Contrails

Looking up at the sky I see two sets of contrails and two planes, one with contrails, one without. How many planes have passed overhead?

I’m sitting back as the sun sets, a breeze picking up and catching me. The pale sky is empty, the roads silent for now. Looking up I see a white line, finite and fully formed. I start to think I must be in a bubble. As I watch, I notice its slow transit of the sky above me, a sky borne javelin, widening and dropping – propelling forward. Will it fall upon me?

I think of a million different words, myriad ideas about this transient object. I let the ideas dissipate and become, themselves, transient.

 

I have a question, a hypothetical situation.

You are walking through a field, miles from another person, or human contact. You come across a wild bird, a very rare wild bird; the last of its kind. Out here, it has no reason to fear a person. It is friendly and approaches you, resting upon your hand. Do you capture this bird, the last of its kind? Do you show the world what it looked like before it was lost? Or do you let it wander free, back into the wild and never to be seen again, to die free alone and oblivious?

Would you be able to live the rest of your life knowing the memory of that rare bird will die with you?

 

Untitled #1

It had started with a phone call. Or, at least, that’s where he thought it had started.

“Hello?”

“Sam.”

“Yes.”

“Are you there?”

“Yes.” Stupid question.

“You sound monosyllabic.”

“Right.”

A moment, a pause.

“I need to speak to you.”

“When?”

“Now, as in right now, you have to come over because there’s something you need to see, or hear; or find.”

Sam exhaled, as he had been taught.

“Okay,” he replied.

 

They were standing on the landing, in silence, waiting. Sam was tired and dishevelled, his hair flattened down from the hat now in his hands. He had the appearance of a meek otter.

John was merely mad and dishevelled: hastily clothed, hair spread about as and when.

“Can you hear that?” John asked.

“No.” Sam replied.

“The thumping.”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s a whirring you know, like one of those ceiling fans, except it has been slowed down – and I mean right down – so that it spins once a second.”

Sam tilted his head.

Nothing.

“You can’t hear it?”

He closed his eyes.

WHUMP.

“Please tell me you can hear it, please, I can’t stand it anymore: it’s driving me mad. I-”

Sam held out his hand, one finger raised, to quiet John.

WHUMP.

Sam opened his eyes. He dropped his hand.

“And sometimes I hear screams, off in the distance, yet near.”

Sam left the landing, moving through to the kitchen. He put his ear to the warm metal plate covering the boiler.

“They sound like they’re being tortured.”

Sam waited.

WHUMP.

“Over and over.”

Sam moved away from the kitchen, to the living room and the sash window. John followed, faithful and wagging.

“I’m so glad you came, I’m not sure what I would have done.”

Sam lifted the window and hung himself out. He turned to the left and the right, then looked up and down. John shuffled each way, peering and scratching his head.

WHUMP.

Sam now closed the window and turned back to the landing. He hurried down the stairs, not asking for John to follow, but knowing he would.

“It started last night, in my dreams and there was this beat, interrupting every second or so. I remember looking for the source. In the end I couldn’t find it and I woke up, but the sound was still there.”

They were on the second flight of stairs now.

“That’s when I started to hear the screams. They don’t come as often as the thumps. I tired to figure out a pattern, but there isn’t one, not like the thumps.”

They piled out of the front door.

“They are not thumps.” Sam said.

John’s eyes widened.

The cold took a bite out of them. Sam pointed across the road, hat in hand.

“There.” He stated.

John’s hair flared up, and settled down.

Above the line of buildings there was empty sky. A great arm rose up, tracing a line high up, flashing neon: red, green, blue. A chorus called out, high pitched and threaded with laughter. The arm disappeared.

WHUMP.

 

Soul, Insignificant

Their faces are daubed with a paint composed of sunset. Run a hand down their cheeks and your fingers would come off stained. After a while, the colour would be pulled away, leaving behind darkness.

“Hot air balloon.”

“Sorry?”

“Over there.”

“Where?”

She leans into him, pooling their vision and stretching her arm toward a dark teardrop falling upward.

