30 Days of Flash #4 - EXCERPT FROM UNFINISHED VICTORIAN STYLE HORROR.

American flash fiction writer Nancy Stohlman has started up a useful writing prompt for those of us without the time or inclination to commit to the NaNoWriMo exercise.FLASH-NANO gives those who've signed up, 30 days of prompts to put short stories down.

Day 4 was write a story that is set in a warm room.

Here's mine - an excerpt from something I will try to finish soon

THE LAST SHIPWRECK

 

“I remember clearly that it was the first week of Michaelmas when the Dean invited me to dine with him in his quarters. The invitation was one I was only too glad to accept, the first anniversary of my wife’s passing had found me in varying shades of maudlin self-absorption and the opportunity to distract my mind – if only for a few hours – from sad and dismal contemplation was to be gratefully taken.

It was an excellent meal. The Dean’s cook, a plump lady in her middle years, had rendered us quite immobile with roast beef, carrots, potatoes and peas – all but drowned in the most succulent gravy I had ever tasted. Our passage to invalidity, I am almost ashamed to say, was aided by a bottle and a half of a most splendid claret. My comfort would have been unsurpassable were it not for the knowledge that outside the weather had turned most treacherous. Having retired to the Dean’s drawing room, warmed by both the excellent beef and the glowing hearth by which we now sat, I had begun to feel the first stirrings of tiredness when the Dean suddenly spoke.

“Do I strike you as an honest man?”

Surprisingly unnerved by this question, I replied that he did.

The Dean poured two more large glasses of the claret.

“The white collar does not guarantee a truthful tongue. Even the most proud soldier of Christ must sometimes bear false witness, my dear boy. Sometimes the truth evades us as it evades all men. I have seen fit to hide things that would shock even the hardest of hearts. But there is one terrible truth which I feel compelled to share with you if you would be so kind as to indulge an elderly fool.”

The rain grew bolder outside.

“Mrs Butterworth will make you a room up. No point in wasting the warmth of the beef by venturing anywhere in that storm.”

I thanked the Dean and reached for my glass. The Dean rose from his chair and steadied himself before the glowering hearth, his head bowed. He seemed troubled. Just as I was about to enquire as to his wellbeing, he straightened himself and turned towards me.

“What I am about to tell you is something I have not spoken of for over 20 years. I had presumed I would take it with me to my grave but I fear it may be an omission which I will pay for in the hereafter.”

The Dean sat himself, his tearful eyes lit by the flames.

“The year was 1850. I was based at a small Cornish village called Stonesizes. I had taken over the church there when the previous incumbent, a man named Treville, was found to have fallen off a perilous path close to the cliffs….”

Though it is some time since that evening, there is not a part of me that wishes I had taken leave of my host there and then. For though the storm that raged outside that night would pass by the time the sun had risen, how I wish I could say the same for the tempest that has troubled my mind ever since.”

 

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30 Days of Flash - #2 CLEAN

American flash fiction writer Nancy Stohlman has started up a useful writing prompt for those of us without the time or inclination to commit to the NaNoWriMo exercise.

FLASH-NANO gives those who've signed up, 30 days of prompts to put short stories down.

Day 2 was write a story that takes place in the bathroom.

Here's mine.

CLEAN

The baby lies in a basket beside the bathroom sink. A yellow woollen blanket over the top of the white all in one, the white boots, the white mittens and cap. The red scrunched face. The mother is barely out of childhood herself. The grandmother and an aunt are eating fries and drinking coffee less than fifteen feet away. Above the sink, a rota claims this bathroom was inspected by Debbie almost an hour ago.

                The baby sleeps.

                The mother wants sleep.

                Endless smothered pillow resting calm eternal quietness mercy please.

                A small white bin of sleeping pills in the tired hand.

                Loneliness.

                The mother runs the cold tap, feeling the water slip through her fingers like the rest of her life. She begins to cry and stops herself almost at once. She knows it will be quick, she knows that nothing takes too much time at this age.

                Outside she can hear the laughter of her mother.  Then steps.

                She picks up the baby for the last time.

                She kisses the baby and swallows hard.

                Sssssh, she says.

                Sssssh

30 Days of Flash - #1 - CLASTIC

American flash fiction writer Nancy Stohlman has started up a useful writing prompt for those of us without the time or inclination to commit to the NaNoWriMo exercise.

FLASH-NANO gives those who've signed up, 30 days of prompts to put short stories down.

Day 1 was write a story that begins at the end.

