John M. Dow's Blog, page 3

West Lothian Interview

Kindle for Christmas sets John on the write lines

A West Lothian author has just had his first novel published on the Amazon Kindle store.

And John Dow's book, 'From Within' has sold an incredible 700 copies in just a week.

Apart from his writing, John, from Eliburn, is an avid reader and reckons that he reads about 200 novels a year. A keen walker, John even takes his Kindle with him on his walks about the town.

"I got a Kindle for Christmas," he added, "and I loved it and the convenience of the device."

Although the first draft of John's book was written in 2005, it was only recently that he dusted it down and finished it off. "I am not a confident person, but I have an incredibly supportive partner," he added. "She found it, read it, loved it and nagged me to take it further."

The inspiration for John's book, which is a short, fast and gruesome story about two Celtic deities warring over a small Scottish Borders town at the edge of their realms, came about when he was driving in the Borders one foggy day. "It was beautiful, but breathtakingly cold," he said, "and this little village was sticking up out of the fog. The image of the village gelled with an idea I had about a supernatural Celtic mythology story."

John, who sticks to a strict limit of 1,000 words a day, is a member of Carmondean Writers' Group. "They were hugely, hugely helpful," he said.

John believes it's never been a better time for authors, with the move to on-line publishing. "It's taking away the power from the publishers and giving it to the writer and reader," he added.

'From Within' can be downloaded from HERE (new window) . John's next book 'Careless Talk' is already well on its way to completion.

CLICK HERE to listen to John talking about his writing.

Published on West Lothian Community News

Careless Talk

Making good progress, I think - first draft is about a third complete. The set-up is all done, now we just need to see how it all unfolds.

Had a lengthy segment of American-Victorian narrative dialogue to write - not the easiest thing in the world to do.

From Within – Now available on Kindle

Now available on the Amazon Kindle Store - From Within

"They stopped, looking around, trying to pinpoint the source of their discomfort. The tension in the air suddenly snapped, released, and with a series of staccato bangs, every door down the length of the street swung open.

From out of the houses and shops they came, shuffling, staggering, and swaying. Fly-by-wire humans, jerking along the street like meat marionettes, with mouths agape and eyes empty. In their suits and their dresses, overalls, smocks, and pyjamas, the locals of Wakely marched to their own rhythm of decay to greet the visitors to their town."

Three strangers find themselves drawn to Wakely, a small village in the Scottish Borders, where a centuries-old conflict between two warring Celtic deities is drawing to its gruesome conclusion.

A small boy holds the key to their survival, but first they have to find him. And they're not the only ones looking.

 

Sticky Bits

There's nothing more alarming than walking down the street minding ones own business only to find oneself caught in the middle of a hole-storm. I huddled in the doorway of a dingy looking greengrocer and shivered as millions of tiny holes hurtled earthward, making little popping noises as they winked out of existence on the grimy pavement.

To add insult to injury, peering through a particularly slow-moving hole revealed that it opened out into a rather pleasant looking meadow, furnished with long, waving, grass and glowing with yellow sunlight.

As I waited for the shower to pass, I drifted into my usual daydream – of building a machine – a Machiavellian arrangement of gears and magnets – to collect the holes together before they popped in order to make a gateway to somewhere – anywhere – better than this.

It was during a particularly pleasant part of this daydream – the part with the girl – that I noticed that one of the tiny holes hadn't popped. It simply sat there, on the pavement, looking at me.

"Oho!" I thought, hardly daring to hope. Another hole fell beside the first and the two coalesced into one slightly larger hole.

"OHO!" I cried. More and more holes fell, bouncing and skipping onto the pavement instead of popping. Little silvery rivers flowing inwards, seemingly drawn towards what was rapidly become a swirling whirlpool to somewhere else.

I peeked my head as far forward as I dared – trust me, you really don't want a hole in the back of your head – and gazed into the swirling eye. The view beyond the coruscating wheel of liquid glass was idyllic to say the least – the sun setting in a brazen sky sending lances of orange fire across rolling hills covered in the greenest grass I'd ever seen. Multi-coloured birds fluttered and swooped and their muted cries drifted up to me as though from the memory of a beautiful dream.

The deluge was slowing when the outermost surface of the spiral began to foam and effervesce.