“There.” She confirms.

“It’s lonely.” He says.

“Or majestic.”

He takes the air in slow and deep and then he asks: “Did you ever see those pictures of the space shuttle transiting the sun?”

“No, never.”

“All you could see was this giant yellow disc, dominating the black space.” He draws himself up,  holding his arms out wide. “And then, in the top right corner,” he draws back in, pinching fore finger and thumb together, capturing a hair of empty space, “there was this tiny blot, more an arrow, aiming for the sun’s edge.”

“And then?”

“And that was it. That great piece of human engineering reduced to no more than an ink blot.”

She taps a finger on the metal railing.

“Sounds like another way to make you feel insignificant.”

“That’s not what I meant.

Part One

I’ve been busy. Sort of. I’ve produced an ebook, filled with work taken from this blog and my short story, Apocalypse, published on The Whistling Fire.

It’s nothing fancy and perhaps brief, but I hope you enjoy it. Print it off, pass it on. Spread the word. It would mean a lot to me.

AllTheGhosts Part One

I should mention that I have started to actually use my DeviantArt.

Ooh and hit me up on  Twitter.

Memory

It was the last full day we spent together. We arrived at the bay when it was still cool from the night. Our feet left deep gashes behind; a trail of darker sand butchered up from beneath the thirsty skin. Cresting the eastern dunes, the sun caught me at the wrong angle: it was all sharp rays stinging the back of my eyes. It was going to be a hot day. I squinted.

“Where are your sunglasses?” She asked me.

“I must have left them behind.”

She started rifling through her bag, searching.

“You should stop worrying about me,” I said.

“I don’t mind.”

She pulled out a hat and placed it over my head, with too much pressure. I could feel her hands shaking.

“Thanks.” I readjusted it. She managed a smile.

“What would you do without me?”

*

I had my misgivings.

It was before the remission, after the surgery. She attended this meeting with other women; had insisted on me taking her. I wasn’t allowed inside. They talked, I think, and were given make-overs, or else shown how to apply their make up all over again.

I remember her walking out early, smiling – yet no different to how she walked in. She told me that it hadn’t felt right, that the sensation of powder on skin had been an alien thing. Unnatural.

She said: “All my adult life I’ve been placing a mask between myself and the real world. Strange, don’t you think? How it’s taken me until now to realise.” She put a hand to my cheek and dragged her thumb against the grain of my stubble.

“You need to shave.”

“I know.”

“You always do.”

And then, as the others left, passing through the doors, I couldn’t help staring over her shoulder at them. They formed a line of powerful, well presented women: smiling and strong. I studied her: pale and emaciated. Sterile and clean.

She continued, in whispers, telling me how pathetic it seemed. How pointless. They were broken people, why should they pretend to be fixed?

And then she said:“You know, the real world is all around us: I think maybe we should stop worrying and get on with it.”

“I guess.”

But I was half concentrating, focusing more on those other women than her – at the vast disparity between them.

“Are you okay?” She retook my attention.

“I’m fine.”

Her freckles showed up under the cold fluorescence of the strip lights and I could make out the thin cracks in her lips. She was frowning. Those sallow lines about her eyes were darker than usual.

“What’s the matter?” Her eyebrows unfolded. She rubbed my forearms with her palms.

I kissed her on the nose, and she twitched.

“Nothing,” I said.

She took my hand.

“Are you glad you came?” I asked.

She nodded.

I exhaled.

Penultimate

So this is the beginning of the end.

I’ve put up a Christmas story at AllTheGhosts.

I have a New Years present planned.

The latest Noah and The Whale album is very good.
And Star Trek socks are even better.

Apocalypse

I have a short story, Apocalypse, up on The Whistling Fire. It went live yesterday.

Apocalypse

“Where will you be?”

“When?”

“At the apocalypse.”

He snorts, and rolls his head back.

She continues to look at him, unmoving; deadpan.

“Oh.”

