Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Left Behind
A short story about death. And afterwards.
Armageddon wasn't so bad.
Boiling skies of blood, shrieking terror from the black oceans, the dead rising from their graves - or reconstituting from their cremation urns - and a few thousand random people getting kidnapped by angels, whisked off to heaven.
Cable TV was back up in a week, Facebook got a few memes about "What were you doing when the world ended?", and all the insurance companies refused to pay out for an act of god.
That was exactly two years ago. Now I'm sitting in the Reaper Bar And Grill, under the "Happy Apocalypse Day" banner, waiting for mother. She's late.
The waitress walks slowly over and stares blankly past my left shoulder as she asks me if I want another drink. I tell her yes, speaking slowly so her brain can keep up. The pale skin on her face crinkles as she lisps something that might be "Have a nice day", then she shuffles away, muttering my order to herself over and over.
There's a giant plasma screen TV set high on one wall, with a group of goth teens flipping channels with the remote. At least, I think they're goths.
The channel changes to show a room with cameras on all sides and furniture in primary colours. This year there's two undeads in the Big Brother house. They're in the kitchen, complaining about immigrants and muslims in their low, keening voices.
The channel changes again to some daytime chat show. The caption flashes in bright letters that fill the screen: My Undead Husband Wants Me To Leave My Live Boyfriend And Come Back To Him.
It seems they'd been married for only six months when he was killed in a motorcycle accident. She'd fallen in love with the grief counsellor and they'd started a family together. Now the previous husband says they were never legally divorced.
The audience is with the first husband - until it turns out he caused the accident by being drunk and they boo him. Then the host brings in his secret undead girlfriend - who'd been a pedestrian killed in the accident. More booing and sad shaking of heads.
They go to the ad break with cheering and applause. The first advert is for a range of beauty products aimed at the grey community, but then the channel changes again.
The waitress brings me my drink, a seasonal cocktail with a festive black umbrella, decorated with a yellow smiley skull. She winks saucily with one pure white eye before moving on.
Has it really only been two years? However did we manage before, without an army of zombies to pour our drinks, appear on our quiz shows and serve hamburgers? One from Poland fixed the pipes in my bathroom and they've never been better.
They've been great for the economy - they can work eighteen hours a day and you can pay them in rat carcases. Though my neighbour isn't happy his new boss is "one of them" - he says they're taking over.
You don't see many zombie movies on TV anymore. Odd, that. There's a couple of dead funny sitcoms though. In the graveyard slot.
Ah, mother's here. She moves to my table and we kiss on the cheek, dry and musky.
"So, how's life?", she asks. My dear late mother.
Labels:
Fiction
Message
A short story about expectations.
The first angels had appeared only weeks earlier.
Glowing humanoid forms, with indistinct outline and features, motionless and glowing a deep blue had materialised in twelve major population centres around the world.
Journalists interviewed witnesses, bloggers speculated, the sick begged for healing, the powerful tried to negotiate, the military tried to destroy. All to no effect.
The angels, as they'd become known, stood motionless and blurred, indestructible, unmoving and seemingly unaware.
But, over the ensuing days, the forms gradually become clearer and the faces more obviously human.
Religious leaders tried to claim the figures for themselves, and political groups did the same. Everyone wanted the visitors to confirm their particular hopes and fears, but the shining figures simply stood there, oblivious and unnoticing.
Then they started to make sounds. Their lips didn't move, but it sounded like they were trying to talk.
Mystics claimed to have predicted their arrival, and interpreted its meaning, varying from the end of the world in war to the dawn of a new age.
The angel's voices started to form recognisable words in the dominant languages of the cities where they'd arrived. Every few hours they "spoke" for several minutes, a few tantalising words, before going silent.
"...message...secret...tell..."
It had to be first contact with a higher being. Humanity was chosen, blessed, about to receive a glorious truth.
"...sad...night...alone...want...please..."
It was a call for help, or a call to action.
"...love...my friend...more beautiful...important...listen..."
It was a plea for unity, or a warning for unbelievers.
A month after the arrival, dignitaries and holders of power were clustered around each of the twelve, hoping to hear the first recognisable sentences from the figures, and hoping they could somehow turn it to their advantage.
The halos flickered in unison around the globe, a sign the angels were about to speak. There was an expectant silence, which stretched into minutes.
Then each of the twelve spoke, clearly and fully.
"This is an important message. Please listen.
Are you sad and lonely because you can't make girls fall for you? Do you feel worthless every night because you can't make them want you?
Well I've got the secret of love and I want to tell you. Yes, my friend, you.
With my help you'll soon be getting more beautiful girls than you'd ever thought possible!
With my infallible method, you'll never sleep alone! And that's a promise!
Send no money now..."
Labels:
Fiction
Preface to A History of Longhaul Spaceflight Psychotechnology
A non-christmassy short story.
"A History of Longhaul Spaceflight Psychotechnology", by Vanz Cunningham
Preface, by Katarin Rybczinski
The first discovered problem of longterm space flight was also the last to be solved. Travellers go mad.
The press call it Space Madness, the military call it Extension Fatigue, psychologists call it Prisoner Stress or Tin Can Syndrome. There are as many names as failed cures, and as many explanations as expeditions that "Autoterminated" when the crew shut down.
Of course they didn't always just shut down. A few became delusional first, and in some sensational cases killed each other and/or themselves. But most of the time they become gradually listless and depressed, until they stopped feeding themselves and stopped responding.
Initially we thought it might be from the boredom, so we gave them endless diverting tasks, games and challenges to occupy their brains and their time. It worked for months, even years, but the artificial tasks were completed more and more perfunctorily, and eventually ignored.
Then we thought it might be from loneliness, so we put fifty gregarious types together on one ship. They formed friendships and alliances, politics and factions - even a religion - and we published joyful papers on how we'd solved the problem. Then we noticed they were shutting down too, and we still didn't understand why.
We thought we could solve the problem by using young children as astronauts. The thinking - quite plausible at the time - was that adults only can't cope with space because it's not the life they grew up with.
I was one of those who sponsored and implemented the plan, and I watched my proteges cut out their surgically implanted feeding tubes with makeshift knives and no anaesthetic. Maybe one day I'll be able to forgive myself, but I doubt it.
Cryosleep was the among the first solutions to be tried, and it appeared to work - right up to the moment the test subjects were revived. The problem seemed to be that, although almost all brain functions had been slowed right down, the autonomic functions could only be taken down so far.
The mind isn't just the prefrontal cortex - it's the whole brain, and the whole body, and indeed the whole past life of the person. By cryoslowing the travellers, we essentially fractured the "person" into several noninteracting parts, which couldn't function without each other.
Many gave up and declared space travel was impossible, saying we should concentrate on solving the earth's problems instead of wasting resources and life on exporting them to other planets. However others still thought a modified cryosleep may still be the answer.
A brain in a "hot cryo" state can be fed sensory cues from which it can construct a fantasy life, offering all the textures and varied surprises of reality.
This is not virtual reality, nor is it the same as REM sleep, and this is not hallucination. We did briefly try placing subjects in indefinitely extended REM sleep, but found continious dreaming for more than thirty six hours was impossible, though we're still not sure why. Nonstop drug induced hallucination and permanent VR were obviously not viable.
However, the sensations inducible in hot cryogenic storage have a detailed and "real" quality absent from ordinary dreaming, and the parameters of the narrative are much more tightly controlled, consistent and believable, kept that way by the computer - or "dream machine" as the media christened it.
Essentially, under the computer's constant guidance, the traveller lives a full virtual life, not limited to rearranged components of their former real life. They are given a whole city to explore, even a whole world, with a neverending stream of complex but soluble problems. There is even the appearance, but not the reality, of danger and grief, without which lives become initially pleasant but quickly stale.
We discovered this last the hard way, by immersing earthbound test subjects into their individual notions of a blissful existence. In only days they all exited the simulations in panic, unable to endure what had become the most banal of hells.
In tests of the more "gritty" scenarios, subjects responded well to spending a year in their alternate lives while their bodies were maintained mechanically - even preferring their slightly novelistic fake families and friends to their real ones.
There were however two remaining problems. One year in "altlife" was stimulating, five years was probably bearable, but the dozen or more centuries that might be needed for a complete journey to a distant planet - that was a different matter.
The first problem was that, no matter how stimulating the artificial challenges provided by the computer, eventually their very artificiality made them uninteresting. The second was that, while someone could in principle have their interest and their body maintained for two or three thousand years, by the end they will have developed a mental state indistinguishable from space madness. It seems people just can't cope with that much living.
The solution to the first problem was controversial but successful - and developed by the author of this work. If people get bored with entirely realistic but fake challenges, make them think the challenges are real. Suppress the knowledge that altlife isn't life, and subjects won't get bored - at least, not so easily.
The second solution is to have several altlifes lived in a row, each of forty to eighty years. After each, memory of it is made inaccessible (but not erased) and a new life begins. While it is theoretically possible to begin at birth each time and progress to old age, in practice the subject is best reborn as a young adult each time.
In the pages that follow, my colleague Dr Cunningham will take you through this history in much more detail than I could manage, and I suspect with much greater flair. He and I are both proud to have dedicated our (real) lives to this problem, and to have made interstellar colonisation a possibility, as well as a necessity.
Katarin Rybczinski
Berlin C, 2243
Labels:
Fiction
I Want to be a Paperback Writer
6027 words and the beginnings of a plot. Unfortunately the NaNoWriMo site won't let me log on to post some of it. So, here's the passage I've just written.
Morden sprinted up the stairs to his office, pushed open the door and stopped.
There was a tall, slim woman - about sixty, with a wrinkled face and severely straight white hair - sitting in his chair, calmly reading a report, with her feet crossed on his desk.
She didn't register his entrance, her eyes continuing to flit rapidly from one line to the next. For some seconds Morden was lost for something to say, caught between astonishment and outrage. Eventually he found his voice.
"Your feet are on my desk."
"Yes, I put them there. You do realise Jacob White's girlfriend - what was her name? Claudia Mannheim - she stood to benefit from Roger White's death too. We've only got her word for it Jacob came home at all that night, and she provides him with a nice detailed alibi for the next day as well.
"It could have been her visited the White's home while Jacob was out getting drunk. They liked her more than their son, so perhaps she went there on the pretext of pleading on his behalf, perhaps took an interest in the father's chemistry experiments with toxic compounds, had him whip up some cyanide and slipped some into his coffee.
She'd have plenty of time to write the two notes, and even plant the third for the wife to find later. It's more plausible she did all that in an hour than her drunken moron of a man did it all in ten minutes."
The woman had a fruity, rich voice, like a black-and-white movie star who played sophisticated, wise and cynical man users. Morden considered before responding.
"Jake confessed at the weekend."
The woman looked up and him and smiled broadly, the lines on her face deepening. "He could be protecting her. Why don't you ask her?"
"Because we've got no evidence. Just the guesswork of a strange old woman who's feet are on my desk. Who are you?"
"Anna Gray. Sergeant Anna Gray. I'm your new sidekick."
"I already have a...sidekick. He's called George."
"I'm afraid Sergeant Locke has accepted promotion - and transfer. You did know he'd applied and been accepted, and you knew the arrangement was he'd finish his current case before moving on."
"Yes but...I expected he'd hang around for a few days to clear up the paperwork. And to say goodbye."
But he had said goodbye. 'Goodbye sir', not 'Goodnight sir'. The old woman didn't speak.
"Alright, but I wasn't consulted. I expect some say in who works under me - as a courtesy if nothing else - and I don't appreciate someone being parachuted in without even telling me. Especially someone who...who..."
"Especially someone who's a rude old bat, old enough to be your mother. Someone who's spent her entire working life in the police but never made it above Sergeant. Someone who's close to retirement, far too good at annoying her superiors, and is being farmed out to whoever will put up with her."
Morden took a long deep breath. "You're the one who said it."
"And you're the one who thought it. But we've been talking for five minutes and my feet are still on your desk. You haven't shouted at me or tried to slap me back into place. You haven't gone storming to your boss and you haven't got me thrown out of the building. I think you like me."
Labels:
Fiction
Remember
A short story about the near future.
- Chou Takamuri, Identity and Time
I remember my first implant, though it seems a strange thing to say.
I was ten years old, an American boy who'd never left Chicago until then. I'd been flown to a Chinese city whose name I couldn't pronounce, then left to lie on a table in a bare white room, listening to the sounds of the doctors getting ready.
When I woke up I didn't feel any different. I was still confused, and I was still a frightened boy in a foreign country. Then within an hour I knew I had been a Korean teenage girl. I'd been a child prodigy in mathematics, spending each day studying field equations, chaos and string theory, learning each thoroughly under pressure from my family and my own fear of failure.