Here's mine.

CLASTIC

Whoosh.

                I think as it happens, that’s the last thing I’ll hear. The waves crashing over me, moving over me towards the shore as I plunge further into the craved sleep.

                The sky above me is blackening. The sea reflects the sky’s mood, sympathises too with my own. This is the way, the right way out. My feet shift and slip on the small stone planets, my eyes scamper and dart as they search for the right worlds to fill my pockets with, which empty moons to take me away from this rock. Each beach is a galaxy, my father once said. The pebbles are moons, the rocks are stars and each grain of sand is everything that ever lived within.

                Finally I see one. Smooth and silent slab of stone; into the barren pocket you go. Symmetry demands more; I bend and pick with care the right number to fit inside my trouser and coat. Not frantically, these stones will see me into the darkness, so I pick them with something almost like…no, not like that at all.

                Now I am pregnant with stone.

                I turn and look back at the town, the world. No one sees me. A car drives past but does not see, does not stop. The driver doesn’t get the chance to have my final conversation, to hear my final words. What will be the last thing I say out loud?    

                Angry rain upon the sea now. Each tiny drop invisible in flight and yet the sea feeds off this assault and grows and turns towards me as I, in turn, move towards the edge, the stones jagging against my cold flesh through the thin pocket, the sky’s tears rippling the fabric of the ancient sea.

                I giggle for a moment as the wave flirts with my feet. One step, then another. I am level with the end of the pier now. I check my pocket as I would have once for keys and money.

                Water past my feet, the cold cannot shock me now. Wading slowly into the darkness, into the water, the waves bristling against my shin, now my knees. My crutch damp with death, the heaviness of each step now making itself known to something deep within me. The rocks in my long nightshirt drag me and almost trip me, but not yet. I am not ready yet.

Walk a little further with me in the rain.

                A few more steps and we’ll be home and dry. An ecstatic stumble, at last the end. I gasp as someone I used to be reaches out but the waves are stronger now, rushing me down, drenching my face, and hunting my breaths. I’m falling, sinking, ready. Above me, above the sea I see a parting of cloud, a burst of sun, another wave, lightness, dark, lightness, dark. And the sea filling my chest, stuffing my lungs with water, turning my bones to stone, to air.

The Kids They Are In Cages

A few weeks ago, in disbelief at the latest dark chapter in the rise of American Fascism, and in a spare 20 minutes at work, I put together an updated version of a Dylan classic

A lot of people seemed to like it. The award winning David Hughes even recorded a version of it. Got asked to post a full length version of the lyrics here. So here it is.



The Kids They Are in Cages

Come gather round people
Wherever you sit
And admit that the whole world
Has all turned to shit
And accept it that you
Played your own part in this.
If your President
Constantly rages
Then you better start praying
That he’ll soon have to quit
For the kids they are in cages.

 

Come racists and rapists
Your man’s in his lair.
Your fear of dark faces
Was what put him there.
And don’t you pretend
That you didn’t care,
That your concerns were
just for jobs and wages.
A fascist sits
In the President’s chair
And the kids
they are in cages.

 

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
The American Dream
Is as wide as it’s tall
Don’t drug tiny children
Cos you cant build a wall
Your Bibles are missing
Some pages.
The land of the free
Will be lost to us all
When the kids they are in cages.

 

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
The earth’s darkest hour
Is now close at hand
The administration’s a family band.
Tyranny, it comes on in stages.
They’ll come for you next
If you don’t take a stand
When the kids they are in cages

 

The lies are now facts
The news is now fake
A move for world peace
Is now a mistake
The values that bind us
Are now his to break.
Dictators are suddenly feted.
And you need to act quick
Before it’s too late
And your
kids they are in cages….

Monday

If I was to get up right now, tell my colleagues I was going for a long lunch, leave my desk, walk to Cardiff Central, buy a ridiculously expensive train ticket to London, grab a table seat and then wait for my personal space to be invaded by a bunch of Brexit retirees on their way to a Monday night showing of something ungodly in the West End, and have to listen to their fucking pre-paid funeral mouths screeching on about how they didn’t even know Italians played golf and how good Lidl-own gin is for cocktails, and all the while watching Tory England speed past me like an ironic montage of a country abandoning the bucolic idyll for tower blocks and cancer, and because despite being nearly 50 still feel pathetically unable to ask if I could just squeeze out for a piss and so I just hold on to it till I nearly pass out in a Paddington cubicle, if I was to then make my way to Westminster and fortuitously bump into Jacob Rees-Mogg, would it be ok if I did a massive Mick Channon-style windmill and punch the nanny-fed cunt into the Thames?