"Oh bugger!" I cried, realising with horror that – if I delayed – the portal would be gone forever. I tensed, ready to spring into a new life in another world, when the dingy door behind me flew open and a grizzled looking old chap in a dusty floral print dress appeared behind me.

"Away we ye, ye stupid bloody things!" he bellowed, and sloshed a bucketful of dirty water and potato peelings across the pavement. The portal fizzed and spat violently then vanished, the energy of its passing casting peelings and grime skyward.

I gazed blankly at the stinking heap of peelings with a heavy heart, and imagined their slimy counterparts descending from the clear sky and soiling the meadow in that other place.

"What have you done?" I whispered.

The old man hiked up his tights. "Stupid bloody holes. Leave sticky bits all over the path. Shouldn't be allowed."

 

Finding Jesus in my Soup

David stared into the bowl of soup where the face of Jesus had materialised and wondered why The Man looked so much like a serial killer. "I mean, if you're the Son of God you can look like anyone, right?"

The face widened its eyes a little, rivulets of Heinz Cream of Tomato streaming to the sides of the plate like the parting of the Red Sea in miniature. For an entity without even a whole head, it did a remarkably accurate approximation of a shrug.

"Well, what's that supposed to mean?"

The manifestation of the divine smiled and opened its mouth. Thick reddish orange liquid bubbled around the words. "I look as you expect me to look."

"Bollocks," David said. "I expect you to look like Robert Powell. And don't give me that  disapproving look – you're a bowl of soup. I can talk to a bowl of soup any way I like."

"Gonnae keep the noise doon, Chief?"

David looked up. Gordon was sitting at the table opposite with his own bowl of soup upturned by his side. As usual, he'd been finger painting and the front of his hospital gown was covered in a lattice of thick orange smears.

"Keep it down yourself, Gordon," David scowled. "I'm trying to have a conversation with Jesus."

"Yer talkin' tae yer soup again, boy. D'ye no think it's time ye stopped it?"

"Do you hear me passing comment when you're smearing shit on the walls of your ward? Or screaming abuse at the seagulls? Have I ever said a word about you sitting up half the night chatting to the furniture?"

Gordon thought about this for a moment. "Naw, Chief. Ye've never said anything. But then, I'm just a mad bampot  – you're a bloody doctor."

 

The Survivors' Club

So, this pneumatic blonde practically leaps at me as I walk into the hotel function suite. She's waving her arms and squealing an introduction in a high-pitched nasal whine. I have to stifle a snigger as she tells me her name is Candy. She's like a five-foot-nothing self-propelled stereotype, shoehorned into less lycra than the average swimsuit model.

I smile and shake her hand as I wait patiently to get a word in.

"So, yah," she says, "I was at Camp Comanche in '02 – you know, the Hatchet Jack thing?"

I think about this for a moment. Hatchet Jack was that caretaker – the one who had a thing about collecting the heads of the summer camp supervisors. By the time I recall this, Candy has launched into a graphic description of how she alone managed to escape the killer and bring him to justice. Sounds like bullshit to me.

"So what about you?" she asks, finally pausing for breath. "Who did you survive?"

I pause. Ok, so I knew that this question would come up multiple times during the weekend, but I still feel a little unprepared. It was all so recent, you know?

"I was at the Macefield Prom. You know, the one in the news a few months ago."

"OMG!" she says. Actually like that. Ohh-Emm-Gee. "That's so amazing! That guy killed, what, two hundred people in one night?"

"Two hundred and twelve," I correct.

"How did you escape?" she asks, her eyes like saucers.

I repeat the story I told the police.

"Wow! Hiding for all that time! You must have been terrified!" I see the usual look of disgust in her eyes as she pictures me hiding in the store cupboard while people were being slaughtered like cattle within a few feet of me. I don't give a shit.

"You do what you have to," I say brusquely. I glance around the room. There are about fifty people present; some of them seem as animated and excited as Candy; some are nervous, withdrawn. One girl sits on her own in the corner, her dark hair hanging down over her face as though she's trying to hide. I wonder what her story is.

"So," I say, "this is my first time here and I don't know anyone. How does it work?"

"Well," Candy says, "we just kind of chat informally for a bit until everyone's here and then we have a talk by our founder. For the rest of the weekend we have workshops and stuff. The timetable is on the noticeboard. " She points across the room.

"Who's the founder?" I ask.