Calculus, Maxwell's equations, Schroedinger, Born and Plank, they were all in my head, all so beautiful and obvious, all fitting together so neatly.
But there was more, and there was also less. There was the time my mother cut her hand preparing an evening meal of rice and soup, and the time I came home bubbling with excitement about my exam results, only to be told my grandfather had died while I was taking it.
I'd had a crush on a movie star, and when I confessed it to a friend he'd laughed and told me his secret love, much more scandalous than mine. One time I'd got separated on a shopping trip and ran around panicking until a man with a deformed face took me to the manager.
But before the age of seven, nothing. And after signing the consent forms to be used for implanting, nothing. It was as though I'd been one person till a specific day at the age of seven, then two till fifteen, and now I was...one and a half, and still only ten.
I wanted to meet my parents - that is, the girl's parents - to show them how well I'd done, but the doctors wouldn't allow it.
I stayed in the clinic for several weeks, watched closely by ever-changing staff in identical blue robes, and crying every night. I wanted to go home, but home was two different places. I wanted my comic books, but I hated comic books and wanted the science books that I'd read in a language I didn't understand.
Gradually it became easier, and after returning "home" I could enjoy basketball and quadratic equations in their own ways. Baseball statistics I could appreciate from both sides.
I found I could understand most Korean and a little Chinese, but I couldn't speak them, because I remembered using the languages, but I'd never been through the process of learning them.
I was told I'd be able to separate my American self from my Korean self, but that never happened. I had, and still have, conflicting sets of memories - plus attitudes, aspirations and even religious beliefs. I can't reconcile them, but the truth is I don't need to.
My psychologist once asked me who I really was. I replied that I was myself, and it didn't matter what we called it. I thought that was quite good for an American/Korean boy/girl of 12/17.
- Tanith Wolf, Whose Me?
I remember my first implant, and now so do a hundred others.
The girl's name was Chan-Sook. I never met her, but I first met another Chan-Sook implant when I was seventeen. She was Canadian, and I met her on the internet, as we all did in those days.
Personal contact between co-implants was strictly forbidden, simply because no one knew what would happen. Would we go mad? Fall in love? How would an already fractured mind cope with seeing itself in a mirror that talked back?
But we were young, we were clever - because that was the the point of implanting - and we were determined. And so, as a minor celebrity and teacher of higher mathematics, I got myself booked into a conference in Canada.
Sally was nineteen. Overweight and sexy, talkative and with a wild sense of humour, she was nothing like me, and we instantly liked each other. We'd been reminiscing about our childhood for half an hour before we realised, with astonishment, that we'd been remembering the same childhood. Chan-Sook was with us both.
I think it was at that moment that we both understood what it really is to be an implant.
Do you recall what they used to say about identical twins raised apart? How they live their lives in subtle parallel, make the same decisions, share an almost telepathic bond? How, when they find each other, it's like the refusing of two halves of one soul?
It was largely media hype about twins. But it's true about us. I didn't fall in love with Sally, she didn't feel threatened by our partially shared identity, and neither of us went mad. But we were like distorting mirrors of each other.
I now have hundreds of sisters - male and female - like Sally, all over the world. We are different, we are independent, but to me, they are my family.
- Aimee X, Multilife
I remember my second implant.
I was one of the first multiple implants, and all the paranoid media speculation of the first was repeated about it. With three or more persons "blended", would the "real" person get lost? Etc, etc.
It's true that Ramon and I were quite different - much more so than I and Chan-Sook. He was fifty years old, a world-class engineer, and I was twenty eight, a theoretical physicist. He was white and I was black. He was homosexual, whereas I was not. He was also dying of cancer, and volunteering to be an implant template was his way of continuing to work.
He'd spent twelve years - longer than anyone at the time- having his memory formation recorded. He was also one of the very few adults being recorded.
I actually had the pleasure of meeting Ramon, shortly before his record was copied into me, so I have two versions of our conversation. I was nervous and a little in awe of him. He thought I was tired but charming.
When Ramon died his family asked me to speak at his funeral. A surprising request, but quite flattering in its way. I think they wanted confirmation that he lived on in me, even to the extent that he could deliver a eulogy for himself.
I had to tell them it wasn't quite like that, but I could tell them how much they meant to him, and they were quite satisfied with that.
Emotional attachments can get tricky with implants. I heard about one case where a woman tried to adopt the girl who'd been implanted with her dead husband. Fortunately she was turned down, but society is still adjusting to the technology after four decades.
- Sam Revok, Reflection/Reflexion
Every implant module placed in the brain is also a recorder, which means the interactions between the template and the host are recorded, as are subsequent implantations, and can themselves be implanted.
I myself have five facets, including my original self. Others have as many as thirteen, and people are now starting to record entire lifespans for later implantation.
It is no longer just the most eminent who get preserved, or the richest. There are families which plan to implant each whole generation in the next. If you work for a major corporation, you may be asked to receive your predecessor's memories, and to have yours placed in your successors when you leave.
Technology never gives us what it promises, but it always gives something unexpected. The IT revolution didn't increase productivity, but it did change the kind of work people do. The atom bomb didn't make peace, but it turned war cold.
Implantation has not created a master-race of schizophrenic multi-geniuses, nor a sub-species of incomprehensible freaks, nor an army of mental clones. It hasn't drawn the peoples of the world together, or pushed them further apart. It may have made people less afraid of each other, but governments still thrive on fear.
I - or should it be "We" - can't tell you what will happen. Perhaps those who inherit me/us through my/our memories will see more clearly.
Labels:
Fiction
View
Sometimes a fictional book review saves you the trouble of writing the book, and sometimes a fictional art review serves in place of the art you can't make yourself.
Re:View
by Nabil Tarkovski
Published 2113, Journal of Temporal Art
Reflexive timelapse films have become an established minor genre in the digital arts. It perhaps started with JKs Living My Life Faster, in which the artist simply took one picture of their face a day for 8 years and played them in rapid sequence. Then Noah Kalina's similar but unnamed project became a lifelong artwork, inspiring dozens of related ideas including one where we see a baby girl's face change literally from day one.
Suzan Webb's work is slightly different. At age 18, in the first week of her first art degree, having just moved into student digs, she found an old laptop and webcam in a skip, plus a battered camera tripod. Later in interview she said the idea came to her instantly, but she didn't expect to continue it for more than a week, let alone twelve years later.
Her room had just one window, and she set up the camera and computer to take one snapshot of her view every hour - but only when she was in the room. When she later moved into a place with two windows, she begged another cam and laptop from a fellow student, and continued her project in stereo.
This timelapse would most likely have little merit if Webb didn't change living space quite so often - and indeed didn't now stay in quite so many cheap hotels in so many countries.
As it is the vista changes from the initial scene of derelict factories, to a split screen of park and kebab shop. to a back garden going through the seasons with occasional bouts of highspeed rain, split with clouds seen through a skylight, to views from homes of friends in New York, her mother's holiday home in Scotland, and a building site somewhere in London.
Occasionally there are black frames, sometimes one or two, sometimes as much as three month's worth, and these I think give a clue to the real meaning of the work. Webb only shows us her life through her views from windows. The black frames are from hours and days when she isn't behind any windows, or in any building. Occasionally she sleeps under the stars, and sometimes she hikes through hills and valleys - in Australia, Canada and the Hindu Kush.
Some use cameras to record their holidays and time outdoors. Webb records what she can see of the outdoors, when she's indoors. This is a record of a person's homelife - one that never shows the home or the person.
Labels:
Fiction
House
Nothing much to report today, but I did stumble on a story/monologue that I wrote eight or nine years ago. So, here it is.
I was in this...house, the other day. And someone had wallpapered over all the doors and windows. So if you wanted to move...between the kitchen and the bathroom...or the bedroom and the garage...you had to go...under the floorboards.
And if you wanted to go upstairs you had to be careful. Because someone had installed a moat and drawbridge...halfway up.
But that wasn't the strangest thing about this house. Because everyone in it...was a retired comedian...from one of those old music halls...that you only ever see...in black and white. So every time you made a cup of tea...you did a song and dance about it. And every time you wanted to make love...you said so...in a loud...stage...whisper.
And I was feeling right at home in this old house, which had a giant beanstalk growing in the garden...and TV in every room. And I was getting along fine...because the people were my kind of people. Until they told me...that I was the guest of honour...and it was my job ...to give the after dinner speech...
...in honour if the patron...
...whose name no one could quite remember.
I was watching this film. And every time the hero slapped his thigh, the female lead broke into tears.
Or was it the other way around....
I was talking, to a friend of a friend, about the problem of quantum singularities in space-time, and I said to them, "Why is it, whenever anyone promises to telephone you at eight thirty, they never do it, until nine fifteen.
And why is it, you can never remember the names of all seven dwarfs."
And they said, "It's simple. We're all part of a single creature, feeling it's way towards cosmic truth. And sometimes it takes a wrong turning, and we all have to backtrack a little, to set it back on the right path."
And I said, "Okay then, why is it that whenever you want to open a new tin of soup, the tin opener is never where you left it. And why can you never find any paperclips when you need them."
And he said, "God has been watching you since before you were born, and he will be there the moment you die. Every misfortune and each little setback is just God's way of telling you to be patient."
And I said to him...
"The truth is music played on instruments that make no sound. Thought is a blind man guarding an invisible treasure. And language...is a virus from outer space."
And then I noticed. That I was talking to the bathroom mirror.
Labels:
Fiction
Forgiveness
This story is another review of a book which doesn't exist. Lem wrote in the preface to one of his collections of factitious reviews that writing the review saved him the trouble of writing the book. Certainly I have plenty of ideas for stories that would take much longer to write than an outline disguised as a review - and many that I wouldn't have sufficient inclination to write anyway.
This is one book that I wouldn't want to write, wouldn't want to read, and would probably never see reviews of. But unlike some works I "review", it is a possible book. Someone could have written it.
"Forgiveness" by Deborah Stott is published next week.
Here it is reviewed by Jordan Travers
This is Deborah Stott's third published novel. It has been called an amorality tale, a thought experiment, and a parable about scapegoating. It has also been called "a truly vile work by a clearly deranged mind", by church leaders who see it as an attack on religion.
Her now-familiar themes are all here - a constantly shifting cast around a mysterious central character, sparse dialogue and detached 3rd person description - but there is also something new, namely paring down of descriptive detail, leaving a sense that the places and the peripheral events are formless or ambiguous, as though seen in a dream.
The protagonist, such as there is, is Angelica, a girl who has led an unremarkable childhood until her fifteenth birthday, when she abruptly suffers a stroke which destroys her memory.
She can recall her life before the stroke, and form new memories, but after a hour or two they fade away. She is effectively trapped in the day of her fifteenth birthday, dimly aware that something is wrong, but unable to formulate an answer or even hold on to the question.
However, this is all we really learn about Angelica. The focus is on the actions of those around her - not on their emotions, because Stott rarely tells us what her characters are feeling directly, letting us piece together their conflicted reactions and motivations from their mercurial and contradictory behavior.
The father, a disappointed office-worker named Joshua, has been wrestling with worsening financial troubles for years, sinking cash he doesn't have into investments that turn bad, borrowing and defaulting, gambling and losing. The mother is Maria, a super-efficient housewife who realised a decade late that she threw away a promising career as an actress to marry the wrong man. There's no doubt they once loved each other, and in quiet moments still do, but it is clear both would rather be elsewhere.
Slowly, imperceptibly, Joshua has been taking out his frustrations more and more on his wife. he starts by ignoring her wishes, then picking arguments about trivial matters, and blaming her for his situation. After Angelica's stroke he starts beating Maria - having to get thoroughly each time drunk first, and being wracked with guilt afterwards.
Then something strange happens. The father stops mistreating the wife, and starts beating the daughter. The transfer is not sudden and takes several pages, but by the end Joshua and Maria are back in love, in good jobs and getting healthier bank balances.
And Angelica is examining herself in the bathroom mirror, puzzled by bruises she can't explain. Does Maria know what's happening? It is difficult to believe she couldn't notice, but she gives no indication. Does she choose not to see, does she not care, or does she consider it a price worth paying? We are not told.
Eventually of course, someone does notice. A doctor calls in the social services and Angelica is taken away to a care home. The parents don't resist too much and a year later we learn they're on their second honeymoon.
Angelica is puzzled by the change of location, but accepts it in her usual docile manner. She is well cared for by professionals and volunteers, and forms friendships - literally renewed on each meeting - with other abused youngsters.
One of these is Ruth, a compulsive liar and manipulator who is shunned by her peers and ignored by her carers. Ruth's neverending stream of stories about her suffering, her abuse, her illness and ill fortune are treated with good natured contempt by all who have heard dozens before.
But of course, Angelica doesn't remember. Each story is new and unquestioned, and the two can talk and cry and commiserate for the first time each day.
