David Hadley's Blog, page 192

Those eyes

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I have held lives in the palm of my hand and curled my fingers around them, either to keep them safe or to squeeze the essence from them. It has been up to me to choose who is to live and who will die.

I have looked into the eyes of those who have just realised that I will be the last thing they will ever see. I have seen the life in them plead with me as they saw my finger tighten on the trigger… and I have seen those same eyes seconds later when there was no life in them.

I have looked into the eyes of men… and women too… as I did things to them and their loved ones that no-one should ever have to do. I have pleaded with them to say just what I needed to hear, begged them not to let their wives, their children endure another second of what I had my underlings do as I stared into those eyes, waiting for them to make it stop.

Yes, I have woken in the night by my nightmares filled with their screams far too often for me ever to escape back into sleep.

Those eyes that haunt me now, now I can no longer sleep, some of them stared back at me with hatred, some even with pity. Too many of them with a belief that they held in the mind that lay behind them something, some greater truth, that was worth more than the screams, the pain, the lives of their loved ones and – in the end - themselves.

Time after time, I pleaded with them to tell me, begged them to listen, screamed at them that no idea is worth the life of a single wife, husband, lover or child. That nothing you cannot feel the living heartbeat of is worth dying for, but far too many of them believed in the nobility of sacrifice and that there was some greater destiny that sacrifice could bring about… and… for that I stay awake deep into the night staring back into those eyes that will never let me sleep… ever again.

The Lower Passageways

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Of course, those dark and gloomy narrow passageways were not the places anyone else would go. The family and everyone else kept to the main rooms and the well-decorated and better-lit main parts of the house. We, though, were interested in the secret and the off-limits. Although, even we were sometimes scared of the dark and gloomy nature of some of the lower passageways, down where the basements and cellars of the house merged into the rock of the ground beneath it.

In those days no-one really knew or cared how old the house was; or why it had so many dark corridors and passageways. Especially those passageways that merged into the rock of the cliff and led away from the house, some down to the sea-shore at the cliff bottom, others away from the house inland and some towards the village and others apparently leading to nowhere, emerging from the ground in heaped rocks, seemingly for no reason.

Of course, people talked of smugglers, of dark deeds and dark days. Others mentioned priests and religious strife from even further back in the history of the island, but no-one really knew for sure. After all, the island was quite a way from the mainland, too far for its customs men, or even its religious differences, to reach, or so you would have thought.

Monday Poem: This Stillness holds Everything

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This Stillness holds Everything

It is a form of silence
this stillness holds everything

On the very edge of sound
waiting for the tremulous heartbeat

of the next few precious moments
to flicker into hesitant life

As we wait for our lives
to slip out of this stasis

And prepare themselves for the day
they will meet beyond the door

Of this semi-darkened room
where the dawn creeps across the floor

And touches the bed where we hide
from the rest of our waiting lives.

A Village Morning

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There was nothing but quiet. After the busy bustle of a city, something he'd become used to, the constant background hum of many people each going about their business in close proximity to each other, the quietness of the village seemed odd, verging on the sinister. After a while, he noticed that his gaze was constantly on the move, looking for action, movement, distraction. In the city he had to be constantly aware of those around him, where they were going, what they were doing.

Here, there was nothing. The street was almost deserted. It was so quiet here that there was a cat sitting in a patch of sun in the middle of the main road, washing its tail and keeping an eye on a pair of birds in a nearby garden. Further down the street, there was what looked like a middle-aged woman wandering around in her front garden, doing something to her plants. Beyond that, there was no movement at all, at least until he was a few yards away from the village shop.

A man he had never seen before came out of the shop, smiled, tucking a newspaper under his arm, and said 'Morning!'

'Er…. Morning,' John replied, attempting to smile back.

'Lovely day?'

'Er… yes… yes, it is.' John was uncertain, wondering if this was going to turn into a conversation but the other man just nodded, as if satisfied, and walked on.

The Dancing Sex Nuns of the Tenth Quadrant

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Eventually, one of the archaeological investigators decided that it must be religious, so they sent for an expert. A few weeks later, she appeared at the site. When the shuttle landed and the bay opened, we were all surprised, and a bit shocked, to see she was one of the Dancing Sex Nuns of the Tenth Quadrant.

The Sex Nuns were one of the last remaining religions, and the only one that could claim any continuation from the ancient lost religions of Old Earth. As mankind had spread out across the stars those old religions found they had less and less to say about what people discovered; about the worlds people found and – especially – about the other living creatures that were discovered.

The Sex Nuns, though, were devoted and absolute in their worship of the being they called the Earth Mother, who they claimed had given birth to the universe and all that it contained and that the stars and the planets that orbited them were the remnants of one of her orgasms made physical.

