David Hadley's Blog, page 179

Nice Guys Finish Here

Apparently, Up Top there is a saying 'nice guys finish last'. Down here, they don't. If we have anything to do with it, they don't finish at all. Niceness is not something we want to encourage, especially among the minions.

Up Top they also say that we down here are evil. Personally, I don't really care what they call us, or me, just as long as they show us some respect, some fear, but I find evil is an awfully subjective word. After all, we are just minding our own business, protecting what is ours. I mean, we have spent millennia getting all this stuff, all this treasure, often as legitimate fees for services rendered, and storing it away down here.

I would say that if anyone is evil it is those smug self-congratulatory bastards who saunter on down here and try to take it from us… those… nice guys… those heroes.

We do our best, though, to make them realise just how unwelcome they are when they attempt to enter our domain. Then, when they have worn out their welcome… and our patience, we leave their bones there, where they fell, as a warning to those that follow that we do not like having our peace disturbed by bands of adventurers seeking fame, glory and treasure down here in this labyrinth we like to call our home.

A World Ready

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How was I to shape this world around her?

I had a world ready for someone. I had the sky just the right shade of blue. I had the distant mountains hinting of far travelled places. I had seas and streams, and rivers too. I had hillsides and valleys. I had woods and the open plains. I had animals all around, busy going about their lives.

Still, though, it seemed like an empty world.

Then I remembered her, from another lifetime, from another world a bit like this one. I had not shaped her life for her, not made that world to fit her. She had too many dreams, too much curiosity about what lay beyond the distant hills.

I'd given her a valley to live in, crops and animals to tend, but I had left her alone to live the way she chose. Eventually, though, she chose to leave behind all I had made for her and go to see what lay beyond those distant hills I painted on her horizons.

She made up her mind, one day, to go there and see for herself. She wanted to discover what lay beyond what I'd created just for her….

And what god would allow that?

The Cold Lands

I had never come this far north before, never been to the Cold Lands. Someone, years ago in a roadside tavern, told me the people of the Cold Lands have such cruel and vicious gods that cause their people to live cold hard lives. He also told me that their soldiers patrol the borders looking for strangers, regarding all as spies, invaders and villains.

It didn't surprise me then when, after only a few hours of crossing the ill-defined borderlands to the Cold Lands, a patrol of soldiers intercepted me. At least, I presumed they were soldiers; they wore tattered remnants of what once may have been uniforms. They were armed of course, but then most that travel the roads are armed, much as I am, and know how to defend themselves, much as I do. I knew there would be little point though in offering resistance to the patrol that surrounded me on that road. None of us knew each other's languages, so it was by gesture that they indicated they would escort me to the town that lay like a smudged shadow in the misty distance.

I was quite happy to go with them. It seems to be either cold or rainy in the Cold Lands, or on a bad day, both. Furthermore, as the man I met in that tavern so long ago said, most days in the Cold Lands are bad days. Maybe the gods of the Cold Lands want it that way. Maybe the people of the Cold Lands owe some huge debt to those gods.

Whatever the reason, it is not a happy land… but then few lands are. Most though manage to be happy every now and then, but the Cold Lands do not… not ever.

The Last Night of the Storyteller

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Then it was all over.

She came to me again that night, creeping into the bed beside me and pulling the covers up over us. Her naked skin was cold where she warmed herself against me.

'Tell me a story,' she said.

'I have no stories left to tell.' The box where I kept the stories was empty. She had taken the last one the night before. Now, I had nothing left to tell her, nothing left to say.

Her hand moved down, over my body. 'I need a story,' she said. 'I need to know why my hand is moving down over your body, and why I am doing this,' she began to kiss down along the path her hand had taken, until her kissing mouth met her hand.

Another kiss, right there. I felt myself respond, my body seeking her mouth, feeling her warm breath caressing me as she spoke. 'I need a tale to tell me what to do next.'

I looked down to see the moonlight reflected in her eyes. Her hand squeezed. I moaned and thought of all the stories I knew, of all the tales I had told to women like her.

I sighed 'Once there was a woman who, every night came to the bed of the Storyteller to be told a story to help her sleep,' I sighed again as her warm mouth closed over me and I felt the first flick of her wet tongue. 'One night though the story-teller had no more stories left to tell her. "I need a story," the woman said. "I need to know why my hand is moving down over your body, and why I am doing this." she began to kiss down along the path her hand had taken, until her kissing mouth met her hand.'

She sighed too now, as the story began and her head and hand began to move in time with each other and with the rhythm of my words.

Happiness is a Warm Courgette

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Still, it is not often you see one of those, let alone two. However, it is probably best if we move on from there, as the Advertising Standards Agency tend to get a bit sniffy about that much sex and violence, especially pre-watershed. Having said that, and I think it was me talking, either that or I possess a slightly more eloquent than average desk, then I think it is safe to move on to the a slightly less contentious subject, about which we could all do with some edification.

Trouble is, I can't think of one.

Well, not one that I'm certain a person of your higher cast of mind, and snugly-fitting underwear would like to peruse, especially on a day like this when there is not a single watermelon in the house, let alone a courgette.

Hey….

Hang on….

Didn't I just say to let alone the courgette?

Now put it down….