It is possible that some of Ruth's stories are true - she is after all in a home for victims of the kind of abuse she describes - but once again Deborah Stott refuses to give us any clues. She carefully avoids any suggestion of the omniscient author, though equally avoids implying that she may be an unreliable narrator.
Angelica may be the ideal companion for Ruth, and certainly Ruth's fantasies (and self delusions?) become less extreme over time, suggesting that she is finding some measure of happiness, but it can't last.
Angelica is transferred to another home, which she accepts in the same confused by docile way. By now she is nineteen, an attractive but vulnerable young woman. Inevitably, some residents show her kindness, some take advantage of her weakness, and most find themselves vacillating between the two. Even those with the best intentions find it all too easy to take advantage, even pretending to themselves they're doing her a favour.
The story focuses on Poul, a 23 year old "writer" (the kind with permanent writer's block) who has been drifting between care homes for most of his life. The reader knows he will rape Angelica long before he does it. The signs are there from the moment we meet him, and it follows the pattern of Angelina's life.
Poul is not depicted as an evil man, just a lonely one. But the way he holds Angelica down and leaves her sobbing in fear and confusion, and the way he does it again the next two nights - each the first for her - is not pleasant to read.
Then, on the third night, hours after Poul and her memory have gone, Angelica gets up, somehow breaks out of the home, and walks into the path of a car. She is killed instantly, and the driver, who was planning to kill himself by driving over a cliff, reconsiders.
And that's it. The book ends abruptly, almost in mid-paragraph. Previous works included an epilogue, but here there is pointedly nothing.
It is easy to see why this book, more than any of Stott's previous output, has caused such controversy. The church sees is as crass sensationalism - an excuse to parade depravity and suffering without even the excuse of the evildoers coming to a bad end. Others view this same lack of moralising tone and the refusal to turn Angelica's story into a simpleminded morality play as brave and intelligent.
Most of the press has, as usual, decided to adopt a middle ground, unable to say anything definite at all, reviewers even refusing to say whether they enjoyed the book or not. Most focus on the obvious symbolism of names. Joshua is the biblical Jesus and Maria is Mary - ah, but which one? Ruth is the biblical author so many believers forget, and Poul is Paul, the one they can't forget. Angelica is obviously an angel, though presumably not a specific one among the choir.
Though Stott follows the short life of her "heroine", the title "Forgiveness" give us a clue that it isn't really about her at all. Angelica is indeed an angel. Not an avenging angel, nor a guardian angel. She simply radiates joy and redemption wherever she walks, infusing those who she meets with strength and purpose.
And what is the source of this life energy? Obviously it is Angelica herself - she suffers so that others may have joy, she is shackled so that others may find freedom, and ultimately she dies so that others may live.
She gives unstintingly until she has no more to give. She asks nothing in return, nor any recognition that she has given. She has no memory, and therefore gives perfect forgiveness. After she lets each of us take whatever we need from her, she lets us off the hook with her forgiveness, and where there is forgiveness, so the reasoning goes, there is no crime.
The message is simple: This is what it is to be a saint, an angel, a benefactor of mankind. We take from those among us who have to goodness to allow it, we go on taking until there's nothing left, and then we move on to the next one, dignifying what we've done pretending it wasn't really us taking at all - we merely received what was freely flowing.
Deborah Stott has refused to be drawn on the meaning of her novel, saying it is up to the reader to extract a moral message from it, and accept or reject it according to their own conscience. Not surprisingly, her detractors find this unsatisfactory.
Speaking personally, I can't tell you whether I'm persuaded by Stott's image of the angel as victim. A week after finishing it I'm still confused - as I suspect was the intention. But I can tell you: You should read it for yourself, and decided, or not, for yourself.
Labels:
Fiction
Angel
This story is incomplete. I worked out the problems it deals with, worked out a solution, wrote the problem...and then realised the solution wouldn't work. And couldn't think of another solution.
This is called "writing yourself into a corner". You can think of this story as being like a murder mystery with the final page missing - except the mystery isn't the identity of the murderer, it's how to prevent the murder.
...I land gently on the wet grass. It is late afternoon in a public park. Whoever I am here for, they will be here soon.
There are trees and neat rosebeds with tarmac paths cuts between them. There are benches and bins, all covered in the light drizzle. An in-between place, at an in-between time. The kind of place people come to think, or to rest and avoid thought.
A man of about fifty walks slowly on the middle of the path. He stops at a bench, seems to ponder on whether to sit, and finally does so. He's the one.
I approach and sit next to him. Of course he doesn't notice me, and he won't remember me when I'm gone. Now, how to open up a conversation with someone who can't see or hear you?
"Tell me."
"I'm going to kill my mother."
Ah, okay.
"Tell me about her."
"She's an invalid. She has a degenerative spinal condition. I've been looking after her alone for ten years. She was meant to die after one year or two. She's stolen my life. I hate her."
"I see. Do you deliberately hurt her? Physically or emotionally?"
"No. I could never do that."
"Why not?"
"She's my mother. I love her."
"And the other reason?"
"Whenever I hurt her as a child, she hurt me much worse."
"You realise she can't hurt you back anymore?"
"Yes. But I'm afraid she will."
"How does she feel about you?"
He seems to ponder for a moment, then takes a deep breath. "She doesn't want to have to rely on me, but she likes that it keeps me with her. She knows that if it wasn't for her disease I'd have left long ago. I was always her favourite."
So far, it seems a pretty standard love-hate relationship between mother and son. Except that he really does intend to kill her. If he were just fantasising it wouldn't have drawn me here. I wonder how many years of care it took to get him to this stage.
"What will happen if you kill your mother?"
"The police will work out I did it and I'll go to jail for 14 years."
That stops me for a moment. I keep forgetting I need to phrase questions more precisely.
"What would you want to happen if you kill your mother?"
"I'll be free to marry my girlfriend and have a family."
"Tell me about your girlfriend."
"She's boring and stupid."
I shouldn't, but I can't help but smile. There's little evasion in this one's mind. I find myself starting to like him a little.
"And how do you feel about her?"
"I've never loved her and now I don't even like her."
"Then why do you stay with her?"
"I wouldn't be able to find anyone else."
"Would you want to find someone else?"
"No."
"Does she love you?"
"I don't know."
"Do you care?"
"I don't know."
Hmmm.
"So, you want to leave one life with a woman you don't want to be with, to set up a new life with another woman you don't want to be with. Is that accurate?"
There's no answer. The question reached him - it would have reached him in hurricane - but he just doesn't want to understand it. There's a block. I could break it down, given time, but there's no need. I try a different tack.
"Why do you want to start a family?"
He continues to stare at the wet ground in silence. Either there's another block, or there was something wrong with the question - some false assumption.
"Do you want to start a family?"
"No."
Ah.
"Then why do you intend to start one?"
"It's what mother says she wants."
"Then why doesn't she let you start one?"
"She also wants me to stay with her and not have anyone else."
Of course. So obvious, I should have seen that one coming. But where do I go now?
"How do you intend to kill your mother?"
"With rat poison. I know where I can get pellets that look just like the painkillers she takes when her back hurts too much. She takes five or six at a time. She thinks I don't know she does it. I can make it looks like she accidentally took the wrong pills."
"Are you sure that would work?"
"Yes. No."
Again I can't help but smile. My friend here is as confused as everyone else, full of diametrically opposed opinions about the things which matter to him most. But there's no self deception, no misdirection or waffle, no meaningless qualifications - and only one question so far he dare not ask himself.
But I can't help thinking there's something wrong with what he's telling me. He can't be lying - he has to tell me the truth as he knows it, however mixed up that might be. He is as exactly as honest with me as he is with himself in his own most private thoughts. No, there's some question I'm not asking.
"Are there other family members or friends who could look after her?"
"She has no friends who care about her enough to help. My sister and father are capable, but they'd pretend to care for her and just let her rot. I couldn't let them do that, so I do it. They call me a hero because I let them off the hook."
Of course they do. But this isn't the answer.
"Do you think your mother will die soon anyway?"
"No. She's 75 but still strong. She's determined."
Well, I'm not sure determination has anything to do with it, though obviously he does. Damn, what am I missing?
"How long have you been planning to kill your mother?"
"Eight years."
Eight years. That's it. Each day he wakes up, genuinely intending to kill his mother, and each day he doesn't do it. Perhaps one day he will, but I doubt it.
He's not just trapped in a stale and empty life, he's trapped at the brink of escaping it...only to recreate it in another form, whether or not he gets caught. It's quite elegant, in its way.
Is there a way out I could give him? I can't put new ideas into his head - that's forbidden - but I can sometimes change the balance between those already there. I can...encourage him.
I could make him get rid of his girlfriend by making his boredom with her outweigh his sense of obligation to her, but I couldn't make him love her - I can't even amplify his liking for her because he doesn't have any liking for her. But I don't think she's the problem anyway.
I can push him towards actually killing his mother, or away from it. I can bring the tensions to the surface, maybe forcing him to find a solution of his own, or bury them, which might give him a kind of peace. Or drive him quietly insane.
There's no solution. I can see this man's problem better than he can, but I can't see a way out. I can't leave - and neither can he - until we find some solution, but I can't.
We're locked together, for as long as it takes. Even if that's forever.
Labels:
Fiction
Conspiracy
Today's short story is a fragment of a novel that I tried to start, on and off, for nine years. It seems some books aren't destined to be written, but the fragments can be interesting. I hope you think so.
Inside the room was a table separating two chairs. Seated at the table, head bowed over a book, was a an white haired man who could have been anywhere between forty and seventy. Next to him, a large jug of steaming coffee, and a china cup with a saucer. The man looked up, and he smiled.
"Ah, good evening Mr Flint. Punctual as always. Please come in and sit down - you are quite safe, but we don't have much time."
After an uncertain pause, Flint sat. The man smiled warmly and leaned forward, as though to confide some secret to an old friend.
"It is so good to finally meet you, Mr Flint. Our mutual friend has told me so much about you. I am Mr Stone, but you guessed that already, naturally."
"How could I resist the trail of breadcrumbs you left for me to follow? Now. why?"
Mr Stone looked thoughtful for a few seconds, staring off into space, collecting his thoughts.
"Here we are, myself and my fellow travellers, a group of a hundred or so, scattered across nations and guilds, loosely tied together by an idea. An idea, a hope and a struggle. An idea that seems too vague to put briefly into words, a hope that seems futile, and a struggle that it seems we can only lose.
"Have you ever wondered what it is we actually do? Aside from sit and hope. We can't mount campaigns, we'd stand no chance in elections, and there's no way we could seize power militarily. And yet you know we make plans. Plans for what?
"The powerful know we exist, and though they could crush us they permit us to exist, because to them we're a safety value. A way for misfits to gain a sense of belonging, and work off their frustration harmlessly. But we're not so harmless they don't keep us under constant observation."
Mr Stone paused and took a sip of coffee. He swilled it thoughtfully around in his mouth, and swallowed.
"I take it you're familiar with the notions of Signal and Noise? The signal is anything you want to measure, and the noise is all the other signals you get that interfere with your measurement. When they point their hidden cameras at us, or send spies to infiltrate us, the signal they're trying to measure is our intentions. They want to know what we're trying to achieve, and how. The noise is everything we do and say that sounds relevant, but isn't.
"And as I'm sure you know, the noise is often louder than the signal. In fact, sometimes the signal is so quiet and the noise so loud, it almost disappears. And so we generate noise of our own, just for them to hear. We make plans that we have no intention of carrying out, just to let them overhear us doing it. We talk in elaborate codes that mean nothing, and they waste hours every day having their computers go over it.
Oh, they know we're doing it. They know that we know that they're watching. And they know we're jamming the signal with noise, which they have to analyse and decode, because hidden somewhere in that noise is the signal that frightens them."
Mr Stone took another mouthful of coffee, and spent another few seconds staring off into space. Then he continued.
"But what if there is no signal? What if all we're doing is making noise to make them think there's a signal hidden in there somewhere? What if everything we say and do is a distraction, not from some grand masterplan, but to hide the fact that there is no masterplan?
"Have you ever thought of that, Mr Flint? I'm sure you have, with a mind like yours. Always watching, always doubting, always trying to understand what's really going on. If you did think of it, you must have realised there'd be no point in carrying out such an elaborate and dangerous deception.
Unless there is a plan after all, and almost none of us know what it is. We know we're hiding something, we know it's important, but we don't know what we're hiding.
What if we hundred are a hoax, hiding the ten who really have a plan. Slowly moving into position, using the noise of the hundred to cover our footsteps. It is ten? Is it five? Or is it just one lone operator, planning ahead, waiting his turn? Who would that one be, Mr Flint?
Me? No! Too obvious. As their leader I could hardly be their secret weapon now, could I?"