"Oh I dunno his name," she squeaks. "Some bigshot shrink. That guy who was trapped in his own psychiatric ward when the patients got out."

"Robert Kleiner?"

"Yeah, that's him. He'll talk about, like, whatever, and then he'll get one of us to tell their story. Hey, if this is your first time, I should introduce you to some of the regulars."

"Yes, that would be good," I say.

I flinch as she grabs my hand, but manage to stifle it. She drags me over to a pair of women who are talking excitedly by the bar. One of them, a tall redhead, seems to be recounting something involving a knife to a shorter dark haired girl. She makes exaggerated stabbing motions in the air.

"Laurie! Jolene! Guess who I have here?" She pauses for a moment and then turns to me, with no sign of a blush. "What's your name?"

"Josh," I answer. "Josh Scott."

"It's Josh Scott!" she says. The sighs of "Ohh!" and "Ahh!" fail to disguise the blank looks. They've no idea who I am but that's ok – I don't know who they are either. The difference is, I don't really care.

"He's the guy from the Macefield thing! Remember? The guy who hid in the cupboard?"

All of a sudden I gain a deeper insight into Hatchet Jack's motivations. Light dawns in the girls' eyes and one of them breathes "Wow! That was, like, two hundred people, right?"

"Two hundred and twelve. So what's your story?"

"Uhh, I'm Jolene," says the redhead. "My friends and I were abducted by that weird inbred cannibal family." I nod attentively as she details her escape. She spends a significant part of her monologue describing the hideous ways in which her friends met their untimely end. I offer sympathies for her loss.

The dark haired girl speaks next. She introduces herself as Laurie and immediately regales me with a convoluted tale of hockey masks, gardening implements, and lots and lots of blood. Her eyes are glittering with excitement as she demonstrates the killing blow she used to decapitate the frenzied deformed kid who'd been stalking her and her friends all summer. I try my best to remain focussed on her story, but I worry that the deep twist of revulsion that sits in my stomach is showing on my face.

I nod at the girl sitting alone in the corner. "Who's that?" I ask.

"That's Sandy. She doesn't talk much," Candy answers. A look passes between the three women. Was that a suggestion of an eyeroll from Laurie.

"I'll just say hi," I say. "Nice meeting you."

"Sure," says Candy, pouting a little.

Candy, Sandy, Jolene and Laurie, I think. It's like a b-movie script gone mad.

I walk through the yapping crowd, occasionally nodding and smiling in response to interested glances. The girl is sitting at a small round table, a glass of fruit juice untouched before her. I clear my throat and she looks up.

"Hi," I say. "My name's Josh."

"Sandy," she answers, her voice barely audible.

"Do you mind if I sit down?"

She shrugs, so I sit. She's pale and pretty and very nervous; she picks distractedly at her fingernails. She interests me.

"If you don't mind me saying, you seem a little out of place here," I say.

"Why?" she asks. "It's a support group. I need support."

I think about this. "Well, yeah, that's what I thought too. A support group for the survivors of violent crime. That's why I'm here, but…"

She looks up at me. "But?"

I shrug. "I dunno – just seems a bit more like a social club to me."

"The Survivors Club," she smiles briefly. "Yeah, it can get like that sometimes."

It occurs to me that she hasn't asked who I survived or how many of my friends were killed. The silence between us is uncomfortable and I wrack my brain trying to think of something to say. I decide to be upfront and ask her what brought her here when I'm saved by the bell: there's a squeal from the PA system and a bass thumping as a microphone is tapped. A mellifluous voice bids us all good evening, and I turn towards a small podium in one corner of the room. A middle aged man in a rumpled suit is standing there beaming at the crowd. The good doctor, I assume.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming. As most of you will be aware, this is the fifth meeting of the Victims Support Group. We have a great weekend of workshops and therapy sessions lined up for you, but to kick things off I'd like to share with you an inspirational story from one of our founding members. Please give a warm welcome to Jason Boyd."

There's a smattering of applause as an athletic looking young man steps up to the podium. He introduces himself and begins talking. My attention drifts within seconds and his voice becomes a background drone. I sneak a glance at Sandy. She has a look of complete boredom on her face. I lean towards her.

"Don't you think it's a little weird?" I ask.

"What do you mean?"

"The way they seem to enjoy telling their stories so much. Almost like they're bragging they were more clever than everyone else, even though they really just got lucky."