PARKLIFE

What happens with music is what happens with everything else the poor possess.

Music scenes pretty much always start amongst the poor – a new sound emerging from the forgotten corners of urban life. This exciting new sound spreads to local clubs and DJ’s. Soon money gets involved, a buzz is generated around an ever hyper-ready media and then record companies, scared of missing the boat, flood the scene with cash – copycats are suddenly abundant, the scene is diluted, finished.

Same thing happens with where they live.  People will hear that a certain part of town is vibrant and exciting and so the hipsters will move in, wanting part of this scene, instantly driving rents and mortgages up. Soon the local café, the local pub, all those things that created that atmosphere in the first place is choked with moneyed strangers, incapable of seeing that they always kill the things they hoped to keep.

Sanitise what the poor have and sell it to the middle classes.  Football, music, fashion – it’s all just grist to the millenial mill. These parasites have always existed but the internet has made their breeding uncontrollable. You used to have to work hard, shop around, put the hours in looking for that new thing you wanted to hear and make yours. Now a click of a mouse and suddenly everyone knows about the Big Beat revival/that obscure French director/that little old fashioned tea rooms tucked away in a forgotten side street.

The poor love their drink, you killed their pubs. They love their football; you priced them out of the game entirely. Everything that the government does to fuck them over already had a mandate from anyone with a buy-to-let mortgage and a stupid haircut. Their chips, their clothes, and their run down cars – you took them and resold them to the rich as artisan street food, authentic work clobber and vintage runabouts. The working class has been shafted, so what the fuck you looking at.

That band you and your mates used to follow back in the day. The local heroes.  Made one album, split up. Now they’ve had a song used in a Coke advert. Now there’s a reunion tour. Better still, they’re playing your hometown. You have to book a ticket online but you’re stuck in a queue and the next thing you know, the thing’s sold out to a bunch of micro brewers with massive beards who just chanced upon an article on Pitchfork and decided that it sounded fun, ironic even.

Sometimes it feels like you’re being laughed at. Everywhere you go, people are dressed like you used to only somehow now it costs a fortune. The pub you frequented as an underage lager lout has changed its name, got rid of the jukebox and sells sandwiches that cost more than your bus fare to work. The telly’s full of people pretending they speak just like you despite being called Julian or Sebastian.

Your dead end job just about keeps the wolf from the door. All your friends are either in the same boat or have fallen overboard. Your kids share classes with kids with first names that make them sound like they came out of a 1930s pit village. Alfie, Bertie, Sid – all being dropped off by the au pair.

Sometimes you want to run away, run home. But home’s gone. That estate, that run down hellhole of your youth, they did it up nice. Saw that there was a view of the sea and decided that the poor didn’t deserve this. They packed them off to live in a car park near the landfill. They renamed the estate after a local hero who grew up round here and who promptly vanished the first chance he could.

Everything on the telly makes you feel worse about yourself. Shows with people buying second homes when you haven’t yet bought one and having the cheek to be stressed about it.  Public school educated comedians pretending to be just like you and generating canned laughter and a stadium tour just by saying stuff that you would say but in an exaggerated version of your own accent.

And that’s the laugh you hear in your head whenever you hear the opening chords of the song Parklife by Blur, that “Oi” and those sitcom music hall fucking key changes.  It’s doubly annoying because Blur's previous single Girls and Boys had been such a celebration of pop music, dance music, holidays and sex that you thought Blur might actually be on the verge of doing something special, something magical. But they weren’t. They were just doing what all the other middle class bands do, picking your pocket with one hand and buying you a drink with the other.

You play the entire album once. It disgusts you. You take it to a charity shop. You miss the bus home, end up walking and a pigeon shits on your head. OI!

 

 

 

 

 

RIP MES

"I think it's over now, I think it's ending."

Mark E Smith, Glasgow, 2017.

Mark E Smith is dead. The Fall is dead.

You cannot separate the two. Like the man himself, it seems a marvel that it lasted as long as it did. Amphetamine and alcohol made Smith wiry and wired, and whilst his body was able to withstand the abuse, his band pummelled the senses with an astonishing catalogue of work that blurred the lines between garage rock, krautrock and bubblegum pop.