The senior archaeologist delegated me to look after the Sex Nun; to take her to the site, answer her questions and – much to the hilarity of my colleagues – assist her with any physical needs she may have.

Captain Jameson had tried to keep her face straight, especially during that last part of my orders, trying not to giggle along with the rest of them. We all knew, or at least thought we knew what the physical wants and needs of the Sex Nuns involved. It was the sort of thing every giggling teenager who is trying to make sense of sexuality hears stories about and, often, fantasises about. Just like all those stories we heard about the nun's lapdance confessionals, where the Sex Nun would lapdance over the supplicant until they were forced to confess all their sins and were granted the relief of absolution.

The Sex Nun, Sister Sinola, of course had all the lithe grace and elegance of her order. She moved with a light sensual motion that could easily make a convert of me as I watched her body undulate in her skin-tight leather Sex Nun's habit as we took the path to the site.

She turned to me as we entered the site. 'You see,' she said, touching my arm with her fingertips as she gestured towards the floor to ceiling poles covering the altar stage. 'Those poles for are for the Sex Nun's holy dances. They symbolise our travels from and back to the womb of the earth Mother as we make our way through this life. We slide up towards Her grace and down to more… earthly matters.' The last few words were said as she stared into my eyes, then licked her lips slowly with the tip of her tongue. Sister Sinola took a step closer to me. I could feel the heat of her body.

'I… I need to consecrate this place,' she said, stroking her hand down my chest, stopping a bare inch above my utility belt.

She turned away and began rummaging through her bag. She came out with a portable music unit, setting its speakers up on either side of the stage altar. She then pulled out a small strip of material from her bag. I had no idea of its purpose.

Sister Sinola saw me starting and held up the wisp of material for me to see. 'My holy Sex Nun Thong,' she said. 'Would you be willing to be my congregation for the consecration?'

'I… I'm not a believer,' I said.

'Oh that doesn't matter,' she said, unzipping her nun's habit and wiggling herself into her Holy Thong. 'I just need you to witness the ceremony.' She came towards me, dressed only in the Holy Thong. 'You will, if you don't mind, you have to kiss the Holy Thong.'

'Right… er… what do I…?'

'Just kneel.' She came forward until she towered above me. 'Just a simple kiss will do,' she said' …unless…'

Then the music began: a slow, throbbing beat that Sister Sinola explained was the sensual heartbeat of the Earth Mother herself. I sat down at one of the congregational tables in the body of the holy place, watching as she began the holy ritual with one of the poles.

It seemed as though the dance took me to a new place, a holy place, somewhere in the heart of what it is to be human and alive. I felt as though I had never really known what it was to be alive as I saw Sister Sinola's sensuous form writhe and gyrate in her devotions around the pole. First moving heavenward and then earthward and back again, time after time in time with the throbbing music.

Then – at the climax of her devotions – Sister Sinola hurled her Holy Thong aside to bring herself as close to the Earth Mother as physically possible as she devoted herself to that pole.

All too soon, the music faded away, leaving us in silence as Sister Sinola dismounted her pole, making obeisance to the Earth Mother as she did so.

'EA-hem…?' I said, when I could get my voice to work.

'Yes?' Sister Sinola said, walking towards me.

'I… I wan… I want to… to confess…'

'Ah… a convert,' she said as she undulated down to my lap.

In the End

All's well that ends well: but does it?

Where does anything end? A recent done-to-death cliché in films, TV and so forth has been the hero making a stand, saying 'this ends here!' before striding off to do what the script said to do.

Nothing ever does really end though – especially in films that need to beget a sequel – everything leaves threads untied, loose ends floating in the breeze to be caught up and blown out from the recent past into the near future by the winds of circumstance.

That is one reason for fiction, something to give the illusion that all those loose ends can be tied up, that things can become a story with a beginning a middle and an end, rather than going on and on like some interminable soap opera.

Events don't happen in isolation though. Events beget events and the protagonist might have 'ended it here' and strode off into the sunset with - or without - the girl, depending on what kind of myth, and what kind of hero, the story has brought into being for its duration.

The trouble with walking off into the sunset, though, is what is going to happen the next time the sun rises. Will the hero still be walking down that lonesome road, heading for some new town, some new injustice? Then, what happens behind him when those loose ends he tied so well begin to untangle, unwind, unknot themselves?

Thursday Poem: Just Together

Just Together

While waiting for the touch of a fingertip
to set in motion all this turning world.
While waiting for that single breath to breathe
new life into all this, we stand and look
for what's about to happen here and now.

We stand both knowing that we lost our way
and took the twisting path to find this place.
We wasted so much of our short lives to search
for what does not need to be found again.