She shrugs again. "It's just their way of coping. They've triumphed over adversity – doesn't really matter if they did it through violence, or running away." She pauses. "Or hiding in a cupboard."

I smile. "You heard about that, then?"

There's no returning smile. She seems quite insightful. I've no idea what she's been through and get the impression she's unlikely to talk about it with a stranger. Which is a shame, really, as she's probably the only person in the room I'm interested in hearing about. Still, there's plenty of time over the weekend to get to know her.

The guy on the podium is still droning on and making hacking gestures. I glance around at his spellbound audience and note the sparkling eyes and the the looks of bloodlust on their faces. I'm sitting in a room full of monsters. The knot of disgust tightens within me. They're all so proud of themselves. It's not such a big deal to survive something. Anyone can do it. Admittedly, it helps when you're the one doing all the killing. It's going to be a fun weekend.

 

Triad

i. Chrissy Dances

And the waves lap gently at the sand, pushing it up and pulling it back, undecided on whether they should stay or go but nevertheless forced into constant motion by the irresistible pull of the moon.

Chrissy sits and waits on the shoreline for the dashing young man who must surely happen by soon. But the waves lap, and the sand stirs, and Chrissy's shadow lengthens across the hard packed rippled surface and still he does not appear.

Her crown sits askew on her golden head and her eyes gaze vacantly down at her feet. She wriggles her toes into the sand and watches as the saturated ground gives up its water in tiny pools around her feet.

The sun dips lower in the sky, resting its head on the horizon, and sends glowing amber beams of sympathy to soothe the young girl's pain. Chrissy smiles back sadly, and looks once more along the empty beach.

She folds her arms over her knees, rests her chin on them, and begins singing softly to herself. A light breeze creeps cautiously from the ocean surface and sidles up the beach. It lifts a few strands of soft, fine, hair and strokes them gently. "Everything will work out fine."

She rises and stands before the ocean with her arms held out. The breeze grows a little more excited, flicking at her white linen dress, and whispering in her ear. She spins slowly on the spot, a careful pirouette. She points with her right foot and inscribes a perfect circle for her Prince to cross. She raises her arms in a graceful arch above her head and pivots forwards, raising one leg in an elegant Arabesque.

The lapping waves give a gurgling chuckle at the dancing girl while their parents roar approval from further afield. The wind cheers and whistles as it flows alongside her, constantly caressing, touching, guiding and leading. She dances up the beach. Her shadow flickers and wavers and the sun turns the water to fire as it clings to the last scrap of the sea. As she dances across the demarcation line between the ocean's domain and the land's, the dry sand leaps excitedly in the air around her feet, kicked into glittering tornadoes by the energy of her passing. From over the border, the brine-soaked ocean sand looks on with envy.

Then he is here, clad in black, tall, lean, his face indistinct with the sun at his back. She dances around him, laughing and crying, desperate for a glimpse of his long awaited face. She spins towards him and the last ray of the dying sun burns fiercely in her heart before vanishing, leaving her alone and silent on the empty beach once more. Her arms fall to her sides and her gaze turns down to the eternal sand. She sinks to her knees with her arms outstretched. The beach takes her hands; the ocean strokes her arms; the slowly spreading darkness caresses her golden hair.

And the waves lap gently at the sand and the wind sighs its pity. Chrissy sits and Chrissy waits for another glimpse on another day, while the weeping sun rolls its moment of magical twilight around the world.

ii. Reuben Stands

The darkness approaches, rushing on the wings of ravens, and Reuben runs through its heart. He feels the gentle tug of the world's turning and the less gentle pressure of the whispering night which surrounds him.

Voices cry to him from the darkness; joyful laughter, angry shouts, tears, grief, and the unbearable keening wail of longing.

He turns to face the latter, his face transfigured in recognition, and throws his voice forwards into the smothering night; "I am here! I am always here!"

The unseen coils of the darkness lash and flex around him, striking his arms, his legs, his back. He stumbles and slows and feels the night thicken. The cry of the longing tears at his heart, pulling at him as he in turn pushes through the murk, and the power of the cry grows with every step he takes.

Reuben redoubles his efforts against the slick, invisible bonds as a distant roar approaches from somewhere behind. It grows lighter ahead. Something shifts beneath his feet. The smooth glassy surface becomes buckled and twisted, pitted and scarred. As he forges forwards, it pulls and sucks at him, slowing him further. Sensing triumph, the invisible coils of night slither and contract around his waist.

