David Hadley's Blog, page 83

Her Only Friends

Sometimes there is nothing to say. Sometimes the words are not there. Sometimes the voice is silent. Sometimes she has gone to those places she goes to when the world is not right for her.

There is a place, high up on the cliff she sits to watch the horizon where the sea meets the sky. Up there, she does not need words. There is only herself and she does not need to justify herself to herself.

Not anymore.

She has learnt how to live with herself. It is the rest of the world that is the problem. Most of the time it leaves her alone and she has learnt to live without it.

She never got on with the world, even as a child. She was always the awkward one at school. She was the one the other girls turned away from and she was the one no boy could ever understand.

Back then, she was full of words. Her words filled her diary and spilled over into page after page of exercise books. There were so many words and so many ways of putting them together, one after another. There was so much she needed to say, but no-one who she wanted to say it to.

So she said all she needed to say to those pages.

Words were the only friends she ever needed.

Now, though, all these years have gone by. She spent so long with the words and wrote so much. Inventing lives and worlds and carving them out of language. She built a universe of her own around herself brick-by-brick, word by word.

Now, sitting here up on her cliff she remembers how she built this place out of words. She spent pages just describing this cliff above the small coastal village and the smell and the sound of the sea below. She spent pages on the sky with all her dark clouds passing over each paragraph.

She stands and walks to the edge of this cliff she made. Here, right on the edge of it all, there are no words.

Below her is a sea full of words, wave upon wave of them. All going as deep into the word sea as any of the books she has made.

Now she is ready to go back to the words.

She takes a deep breath and dives straight in.

 

When The Shadows Call

When the shadows call, we can hide there and let the daytime pass us by. We wait for darkness before we move. We wait for the night to cover the sky with its deep blankets before we dare creep from the shadows where we hide.

They are out there, looking for us. We know only too well what will happen when they find us. Sometimes, as we huddle in the deepest darkness we can find and peer out through whatever cover we have found, we see the days waiting out there. We long for them, long to feel the sun on our faces again, feel the warmth seeping into us as deep as our bones.

Sometimes, I look at Ella, she looks at me, and I see the same thought in her eyes, as I know she sees in mine. Sometimes, I know we both wonder if it is worth it, if this is any kind of life. But survival is all that matters for now.

I look at Ella and all I can see is the promise I made to her mother. A promise that I would keep Ella safe, get her away from the nightmare our lives had become. I promised as the life slipped from my wife’s eyes that I would keep our daughter alive. I would find a place where she could venture out into the sunlight again.

Now, though I look at Ella, and I look at my reflection in moonlit pools and I wonder at the creatures they have forced us to become. I wonder if it is worth struggling on through another night and hiding for even one more day.

They are drawing closer and they will catch us.

I look at Ella and she looks at me. We dare not say it to each other, but both of us think that maybe it would be better for us to just end it all now.

 

Louise, How It Began… Again

‘Are you sure you want to start like this?’

‘Why, what is wrong with it?’

‘Well, nothing… I suppose.’ She scratched the lobe of her left ear in that way.

‘Come on, tell me.’

Louise sniffed. ‘Well, wouldn’t it be better if you started with a bit of drama, a bit of conflict?’

‘Conflict…? That’s a good one. You are here aren’t you?’ I thought about adding something about the scene, but decided I couldn’t be bothered. Anyway, these days who reads description?

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘It is funny how you always seem to turn up when one of these stories needs some conflict.’

‘Stories? Is that what you’re calling them now?’

‘Well, what would you call them?’

‘I’m too polite to say.’

‘You… too polite…? Ha!’

‘Well, you created me.’

‘So… I see, everything is my fault is it?’

Louise said nothing.

Too late, I realised I’d started filling in a bit of the background. She bent down and examined the leaf of a plant growing nearby.

Quickly, I described a small room… a bedroom in a cottage… holiday cottage. It was up under the sloping roof with old worn beams painted black. There was a small window, open in the breeze, which fluttered the curtains. The sound of the waves was soft in the distance.

‘Hey, I was looking at that plant.’

‘Yeah, well, you know I don’t know anything about nature… plants and stuff.’

‘Well, I did think it was a bit unusual… for a plant.’ She looked around, hands on hips. ‘I see we are in a bedroom again.’

‘Again?’

‘At least this time I’m dressed.’

I shook my head.

Louse looked down at herself. ‘Bastard.’ She glared at me. Then she looked down and prodded herself. ‘Anyway, where did these come from? I thought you didn’t like big ones?’

‘I… er… felt like a change.’

‘I can’t see my feet!’

