The parrot did it.

Henry kicked at the kerb. He wasn’t happy. There was another bill in the letterbox this morning, and it had come with a lawyer’s letter threatening action.

A parrot was in the tree opposite, plucking at a cord of string which had lashed a poster of a missing child to the rotting trunk. “Missing!” The poster had proclaimed. Eventually the cardboard had perished under the stress of wind, rain and sun, but no replacement had ever declared “Found!” so Henry had no idea if the child was safe with her family, or deep under the red soil somewhere.

The parrot eyed him with one round eye as it tugged and twisted at the string. It was a tired-looking bird, with feathers missing from its neck and a dull, chipped bill.

Bills. There it was again.

He’d had to go down to the office three times now, sit waiting on the cracked vinyl chairs for the man with the grey suit and the sweat-stained shirt to come out and hand him still more piles of paper listing demands, dates and threats of consequences. He wasn’t a sympathetic man.

In the corner of sweaty-man’s office was a shrine of framed photographs. They showed him in holiday mode, posing next to various animals and birds. Even the animals appeared to be leaning away from his acrid smell in the pictures. He didn’t look as relaxed as you’d expect in the holiday snaps, but a little ill at ease, as if he wasn’t sure how to act. Perhaps if he’d been threatening the animals with community service or prison time he’d have felt more at home.

As Henry turned back to the house, he heard a voice. “Henry”, it called. “Henry, Henry”.

He looked both ways up the street, but the kids at one end were engrossed in trying to set fire to something- probably an ant’s nest, and the only other person around was an older woman who appeared to be leaning on her front gate, framed by honeysuckle plants, although he suspected her back was bent with the weight of seventy years and advanced osteoporosis.

That only left the bird.

“Henry”, it called.

He turned and crossed the street, wondering if perhaps the extra whisky he’d had last night had not been soaked up by the boiled eggs he’s choked down with toast, despite the post-binge gagging he’d felt.

The bird cocked its head and stuck out its tongue. Lifted its wings like an angelic chameleon.

It flew a few metres and rested on a fence. He followed.

It flew again, this time settling on the grille of the storm drain. The heavy rains had lifted it from its frame slightly, and a torrent surged below, a churning mass of filthy brown water. Foam gathered on the bars.

It was a river of, of, of BEER! Henry laughed to himself, as he pushed the parrot to one side. Stripping down to his underwear, he lifted the grille.

The parrot seemed to grin at him as it nodded, happily. “Bye, Henry!” it said.

Henry eased himself into the foaming mess and drank deeply. The current caught him, and he let himself disappear under the road. As the daylight fizzed into darkness, he thought he saw a little girl looking down at him and laughing. He could almost hear her, and he was happy, as her laughter drowned out the mantra of bills, bills, bills which he’d had playing through his mind for what seemed like... forever.

The Pigeons Return to Death Hotel

There’s the hotel full of crazies. The manager is finding it hard to keep everything running smoothly, and, when no one is looking, he likes to slip into his office and slide open the middle drawer of the desk. Inside, where the catering bills are starting to collect, he hides a bottle with just enough in it to keep the edges smooth.

He has to keep an eye on all corners of the hotel, and, even though he shouldn’t go there, explore all of the personalities he’s hired so that he can coax them into productivity.

There’s the cleaning team. They have to make sure that things don’t pile up and become offensive. They must be trusted, as they methodically enter each room and rearrange it the way it would appear on the website. They can’t mess with the guest’s belongings, so there’s faith involved.

Without them, the hotel would, in all probability, collapse.

There are the guides: The bellhops who move things around, from the entrance to the top floor. They like tips, but they’re also proud of the way they can “fix” things. Someone has to know which corners can be cut, and what the fastest and most cost-effective ways are for getting from A to Z.

The guests? They aren’t meant to be around permanently. There’s a rhythm to their arrival and departure, and a certain amount of predictability in their activities. Every now and then, a rock band will blow in like a tornado and leave a trail of broken furniture to replace, and, occasionally, there will be someone who arrives depressed, drinks too much from the mini-bar and needs to be coaxed back from a window ledge, but, for the most part, there is order.

Business people breeze in with a lack of interest in the surroundings. Just looking for a place to recharge themselves and their gadgets.

Lovers leave a tangible haze in their wake- a cloud of perfumes and the smells of lovemaking- the drooping heads of red roses nodding over emptied champagne buckets.

Occasionally, a disgraced husband will arrive, his red eyes and thousand-yard stare gazing into a future of weekend-parenting and mounting lawyer’s bills.

There are conventions. Industrial equipment salesmen and their clients. Book publishers and their newest titles, billed as best-sellers before they’ve even hit the shelves. Once, the manager even accepted a group of people, mostly in their twenties, who swore that the science fiction novels of a particular author formed sufficient foundation for a lifestyle. The lifestyle appeared to encourage long black coats and poorly-managed facial hair growth.

