May this year was freezing. No snow just cold nights. Raw days. I went to the allotments every morning to check on the hens. Feed them. I don’t go any more. They’re all dead. A virus Harry sez.
When I used to walk down to the allotment along the narrow paths The Gardeners keep free of weeds the frost made that sound under my feet only walking on frost makes. Crunchy-crackly Jen calls it, like she would know.
Another week has passed and I still haven’t grown younger. Santa’s not paying his dividends. I guess I’ll live. Speaking of living (cheapest segway possible or maybe it’s segue – the one with the wheels): We Lived by our Adam West started the week. Once again we are engulfed with interest – yes it’s a fire and war reference – into the historical fiction which Senõr West delivers so well.
They were running everywhere, the children. There was this confident little girl running around, Judith, the one who’s name we wish we’d have thought of before Jennifer was born. She ran around within that, wearing this little pink polka dot dress. It was the kind of thing that if Patricia were here she’d talk about how she wishes she’d have been able to give it to Jennifer for Christmas and talk about how it would have suited ‘ours more’. Patricia wasn’t here today, she couldn’t be. The agency was taking off and at least one of us had to be there to man the phones and those phones had been ringing lately. It was finally working. That dream we’d had was getting there and was breaking the wall that had stopped it for the last five years. But she’d have been jealous of that kid of all things.
Sylvie looked down at the dishes. In the slightly greasy water her fingers disappeared under the foam. The light sparkled and popped as tiny globes exploded and infinitesimal rainbows vanished in the blink of an eye.
She had always loved bubbles, the luxurious bath type ones that wrapped you in a quilt of scented foam. The ones children, and sometimes Sylvie herself, made blowing through a plastic ring, and the sort that floated out of wonderful bubble machines. Of all the things she wished she had, and there were many, a bubble machine came pretty high on the list.
Spring 1938.
Lars said to Miranda, “Understand this…” and left the table.
A series of explosions shook the six storey building but did not deter Miranda’s study of him; his untidy egress.
Through the narrow living space towards the sash window, she watched him go. Observed him at the window and after a time wondered why he found what was on the other side of the glass – a post-siesta pre-bombardment tableau in the still spring air – more compelling than whatever it was she supposed he intended to spout next.
If indeed there was more.
I withhold tears as I peer into the furious blue eyes of my runaway lover. His rugged, masculine body is chained to the behemothian memorial stone of a literary legend, yet his murderous vows continue to escape effortlessly. I murmur wryly as I brush my fingers across his exposed nipples and entertain an intense bombardment of blissful necrophilia fantasies.
“What a waste all of this is… I am breaking off another physical relationship and degrading a historical artifact simultaneously. Where did we go wrong, Ed? Why are you acting like such a monumental tosser!?”
Continue reading “The Whereabouts of Mrs Trisha by W D Frank – Adult Content”
I wrote poetry for an illiterate. She was pretty. We made bad love in a goodly way. She wanted to live in a doll’s house near nesting swans. Furiously describing anxiety, panic attacks. I saw her through the night, but days went badly. Trauma for effect; the actress at her art. Drinking water from zippy bottles, dropped out the window when used up. The landlord never understood.
“You creeps gotta get out.”
Lissa felt old. Her bones were tired and her soul weary. Mama and Baba had been long gone and she had spent countless years alone in the dark, cramped place where they had all existed.
The three brief occasions when she had gone “up top” were her dearest memories. In the deep of the night, when the gangs roamed outside the draughty windows and the spotlights from the Enforcer’s wagons slid across the walls, scaring the cockroaches and scorpions, she would close her lids and take her thoughts to the sun-kissed meadow and the startling blue of the sky.
“Lissa, wake up.”
The child opened her eyes, night goggles hid her father’s eyes, mirrored ovals glowed on his face. “Come on my love, get up”
“Baba, the siren didn’t sound, we are early.”
“Yes, but it’s time.”
“Michael, she’s frightened, don’t alarm her.”
“Hush woman.” The tall figure turned to his wife, he reached out, the gesture softening the impact of his words. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Bring the clothes for Lissa, don’t forget the gloves and the headset.”
The nags were against me. Six races. Six bets. All blown out before the finishing line. I’m going to change bars, I told myself, this place is bad fucking luck for me. Superstition and gambling become more impassioned bed fellows the worse your luck is – and mine, mine hadn’t seen anything to show for it in months.
I sat at the bar in the Front Page cursing my luck, cursing the Racing Post, cursing the barman who had talked through the back page of form listings and most probably caused me to rush to a decision when time and a clear head was required. As the stranger pulled up a seat beside me I cursed him too. Wednesday afternoon, quite possibly the quietest time in a bar’s week and in a room full of empty, cold seats this prick parks up alongside me.
Continue reading “The Front Page by David Louden – Adult Content”