‘Hang on… they are a bit… aren’t they?’

I described her a bit better. She was about 5’ 6”, long red hair, slim and her….’

‘Hey?’

‘What?’

‘Can’t a fictional character have a bit of privacy? I don’t want any of those Internet weirdos you hang around with getting all excited about me.’

‘What… so?’ I nodded towards the bed.

‘What?’

I smiled.

‘What, after last time?’

‘That was meant to be comedy,’ I said.

‘I’ve seen bigger jokes.’ She stared at me.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘It is too late now.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I’ve reached my word count for this piece.’

‘What already? I know I’ve complained about you always finishing too soon… but, well, you know that is my character for you.’

‘No, sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m finishing now.’

‘Hang on,’ Louise said. ‘I haven’t even asked you about that earlobe thing yet.’

But it was too late, the story was over.

 

Making The Best Of It With Leftovers

Well, there we were. Which was useful. Otherwise, we would have been here, and it is not much fun being here without at least a couple of sandwiches and a drink. After all, we are here for the long haul.

As it were….

Or, even as it probably still is.

Anyway, we came to this supermarket – as you can tell – to see if we could pick up an arresting first paragraph for this… this… whatever it is. For, as you can see, this… piece doesn’t start that well.

Not only that, at least so far, it hasn’t managed to get going at all.

In all its various promotions, the supermarket had promised it had all manner of paragraphs, sentences and so forth, on offer today. From arresting first paragraphs, through interesting and gripping middle passages, right through to some killer wrap-up lines.

Of course, we were eager to stock up, as we are now down to a handful of frozen paragraphs stuck to the bottom of the freezer. Many are well past their Best Before date too. I found one, the other day, which mentioned the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Another one I found in there referenced Pan’s People on Top of the Pops. It had gone a funny colour and smelt as though it could contain traces of the now unperson Jimmy Saville, a well-recognised health hazard these days.

There are a few odd sentences in the back of the cupboard too. Obviously, these are ones we’ve never got around to using, often for the usual reasons. Some of them look as though they might be foreign. But the storage instructions and ingredients list have worn off, so we don’t really want to open them up only to find they are instructions for how to clean out the vacuum cleaner filter in Polish. Which – as experience shows – does not tend to make a riveting posting, unless – of course – it is on a Polish Vacuum cleaner maintenance blog, of which I’m sure there are many.

Still, anyway, we did find the miscellaneous verbiage aisle… eventually. The supermarket, apparently, had moved it again. It used to be right next t the frozen peas, but now it is in garden supplies for some reason. They were right next to the slug pellets and two-for-the-price-of-one celebrity gardener-endorsed dibbers.

Anyway, all they had left was one rather limp paragraph about the Liberal Democrat Annual Conference. Which was probably way past its best when they had it in. There were also a couple of paragraphs about the  latest celebrity talent show on ITV. However, it had a couple of key words missing and several dangerous dangling modifiers which could – quite easily – fall foul of current EU Grammar safety standards.

So, we left without buying anything.

In the end, I had to cobble this one together out of what leftovers we had from a short story I’d made last week.

Still, I suppose, it didn’t turn out too bad in the end, even if I believe it could have done with another spoonful of garam masala in the closing line.

Voices In The Dark

The voices call from the dark. They lie out of reach, crying in the emptiness. Hands reach, fingertips brush against what could almost reach… if only. Inches become measureless voids, full only of emptiness. Only space lies between the hand that reaches and the hand that would reach back, grab and hold on tight.

This is where the world ended for so many. Yet there are those that somehow survived, some that still live. Their voices call out in the dark. They are the cries of those who hang on to life by its very edges, their hold on it slipping away by the second.

There are others too, pulled out from the wreckage who do not know if they are alive or dead. People with sightless eyes starring inward, unable to cope with a world so torn and destroyed, who wait for the old world to come back to them.

Injuries too, some more than the eye can bear or the mind acknowledge. Some of us here, scrabbling over the ruins chasing the calling voices, feeling for the hesitant dying heartbeat, have been to war. We have seen what humans can inflict on one another, but this….

This is an indifferent nature, tearing itself apart. It is a time, a place, where humans are just one more stain on the uncaring ground. A world overfull of life, like this one, does not care who it kills and maims, no matter what invented god you cry and plead to.

There are no gods here now.

There is only indifferent nature and the ruin of what was only hours ago a thriving town.

 

The Long Fog

The fog has not lifted for days now. It is dull, cold damp world that looms suddenly out of the thick greyness, taking us all by surprise. Sound is deadened, muted. We feel cocooned in some thick wadding that wraps around our world trapping us all inside.