Reuben cries out as his feet begin to sink. An icy chill embraces them and the all-too familiar hand of fear caresses his heart.

"Too soon! Have pity!" he cries, as the cold tendrils pulse and surge up and down the length of his legs. The laughter of the darkness and the onslaught of the roaring sound assault his ears and he covers his head with his arms.

The lighter air ahead is flecked with red and gold and it is towards this small hope that Reuben strives. Bright sparks ignite and burn angrily before his eyes, spinning and dancing, coalescing into a light band below and a darker band above. The surface around his legs is liquid and icy, pricking and sticking, lacerating his flesh with vicious tendrils of cold. A wave forges ahead of him, wrapping him in its reluctance, and the darkness gloats and cackles behind him.

The soft earth touches the soles of his feet in a gentle caress. With an exultant cry he pulls free of his ephemeral bonds and sprints, head down, arms pumping, knees rising high to clear the foam around his legs. The world slips into focus; gently undulating dunes beneath a luminous sky of purple and red. The darkness falls behind, unable to match his pace now that the land is on his side, but still stalking its inexorable way towards him. The last tendrils of night spring from his shoulders as he steps clear of the shivering blackness and the gentle light of the dying sun flickers in his eyes.

He laughs and whoops, leaping the last few feet, emerging from the sea as though for the first time, and the firm sand beneath him smiles its welcome. And then, a flicker of white, sunlight on golden hair, the madly pirouetting form of longing made corporeal and Reuben stands transfixed, the pursuing horror forgotten in an instant.

She spins around him, aware and unaware, eyes flashing past without making contact. Her hair whips across her face, stealing his breath and pulling it around her. She slows, her arms raising, turning towards him; her face, in profile, pale and lovely, turning, turning as the heavy curtain of dark – its path leading remorselessly to this place – rests its cold hand upon his back and wraps him in its coils once more.

His heart slows and despair floods through him as the ebony claws tear at him. The world fades. The silhouette falls to her knees on the beach. The blackness is total and eternal.

iii. The World Turns

Mother spins around her centre and dances around Father with breathtaking speed. The solar winds drift across her face, billowing and blowing across unimaginable distance with the softness of a lover's caress, and the golden light of his gaze lies softly on her cheek. She is everything that is, was, and will be but nothing without him.

And there, on the border between day and night, the thin band of dusk creeps lazily across her countenance, ebbing and flowing with the contours of her beautiful face. Glistening clouds race across lush, green, grassland; the shimmer of burning air rises above parched desert; breathless frozen air hangs still above her frozen crown and feet. And all around and ever present rolls the passionate tempest of the ocean.

And there, on the border between motion and stillness, the thin band of glistening silver sand lies streaked with red as the dusk approaches. A trail of footprints, insignificant on the face of the world, leads from the ocean to the land. A second trail spirals and spins along the length of the beach; meandering and searching, then arcing sharply towards the sea.

And there, on the border between Chrissy and Reuben, the world holds her delicate breath. For a single moment, frozen in time, the girl dances and the boy stands. Her longing heart calls out to Mother for mercy. His anguished mind calls to Father, railing against his absence.

And Mother reaches out with a gentle breeze and strokes Chrissy's golden hair. She feels Reuben's feet, standing calmly on her shore. The girl's breath flows from her mouth, mixing with the breeze and is carried to the boy. "In this small way you are connected," Mother sighs. For Chrissy is everything that is and was and will be, but without Reuben she is nothing. "In this small way we are all connected."

And the waves lap gently at the sand in this place of union where opposites meet.

 

Shit!

"Gardez l'eau!" the leathery little man bellowed, and promptly ejected the unpleasant contents of a small blue bucket from the first floor window.

Standing, as I was, directly underneath, I was shocked, stunned, and not a little bemused to find myself suddenley decorated in what had, until very recently, been the contents of a complete stranger's colon. I am by no means xenophobic, but if I must find myself lathered in excrement at eleven o' clock in the morning, I would much rather it was, at the very least, the excrement of someone I knew and preferably that of a close personal friend.

"I say," I said, with a furrowing of my brow (which, incidentally, caused some rather nasty trickles to make their way around the sides of my face), "may I perhaps suggest a little consideration for passers-by when lobbing your unmentionables from your window, my good Sir?"