There will never be another lyricist like Smith. Despite his continual paranoia about plagiarists and notebooks, Smith’s scattergun approach was inimitable.  Lovecraft, Machen and Wyndham Lewis were heroes mentioned in interviews but there is nothing in literature quite like a great MES lyric. Part social commentary, part science fiction, all delivered in bile-powered stream-of-consciousness salvos.

And the voice. Smith was not a singer. His Salford whine was the band’s greatest weapon, adding an abrasive texture to the group’s formidable musical assault. 

I discovered the Fall for myself on Friday September 15, 1989. I was due to start at university on the Monday and had just finished my final shift at my summer job, packing organic produce for supermarkets. It was a shit job for a shit wage but it paid for my beers and my weekly splurge on records.  There was a second hand record shop on the way to the bus stop and, if I had time, a lucrative 10 minutes could be spent buying the records that cash-strapped students had given up in the term before.

The cassette album of I, Kurious Oranj, stood out on the shelf that day in its orange glow. Like a chemical accident. I had read a considerable amount about the Fall in the music press, had seen endless namechecks and live reviews. I was at the age where I was always looking for the next thing to play to my mates and having had some success amongst my peers with Pixies and Happy Mondays already that summer, maybe The Fall might be the next thing to impress them with.

The song titles offered small clues as to the unique approach of Mark E Smith. “Big New Prinz”, “Guide Me Soft” “CD Win Fall 2088 AD”.  Mangled language, gnarled syntax. I was yet to discover this was a concept album/ballet soundtrack commemorating the 300^th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution. 

£3 and the tape was mine.  I missed the bus and walked home eight miles in Ceredigion drizzle.

I still remember the excitement of those first 30 seconds or so of the Fall on my Walkman. A series of uncertain handclaps, a man barking “Rocking Records, the guy’s rock records…” and then the greatest rhythm section Manchester ever produced, Hanley and Wolstencroft, kick it in.  I was hooked.

The Fall went on to soundtrack my twenties. Each year a new album usually preceded by a disappointing single, an astonishing Peel session and an NME interview which acted as an alternative State of the Nation address.  This annual ritual was something far more exciting to me than Christmas or my birthday. From hearing the screeching violin introduction to Sing Harpy in my campus pit to the sheer exuberance of Touch Sensitive in my damp bedsit, the 90s were my Peak Enjoyment of Mark E Smith years.

Eventually I begun to explore their labyrinthine back catalogue, a treasure trove of riches. Though punk had given Smith the impetus to do something, it is clear The Fall were never punk in the way the Pistols were. The Fall were indignant, different, diffident and difficult without ever resorting to shock tactics. Repetition was their schtick and somehow they stayed ahead of the pack, not so much pointing the way forward (for who can truly ape genius) as showing their peers just how far ahead they were.

And then there were the live shows. The risk factor of buying a ticket to The Fall. Because, on his day, when MES cantankerousness and contrarianism over spilled into hostility and unpleasantness, the Fall could implode before your very eyes. But it seemed worth it somehow, like walking away from your football team’s latest defeat, knowing you’d be back, a sucker for punishment. At their best (and I’ve seen them hit these heights several times), Mark E Smith was a conduit between the audience’s expectations and the band’s sheer power, a general on the field of battle, barking instructions like a Lancashire James Brown.  I’ve seen friends that were previously resistant to even the idea of The Fall converted at those special performances.

You get older, you settle down. Married, 2 kids. The usual. At first The Fall seemed a relief from all that conformity you’d allowed your life to settle into. And then, as the number of ex Fall members grew in turn with the number of ex record labels The Fall had been signed to, their power began to diminish. Smith seemed no longer capable of greatness. On stage too, resorting to fiddling with band members equipment, spoiling for a fight rather than putting on a show. The sight of a decrepit Smith, King Leer in a wheelchair, was the stuff of tragedy. The records began to suffer as MES, seemingly intent on alienating even the hardcore devotees who now made up 90% of his audience, embarked on a path of almost anti-music. 

And now he’s dead. Sixty. No age at all.  If Bowie was the mainstream rock chameleon, able to change his colours and adapt to an ever changing pop landscape, Smith was a shape-shifter – mythological, restless, sinister – the fiend with a violin, the paranoia man, the casino soul. His waltz now ended, I find myself surprisingly devastated at his final demise.  And then, just as I was with that other thin white duke, I marvel at the fullness of those years spent amongst us and stand amazed at their life’s work.

I doubt Mark’s a new face in hell now, but wherever he is, I'll raise a glass to him tonight. Thanks for all the memories, Mark. Rest in peace.