At first, we all assumed it was more of that freak weather some people like to get excited about. But the weather is in constant flux, and there are such rare extremes far more often than we remember.

This fog, though, is no ordinary fog.

It may not just be the weather either.

We were on duty when the first report arrived. A scream heard somewhere out by the High Street. ‘Made the old biddy’s blood run cold, apparently, Sue said as I started up the patrol car. She stared at me.

‘It is my turn,’ I said. ‘You drove last night.’ I know she doesn’t like my driving. Sometimes I exaggerate it, just to wind her up.

‘Well, I can’t say you don’t need the practice.’ She grinned at her reflection in the windscreen.

In this fog, though, I couldn’t drive fast, and I didn’t want to, not even to annoy Sue.

Once we got there, the street was deserted. This town doesn’t have a nightlife much past about two in the morning, and it was now half-past three. The fog was thick, choking. Sue coughed as she cursed her torch for not piercing the fog.

‘We won’t find anything in this,’ she said. ‘Even if there is anything. It was probably a cat… or a fo….’

‘What?’ I could just make her out as a shape in the gloom, standing over something.

‘I… I’ve found it.’ Her voice was quiet.

I added the light of my torch to hers to illuminate the thing on the ground. We’d found a body all right. But, as my torch lit it up what remained of it, we both wished we hadn’t.

 

A New Sexual Revolution

Well, obviously I would tell you more. I could possibly even draw a diagram. However, in these rather litigious times a mere sketch could end up with me serving several years behind bars, or – even worse – suffering a few months of tabloid front-page headlines.

Not only that, these days there is an ever-present seething mass of outrage poised for action at the drop of an ill-considered tweet. All ready to vent their instant outrage at any perceived breach of increasingly proscribed allowable thought.

After all, how dare you even think that? They, waiting hands over keyboard out there will make you regret even contemplating considering the thought of anything, no matter how trivial, they regard as beyond the pale.

Still, anyway, as I was going to avoid saying, mentioning or even alluding to, there are things out there that are going on. Certain things we all know we dare not mention, or even allude towards.

After all, we do live in a multicultural society – we are told – so the sexual practices of a certain minority should not be looked upon with anything approaching a judgmental attitude. As the old saying goes, ‘judge not, or you will be condemned most mightily on the social media sites and tabloid front pages.’

Not, of course, that the broadsheet will let it go by without some snide bit of gossip, innuendo and shallow hyperbole. All not much different to those tabloids they pretend to sneer at, while secretly envying and emulating. After all, there is little difference between a broadsheet journalist and a tabloid hack. Apart, that is, from a thesaurus and a poor third in Media Studies, or some such similar shallow debasement of the educational standards of what was once a semi- educated country.

Let alone should the mighty BBC look down from its high moral horse and consider you an unperson in its own Brave New World it is building one slanted news item at a time.

So, anyway, there we were.

She had the Edam and I had the Stilton.

Of course, the metropolitan elite look somewhat askance upon the erotic use of cheese these days. Mainly because they regarded such unusual cheeses as their preserve, unknown or misunderstood by the hoi-polloi. Now, though the erotic use of cheese is – as some cultural critics maintain – only a few months away from mass acceptance. So ordinary people can now look forward confidently to the time when – in the near future – full-frontal Brie dating site adverts appear out on the more mainstream websites.

Experts confidently predict too, that erotic cheese websites will soon no longer be hidden away as specialist sites, or used only by those in the over-privileged metropolitan middle-classes.

All that is need is a breakout trilogy of erotic cheese novels, such as Fifty Slices of Gruyere for the scene to go mainstream.

So, take my advice get in a stock of Double Gloucester now, and start polishing your Sage Derby bondage harness for the erotic cheese is coming… as it were.

 

The Memory Guitar

She glanced across at the guitar case, untouched for so long. Every few days, Rosie the cleaner came into the room and dusted. She wiped down the guitar case and polished the gold records in their frames on the wall.

Occasionally, she’d look at him, but she knew now, warned by his PA, not to talk to him about the guitar or the awards.

Rosie knew the story now, though. Her daughter told her all about it one day as they sat together.

Of course, Claire, her daughter knew all about him, the man who used to be famous. ‘I had a poster of him on my wall, don’t you remember, mum?’

Rosie shook her head. All she could remember of those days were the arguments, the slammed doors and the noise… the music, far too loud.

‘Fancy you having him as a client.’ Claire grinned. ‘I used to fancy him, so much. What does he look like now?’