And if we knew then, what we know these days
we would not have lost sight of one another
so long as we both searched those far horizons
and watched distances and the skies always

while seeking something that would come to take
us far away from all of this, but now
we're, still together, standing still in spite
of and because of all that time we lost

apart together, when we could have been
here just together waiting for the clouds
to part, the sun to rise up to begin
a new day freshly created just for us.

Come Inside

When the doorbell rang, I peeked out of the front bay window to see who it was. Two women, one younger one and one about thirty or so, stood by the front door. They had that look of the religious about them, although neither of them looked ugly enough to be real zealots.

Religious ones would be amusing, I thought to myself. I became a meek smiling old woman as I opened the door.

They uttered some religious platitudes and I nodded and smiled as though their empty mouthings had sparked a connection. I've lived through enough human religions to know how easy they come and go, despite – or maybe because of – how reverently the devout need to believe.

'Yes, I've always wondered about that,' I said. 'Would you like to come in?' I almost offered them a cup of tea, but then wondered if theirs was one of those religions that imposed odd arbitrary rules of denial on its adherents to make them more pliable.

The two women didn't even glance at each other to check their mutual feeling of security. I was an old woman. I was safe.

They came in, smiling and chatting, and walked down the hall towards the room I'd indicated as I shut the front door behind them and quickly, silently, locked and bolted it.

I noticed, as I followed them down the hall, what a nice sexy arse the older one had. I could feel myself growing out of the old woman disguise. Quickly, I looked away from her rolling arse, filling that unreligiously-tight skirt and the way it undulated, before either of them happened to glance behind them.

I got them sitting primly side by side on the sofa, turned away for a moment to let them relax and then – suddenly – turned back, changing my form as I leapt to attack.

The Choc-Ices of Possibility

She was the kind of woman who always knew which side her mandolin was buttered and she had a complete set of bespoke bicycle clips for all formal occasions. Still, those of us who knew her, and some of us had known her several times, always knew she was destined for greatness, especially on that memorable night the local cinema caught fire and we had to make our own entertainment as the firemen struggled to get the blaze under control.

She would, we all believed, eventually find - at least - a more profitable position in the intimate entertainment industry than up against the supermarket back wall in the flickering light of a cinema-turned-inferno.

With the money we had otherwise earmarked for interval choc-ices grasped in her hand and no underwear to her name, she left our small town later that very night.

For weeks afterwards, we all wondered what became of her, especially as the cinema had yet to reopen and we all had several choc-ices worth of possibilities we would have liked to explore with her.

However, we were not too surprised, a few months later, to find some of her more recognisable features displayed in a picture expose of a mere handful of politicians from the capital. All accused of doing to her what they had already so demonstrably done to the country, with the only appreciable difference in the fact that this time it was the politicians paying for their mistakes, not us.

Of course, a woman falling into such disgrace with so many formerly well- if-not-quite-respected-then-tolerated gentlemen had only one option left open to her. So, only a few months later we were again not really surprised on opening our tabloids to discover she had been given a prime-time chat show of her own.

Tired of Being Alone

[….]

I recognised the sound: I Fought the Law by The Clash. I had been a teenager when punk hit the music scene like a fist in the face, and I was still there to see how quickly it became an empty parody of itself just over a year later. Now it had become nothing more than golden oldies, just another hairstyle in the ever-lengthening history of Rock 'n' Roll. It seemed as though the outrageous had become commonplace, mundane with outrage itself out of date and worn out. No-one had the energy to be outraged any more, hardly meriting a paragraph unless it was a slow news day.

Guy marched up to where I sat and bowed formally. I stood up and Guy took me into his arms. We waltzed sedately around the half-empty dance floor completely out of step with the frantic beat of the anonymous disco tune the DJ played. As people turned to stare, I noticed Julia and Anne sitting side by side, as we twirled around the dance-floor, laughing as they watched us.

Guy tried to tango. I could not hold him as he bent backwards in my arms. We fell to the floor. I stood and held out my hand to Guy. He pulled me back down onto the floor. Then he rolled and stood up, tottering backwards into a pair of serious dancers. They glared and moved away. I sat cross-legged in the middle of the dance-floor trying to make a roll-up as the strobe light flickered.

'Al Green: Tired of Being Alone,' I muttered to myself and looked up as Julia held out her hand and pulled me to my feet. We danced slowly, seriously, close together. I let my cigarette go out as Julia rested her head on my shoulder. Slowly I danced us towards the doorway.

'I need a drink,' I said as we danced out into the corridor.

'Okay.' Julia let me go. 'Are you glad you came now?'

'Yes. I'd forgotten how good a night out could be.' I frowned as I saw Robert engaged in yet another serious discussion at a table near the door. I turned away towards the bar, hoping he would not notice us.

Robert waved at Julia, gesturing for her to come over to his table. She waved and shook her head. Robert shrugged and resumed his conversation with his union cronies. Someone else I didn't recognise waved at Julia; she waved back once more.

