is politics’. These days, of course, we look upon such ignorant nostrums as something akin to witchcraft, astrology, religion or other such manifestations of puerile nonsense.

As scientific research shows, rather than everything being politics, we now know that nothing is politics and that furthermore it is the duty of every single one of us to do our best to eradicate the curse of politics from this world of ours forevermore.

Politics is – as we now know – a form of mental illness which makes the sufferer believe they know what is wrong with society and – fatally – how they can make it better. Whereas those of us uninfected by the disease of politics know that things are always buggered up like this, in one way or another, and that any attempt to make things better will only end up making things much, much, worse.

So, therefore, if you do happen to come into contact with someone suffering from politics, please make sure you are disinfected, immunised and quarantined until it can be demonstrated you are entirely free from infection. Furthermore, please report all outbreaks of politics you see so that those unfortunate enough to be infected can be put down before the virus spreads to normal people.

Following these simple guidelines should ensure that soon we have an entirely politics-free country and we can all go about our lives safe in the knowledge that no politician is likely to come along and bugger it all up for us.

Celebratory Bunting

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Well, there is not much that can be said about it, not now. At the time it was one of the finest examples of its kind throughout the Empire. The bunting alone would have stretched for miles, if laid end to end. Of course, it was often said that the women who operated it were very often laid end to end, often wearing little more than the bunting. That was however, a false rumour put about by the Axis powers during the early days of WWII, meant to disrupt Allied supply lines and to divert attention from what was then regarded as the imminent invasion of the British Isles by the German army.

However, that much bunting would no-doubt have been a major problem for the occupying forces, as well as that number of skilled women of negotiable virtue let loose amongst the German soldiery. Still, that was then and they were very different days, except the Tuesdays, of course, which have been – certainly in the British Isles - more or less unchanged since the day William the Bastard became William the Lucky Bastard and then – quite quickly afterwards – William the Conqueror.

At least, though, it did have somewhere to tie the bunting to, which is more than can be said for the modern ones, even though they nearly all now come with their own integral MP3 player and Sat-Nav.