Rosie shrugged. ‘Bald, wrinkled. Too heavy, probably. Like we all do as we grow older.’

‘Bald?’

Rosie remembered her daughter’s bedroom, one poster in particular. ‘He wasn’t that hairy one with a guitar, was he?’

Claire nodded.

‘Your dad called him the guitar gorilla.’ Rosie was silent, remembering Pete. He was gone now, seven years and still she kept asking him if he wanted a cup of tea when she was in the house alone. ‘He has a guitar, in a case. But he never touches it.’

‘Yes.’ Claire nodded again. ‘It was a tragedy. It was in all the papers. He swore then he’d never play another note again. Not after that night. He walked off then and there and was never seen on stage again.’ She looked at her mother. ‘And now, here you are cleaning for him.’

She looked away, shaking her head, remembering another night, a few years earlier and a hotel room with a guitar propped up in a corner. She too had times she’d never forget.

‘Anyway,’ Rosie said. ‘Fancy another cup of tea.’

Claire smiled, wiped her eyes and said yes.

 

The Evil Plan

It began.

Well, it would have begun, if he could get the parts.

They were out of stock as usual.

‘Not much call for that sort of thing, these days, squire.’ The assistant shrugged.

The Docktor had thought he could get what he needed on the internet. After all, he thought, you can get everything you want on the internet these days.

‘You must be joking… use the internet?’ The man before him, or what the Docktor assumed was the same man, had said over the phone when the Docktor had first made his tentative enquiry. ‘The internet is crawling with… well, with the other side, squire. More than my job’s worth, if you know what I mean?’

The Docktor didn’t really know what the assistant meant, but maybe that was why he was doing what he was doing, or – at least – trying to do what he was doing. The Docktor had never really got the hang of the rest of humanity.

He was not a people person.

Just as well in a way. Minions were a bit easy come, easy go – almost by definition. It was best not to become too attached to them. It would make the inevitable disappointment at their failure and eventual trip to the piranha tank too emotional.

The Docktor had no real faith in emotion, far too messy.

Except anger of course. Anger was always good.

He could feel his anger rising now as he stared across the counter at the minio… shop assistant.

‘So, have you got one?’ The Doctor was drumming his fingers on the counter-top.

‘I’ll have to check.’ The assistant made no effort to do so. He sighed and then turned towards the door to a back room. He turned back. ‘Although, you know volcanic islands can be a bit….’ He made a rising and falling motion with his hand. ‘Not really a long-term viable habitat.’

‘Well,’ the Docktor tried to keep calm. ‘I wasn’t thinking of long term. Once the world is mine… er… once my plans have come to fruition, then the world will be….’ He laughed, trying out his interpersonal skills, such as they were. ‘The world will be my oyster.’ His hand closed into a fist as though he was crushing the world itself in his hand.

‘Yes, well, right.’ The assistant came back to the counter.  He leant on the counter, towards the Docktor. ‘Between you and me, the bottom’s dropped out of the old world-domination game. These days we usually sell our islands to reclusive billionaires and the weirder rock stars. As for volcanic islands… well, like I said… there’s no call for them. Sorry.’

The Doctor stared.

‘Although,’ the assistant said. ‘I could get you a seat in the European Parliament, if you want?’

‘That’s not world domination, though, is it?’ The Doctor drummed his fingers on the countertop again.

‘Next best thing.’

‘Really?’

The assistant nodded. ‘Just think of the expenses alone. That, and the almost complete lack of democratic accountability.’

‘Right,’ the Doctor beamed his cold smile. ‘I’ll take it.’

Then They Came

The day draws to a close. We draw the curtains on the growing darkness. Then we lock and bolt the doors before checking the weapons.

The nights grow longer now. There is more darkness than light as the days shrink and cower before the approaching winter.

It will not be long before winter locks us inside here, huddled together. All sitting here, waiting for the dawn. All hoping will we see another day, or, if we don’t, that we will be amongst the lucky ones who die quickly.

Once, we humans ruled this world. This was a country with no great predators. The only dangers to people were other humans. Then, even here, far from any city, still there was civilisation. There was an expectation that any step would not be a last one.

There were times when the night was not a time of danger and fear. There was a time when not every sound in the darkness terrified us as we felt them drawing closer. There was a time when you could visit friends and neighbours and not find what remains of them ripped and torn across the wreckage of what was once their home. There was a time when this land was safe.

Then they came.

Where they came from, no-one knows. Why they are here, no-one knows. All we do know is that we were once lords of all we could see.

Now we are only prey, huddled here waiting, and knowing, one day the end will come.