Mr Stone grinned self-deprecatingly at the thought. He downed the last of the coffee, and with barely a pause poured another cup.
"But maybe the best agent is one who doesn't even know he's an agent. It's something to consider anyway. Goodnight, Mr Flint."
Labels:
Fiction
Introduction to Chronomatics
One of my all-time favourite writers is Stanislaw Lem. He is one of those authors who, like JG Ballard, gets categorised as Science Fiction because he won't fit anywhere else. That, plus the space ships and aliens. He started out writing the kind of Sci-Fi that's really political satire, and moved more and more towards philosophical musings thinly disguised with plot. One series of stories was a set of lectures on epistemology, presented as the output of a giant computer.
Halfway between the two were his reviews of nonexistant books, and "exerpts" from fantasy scientific papers from the future. Here, then, is my glimpse of the future, part of a study book which fell back through time.
From 'Introduction to Chronomatics'
by Jorgen Lemski
Published 2248
The science of chronomatics is based on three key insights, the first two reasonably obvious, the third just the opposite.
The first insight is that knowing the future changes the future. Everyone knows this - indeed, the only possible reason for wanting to know the future is wanting to change it. There's no point in knowing the day of your death if you can't do something to avoid it.
The second insight has been phrased various ways - "the map is not the territory", "you can't tell the whole truth", "the description is not the reality" and so on. This is sometimes taken to mean that any description or representation is necessarily incomplete, and indeed this is the case, but is not the main point being made.
It also means that any description of any part of reality cannot include a description of the description itself. Why? Because then it would have to include a description of that self-description, and so on, to infinity.
In fact, a description can't describe itself - or it's role in a larger reality that it describes - for precisely the same reason that any description of reality cannot contain every detail of that reality. Because reality is by definition infinitely detailed, and the description by definition is not. And an infinitely regressing self description, to exist at all, nevermind being complete, would need to be infinitely detailed.
Some students give up in confusion at this point, and in doing so deny themselves the grandeur of the third insight - the one that makes Chronomatics concievable, and thus time travel possible.
The key third insight is highly counterintuitive and consistently misunderstood. It is that, just as the decisions we make in the present affect the future, they also affect the past. The past is not fixed - the waves of cause and effect rippling out from an act in the present flow into the past as well as the future.
The difficult thing to understand is that the events of the past reconfigured by actions in the present have effects of their own, which ripple out to affect both their past and their future, which includes our present. And occasionally the events of the present that are affected in this way cause secondary backward ripples, changing or even erasing the past events which caused them, thus erasing themselves and replacing themselves with a new present.
This process of oscillation continues until a stable timeline is reached - one with effects that do no erase their own causes.
However, these stable events (and decisions) of the present soon become events of the past, which can be affected by events of the new present. Thus time is in constant flux, and in principle an event today could change one that happened millions of years ago, which might in some way radically change all history. This may already have happened - there is, by definition, no way of knowing.
Once the student has grasped (and been a little scared by) these concepts, they tend to ask two questions: Is human existence really that precarious, and how does this knowledge help us travel through time?
To answer the first question, it is necessary to emphasise that when we talk about "events" and "decisions" echoing backwards and forwards, only a tiny number of these are the kind of events recorded in diaries and newspapers. Events like "The president declares war" and decisions like "Mary chooses blue shoes today" are in a sense tiny blips against the constant background of "One grain of sand falls from a stone", "One electron is displaced when a cesium atom decays" and "A small part of one string shifts in one dimension".
Essentially, from a chronomatics point of view. human affairs are a minor sideshow in one small part of the universe. This might make us feel small, but it should also make us feel safe.
The chronomatist Wilhelm Strondberg once famously addressed the assembly on this in his distinctive prose style:
"The universe is in chaos, eternally destroying and recreating itself, only to do so countless times again, and we poor creatures are flotsam in this storm. But fear not, for we are safe, not because we are too large to escape the waves, but because we are too small. The gods of time battle above us, on scales too immense and strange for us to imagine, as we are too simple for their weapons to hurt."
And so to the second question: How does chronomatic science enable us to travel in time? And more importantly, how does it enable us to do this without damaging it?
The answer lies in two facts. First, that ripples in history take time to travel, but this time is outside of history. Second, just as isolated bubbles can survive turbulence in a lake and insects can survive within them, so we can create bubbles of calm in the sea of history, and move them against the tide.
The notion that causality takes time - indeed, that it takes time for the timeline to be affected by events within itself - can at first be a little difficult to grasp. The difficulty is that the word "time" is being used in two very different ways...
Labels:
Fiction
Time
In a lot of short stories, and a lot of science fiction, the plot and characters are really just excuses to create the world where they happen. Often the political and cultural background is more interesting than what the characters do in the foreground - and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Anyway, here's a science fiction short story that's almost entirely background.
No one knew who had invented the time weapon, and no one could be certain which side started the war.
It was commonly believed that the weapon's invention, and its inventor, belonged to a timeline long since erased. Some thought they had evidence the war had its origins in a dispute over temporal colonisation rights with the enemy, which had been an ally at the time. Others stated confidently that the war had been religious in nature, though the religion itself had been since erased at source. A distinct minority favoured the notion that it was an unprovoked pre-emptive attack borne simply out of the fear of being attacked first.
The truth was that no one knew why the two empires were at war, and estimates of how long they had been fighting were necessarily vague, but all authorities agreed the other side must have attacked first.
A protective shield had been quickly developed after the first few inexpert attacks. The same technology behind the time weapon allowed an area to be defined which was immune to causality shift. The original plan had been to encase the entire continent in such an area, protecting the whole population from history change while the weapon removed the historical basis of the enemy.
Unfortunately there were two problems. First it appeared the enemy also had such a shield, and second, there was simply not enough energy to protect such a large area continuously.
The result was that the centre of the empire was protected by the shield, and the weapon was used to try to undo the damage done to the outlying regions. Thus the cities of the central area occupied a different timeline to the rest of the empire - indeed, occasionally the outlying regions occupied a history where there was no temporal war at all, or even no empire!
Communications between the centre and it's protectorates were therefore infrequent and confused. However, the centre could on no account afford to withdraw any part of its protection, simply because the centre was not self sufficient.
Supplies of food, raw materials and energy for the protective area had to come from outside the centre, and much planning and effort was spent in ensuring the history of the outlying regions was such that they could provide what was needed.
The enemy was presumably in a similar situation, and therefore many of the tactics adopted revolved around depriving the enemy of productive technology.
In effect, the temporal war had largely ceased to be a fight between two empires to erase each other's founding histories, and become an old fashioned war of attrition, each side trying to starve the other.
The invention of the time weapon had presumably been in an unprotected area, either an outlying region, or more likely the centre before the protective area had been established. Either way, knowledge of its construction was ferociously guarded, even in a timeline when it had never been invented.
It was therefore the holy grail of attack strategies to find some point in the enemy's history which they'd neglected to protect, which was pivotal in the chain of events leading to their acquisition of the weapon. So far though, all attempts to find it had been futile.
The enemy were thought to be a smaller political entity, seemingly occupying the same landmass, ending roughly three thousand years in the past. Historians asserted that it had originally been founded two thousand years before that, but had pushed back its founding date by at least a thousand years.
The empire's own plans for expansion included the stimulation of politically amenable states in the centuries leading up to it's founding, which would either retrogress the founding, or reduce opposition to initial expansion. Both outcomes would of course be desirable.
Recently, a bold proposal was put forward to create such states several millennia in the past, and even provide them with the means to invent their own time weapon. If successful, this would ensure that the enemy empire, when it comes into existence would find itself already contained on all sides by a pre-existing rival - namely the empire's own proxies.
At the last observation, the proposal was still controversial, but support was growing as the war continued with no victory in sight.
Anyway, here's a science fiction short story that's almost entirely background.
No one knew who had invented the time weapon, and no one could be certain which side started the war.
It was commonly believed that the weapon's invention, and its inventor, belonged to a timeline long since erased. Some thought they had evidence the war had its origins in a dispute over temporal colonisation rights with the enemy, which had been an ally at the time. Others stated confidently that the war had been religious in nature, though the religion itself had been since erased at source. A distinct minority favoured the notion that it was an unprovoked pre-emptive attack borne simply out of the fear of being attacked first.
The truth was that no one knew why the two empires were at war, and estimates of how long they had been fighting were necessarily vague, but all authorities agreed the other side must have attacked first.
A protective shield had been quickly developed after the first few inexpert attacks. The same technology behind the time weapon allowed an area to be defined which was immune to causality shift. The original plan had been to encase the entire continent in such an area, protecting the whole population from history change while the weapon removed the historical basis of the enemy.
Unfortunately there were two problems. First it appeared the enemy also had such a shield, and second, there was simply not enough energy to protect such a large area continuously.
The result was that the centre of the empire was protected by the shield, and the weapon was used to try to undo the damage done to the outlying regions. Thus the cities of the central area occupied a different timeline to the rest of the empire - indeed, occasionally the outlying regions occupied a history where there was no temporal war at all, or even no empire!
Communications between the centre and it's protectorates were therefore infrequent and confused. However, the centre could on no account afford to withdraw any part of its protection, simply because the centre was not self sufficient.
Supplies of food, raw materials and energy for the protective area had to come from outside the centre, and much planning and effort was spent in ensuring the history of the outlying regions was such that they could provide what was needed.
The enemy was presumably in a similar situation, and therefore many of the tactics adopted revolved around depriving the enemy of productive technology.
In effect, the temporal war had largely ceased to be a fight between two empires to erase each other's founding histories, and become an old fashioned war of attrition, each side trying to starve the other.
The invention of the time weapon had presumably been in an unprotected area, either an outlying region, or more likely the centre before the protective area had been established. Either way, knowledge of its construction was ferociously guarded, even in a timeline when it had never been invented.
It was therefore the holy grail of attack strategies to find some point in the enemy's history which they'd neglected to protect, which was pivotal in the chain of events leading to their acquisition of the weapon. So far though, all attempts to find it had been futile.
The enemy were thought to be a smaller political entity, seemingly occupying the same landmass, ending roughly three thousand years in the past. Historians asserted that it had originally been founded two thousand years before that, but had pushed back its founding date by at least a thousand years.
The empire's own plans for expansion included the stimulation of politically amenable states in the centuries leading up to it's founding, which would either retrogress the founding, or reduce opposition to initial expansion. Both outcomes would of course be desirable.
Recently, a bold proposal was put forward to create such states several millennia in the past, and even provide them with the means to invent their own time weapon. If successful, this would ensure that the enemy empire, when it comes into existence would find itself already contained on all sides by a pre-existing rival - namely the empire's own proxies.
At the last observation, the proposal was still controversial, but support was growing as the war continued with no victory in sight.
Labels:
Fiction
Too Much Reality
A short story. Let me know what you think.
Doctor Alice Fletcher wasn't listening.
Her current patient was a middle aged bank clerk who could talk for hours about how his wife didn't love him, his friends didn't respect him, his colleagues didn't value him and his children didn't want to see him. About himself, in other words.
He liked to say his problem was that people didn't understand what he was about, and couldn't relate to him. Privately Alice was sure everyone did understand, and that was why they didn't want to relate to him. The only thing he was about was himself. It was all he talked about, all he cared about, all he knew about.
God! What was his name? She'd forgotten again. She gazed at her psychiatric diplomas on the wall, and weighed up the pros and cons of pronouncing him sane, cured and happy, versus losing whatever he was paying her to sit in the same room pretending to take notes.
Only five more minutes till I have to throw him out. Just hold on till then. They I can have a nice cup of coffee and open that new packet of chocolate biscuits before the next patient.
She became aware that he's stopped talking. She glanced up.
"Well?", he demanded. "What should I do?"
Jump of a cliff you tedious windbag, thought Alice. Aloud she said, "It's not my job to tell you what to do. Only to let you find out for yourself how you feel."
"Yes but...what do you think?"
I've no idea what you're on about and I don't care. Now leave me alone. "I think we've made some important progress this week, and this is a good point to end today's session. You need to think about what we've learned, and build on it next time."
She stood up and held the door open for him. He walked out looking confused and trying to hide it. She nodded and smiled at him as he left, and closed the door firmly.
Alice let out a deep sigh. She didn't feel well - hadn't felt well all week. It could be mild food poisoning, probably from that restaurant. Her husband had taken her out and they'd spent far too much money on far too much food and far too much wine. And then they'd...well, it had been lovely. It had all been enormously sweet of him but...somehow typical she'd spend the next week suffering for his kindness.
The intercom bleeped. "Detective Wheeler is here to see you", said Madeline's voice through the tinny speaker.
Alice frowned, "I've got another patient in five minutes. Did he make an appointment? I'm rather busy."