"No you may not," snapped the little man. "I shouted the customary warning. Anyone hearing those words should consider themselves fairly warned. Your personal hygiene is not my responsibility."

I squinted up at him, mopping ineffectually at my face with the morning newspaper. "It is also customary," I began through gritted teeth, "to allow a little time to elapse between calling the warning and letting fly with the bucket of effluence."

The little man's leathery visage set hard, looking for all the world like a gorilla's palm. "I allowed more than sufficient time for a plan of evasion to be produced and executed," he stated.

"You did nothing of the kind, I cried, shaking my fist. "The two events were as near simultaneous as makes no odds! You need to leave a margin of at least a few seconds to allow the individual occupying your intended strike-point to take himself out of harms way – otherwise you end up in a heated debate with an enraged and excrement-soaked stranger."

He leaned out from the window and studied me intently. He did at least appear to be giving the suggestion a reasonable amount of thought.

"So you're saying," he began slowly, "that I should call 'Gardez l'eau'… and then wait?"

"Yes," I said. "You should wai…"

The second flood of noxious semi-solids struck me full on the face, and the bucket followed less than a second later.

I danced from foot to foot in a furious little jig and shrieked incoherent outrage up into the annoying little man's face. "Why?" I bellowed. "Why would you do that?"

"By means of demonstration," he cried, offended. "As you are being so good as to assist me in improving this essential life-skill, I felt it only fair that I should take the opportunity to demonstrate that I had assimilated your information correctly!"

"But you didn't have to actually throw it! And you certainly didn't have to lob the bucket down afterwards!"

"Ah yes, I do apologise for that – I'm afraid I became a little over-enthusiastic in my learnings. In my defence, however, I should point out that you had adequate time to prepare yourself but chose instead to stand chatting."

"What?" I gasped. "Because I didn't realise you were going to throw another bucket of foul water on me!"

His eyes fairly bulged from his shoe-like face. "I cried the customary warning!"

"In demonstration!" I shrieked, recommencing my little hopping dance of fury. "In conversation!"

"When someone says 'gardez l'eau'", the little man said carefully, "It should be perfectly evident that something unpleasant is likely to follow. Whether in conversation or not."

Before I could gather my rapidly spinning thoughts, the third deluge of filth sluiced down from above with the sound of an overinflated snail.

"Gaaaaaah!" I cried, and was suddenley cut short as a large galvanised steel bucket wedged itself firmly over my shocked head.

I staggered to and fro for a moment before grasping the bucket with slippery filth-soaked hands and pulled it from my head.

"That was deliberate!" I wailed.

"Of course it was deliberate," said the little man. "That's why I said 'gard'…"

"Shut up! Shut up!" I roared, incandescent with smelly rage. I raced across to the other side of the street as the little man disappeared back inside the building. As I stood panting and leaning against the wall, he reappeared bearing what looked like a firehose.

I gaped in horror. "What do you have there, Sir?" I whispered.

He thought about it for a moment and then smiled.

"Pressure," he said. "And range."

 

Crepe Paper Suit

It was early in the evening when the leathery little chap in the crepe paper suit first approached me as I was walking through the park. He did not do so directly, but instead walked past on my right hand side, circled around behind me, and then sidled around to my left. He gave me a cheery little wave in way of greeting, and grinned a wide, gummy, grin.

"Hellay!" he said.

I nodded in reply.

"I wonder if I may bother you for a moment," he asked, with another toothless smile.

"You are bothering me quite enough already," I snapped, having no wish to spend the evening being accosted by little men in strange clothes.

He looked momentarily crestfallen, but brightened up before I could take any satisfaction from it.

"It will be worth your while," he said.

I frowned at him and continued walking. He fell into step beside me, looking up expectantly and wielding his hideous grimace at me the whole time.

"Really," he said.

"I very much doubt it, strange little man," I said. "I am very choosy about the people with whom I keep company and my current criteria for conversation does not extend to leathery little men in paper suits. Good day."

"Ah, but it is a good day," he said. "It's the best of all possible days."

Something in the earnestness of his voice caught my attention and I stopped. While waiting for him to cease grinning inanely and get to the point, I surveyed his peculiar apparel. His suit was most definitely crepe, pale blue with little veins of white running through it. The bottoms of his trousers were ragged where the paper had soaked through and torn. From his sleeves and trousers there protruded naked white extremities. His head was wholly bald and his eyes sparkled like nuggets of amber in his jovial face.