I fought my way to the bar and brought back two pints. Julia was in conversation with someone else I vaguely recognised. Eventually, I remembered her name was Jennifer and I'd seen her at the house a couple of times with Julia. I presumed she was studying Politics too.

I handed a pint to Julia and lit the remains of my roll-up. Julia put her glass down on a nearby table and pulled my tin from my pocket. The two girls chatted together as I leant back against the wall and looked around.

The differences between the first year students and the others were not so obvious any more. The nervous awkwardness was almost gone. Only a few stood, or sat, stiffly on the periphery with nervous hands, seeking sanctuary from others' eyes.

The lights flashed twice and Julia turned to me, raising her eyebrows; I nodded and gave her my empty glass. She and Jennifer headed off to the bar together, chatting all the way.

'Have you done the essay?'

I turned. Steve, a classmate from my tutorial group, looked up at me blinking nervously behind the thick lenses of his black-framed glasses.

'More or less, just writing it out neatly. I'll have it done tomorrow sometime,' I said. 'Is yours finished?'

Steve nodded and looked around. 'I don't see you in here very often. You're usually with some girl. The one that meets you sometimes, after the tutorials.'

'Yes, Alison. She's gone home for the weekend,' I said.

Julia returned and handed me another pint. Steve blinked across at Julia. I could see beads of sweat on his top lip. He muttered something, gestured vaguely and wandered off.

'Who's that?' Julia said, leaning closer to me as she watched him walk away.

'That's Steve. He's a bit on the nervous side. He sits in the corner in tutorials and never says a word, always terrified of being asked a question.' I watched him disappear into the crowd at the doorway. 'The sad thing, though, is that he is the smartest one in our group. We could do with his help sometimes. It took three weeks for him to build up the nerve to say hello to me…. So, by the summer he may even speak in the tutorials.'

'That's a shame,' Julia said. 'I wonder what made him like that?'

'Being one out of only three in his school to take A levels,' I said. 'In some places a little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous. I went to a school similar to Steve's. I've seen what can happen to kids at those places.'

'What sort of things?'

I pulled the sleeve of my shirt up and showed her the scar: long and jagged, from just below the shoulder to an inch above the elbow, twisting from the outside of my arm at the top to just above the crease of flesh on the inside of my elbow.

'That was for wanting to keep my Geography homework to myself.' I pulled down the sleeve.

Julia stared at my sleeve as though the scar was still visible through the material of my shirt. Over the other side of the room, I could see people being herded out by the bar staff.

'Come on, drink up. I think it's time to go,' I said.

'Was your school really like that?' Julia said, still looking at my arm as she drank.

'Yes,' I said. From the age of eleven, I had been interred in a school notorious throughout the local education authority. It was infamous even for the viciousness of the girls' netball team. I remembered once meeting a girl at a party who had played netball against my old school. Much later that night she showed me the scar that ran for six inches up the inside of her thigh. The scar had the shape of an arrow pointing to the place where I was keen to go, nevertheless, I paused to kiss along it in a kind of awe.

The girls at my school had been the granddaughters of the small, pale, hard-faced and broad-backed retired miners who now raced pigeons and grew vegetables on their allotments. Allotments that were already subsiding into the underground tunnels they had dug many years before. Their granddaughters had inherited the small stature and hard faces of the miners, while developing large aggressive breasts that were more terrifying than erotic. Before I moved away, I occasionally saw some of those girls I had lain awake at night trying not to stain the sheets over during my early teenage years. They seemed to be suddenly decades older with sagging faces and breasts, each one with several wild children of her own.

I had escaped Empire Street School with only one small scar on my chin as well as the long one on my arm, and two CSEs: Geography and Mathematics, which suggested only a career in cartography. Instead, I spent a year at the local Technical College, amongst welders and car mechanics, and came out with four O levels. 'It was nasty, it was violent and I got out as soon as I could.'

Julia looked at me closely and then nodded. She finished her drink, and put the glass down on a table as we walked out of the bar.

I sat on the cloakroom bench, rolling a cigarette, as Julia fished her own coat out from under a deep pile of coats that had been hanging up when we first arrived. Julia put her coat on and I handed the cigarette to her. I began to roll another. I put the cigarette into my mouth and shut the tin.

There was a dull thud and a curse from further up the cloakroom. I opened my tin and began to roll yet another cigarette. I finished rolling it just as Guy came over, rubbing his head. I held out the cigarette to him as he sat down next to me.

'So how many times is it that you've forgotten about the low doorway?'

'Seven, no six,' Guy said and rubbed his head again. 'Can you hang on a minute? Anne's gone to the toilet. Oh, and we have a couple of bottles of wine back at the house. Interested?'

[….]

[Extract from: Hanging Around Until: A novel]