"Detective Wheeler is your next appointment, Doctor", said Madeline in her best 'talking to an idiot but making an effort not to sound patronising' voice. "It's about Mr West. You agreed the police could interview you this morning."
Did I? You're probably lying to me, you old cow..
"Send him in, Madeline."
The door opened and a podgy grey haired man in a neatly pressed suit and trenchcoat walked in.
He even looks like an inspector from the TV. I bet he drives an old banger and he's got a rubbish lovelife.
"Good morning Inspector", said Alice professionally. "Please come in and sit down. Or lie on the couch if you prefer."
"Thank you, I'll just sit." replied Wheeler. He had a voice that matched the rest of him - neat, careful, and past it's prime.
He sat, carefully. "I understand Mr Greg West was a patient of yours, Doctor Fletcher."
"Was? Has something happened to him?"
"I'm afraid so. He shot a man with a pistol at point blank range, and then turned the gun on himself."
There was a long, surprised pause.
"You're quite sure it was him? And they're both dead?"
"Yes...and yes. There were several witnesses. You'll probably read about it in the evening papers."
"I...see. And you want me to tell you why he did it."
"Well, if you could maybe shed some light on what he might have been thinking.
Alice was silent
"Did he have any real enemies? Did he talk a lot about killing?"
"No enemies that I knew of, and...no, not the way you mean. He talked about other people dying all the time - it was why he was referred to me, but..."
"But...?"
She sighed. "I'd better start at the beginning."
Gregory West was a thin man of 26, with strawlike hair and sharp features. He had a look that you'd describe as 'intense' if you liked him, or 'beady' if you didn't.
After introducing herself, Alice glanced through the notes she'd been given, before speaking again.
"You've been seeing Doctor Gibson for six months, and he referred you to me. He says you believe you have some kind of precognitive ability, and you were sent to him because you kept trying to warn people about the future. Is that right?"
"I know when people are gonna die."
"How do you know? Do you hear voices?"
"I just know. Whenever I meet someone. Always know."
"Can you give me any examples?"
"Yeah. When I was seven my mum was stung by a bee on her throat. She choked to death. Took her ten minutes. Allergic reaction they said. I was there. I knew it was going to happen. I'd always known. I thought she knew too. I thought everyone knew. I tried to tell my dad later but...he hit me till I stopped."
"I see. You know what..."
"Yes, I know what all you psycho types say. You say I was deeply hurt by seeing my mum die and my dad abusing me and I made up a fantasy of knowing. I'm not stupid you know. Anyway it keeps happening."
"Like when?"
"I had a friend at school. Martin. He was always climbing things. I told him if he climbed up on the school roof he'd fall off and smash his head. He didn't believe me. Then a couple of months later he did it. His head was spilled all over the playground. At the funeral they said it was an accident. But I knew."
"Were you there when he climbed up on to the roof? Did you go there with him?"
"What, you think I pushed him? No, I wasn't there. I was off school. You can check."
"And was there anything more recently?"
"I had a job interview. Didn't get it. Met the manager. Evil old bastard. Tried to break my hand when he shook it. Blew smoke in my face. Always smoking. I knew he'd die of lung cancer. Two years time."
"And? Did he?"
"Not yet. It was only a year and a half ago. But I read that he was in hospital."
Wheeler interrupted her. "So you didn't believe him?"
"No of course not! One quarter of my patients think they've got supernatural powers, one quarter think everyone's whispering about them behind their backs, and one quarter think their girlfriends are CIA spies."
"And the other quarter?"
"They just want someone to talk to. So far as I could see, Greg West was just a confused young man with an overactive fantasy life. It was my job to ascertain whether it was a dangerous fantasy, and if it was, help him get rid of it."
"Hm. Did he tell you when you were going to die?"
Alice smiled grimly. "Oh yes, he tried to pull that one on me. He told me I'd die in childbirth in a little over a year."
"I take it you think that's unlikely."
"Five years ago my husband and I decided to stop having fertility treatment. I can't have children, Inspector."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you tell Mr West that?"
"No! I never discuss my life outside of this office with my patients. It would be grossly unprofessional. Besides, it would drive me stark staring bonkers if I let some of my patients into my life."
Wheeler smiled. "Are psychiatrists supposed to use terms like stark staring bonkers?"
Alice fought to keep her mouth from twitching. "Only when talking to policemen. And each other. But Greg West wasn't like that. I think all he really wanted was for someone to believe him. Which of course I was never going to do."
"Mmmm. And all this happened...when?"
"Four months ago. I can get the exact date if you need it."
"Later, if it turns out to be important. Right now I just want a general picture. You were telling me what happened the first time you met Mr West."
"He gave me a few more examples of people he'd known who'd died - or he thought were going to die. It was quite clear he was very skilled at rewriting his memories to give himself advance knowledge. Foreknowledge after the fact, I suppose you'd call it. Prophecy in hindsight."
"And how many other times did you see him?"
"Only four or five. Each time he told me a series of his death stories. The deaths were all different, but the stories all really the same. It was odd how many people he'd known who'd died. Assuming he had known that many. I began to suspect he'd not known anyone who'd died, apart from his mother. I thought he might be inventing the whole thing. In fact I was going to suggest that to him on his next session...
"But he never turned up. Now you're telling me that's because he killed a stranger and then himself. I'm sorry Inspector, all I can say is...he thought a lot about death and...maybe it went too far."
Wheeler nodded, as though unsurprised. "Well, Doctor Fletcher, I'm sorry to have taken up your time. I think you're probably right - it's just another murder suicide by...excuse me for saying it, but someone who's not quite right in the head.
"I'll see myself out. Good morning, Doctor."
...and he left without ceremony. Alice got up to put the kettle on for a nice hot cup of coffee. The intercom buzzed.
"Mrs King is her for her weekly appointment, Doctor Fletcher."
Madeline's voice had its usual edge of being ever so slightly patronising.
Oh fuck it. And fuck you too, Madeline.
"Send her in."
Three days later, Alice had got a colleague to prescribe her some pills for the queasiness, and she was enjoying her third cup of coffee with chocolate biscuits of the morning. Then Wheeler unexpectedly dropped by.
"Back again, Inspector? Are you sure you won't take the couch this time?"
"Thank you, but no. There's been some, ah, developments in the case of our friend Greg West."
"Go on."
"He left us a note which...sort of...explains what he did. He sent it by email and we get hundreds of crank messages a day, so it took a while to surface. And it turns out the man he shot was a big time gangster from the north, planning to expand his little drug empire down here. Name of Ricky Flynn."
"Oh! Sounds like Greg did you a favour."
"Well...you wouldn't hear me say it on the record. But the thing is..."
"...yes?"
"The message said he met this girl in a pub, hit it off with her and...knew this fellow Flynn was going to kill her in a week. So, he decided to kill Flynn before he could kill her. We don't know where he got the gun from, and we can't trace any connection between him and Flynn. I don't suppose he mentioned any criminal associates or connections to you at all? Or a young lady named Samantha who might be mixed up in it?"
"I'm sorry Inspector. Greg was a rough type, but not like that. And if he had, I think I'd have told you."
"Hmmm. Well it was just a thought. Looks like there's going to be a big enquiry now, and we won't be able to keep the press out of it. So I'm just saying, you'll be asked to testify...and if some journalist gets wind of the supernatural angle...well, they might start to bother you. Just thought I'd warn you."
"I see. I think I can deal with coroners and newshounds."
"Okay. I'd better be on my way."
Wheeler turned to go
"Oh Inspector?"
He half turned back.
"Yes?"
"What happened to the girl?"
"It looks like she's...disappeared."
Wheeler reached the door.
"There is one other thing Inspector."
Wheeler turned again.
Alice opened her desk drawer and took out a small strip of paper. It was stained with a line of bright pink.
"You remember how Greg said I'd die? And I said he was wrong because I couldn't have children? Well I've been feeling sick recently so this morning I bought this test kit and...
She held up the strip.
"I'm pregnant."
Doctor Alice Fletcher wasn't listening.
Her current patient was a middle aged bank clerk who could talk for hours about how his wife didn't love him, his friends didn't respect him, his colleagues didn't value him and his children didn't want to see him. About himself, in other words.
He liked to say his problem was that people didn't understand what he was about, and couldn't relate to him. Privately Alice was sure everyone did understand, and that was why they didn't want to relate to him. The only thing he was about was himself. It was all he talked about, all he cared about, all he knew about.
God! What was his name? She'd forgotten again. She gazed at her psychiatric diplomas on the wall, and weighed up the pros and cons of pronouncing him sane, cured and happy, versus losing whatever he was paying her to sit in the same room pretending to take notes.
Only five more minutes till I have to throw him out. Just hold on till then. They I can have a nice cup of coffee and open that new packet of chocolate biscuits before the next patient.
She became aware that he's stopped talking. She glanced up.
"Well?", he demanded. "What should I do?"
Jump of a cliff you tedious windbag, thought Alice. Aloud she said, "It's not my job to tell you what to do. Only to let you find out for yourself how you feel."
"Yes but...what do you think?"
I've no idea what you're on about and I don't care. Now leave me alone. "I think we've made some important progress this week, and this is a good point to end today's session. You need to think about what we've learned, and build on it next time."
She stood up and held the door open for him. He walked out looking confused and trying to hide it. She nodded and smiled at him as he left, and closed the door firmly.
Alice let out a deep sigh. She didn't feel well - hadn't felt well all week. It could be mild food poisoning, probably from that restaurant. Her husband had taken her out and they'd spent far too much money on far too much food and far too much wine. And then they'd...well, it had been lovely. It had all been enormously sweet of him but...somehow typical she'd spend the next week suffering for his kindness.
The intercom bleeped. "Detective Wheeler is here to see you", said Madeline's voice through the tinny speaker.
Alice frowned, "I've got another patient in five minutes. Did he make an appointment? I'm rather busy."
"Detective Wheeler is your next appointment, Doctor", said Madeline in her best 'talking to an idiot but making an effort not to sound patronising' voice. "It's about Mr West. You agreed the police could interview you this morning."
Did I? You're probably lying to me, you old cow..
"Send him in, Madeline."
The door opened and a podgy grey haired man in a neatly pressed suit and trenchcoat walked in.
He even looks like an inspector from the TV. I bet he drives an old banger and he's got a rubbish lovelife.
"Good morning Inspector", said Alice professionally. "Please come in and sit down. Or lie on the couch if you prefer."
"Thank you, I'll just sit." replied Wheeler. He had a voice that matched the rest of him - neat, careful, and past it's prime.
He sat, carefully. "I understand Mr Greg West was a patient of yours, Doctor Fletcher."
"Was? Has something happened to him?"
"I'm afraid so. He shot a man with a pistol at point blank range, and then turned the gun on himself."
There was a long, surprised pause.
"You're quite sure it was him? And they're both dead?"
"Yes...and yes. There were several witnesses. You'll probably read about it in the evening papers."
"I...see. And you want me to tell you why he did it."
"Well, if you could maybe shed some light on what he might have been thinking.
Alice was silent
"Did he have any real enemies? Did he talk a lot about killing?"
"No enemies that I knew of, and...no, not the way you mean. He talked about other people dying all the time - it was why he was referred to me, but..."
"But...?"
She sighed. "I'd better start at the beginning."
Gregory West was a thin man of 26, with strawlike hair and sharp features. He had a look that you'd describe as 'intense' if you liked him, or 'beady' if you didn't.
After introducing herself, Alice glanced through the notes she'd been given, before speaking again.
"You've been seeing Doctor Gibson for six months, and he referred you to me. He says you believe you have some kind of precognitive ability, and you were sent to him because you kept trying to warn people about the future. Is that right?"
"I know when people are gonna die."
"How do you know? Do you hear voices?"
"I just know. Whenever I meet someone. Always know."
"Can you give me any examples?"
"Yeah. When I was seven my mum was stung by a bee on her throat. She choked to death. Took her ten minutes. Allergic reaction they said. I was there. I knew it was going to happen. I'd always known. I thought she knew too. I thought everyone knew. I tried to tell my dad later but...he hit me till I stopped."
"I see. You know what..."
"Yes, I know what all you psycho types say. You say I was deeply hurt by seeing my mum die and my dad abusing me and I made up a fantasy of knowing. I'm not stupid you know. Anyway it keeps happening."
"Like when?"
"I had a friend at school. Martin. He was always climbing things. I told him if he climbed up on the school roof he'd fall off and smash his head. He didn't believe me. Then a couple of months later he did it. His head was spilled all over the playground. At the funeral they said it was an accident. But I knew."
"Were you there when he climbed up on to the roof? Did you go there with him?"
"What, you think I pushed him? No, I wasn't there. I was off school. You can check."
"And was there anything more recently?"