The manager doesn’t mind. He likes to have something new going on all the time. He enjoys that he directs life here; that he has harnessed the predictability of hotel life.

His biggest fear is the lifts. They're designed to keep everything moving. The music he has piped into them is unbearable for anything more than the two minute’s duration of the trip, and that’s what he expects. In. Out. Up. Down. Nobody on earth wants to be stuck in a lift for even a few minutes. He makes sure to have them regularly maintained.

In one of the rooms there is a stain. A stain so deeply ingrained that he’d had to order a kilim from one of the passing salesmen to cover it up. A stain which tells a story of bad decisions and worse consequences. Fortunately, though, few people ask for that room, as it looks out over the local bar, and the unrelenting neon advertisements and driving rock music make potential guests ask for a different suite almost immediately.

He’d had babies born there, brides deflowered and even one or two deaths. Unanswered knocks on the door leading to the disappointing discovery of the ends of lives. One, a sleeping pill overdose, another, a man who had enjoyed sleeping so much, that he’d chosen it for eternity. Death wasn’t as terrible as it seemed. Discreet paramedics slipped the bodies into the servant’s elevator, and then the cleaning teams simply changed the mattress and sheets.

The manager prided himself on his decisiveness: He couldn’t afford to dither over minor details, and yet, his decision-making miraculously seemed to pay attention even to these.

Sometimes, when he is hiding in his office, the grating lid of the bottle twisting in his hand, he liked to read his own motto that he’d made into a sign. He’d printed it out, laminated it, and stuck it behind his own desk:

“If you’re just sitting on the fence, stand up. You’re bound to fall one way or the other.”

Then he’d laugh a little to himself, as he imagined teetering and toppling into the unknown. As if that would ever happen to him.

* * *

And so it went on, year after year. On the roof, the pigeons nested, cooing as they strutted about the concrete. Their droppings built up over the top of the lift shaft, paste and then dust, slowly eroding the aging rivets. No one could see them up there, but their presence would, in the end, inspire a spectacular end to the manager, the hotel, and several of the guests.

The call of the oven

You’re close. Just on the edge, in fact. The wrong word, a song on the radio- hell, a TV ad, even, can send you over into freefall.

That’s not all. If it’s bad, a phone call can have you striking at walls, shouting.

A balloon filled to its limits, a tooth, hanging by the thinnest sliver of gum.

The blood rushes through your neck, and collects somewhere near the top of your head.

A balcony is a threat, an oncoming train, a whispered invitation.

There it is: The inverted white casket in the kitchen, calling out.

Ugliness and shame is unveiled at every step. Love songs, played backwards.

Munch caught it.

Ingrid Jonker heard it, just beyond the breakers.

Van Gogh flicked his brush in its direction, but was caught by the old adage, “always check your weapon”, before slumping over in the wheatfield.

Too many naked roasts with their bland whiteness dripping blood came out of the same oven which told Plath its jokes.

Then, an earsplitting sunrise, with the call of nesting birds and the energetic racing of motors outside the window: Everyone’s going somewhere.

The oven’s just for cooking.

The oven’s just for cooking

Paisley Curtains

The gentle curls became sinister shadows in the dark. Scott sat with his action man against the wall on the side of the room farthest from the window. The toy was anything but active, though; it just sat with its lightning blue eyes glaring into the gloom.

The sounds were bad. The wind hissed in breathy drafts which lifted the skirts of the curtains and the dressing gown on the back of the door. It could have been a cat, Scott thought, that he heard padding across the roof. Yes, he decided, it must have been a cat.

But it was the curtains which terrified him most. The paisley fabric turned into thousands of eyes, watching, and mouths with razor-sharp teeth which seemed… hungry.

Scott tried to burrow even deeper under his duvet, but he recalled the warnings. Donald’s mum had insisted that they’d be smothered if they put their heads under their duvets whenever he slept over, and he knew the panic of pushing the boundaries- feeling the air grow moist and warm as he converted it to carbon dioxide.

He made a tube, a breathing hole so that he’d make it. Felt a little like that explorer he’d seen on television- the one who had gone in search of Tarzan, and slipped, instead, into a pool of quicksand. The reed he’d used as a straw to breathe through was left on the surface next to a pith helmet.

He could hear his little brother sleeping on the lower bunk, and the tick, tick, tick of his Hong Kong Phooey watch on the chest of drawers.

Downstairs, the house was silent, but the fridge shuddered every now and then, as if shivering from the cold it generated.

The streetlamp was lukewarm amber, and couldn’t penetrate the gloom. He listened more carefully. Somewhere in the house, he was almost certain he could hear crying.