Wipe it, first, though… before you put it back, at least.

Hold on….

Yes, you are right… it is rather a fine example of a courgette…. So fresh… so firm….

Hang on. You stay there… and keep that courgette warm…. I'll go and fetch a suitably pre-moistened set of bagpipes.

Monday Poem: She is everything

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She is everything

She is like the time
She is like motion
She is the world
She moves through.

She is soft like silk
She is hard as stone
She shines like a star
She orbits around.

She is all the sky
She turns to face.
She laughs at you
She wants to be freedom.

She wants everything
She is everything
She tells no lies
She never tells the truth.

She lives beyond
She will never go home
She will be there when you wake up
She will be gone in the morning.

When it all Stopped

I was quite young the first time it happened, somewhere around ten or eleven years old. Probably eleven, because I seem to recall I hadn't long started secondary school when it happened for the second time.

The first time, though, happened when a few of us were playing football, on the local park football pitch. I had a brand new football and we were – I suppose – testing it out. It was quite a windy day and it was a light ball, not regulation weight or anywhere near. Anyway, eventually the ball sailed through our improvised goal – jumpers for goalposts, of course - and over a garden wall.

I knew I had to get my ball back, even though the others all said that there was a dangerous dog in the garden. It was more an orchard than a garden, one that we'd never ever tried to scrump, because of this alleged big vicious dog, despite the fact that none of us could recall ever seeing it.

I climbed up onto the top of the wall and sat astride it, looking down into the orchard. A couple of my friends joined me up there and we peered into the long grass that covered the ground searching for the yellow ball. Eventually we saw it down by the trunk of one of the trees.

There was no sign of any dog, or even a sense that the orchard was anything but deserted. Even so, I dropped down from the wall as stealthily as I could and made straight for the ball.

I was strolling out, back to the wall, with the ball under my arm when the other two boys on the wall screamed and pointed behind me. I turned just in time to see the dog behind me – mid-leap. I crouched down, dropping the ball and covered my face with my arm, waiting for those massive vicious teeth to rip me to shreds….

Nothing happened….

Gingerly, I looked up from under my protecting arm. The dog was there in mid-air, spittle droplets hung in the air under its wide-open jaw, its ears blown back in the now non-existent air-resistance from its leap.

I looked around, one of the boys was open-mouthed too, silently screaming and pointing, the other had his hands over his eyes, half-turning away from the sight of me and the dog.

I didn't hang around to see how long this tableau would remain, how long the freeze frame would last. I picked up my ball, threw it over the wall and then climbed up the tree nearest the wall.

I was shinning my way halfway along the bough that reached the wall when the roar of the dog and the scream of my mate split the silence again. By the time the boy and dog had realised I was no longer where they thought I was; I was safe back on the top of the wall again.

The Miracle of the Kebab

'For what doth it profit a man if he is in the revered street of the late-night takeaways and yet he finds himself short of the dosh to get himself the most holy of kebabs?' The Prophet Nhigel (May his Plums Dangle Mightily) stared at each of his disciples in turn as they stood swaying in the street outside the kebab shop. Well, all of them except – it seemed – Barry the Tosser.

Nhigel looked around and saw that Barry was in the alley down the side of the supermarket. He seemed to be inducting a lay sister into the Brotherhood of the Mates by the method of the secret handshake. At least, her hand was moving up and down rather rapidly and from the way Barry was chanting the name of the Lord with increasing regularity, Nhigel assumed it would not be long before Barry anointed the acolyte with his holy sacrament.

Nhigel smiled to himself when he looked back at the mates. Big Paul held his hands out to Nhigel, heaped in them was all the spare change the mates could muster between them.

'Is there enough there?' Stan the sceptic said.

Nhigel counted. 'It is a miracle, brothers!' Nhigel opened the door of the kebab shop. 'Come let us all feast upon the bounty of the Lord and sing his praises for the wonder of the mighty kebab as we then meander our way homeward.'

When the Day Came

Now, those times are long gone.

She used to sit here and watch the river flowing by. She used to have so many endless days. She had a long summer that seemed as though it would never end. Even when September ended and the nights drew their blankets over the skies and the wind grew sharp teeth that nipped at her skin, even then her summer hung on.

There were rainy days, of course. This is England, there are always rainy days, but the sun soon came out in her long summer, and the rain washed her world for her; leaving it clean, leaving it fresh.

For a time, it seemed as though time had stopped. For a time, she began to think that maybe there would be a future. For a time, she forgot about the past.

Then the day came when her summer was suddenly over.

The day came when the past came back.

The day came when those who had spent the long summer searching for her found her.

The day came when there was the sudden crack of gunfire and a dying voice screaming her name: telling her to run, to leave her summer behind and never look back.

Thursday Poem: Those Dark Corners

Those Dark Corners

The day begins so slowly with the night
slipping reluctantly down from the mind
like some dark creature of the shadow places
retreating hesitant before the dawn
can come and take its hiding places away.

The light will come soon now and chase away
all those dark corners where the fear and dread
still wait, reluctant to face the light, they scamper
away to those dark corners where the day
will never venture, even at its brightest.

For there are those dark places in the corners
always just where we never want to look,
the shadows where such things will grow and breed
and waiting for the darkness to come back.