"I had a job interview. Didn't get it. Met the manager. Evil old bastard. Tried to break my hand when he shook it. Blew smoke in my face. Always smoking. I knew he'd die of lung cancer. Two years time."
"And? Did he?"
"Not yet. It was only a year and a half ago. But I read that he was in hospital."
Wheeler interrupted her. "So you didn't believe him?"
"No of course not! One quarter of my patients think they've got supernatural powers, one quarter think everyone's whispering about them behind their backs, and one quarter think their girlfriends are CIA spies."
"And the other quarter?"
"They just want someone to talk to. So far as I could see, Greg West was just a confused young man with an overactive fantasy life. It was my job to ascertain whether it was a dangerous fantasy, and if it was, help him get rid of it."
"Hm. Did he tell you when you were going to die?"
Alice smiled grimly. "Oh yes, he tried to pull that one on me. He told me I'd die in childbirth in a little over a year."
"I take it you think that's unlikely."
"Five years ago my husband and I decided to stop having fertility treatment. I can't have children, Inspector."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you tell Mr West that?"
"No! I never discuss my life outside of this office with my patients. It would be grossly unprofessional. Besides, it would drive me stark staring bonkers if I let some of my patients into my life."
Wheeler smiled. "Are psychiatrists supposed to use terms like stark staring bonkers?"
Alice fought to keep her mouth from twitching. "Only when talking to policemen. And each other. But Greg West wasn't like that. I think all he really wanted was for someone to believe him. Which of course I was never going to do."
"Mmmm. And all this happened...when?"
"Four months ago. I can get the exact date if you need it."
"Later, if it turns out to be important. Right now I just want a general picture. You were telling me what happened the first time you met Mr West."
"He gave me a few more examples of people he'd known who'd died - or he thought were going to die. It was quite clear he was very skilled at rewriting his memories to give himself advance knowledge. Foreknowledge after the fact, I suppose you'd call it. Prophecy in hindsight."
"And how many other times did you see him?"
"Only four or five. Each time he told me a series of his death stories. The deaths were all different, but the stories all really the same. It was odd how many people he'd known who'd died. Assuming he had known that many. I began to suspect he'd not known anyone who'd died, apart from his mother. I thought he might be inventing the whole thing. In fact I was going to suggest that to him on his next session...
"But he never turned up. Now you're telling me that's because he killed a stranger and then himself. I'm sorry Inspector, all I can say is...he thought a lot about death and...maybe it went too far."
Wheeler nodded, as though unsurprised. "Well, Doctor Fletcher, I'm sorry to have taken up your time. I think you're probably right - it's just another murder suicide by...excuse me for saying it, but someone who's not quite right in the head.
"I'll see myself out. Good morning, Doctor."
...and he left without ceremony. Alice got up to put the kettle on for a nice hot cup of coffee. The intercom buzzed.
"Mrs King is her for her weekly appointment, Doctor Fletcher."
Madeline's voice had its usual edge of being ever so slightly patronising.
Oh fuck it. And fuck you too, Madeline.
"Send her in."
Three days later, Alice had got a colleague to prescribe her some pills for the queasiness, and she was enjoying her third cup of coffee with chocolate biscuits of the morning. Then Wheeler unexpectedly dropped by.
"Back again, Inspector? Are you sure you won't take the couch this time?"
"Thank you, but no. There's been some, ah, developments in the case of our friend Greg West."
"Go on."
"He left us a note which...sort of...explains what he did. He sent it by email and we get hundreds of crank messages a day, so it took a while to surface. And it turns out the man he shot was a big time gangster from the north, planning to expand his little drug empire down here. Name of Ricky Flynn."
"Oh! Sounds like Greg did you a favour."
"Well...you wouldn't hear me say it on the record. But the thing is..."
"...yes?"
"The message said he met this girl in a pub, hit it off with her and...knew this fellow Flynn was going to kill her in a week. So, he decided to kill Flynn before he could kill her. We don't know where he got the gun from, and we can't trace any connection between him and Flynn. I don't suppose he mentioned any criminal associates or connections to you at all? Or a young lady named Samantha who might be mixed up in it?"
"I'm sorry Inspector. Greg was a rough type, but not like that. And if he had, I think I'd have told you."
"Hmmm. Well it was just a thought. Looks like there's going to be a big enquiry now, and we won't be able to keep the press out of it. So I'm just saying, you'll be asked to testify...and if some journalist gets wind of the supernatural angle...well, they might start to bother you. Just thought I'd warn you."
"I see. I think I can deal with coroners and newshounds."
"Okay. I'd better be on my way."
Wheeler turned to go
"Oh Inspector?"
He half turned back.
"Yes?"
"What happened to the girl?"
"It looks like she's...disappeared."
Wheeler reached the door.
"There is one other thing Inspector."
Wheeler turned again.
Alice opened her desk drawer and took out a small strip of paper. It was stained with a line of bright pink.
"You remember how Greg said I'd die? And I said he was wrong because I couldn't have children? Well I've been feeling sick recently so this morning I bought this test kit and...
She held up the strip.
"I'm pregnant."
Labels:
Fiction
Mother's Day (Part 1)
This is the first draft of the first 2000 words of "Mother's Day".
Detective Inspector Brandt had a very piercing snore. Guttural and nasal, you didn't just hear it - you felt like it was burrowing into your head. His colleagues compared it to a pneumatic drill, a dalek with asthma, or a dozen other things. They had plenty of opportunity to find metaphors for it because they heard it so often - though somehow never when his superiors were nearby.
Currently it was ten in the morning and Brandt was snoring in the passenger seat of his car. His new Sergeant was driving and wondering what he'd let himself in for. It was Sergeant Harris' first murder - first suspicious death, he corrected himself - and they'd put him under a man who dressed like a mad tramp, kept a horrible car that belonged in a scrapyard...and slept all the time. Loudly.
41B Newman Street, said Harris to himself, glancing at the local streetmap. A row of new redbrick houses, in one of the posher parts of town. Just ten minutes walk from the two just-opened swanky restaurants, the renovated cinema, the wooded area, and the shopping centre that was still being built. And that road with the small church where all the prostitutes still hung out.
Brandt gave a grunt as they ran over a pothole, turning left into Newman Street. Harris carefully parked the car opposite the fluttering yellow "Crime Scene" banners. The two uniformed officers standing guard outside didn't move.
"Sir, we're here", said Harris, gingerly nudging his superior officer.
"Good!" declared Brandt, his eyes flying open as though he hasn't really been asleep at all. "Now remind me why we're here."
Oh god, thought Harris. "Teenage girl found bludgeoned last night by her mother, sir.", he said, summarising their earlier briefing. "Emily Rush, 19..."
"Oh yes. You thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you?"
Brandt heaved himself out of the car. He was a large man, 6 foot 2, heavy boned and almost obese. Somewhere in indeterminate middle age, he cultivated a permanent three-day black stubble and unkempt short hair. He wore a dark green moth-eaten coat over his barely-regulation tatty grey trousers and off-white shirt.
He flashed his pass at the two uniformed constables - who, presumably recognising him, didn't even bother to look - before ducking under the yellow tape barriers and making for the open front door. He was met there by a man in an inspector's uniform.
"Hi Bob", said Brandt tiredly, "Where's the people?"
"The daughter's upstairs with doctor Molyneux", replied Bob. "The mother's in the kitchen. Name's Irene. This way."
Inspector Bob Rawlin was a grey haired lifelong uniform copper whose only remaining ambition was to reach retirement without formal reprimand or a knife wound - though he wondered how the force would cope without his experience and calming presence.
He led Brandt and Harris through a bare and neat sitting room, into a modern, well scrubbed kitchen. There was a handsome woman in early forties sitting on a high stool, clutching a mug of tea, staring into the middle distance. She wore a sombre brown trouser suit with stripes, and sensible walking shoes. Her honey coloured hair was tied back, and her only item of jewelry was a fake emerald brooch. Her face showed she'd been crying, but now she was just withdrawn, ignoring the WPC at her side and the men in her home.
"Mrs Rush", said Brandt. "My name's Detective Inspector Brandt. I'm sorry to have to do this, and I'm sure you just want to be left alone, but we've got to ask you some questions, so we can begin to find out who did this to your daughter."
For a long moment she seemed not to have heard him. Then her eyes focused and she turned them on the crumpled man in her kitchen.
"It's Miss", she said in a level, controlled voice, "and I understand. What do you need to know?"
"First of all, we need to know what you were doing last night."
"Working. I got home at...about midnight. Maybe quarter past. I didn't hear anything so I thought Emily might be asleep. I watched a bit of TV, made myself some coffee. Then at...twelve thirty, twelve forty five, I don't know...went upstairs to bed, and checked in her bedroom. She wasn't there so I thought she must be doing her meditation in the spare room and she wouldn't want to be disturbed so I didn't look in on her and...
The stream of words stopped and for several seconds she fought to hold back tears. With a determined expression, she regained control.
"I went to bed. Woke up at nine. I called her but she didn't answer, so I looked in her bedroom and the spare bedroom and...
"She was lying on the floor, with blood on her head. I...I ran over to her and...her eyes were open. I mean, they were fixed open. I don't remember what I did next...probably just stood and stared. But I called the police...and an ambulance. It took them forever to arrive. I couldn't do anything. Just wait."
Irene seemed about to say something else, but her gaze just melted back into the middle distance.
"Miss Rush", said Brandt after a few seconds, "Can you tell us about your work?"
Her eyes continued to stare off to one side, and she spoke as though on automatic pilot.
"I work five till eleven for the Bugle. The local newspaper. Not the night shift. They call it the twilight shift. I'm in the accounting section. I walk from there. Takes me about an hour."
"And you work there five days a week?"
"Four. Alternating."
"I see. And was your daughter usually home when you got back?"
"Most days. Sometimes she was out with that boyfriend of hers. Alvin, his name is. Alvin Lucas."
"Does he ever visit her here?"
"No, not anymore. We did it once or twice but, he and I...."
"I see. We'll need to talk to him. Do you know his address or phone number?"
"No. But it'll be in Emily's diary. It's upstairs with..."
Spasmodically she closed her eyes and struggled against tears again. She didn't open them until she was once again fully composed.
"We'll get it." said Brandt as though there had been no interruption. "Now, was there anyone else who sometimes came to see your daughter? A friend, someone who'd come and collect her to go somewhere...?"
"No I don't think so. But anyone could have got in the back way. I was always telling her to lock the back door but she never did. Silly girl, I...no wait! Of course there were people! Her karate friends!"
"She studied karate?"
"Yes! At the community centre. Some of her friends from there sometimes came round to practice moves and do their meditation in the spare bedroom. We set it up specially for her."
"Right, could you..."
"One friend in particular.", She was quite animated now. "Um...Leon! That was his name. Young fellow. Seventeen. Chinese. He came round quite often. Once a week, maybe a little less."
"Okay. So when was the last time he was here?"
"Oh...not for two weeks. That I know of. But he often came round when I wasn't here. Early evening. I think he...you know, I think he liked her. Quite a lot actually."
"Okay, we'll check out the karate club at the community centre..."
"And Leon."
"And Leon. But I also need to know where your daughter went, what other people she might have known. What did she do days and nights? Did she have a job? College?"
"Um. No. She dropped out of university six months ago. She was looking for a job. Well, I say looking..."
"I know what you mean. What about nightclubs, music venues, pubs. Did she go out much evenings or nights?"
"No, not really. Well, not that I knew about anyway. She never told me."
"So she stayed in this house most of the daytime and nighttime, except when she went to the karate club or to see her boyfriend. Sometimes she had visitors and they'd practice karate upstairs. Did she know people on the internet? Chatrooms, online games, that sort of thing?"
"Y...es. Infrequently. I think she kept in touch with a few people by email, but it wasn't a big thing for her. My god. Do you think she met some pervert on the internet?"
"I don't know, but it's something we'll have to look into. We're going to have to take your daughter's computer for a few days I'm afraid, to look for anything like that."
Irene shrugged, suddenly uninterested.
"Okay", said Brandt. "I'm going to follow all this up, and I might have some more questions for you later. Before that, I'm going to have to have a look at your daughter."
The mother didn't respond, but she took a sip of her tea.
In the hallway outside, Harris lent over and spoke quietly the Brandt.
"What do you make of that, sir?"
Brandt looked at him, puzzled. "What am I supposed to make of it, Harris?"
"Well sir, do you believe her?"
"I don't know yet. I've only just met her and haven't checked anything she said yet. But it's obvious who she thinks killed her daughter."
Before Harris could say anything else, Brandt bounded heavily up the stairs.
There were four rooms upstairs - one was obviously a small bathroom, one a tidy bedroom, one a rather untidy bedroom, and the other...
...contained Doctor Christopher Molyneux and his assistant, dressed in white coveralls, photographing a dead girl on the floor.