A daddy-long-legs brushed across his face, and Scott whimpered. How would things be, when they moved to another country? Would there be quicksand in Africa? Would he have to sleep in a hammock, with the calls of jungle cats echoing in the distance? Would the curtains and fridge- the objects of fear for him now- even be there to comfort him when they climbed off the aeroplane?

The Action Man was ready. He sat in his World War II Arctic Fatigues, and prepared his rifle, the one which shot matches. He’d protect Scott. It was his pledge.

#FlashFiction

A Day in the Life

Ever heard The Beatles song, A Day in the Life? Well, from the gentle sliding opening bars, to the tumultuous final, drawn out E-chord, it’s a chilling snapshot of the news.

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

There’s a promising young man who is killed in his car, strange potholes appearing all over Lancashire, and general confusion as the newsreader stumbles through life with his alarm clock hounding him.

“And though the news was rather sad…”

This past week has been an apocalyptic mess of news. Perhaps the past month. From every angle, the “stories” have been churned out by journalists, with sub-editors vying for the most clever or succinct headlines. Here’s my own “Day in the Life”:

A tyrant was said to be cowering in a bunker as rebel forces pounded his compound with heavy artillery. He wasn’t cowering, but appeared later on to call on his supporters to “kill the rebels like rats”. He’s a mass murderer, but news commentators discussed his penchant for silk robes and his choice in headgear. Gaddafi remains free.

Some rhinos were savaged by poachers, who cut off their horns, cut them brutally, and left them for dead, only they weren’t. Vets and animal enthusiasts wept, and wondered, why?

A bus overloaded with children slipped into a river near Knysna, killing many. They’d had nothing on their minds except playing soccer at break, exchanging sandwiches, or maybe blushing at the first exchanges of loving glances between naïve boys and girls. Children are curiously fearless and yet inordinately fearful. Who knows what they thought, as they slipped away.

On the horn of Africa, millions are starving, children are dying at a (measured) rate of ten a day. The figures are likely far higher. They totter in from the barren wastelands, their bow-legs struggling to keep them from toppling into the dust. The safety camps are sometimes just grotesque hospices, where the childrens’ eyes sink deeper into their fly-specked faces, and their mothers wail, or just sit, silently. These emaciated ones just fall asleep, never having known couches, television sets or restaurants, and are ticked off on lists by grim volunteer medics as they die.

“And I just had to laugh…’

And in my community newspaper?

Well, there were some commentaries on horse riders losing their favourite riding grounds. A letter complaining about telemarketers. Another, about a family facing eviction from a council house, and still another about children born in prison, whose mothers are finally allowed to provide entertainment, toys and education to them. My community newspaper finished off with an incitement to go and see a visiting Dutch reed quartet, and some advertisements telling me to hire people to help me rid my garden of moles.

It just wasn’t funny, this week.

“I saw the photograph…”

*Read more about the Beatle’s song, A Day in the Life, here.

Lyrics | Beatles lyrics - A Day In The Life lyrics

The Monstrous Truth

Don’t worry, I lied. There’re no such things as monsters. The things I’ve told my children when they’ve come to me with questions.

If you visit the source of a river, it’s usually unrecognizable. It may look a little like a mossy drinking fountain, burping up a steady curved stream from the earth. It’s hard, looking at that, to reconcile it with a mass of water alongside a city, straddled with bridges. That’s why it’s scary when the children come to me as if I’m a source of information. My trickle is sometimes polluted with a lifetime of experience.

Well, kids, I’d better put the matter right: There are monsters, lots of them. The truth is, you’re better off recognizing them, before they recognize you…

• Vampires and other bloodsuckers: They’re the ones who come, not in a cape or covered in glitter, but in the guise of sly deception. They’ll feed of you until you’re dry and they’re sated, and move on, abandoning your desiccated emotions or finances. Watch out for them. They’re hard to spot.
• Werewolves: Don’t be afraid of all dogs, or men with beards, for that matter, but if someone ever touches you in a way that makes you feel bad, or dirty, or you think it’s just not… right, then tell me. Don’t let anyone touch you on your private parts. A silver bullet won’t kill them- that’s another myth. Unfortunately, they’ll slip into the night, and target some other kid.
• Axe murderers: They’re out there. People who react with violence to almost every situation- people who enjoy it. They’ll try and hurt you, maybe even kill you by accident, unless you step away from fights and escalating arguments. Walk away. Keep walking. An axe can be a fist, or a boot, or a brick or a gun.
• Zombies: Dead people don’t really walk around, searching for braaaaainnnsss, do they? Yes, child, they do. They’re called “drug addicts”. They’ll seek you out, haul you away into an eternal night of mindless celebration, until your brain is eaten away. Your weapon? They’re dead, so all you have to do is use the magic word: No. Then run for your life.
• Witches and warlocks: I won’t tell you how to think- you have the privilege of learning about all sorts of people, but I do hope you temper your intellect with common sense. There are some crazy ideas out there, and I hope that the “magic” of creativity you get to experience is based on reality, and not superstition.
• Trolls: Sure, they exist. They’ll hate, and hate, and hate. You can be tricked into being one by forgetting compassion and empathy, and respect for others. Be kind, my child, and you’ll be safe.