"Today is the day," he began, "when your problem shall be solved." He finished this with a flourish of his hands and a little pirouette.

"And why, pray tell, will all my problems come to an end?" I asked.

He smiled knowingly and reached into his paper jacket, producing a small strawberry coloured parcel tied with wool.

"Because, my dear friend, I have a crepe paper suit for you!"

I gaped at the wizened fool with astonishment.

"What on earth would I want with a paper suit?" I cried! "Begone! Avaunt!"

"Hear me out, sir," he pleaded. "Listen to what I have to say!"

"I have listened to what you have to say, and it is readily apparent that you would have me dress like a buffoon! A buffoon like you, sir!" I cried.

Without giving him a second glance I began to stride down the pathway, but after a few steps I heard little leathery flaps as his little leathery feet slip-slapped along behind me, no doubt bringing his little leathery body with them. I stopped in annoyance and turned around.

"Sir! Will you kindly find someone else to bother! I am in no mood to have clothing of inappropriate construction foisted upon me by a grinning imbecile. Please, depart at once." I stood straight, pointing to the east.

His gaze followed my finger for a moment and then travelled back up the length of my arm to my face. I was horrified to see huge, glassy tears standing out in his amber eyes.

"You unspeakable fiend!" he wailed! "How could you? Why would you?" He spun around in a grief stricken little circle and flapped his little white feet up and down a few times. When he turned to face me, his look was dark and angry.

"This," he said, thrusting the strawberry coloured parcel in my astonished face, "is too good for the likes of you! All I was trying to do was help! But, oh no! You're much too grand! Much too proud to wear the humble coat of crepe! Much too arrogant to wear the gentle raiment of pulp and dye! A pox on you, Sir! A pox on you and your silly nose!"

I allowed him to vent his wrath and watched with some bemusement as he zig-zagged his way back along the path, stopping every now and then to regale a passer-by with tales of my unspeakable cruelty. He eventually disappeared from sight and I turned and carried on my way, trying to enjoy what was left of the evening.

When I reached the park gate, I found the policemen lying in wait, as they always did.

"There he is!" one cried.

"Get him!" said another.

I loped off in the opposite direction, enjoying the feel of the cool air on my naked skin.

 

Incoming!

The pigeon emitted a ghastly shriek as it spun out of the sky and strafed the pavement by my feet. I leapt nimbly to the side and kicked out with one foot, sending the hideous creature hurtling headlong into a nearby bush.

"Aha! Take that!" I cried, dancing the happy dance and celebrating my triumphant victory by pulling faces at the final resting place of my fallen foe.

Alas, my celebrations were too early, and before I had finished the first verse of "Happy Happy Joy Joy", the bush had begun to quake. There was a dry snapping sound and a puff of terrified leaves shot into the air where they were picked up by the wind and sent scuttling off.

I tensed and looked soberly at the bush. Nothing could have survived that perfectly executed ninja-kick.

With a sudden rending sound, the bush split apart and the pigeon lurched forward; its right leg was bent awkwardly beneath it and its left eye roared bloody vengeance for the loss of its partner. It staggered towards me; slowly, painfully, inexorably, its dragging limb screeching and scratching through the autumn leaves.

"In the name of God!" I cried. "Why can't you just die!"

I clasped my hands to my head and fell to my knees, unable to escape the relentless approach of the broken, feathery monster. Despair washed over me – a sudden lethargy; a willingness to accept my fate. The desolation of my soul was filled by a sudden longing for release; an urge to simply accept my fate.

"Three years! You've been following me for three years and I can run no more. I accept my fate, oh beaked spectre! Do with me what thou will, just make the pursuit end! Lift from my head this curse of eternal flapping and fluttering. Just give me the bloody note."

The pigeon squatted back on its mangled leg and held forth the other. Tied around the base of the leg was a tiny scrap of paper. With shaking hands, I untied the message and unrolled it.

Dear John

Have a pigeon

Love, Jenny

The dissolution of my spirit was complete and I sank to the ground. The cold pavement pressing against my face went unnoticed in the blackness of my despair. The pigeon cooed mockingly in my face and I closed my eyes against my shame.

Why couldn't she just send a box of bloody chocolates like any normal person would.