The doctor looked up, smiled in that eye-crinkling, nose-scrunching way he had, and carefully walked over to Brandt. Doctor Molyneux was taller than Brandt, older, fatter, hairier, and happier.
"Morning", he said amiably. "Single blow to the back of the head with a blunt instrument - most likely that blood covered metal statue that's next to her, though I'm prepared to be proven wrong on that point. Assailant probably right handed, didn't need much strength, could have been a woman or a teenager. Death would have been instantaneous or near as dammit. No fingerprints or fibres so far."
"And a good morning to you, Doctor", returned Brandt. "Can I take a closer look?"
"If you're careful and don't leave any fingerprints or drop any litter.", said the doctor, producing a boiled sweet from nowhere and popping it into his mouth. He must have given up smoking again.
Brandt cautiously stepped into the room, leaving Harris outside looking squeamish with the good Doctor for company. The assistant had started photographing the shelves.
The room was spacious with no carpet or furniture except a wicker chair in one corner. There were shelves containing piles of CDs, books on martial arts and pop music, and a dozen kitch knick-knacks representing the mysterious east. One of them was lying on the floor - a dark brass figurine of a dragon curled up as though asleep. There was hair and blood on its back.
Unable to put it off any longer, Brandt lent over the body of the girl. She was lying chest down, face right, arms and legs splayed and bent, as though she'd tripped and fallen. She was wearing baggy jeans and a figure-hugging white t-shirt, shoes with raised heels and no socks, all splattered with patches of mud and dirt. The jeans dipped at the back to reveal a bright purple thong. There was a dry dead leaf stuck to the back of her t-shirt.
She was in her late teens, looking healthy and well scrubbed with well kept long straight blond hair - except for the mess of congealed blood behind her crown, and a bruise above the left temple. Her eyes were open and staring blankly, her nose was small and upturned, and her mouth was slightly open in what looked like the first moment forming an expression of surprise.
Brandt straightened up and turned to the doctor. "It looks like she walked through the woods last night."
"Yes", said Doctor Molyneux, sucking on his sweet. "In fact, I'd say she rolled around in it. There's quite a lot of bruises too. Some are weeks old - I'd say five or six - and they look pretty consistent with martial arts. But some are just a few hours old, and they look...
He tailed off. Brandt raised his eyebrows.
"This is strictly off the record, Brandt. I could be wrong and the post mortem will show for certain, but...the newer bruises are consistent with being attacked and held down from behind, not playfighting from the front. It looks like she was violently assaulted in the woods. I think...she might have been raped."
Brandt was silent for seconds. "You're saying..."
"Officially I'm not saying anything."
"But off the record, she might have been raped in the woods last night...and then killed back here?"
"That's what it looks like."
Detective Inspector Brandt had a very piercing snore. Guttural and nasal, you didn't just hear it - you felt like it was burrowing into your head. His colleagues compared it to a pneumatic drill, a dalek with asthma, or a dozen other things. They had plenty of opportunity to find metaphors for it because they heard it so often - though somehow never when his superiors were nearby.
Currently it was ten in the morning and Brandt was snoring in the passenger seat of his car. His new Sergeant was driving and wondering what he'd let himself in for. It was Sergeant Harris' first murder - first suspicious death, he corrected himself - and they'd put him under a man who dressed like a mad tramp, kept a horrible car that belonged in a scrapyard...and slept all the time. Loudly.
41B Newman Street, said Harris to himself, glancing at the local streetmap. A row of new redbrick houses, in one of the posher parts of town. Just ten minutes walk from the two just-opened swanky restaurants, the renovated cinema, the wooded area, and the shopping centre that was still being built. And that road with the small church where all the prostitutes still hung out.
Brandt gave a grunt as they ran over a pothole, turning left into Newman Street. Harris carefully parked the car opposite the fluttering yellow "Crime Scene" banners. The two uniformed officers standing guard outside didn't move.
"Sir, we're here", said Harris, gingerly nudging his superior officer.
"Good!" declared Brandt, his eyes flying open as though he hasn't really been asleep at all. "Now remind me why we're here."
Oh god, thought Harris. "Teenage girl found bludgeoned last night by her mother, sir.", he said, summarising their earlier briefing. "Emily Rush, 19..."
"Oh yes. You thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you?"
Brandt heaved himself out of the car. He was a large man, 6 foot 2, heavy boned and almost obese. Somewhere in indeterminate middle age, he cultivated a permanent three-day black stubble and unkempt short hair. He wore a dark green moth-eaten coat over his barely-regulation tatty grey trousers and off-white shirt.
He flashed his pass at the two uniformed constables - who, presumably recognising him, didn't even bother to look - before ducking under the yellow tape barriers and making for the open front door. He was met there by a man in an inspector's uniform.
"Hi Bob", said Brandt tiredly, "Where's the people?"
"The daughter's upstairs with doctor Molyneux", replied Bob. "The mother's in the kitchen. Name's Irene. This way."
Inspector Bob Rawlin was a grey haired lifelong uniform copper whose only remaining ambition was to reach retirement without formal reprimand or a knife wound - though he wondered how the force would cope without his experience and calming presence.
He led Brandt and Harris through a bare and neat sitting room, into a modern, well scrubbed kitchen. There was a handsome woman in early forties sitting on a high stool, clutching a mug of tea, staring into the middle distance. She wore a sombre brown trouser suit with stripes, and sensible walking shoes. Her honey coloured hair was tied back, and her only item of jewelry was a fake emerald brooch. Her face showed she'd been crying, but now she was just withdrawn, ignoring the WPC at her side and the men in her home.
"Mrs Rush", said Brandt. "My name's Detective Inspector Brandt. I'm sorry to have to do this, and I'm sure you just want to be left alone, but we've got to ask you some questions, so we can begin to find out who did this to your daughter."
For a long moment she seemed not to have heard him. Then her eyes focused and she turned them on the crumpled man in her kitchen.
"It's Miss", she said in a level, controlled voice, "and I understand. What do you need to know?"
"First of all, we need to know what you were doing last night."
"Working. I got home at...about midnight. Maybe quarter past. I didn't hear anything so I thought Emily might be asleep. I watched a bit of TV, made myself some coffee. Then at...twelve thirty, twelve forty five, I don't know...went upstairs to bed, and checked in her bedroom. She wasn't there so I thought she must be doing her meditation in the spare room and she wouldn't want to be disturbed so I didn't look in on her and...
The stream of words stopped and for several seconds she fought to hold back tears. With a determined expression, she regained control.
"I went to bed. Woke up at nine. I called her but she didn't answer, so I looked in her bedroom and the spare bedroom and...
"She was lying on the floor, with blood on her head. I...I ran over to her and...her eyes were open. I mean, they were fixed open. I don't remember what I did next...probably just stood and stared. But I called the police...and an ambulance. It took them forever to arrive. I couldn't do anything. Just wait."
Irene seemed about to say something else, but her gaze just melted back into the middle distance.
"Miss Rush", said Brandt after a few seconds, "Can you tell us about your work?"
Her eyes continued to stare off to one side, and she spoke as though on automatic pilot.
"I work five till eleven for the Bugle. The local newspaper. Not the night shift. They call it the twilight shift. I'm in the accounting section. I walk from there. Takes me about an hour."
"And you work there five days a week?"
"Four. Alternating."
"I see. And was your daughter usually home when you got back?"
"Most days. Sometimes she was out with that boyfriend of hers. Alvin, his name is. Alvin Lucas."
"Does he ever visit her here?"
"No, not anymore. We did it once or twice but, he and I...."
"I see. We'll need to talk to him. Do you know his address or phone number?"
"No. But it'll be in Emily's diary. It's upstairs with..."
Spasmodically she closed her eyes and struggled against tears again. She didn't open them until she was once again fully composed.
"We'll get it." said Brandt as though there had been no interruption. "Now, was there anyone else who sometimes came to see your daughter? A friend, someone who'd come and collect her to go somewhere...?"
"No I don't think so. But anyone could have got in the back way. I was always telling her to lock the back door but she never did. Silly girl, I...no wait! Of course there were people! Her karate friends!"
"She studied karate?"
"Yes! At the community centre. Some of her friends from there sometimes came round to practice moves and do their meditation in the spare bedroom. We set it up specially for her."
"Right, could you..."
"One friend in particular.", She was quite animated now. "Um...Leon! That was his name. Young fellow. Seventeen. Chinese. He came round quite often. Once a week, maybe a little less."
"Okay. So when was the last time he was here?"
"Oh...not for two weeks. That I know of. But he often came round when I wasn't here. Early evening. I think he...you know, I think he liked her. Quite a lot actually."
"Okay, we'll check out the karate club at the community centre..."
"And Leon."
"And Leon. But I also need to know where your daughter went, what other people she might have known. What did she do days and nights? Did she have a job? College?"
"Um. No. She dropped out of university six months ago. She was looking for a job. Well, I say looking..."
"I know what you mean. What about nightclubs, music venues, pubs. Did she go out much evenings or nights?"
"No, not really. Well, not that I knew about anyway. She never told me."
"So she stayed in this house most of the daytime and nighttime, except when she went to the karate club or to see her boyfriend. Sometimes she had visitors and they'd practice karate upstairs. Did she know people on the internet? Chatrooms, online games, that sort of thing?"
"Y...es. Infrequently. I think she kept in touch with a few people by email, but it wasn't a big thing for her. My god. Do you think she met some pervert on the internet?"
"I don't know, but it's something we'll have to look into. We're going to have to take your daughter's computer for a few days I'm afraid, to look for anything like that."
Irene shrugged, suddenly uninterested.
"Okay", said Brandt. "I'm going to follow all this up, and I might have some more questions for you later. Before that, I'm going to have to have a look at your daughter."
The mother didn't respond, but she took a sip of her tea.
In the hallway outside, Harris lent over and spoke quietly the Brandt.
"What do you make of that, sir?"
Brandt looked at him, puzzled. "What am I supposed to make of it, Harris?"
"Well sir, do you believe her?"
"I don't know yet. I've only just met her and haven't checked anything she said yet. But it's obvious who she thinks killed her daughter."
Before Harris could say anything else, Brandt bounded heavily up the stairs.
There were four rooms upstairs - one was obviously a small bathroom, one a tidy bedroom, one a rather untidy bedroom, and the other...
...contained Doctor Christopher Molyneux and his assistant, dressed in white coveralls, photographing a dead girl on the floor.
The doctor looked up, smiled in that eye-crinkling, nose-scrunching way he had, and carefully walked over to Brandt. Doctor Molyneux was taller than Brandt, older, fatter, hairier, and happier.
"Morning", he said amiably. "Single blow to the back of the head with a blunt instrument - most likely that blood covered metal statue that's next to her, though I'm prepared to be proven wrong on that point. Assailant probably right handed, didn't need much strength, could have been a woman or a teenager. Death would have been instantaneous or near as dammit. No fingerprints or fibres so far."
"And a good morning to you, Doctor", returned Brandt. "Can I take a closer look?"
"If you're careful and don't leave any fingerprints or drop any litter.", said the doctor, producing a boiled sweet from nowhere and popping it into his mouth. He must have given up smoking again.
Brandt cautiously stepped into the room, leaving Harris outside looking squeamish with the good Doctor for company. The assistant had started photographing the shelves.
The room was spacious with no carpet or furniture except a wicker chair in one corner. There were shelves containing piles of CDs, books on martial arts and pop music, and a dozen kitch knick-knacks representing the mysterious east. One of them was lying on the floor - a dark brass figurine of a dragon curled up as though asleep. There was hair and blood on its back.
Unable to put it off any longer, Brandt lent over the body of the girl. She was lying chest down, face right, arms and legs splayed and bent, as though she'd tripped and fallen. She was wearing baggy jeans and a figure-hugging white t-shirt, shoes with raised heels and no socks, all splattered with patches of mud and dirt. The jeans dipped at the back to reveal a bright purple thong. There was a dry dead leaf stuck to the back of her t-shirt.
She was in her late teens, looking healthy and well scrubbed with well kept long straight blond hair - except for the mess of congealed blood behind her crown, and a bruise above the left temple. Her eyes were open and staring blankly, her nose was small and upturned, and her mouth was slightly open in what looked like the first moment forming an expression of surprise.
Brandt straightened up and turned to the doctor. "It looks like she walked through the woods last night."
"Yes", said Doctor Molyneux, sucking on his sweet. "In fact, I'd say she rolled around in it. There's quite a lot of bruises too. Some are weeks old - I'd say five or six - and they look pretty consistent with martial arts. But some are just a few hours old, and they look...
He tailed off. Brandt raised his eyebrows.
"This is strictly off the record, Brandt. I could be wrong and the post mortem will show for certain, but...the newer bruises are consistent with being attacked and held down from behind, not playfighting from the front. It looks like she was violently assaulted in the woods. I think...she might have been raped."