There are other monsters out there, but I’m sure you’ll find that out. The rule-of-thumb is that you treat people well, and keep yourself from getting into the places where monsters lurk. I’ll always be there to help you, I hope, but you guys can also help each other, too. Stand up for what’s right, and stick to the truth.

I’ll try not to hurt you by shielding you from the truth too much.

And don’t, whatever you do, look under the bed: It’s horribly dusty, for a start.

Ace of Spades

Grace double-checked that all the addresses were right. Email wasn’t at all like the post- twenty years ago she’d kept a worn notebook with the street addresses for friends and family, made her lists from it when it was time to draw up the Christmas cards, each one personalized. No, email, she thought, was impossibly fast. People changed jobs, switched accounts, or just didn’t bother to check them. So much for the online address book. Still, it would suit her purposes today- she couldn’t wait two weeks. It had to happen by tomorrow.

It had been quite a pleasant morning. Not too bad for the last one she’d see. First, she dealt with the necessities: bleached the grouting around the bathroom tiles, rinsed out the bucket with more bleach, and checked that the fireplace was empty of ash. Then, she’d wiped all the other surfaces in the house. Three hours, all told. Plenty of experience, she thought, bitterly.

She tried not to think of the cellar, where the cement had finally set. All those awful months digging in the gloom, with the spiders and mice twitching in the shadows. Grace was glad that was out of the way. The cellar door had taken ages to board up and cover with carpet, too. Her fingers ached a little. Although just 45, she had felt her joints protest at the extra work.

The cat eyed her from the windowsill. Grace smiled. The poor thing was so dependent on her. It’d be hard for the authorities to find a place to keep a middle-aged cat, although, to Grace, Cleo would always be the kitten she’d found her as, teetering on legs no bigger than stubby crayons.

A noise made her think that the television was on, but that had ended abruptly two weeks ago, and she was actually thrilled not to have to listen to Don correcting it all the time. Disagreeing with the weatherman, mocking the talking heads during the news reports. She was quite happy not to hear Don, ever again, in fact.

The noise was just a roll of thunder in the distance. At the next blue flash, she counted: One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, she counted until the thunder groaned again; it turned out that the storm was at least eight miles away.

She put on the skirt she liked. It showed off her knees, and she was proud of them. Knee-pride suddenly felt… silly. She chuckled to herself. A soft satin blouse made her feel warm, and showed just enough of her breasts to be both decent and a little daring at the same time. Grace was sad that the stilettos would have to wait for the next time she did this, but then she wouldn’t be around to see them.

Checking that the lights were off, except the one in the study, she thought again of the cellar. How easy it had been. Nobody had noticed Don’s absence. She had excuses and a fake sympathetic expression all prepared in case anyone had asked where he was, but no-one had. Oh, he’s gone to visit his aunt, she would have said. Very old lady that, it won’t be long now. She suddenly remembered, as she saw the glow of the screen in the corner that she needed to finish up.

Grace pressed “send”.

Grace was happy. Happy that he’d be blamed for everything. How many years of trays of food, expressionless lovemaking and then, towards the end, expressionless everything. He deserved what he’d get.

Going outside, she shivered. Not that cold was important right now, but it was taking the pleasure away from her.

She sat down on the side of the hole she’d dug over the past few nights, in the dark. It was a comfy fit. Launching herself into the damp earth, she looked up. Without all the other light, she could see the stars. None of them were shooting. They just twinkled, much as they had when she’d been born 45 years ago.

She grinned as she began pulling the dirt in on herself. Of how she’d made sure Don’s passport was gone, and how she’d asked a teenager to get the ticket in his name to somewhere tropical. Don! Don in the tropics! That was a laugh. He’d have moaned about the smell of suntan lotion, or the big ants, or something. Anything. That’s what he liked to do. Moan.

Taking her last few breaths, she looked up to see the cat, looking at her. The moon formed a halo against Cleo’s pointed ears. My angel, thought Grace. The last few chunks of earth slipped against her cheeks, and she thought that it was a little ironic: She’d struggled to get all Don’s angles completely secured in the cement, but she wanted at least her hand to be left for people to see.

The night disappeared as the soil toppled into the gaps.

Amanda’s computer made that alert signal she liked. It was the first notes of Fur Elise. She got up and walked over. New mail, it said. From Grace.

Hi, Amanda, I don’t have much time. Don’s been acting very oddly these last few weeks. I think he may be drinking again. He’s looking at me in a funny way, but I can’t describe it. I think he wants to hurt me. Please come and visit as soon as you can. Love, Grace.

#Flashfriday