They dangle their legs over the concrete ledge, close to the lapping canal water. Dead scum floats beneath their feet and it smells faintly of a harbour when the tide rolls out. They watch light dancing against the blank underbelly of the bridge, carrying traffic. Around them the detritus of broken industry lies shattered; a burnt out car, rusted steel drums, puddles made iridescent with a thin veneer of oil. A halo of fast food packaging flutters in the wind. Few boats wander past. Crickets chatter.

He thinks about what it would be like, to see the world end. Would it be quick, or drawn out? Would he even have the chance to make a phone call? He lies back a moment and tries to imagine that the sun is now a searing explosion washing over his body. If it was, then he’d be dead by now. Vaporised: burned into the earth as a permanent shadow.

“With my family then, I guess.”

She sighs.

“I don’t think you understand. It’s not about where you want to be, but where you will be.”

“I never thought about it like that.”

“It’s not such an easy question.” She holds her hands out, palms up as though the concept were an object for him to see. Her naked feet form a Newton’s cradle. The sound of skin kissing bounces off the water and concrete. He feels, for a moment, as he did when he was a child at the local swimming pool, listening to the unreal sounds of water slapping and voices ricocheting. Chlorine burning his nostrils.

He draws his eyes down, shuttering them from the sun.

“I’d be at home then, he says: sleeping and it would all be over by the time I woke up, or rather I would never wake up because I miss important events. Always have,” he adds, quieter.

“I like that.” She pulls a loose hair from his cheek and blows it away. “Permanent sleep. I wonder if you’d carry on dreaming.”

“Probably not.”

She brushes back one side of her hair, tucking it behind an ear. She cranes her head a little. The first audible chug from a pleasure boat rolls in from around a distant meander.

“I think I’ll be in a supermarket,” she says. “And I’ll be the only one smiling. Have you ever noticed that? That people never smile in supermarkets? They all carry expressions of boredom; or else annoyance, or inconvenience. I saw this woman once, in the queue and she was worried, you know? Like something was distressing her. She had the face of a trapped animal.”

“I’ve never looked that closely.”

“Well I have. And that’s where I’ll be, with all those people and I don’t think their expressions will be any different.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Why don’t you?”
“That’s not what I was asking.”

She giggles at him and shakes her head.

“Alright then,” she says. “I think it will be because they won’t realise what’s happening to them, because the idea that they will all die and no-one will be there to remember them, will be too much to handle. They won’t be able to comprehend it, so they’ll carry on as if nothing is wrong.”

“You’re a pessimist.”

“I’m not deluding myself. There’s a difference.”

“But what if they did realise?”

“They’d laugh. Really hard.”

“And then?”

“It’d be too late, the apocalypse will have happened.”

Postcard

I just wrote this in the last five minutes. It’s a little rough.

Her name was Mary and she lived in a postcard. Her brother carried her from place to place. He took her to Hawaii and he took her to Paris, before they spent one year in Timbuktu.

Her smile was cut from sunshine; her eyes reflected ocean off the Cote d’Azure.

He liked to remind her of their childhood, when on Sundays they’d go to church and they’d sing in the choir and their mother would wave from the farthest pew.

Her brother was a good man, he’d show her off to anyone who asked.

Six sailors fell in love with her and seven priests prayed for her until the day she died at eighty two.

It was the last day of summer in Warsaw, when the rain came in torrents and he dropped her in a puddle coated with an iridescent sheen.

Her hair turned to ink and her smile faded in a blink and that man cried because his sister was gone for good.

A very disturbing dream I had last night

A shopping mall: clean, open and sterile, built from steel and glass, reflecting the sun in a prism of mirrors; constructed out of light. Dressed in white, I slip through to the exit, where mouths scream and muscles contort. The people are filthy. Violence has erupted from sleeping paranoia and open desperation. A young woman falls across my path – her eyes are shuttered, her hair hangs over pale bloodless cheeks in a death veil. Her family clutch at one another as I cross over the path of her broken body.

A shadow passes.

Silence reigns.

The final calm.

And then the true light arrives, and it blinds them all before they feel the wave of heat. Ghosts are seared into concrete as the atmosphere becomes plasma. I bathe in the warmth of the end.