Brandt was silent for seconds. "You're saying..."
"Officially I'm not saying anything."
"But off the record, she might have been raped in the woods last night...and then killed back here?"
"That's what it looks like."
Labels:
Fiction
Thinking About Writing
Some story ideas:
At a seance, 7 people join hands around a table. The lights dim to black and for several minutes the table knocks and tilts, there are ghostly moaning sounds, glowing shadowy faces appear in midair and the medium channels messages from the spirit world.
When the lights return, one of the 7 is dead. One of the remaining 6 is a murderer. How did they do it?
A man has been held prisoner at a remote military installation for some months. He is being interrogated to discover why he suddenly defected to the enemy - though it is unclear whether it's his side or the other which is interrogating him.
During one session, he realises something.
"Everyone knows that everyone breaks. It's what you do - you break people. And everyone knows you do it well. So why haven't you broken me? I'm hungry but not starving. I'm cold but not freezing. You've been threatening me and disorienting me for months, but I haven't broken. Why not?
You're not even trying to break me are you? What's really going on? What do you really want?"
In a paranoid society where everyone is under surveillance, there is a resistance group. Finding they can't mount any real operations, they resist by pretending to be part of a much larger resistance, playacting cloak-and-dagger secrecy for the hidden cameras and infiltrators, and hinting that prominent government members are resistance members.
In this way, they try to make the oppressors turn on each other.
A series of people disappear, each leaving an apparent suicide note. For most of them, someone reports seeing them briefly several days after their disappearance. Some of those who claim to see then subsequently disappear, leaving notes. Some (and by implication, maybe all) of the sightings turn out to be fabrications.
It starts to look as though a group have produced a cloud of disappearances, hiding one or more murders. A tactic which enables several people to commit murder and disappear to a new life. But which sightings are genuine, and which disappearances are murders?
A corrupt senior police detective habitually plants evidence to get convictions. A new young detective decides the only way to get rid of the corrupt one is...to adopt his methods. Selecting a recent unsolved murder, he plants clues which lead his colleagues to their superior, but when they start to suspect the evidence is planted, he has to outwit them, forensics and the senior detective himself in making the older man appear guilty.
At a seance, 7 people join hands around a table. The lights dim to black and for several minutes the table knocks and tilts, there are ghostly moaning sounds, glowing shadowy faces appear in midair and the medium channels messages from the spirit world.
When the lights return, one of the 7 is dead. One of the remaining 6 is a murderer. How did they do it?
A man has been held prisoner at a remote military installation for some months. He is being interrogated to discover why he suddenly defected to the enemy - though it is unclear whether it's his side or the other which is interrogating him.
During one session, he realises something.
"Everyone knows that everyone breaks. It's what you do - you break people. And everyone knows you do it well. So why haven't you broken me? I'm hungry but not starving. I'm cold but not freezing. You've been threatening me and disorienting me for months, but I haven't broken. Why not?
You're not even trying to break me are you? What's really going on? What do you really want?"
In a paranoid society where everyone is under surveillance, there is a resistance group. Finding they can't mount any real operations, they resist by pretending to be part of a much larger resistance, playacting cloak-and-dagger secrecy for the hidden cameras and infiltrators, and hinting that prominent government members are resistance members.
In this way, they try to make the oppressors turn on each other.
A series of people disappear, each leaving an apparent suicide note. For most of them, someone reports seeing them briefly several days after their disappearance. Some of those who claim to see then subsequently disappear, leaving notes. Some (and by implication, maybe all) of the sightings turn out to be fabrications.
It starts to look as though a group have produced a cloud of disappearances, hiding one or more murders. A tactic which enables several people to commit murder and disappear to a new life. But which sightings are genuine, and which disappearances are murders?
A corrupt senior police detective habitually plants evidence to get convictions. A new young detective decides the only way to get rid of the corrupt one is...to adopt his methods. Selecting a recent unsolved murder, he plants clues which lead his colleagues to their superior, but when they start to suspect the evidence is planted, he has to outwit them, forensics and the senior detective himself in making the older man appear guilty.
Labels:
Fiction
A Valentine Story
Yesterday, I wrote a story for Saint Valentine's day. Camy write stories about young gay love and the supernatural, and his latest is a valentine story. So, I sat down and wrote something inspired by it, incorporating those themes.
He was rather pleased with the result and said I should publish it somewhere. Well, I'm looking around for websites that publish the right kind of fiction - that is, stories which have gay elements but aren't just about being gay, aren't just for teenagers, and aren't porn.
Gay Authors looks promising. There's DaBeagle and AwesomeDude, and if I start to get established I might try the great Blithe House one day.
In the meantime, there's this here blog. I'm not sure what to call this story, but the working title was Future/Past. Here it is.
February 14th 2038.
An old man sits in a cubicle, reliving the television of his youth. Virtual reality patches attached to his eyeballs and sonic vibrators on his eardrums, showing him entertainment, drama and music from fifty years before. This how he spends his days, and this is what he plans to do until he dies. He hears a woman’s voice.
“There are those who say a person’s life is shaped by a single moment.”
He looks around, startled, but there’s no one there. After some seconds uncertainty, he returns to the comedy show being shown directly to his eyes. He’s seen it dozens of times before and never found it funny, but it’s a comforting presence.
“It might be that time you got lost in a strange house when you were seven, or the time your father first hit you for telling lies when you were telling the truth, or the time you snuck out of the house and got caught in a thunderstorm.”
The man carefully switched off the devices, and took them out of his eyes and ears. He didn’t turn around.
“I don’t know who you are”, he said to the voice behind him, “but I’ve got nothing you could want. This room is protected by nanolock. Leave now and I won’t summon security.”
“Some say we spend our whole lives trying to recapture a single experience. Like the first time you heard a certain song on the radio and you thought it was the most incredible, exciting sound ever. Then there’s the first time you got drunk, and fell about laughing though you weren’t sure why.”
The voice came from the wall behind him, where there were no doors, but he still didn’t turn around. Trying to make his tone sound confident, he spoke to it.
“Look. I don’t know who you are. And I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But whatever it is, just leave.”
“I can’t. As for who I am, I could be a dream. Or an undigested bit of fish. Maybe you’re going mad. Perhaps if you turn around you’ll find out. Turn around, Charlie.”
He spun around in his seat, expecting to see a blank wall. Instead, there was a woman. An ordinary looking woman he’d never seen before. She spoke again.
“I’ve heard it said that every time you fall in love, it’s your way of trying to recapture the last time. But I’ve also heard it said that everyone falls in love just once in their lives, because no one could endure those emotions more than once. I hear a lot of things. It could be some of them are true.
But who says it has to be about love? Maybe the single defining moment of your life was that time when you were six, and you saw an old man riding a bicycle up a country lane. You couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t him pushing the pedals, but the pedals moving his feet.
“Who says it has to be from childhood though? There was that time you were twenty three, and you got a phone call saying your mother had been in a car crash. And your first thought was hoping she was dead, because you knew she was leaving you all her money in her will, and you were in debt. You never told anyone about that, did you?”
He stared at her for long seconds, incredulous. Then, “What are you? What do you want? Why are you…why are you doing this to me?”
“But you know what I think, Charlie? I think the defining moments of our lives aren’t those when we fall in love, or out of it, or give in to rage. Moments of terror, ecstasy, panic, joy, hope. No. I think it’s all about regret. Regret and shame.
If I asked you, Charlie, what is the one thing you wanted most of all…I think it would be to go back in time and change something you did wrong. What is it you regret, Charlie? What’s the one thing you wish you could make right again?”
The man snorted. “I wish I’d invested in nanotechnology. I’d be a billionaire.”
The woman smiled. “I’m sure you do, and I’m sure you would. But you don’t sit here day after day watching vidshows about money, do you. What else?”
He shrugged. “I’ve wasted my life. I can’t get it back. What else is there to regret?”
She nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a good answer. But not to the question I asked. What’s the one mistake you’ve spent decades trying to make up for, or forget, or persuade yourself wasn’t really a mistake?”
“You seem to know all about me, whoever you are. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because you have to tell me. And when you tell me the truth, I can give you a second chance. But only then.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re probably an hallucination.”
“Maybe. If I am, why are you bothering to lie to me? What kind of man lies to his own delusions?”
“I’m not lying.” He was indignant. “I’ve got plenty of regrets. There’s probably hundreds of things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of. And hundreds more that I ought to be ashamed of. Going over them won’t make them better. It won’t even make me happier about them.”
“Don’t you understand what I’m saying to you, Charlie? You’ve spent years in this room trying to get back to the past. Reliving old memories again and again. You want to go back, because you want to do it differently. But which part, Charlie? Which part of it do you want to try again?
Not your fifties when you made enough money to sit here all day plugged into the past. Not your thirties when you saw the world and wrote all those songs about it. Not the earliest years of your childhood when you were secure and happy. Which part? Tell me the moment and I can send you back. Not in virtual reality, not in television, for real. You can start again from that moment.”
He stared at her, not believing but not dismissing what she said. His mind worked, trying to think of the one event that might be the one she wanted.
“When I was twenty five, I was living with…someone. What am I hiding it for? We were absolutely devoted to each other. And…I cheated on him. For no reason. We had everything together and I destroyed it. I cheated on him and then I told him about it knowing how much it would hurt him. I didn’t have to tell him but I did. It’s like I wanted to destroy our life together”
”So do you regret cheating on him, or telling him?”
“Oh I don’t know. It was all so long ago. I don’t know why I did any of it.”
“Find another memory.” She said it gently.
“I was eleven. I was playing near a cliff face with a friend. I can’t even remember her name. But I pushed her. I pushed her as though I wanted her to fall over the edge. We were just playing. She almost fell. I almost killed her.
She got her balance back and stared at me with the most hatred I’ve ever seen. She was my friend and I did the stupidest thing imaginable. I felt that if she pushed me over the cliff…she’d be right. I don’t deserve a second chance, because of what I did that day”
There were tears in his eyes.
The woman crouched down and looked up at him. “One moment of thoughtlessness, at an age when you scarcely thought at all. Is that the shame you’ve been carrying for six decades?”
“Yes.” He bowed his head and wiped his eyes.
“No. It isn’t.”
“Alright. Alright. I’ll tell you. But it’s so silly. Almost killing a friend, making someone I loved suffer for no reason – those are proper regrets. Those are the things I should be punished for.”
“Who said anything about punishment? This isn’t about the biggest crime you’ve committed in your life. It’s not about how much you’ve hurt other people. It’s about the one thing you can’t forgive yourself for doing – or not doing. It doesn’t have to make sense to other people.”
He took a deep breath.
“It’s so trivial. I was seventeen. It was Valentine’s Day, and I’d got a card. Just one. And I knew who it was from. He’d tried to disguise his handwriting, but I recognised it. He was so…”
“Go on.”
“It must have taken him all his courage to send it. He was so ashamed…hid his feelings all the time because he was afraid of what other people would say. What they’d do. But I knew. I knew how he felt. About me. It was just a silly crush. It would have gone away in a few months probably, and then he might get another crush on some other boy.
But just for those months, he was fascinated by me. Me! Why me?! I don’t know. He was just a kid, like me. We didn’t know anything. We thought love was something only old people did, and heartache was being dumped after two dates.
It must have taken him days to get up the courage to write it. Just a stupid valentine card. He wanted to tell me so desperately, and he was so terrified me knowing.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I never mentioned the card to him or anyone else. I just…ignored him. I don’t know if he ever found someone else. But I never told him I knew.”
“That’s it? He didn’t kill himself out of grief? Didn’t go mad because of what you did?”
“No. Nothing happened.”
“Thank you.”
The man closed his eyes and wept. After a long time, he spoke.
“So what happens now?”
“What’s that, Charlie?” asked his mother turning around. “There’s a letter for you on the table”
Charlie sat in the kitchen, his ears plugged into a stereo walkman. There was a small pile of letters on the table, one addressed to him in shaky handwriting. He pulled open the envelope and read the card inside:
You’ll never know I love you
Charlie – Carl to his friends – carefully folded the piece of card and put it in his pocket.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Mum.” He said. “Just going out for a bit.”
He pulled the headphones out of his ears, put on a coat, stepped out of the front door and started walking. After several streets he came to a low wall with three teenagers sitting on it. They nodded in greeting.
“Billy”, he said to the one on the left. “I got your letter.”
The boy on the wall froze, colour visibly draining from his face.
“Thanks, it means a lot”, said Charlie, turning away as if to go. Then he turned back, as though struck by a sudden thought.
“See you tonight? We can talk about it some more if you like.”
The colour rushed back, flushing with several conflicting emotions.
Billy managed a nod.
“See you.”
Charlie walked away.
Labels:
Fiction
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