Remember me - Fiction

I had never even considered smoking a pipe up until then, but the way she looked at me with those big doe eyes, I mean, how could I say no to her? I just fell will to her every command. Later that day we went down to the corner shop and I bought a white carved wooden pipe with a rosewood handle. It looked like a Siberian tigers toe with a long black nail. We went back to our apartment and tried it out. We pulled cushions off the sofa and sat on them cross-legged on the balcony. I remember it being sunny, because the red tips at the end of her bleach blonde hair looked pink in the sunlight. We sat so close that we were able to touch our toes together. She placed a box of matches, a pouch of GoldBerch tobacco and, of course, the tiger toe pipe in the space between our feet.

I asked her to do the honours, to break in the pipe for me because I knew the pipe wouldn’t be mine for long. She would become attached to it and borrow it constantly until the day came where I was happily forced to donate it to her properly, and she would reject it and wait for me to insist. Like always she would snap it from my hands and cradle it to her chest before throwing her arms around my neck and telling me how much she loved me. But in that moment, she just admired it.

She opened up the pouch, pinched a wad of tobacco between her fingers and stuffed it into the pipe with her thumb. I have tried since to stick my thumb in the hollow where hers fit so easily, but it wouldn’t. She picked up the matches and emptied them out onto the balcony.

“Oh, Goodie.” I remember her saying, “I can finish off my drawing with these.” You see, Annie was a phenomenal artist, but a terrible clot and as a result of both we always had an abundance of burnt-out matches lying around the apartment or ‘tiny pencils’ as she would call them.

“They create the best effects.” She would say when I asked her to clear them up. She scooped up the ‘tiny pencils’ and dropped them in her pocket. She picked up the one remaining red-tipped match and struck it against the edge of the box. A bright red flame burst and fizzed for a second before settling back to yellow. She was always in the habit of burning herself, so my first instinct was to reach to protect her hands, her skin, like ivory bone, almost transparent. But this time she held it steady. She raised the tiger toe to her lips and dipped the match into the tobacco inhaling the fumes. After a moment thick whitey-grey smoke blew through her nostril. Then she smiled and I realised I was the luckiest woman in the world. She slipped an imaginary deer-stalker onto her head and took short puckered drags from the pipe. I grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her tiny body onto my lap.

“You are the strangest and most wonderful girl I’ve ever met.” She clenched the pipe between her teeth and spoke back to me in a lispy whistle.

“On the contrary, my dear Watson. I am the strangest and most wonderful girl you will ever meet.” I pulled the pipe from her mouth and cupped her cheeks in my hands.

“My gorgeous girl, don’t ever change.” And then she pressed her lips into mine.

Her lips were waxy, like raw chicken breasts left out too long to thaw. And when I stepped back from her she wasn’t smiling anymore. The kiss had probably worn her out. She was too tired to smile. She was too tired to do anything anymore; too tired to walk, too tired to speak, too tired to eat. The nurse would have to wake her up to feed her and even then she would often fall asleep mid-swallow and almost choke. So mostly I read to her. I read her columns from her favourite magazines and I read her chapters from her favourite books, but most of the time she would fall asleep in the middle of a sentence and wake up in a different world. And it scared her. I could almost recite The Sign of the Three to her by heart, if I wanted to. But I don’t. I never want to look at that story or that book again. I decided that neither of us had the time, or the patience to reread the same adventures over and over, so I decided to start reading her children’s comic strips. The short little strips, only three or four frames long, something she might be able to stay awake long enough to enjoy. Sometimes she listened, sometimes she didn’t, but she couldn’t control whether she did or not and I could never hold her to that regardless. I placed my hand on her tiny bony wrist to centre her, to bring her back to me. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me like I was a stranger. It broke my heart and this was only a mild reaction.

“No, love. It’s me. It’s only me. Don’t worry, it’s only me.” Once she put my face back together and realised I was human, she relaxed her shoulders and almost smiled with those waxy lips I used to spend whole nights dreaming about kissing.

There was a long moment of silence while she studied every detail of my face, like a newborn scans their mothers face. A split second later her face had contorted into a mask of absolute stilling fear. And she had forgotten me… again.  

  “No. No please, Annie. Listen to me. It’s Martha. Please listen to me it’s Martha.” I went to touch her arm very gently, but as soon as I touched her skin, she jolted in the bed and her face was set in tremendous shock.

 “Darling, please listen to me. It’s Martha. Your Martha. Annie, darling. Can you hear me?” I jumped up and grasped her shoulders firmly. Tears were flooding my eyes and streaming down my face. Her body was stiff and dark shadows flushed across her face as she held her breath tight in her lungs, like it was the last breath she would ever take. She tried to move her limbs but they were too heavy. She started to panic and whimper, like a child and I was all but rolled up in a ball at her feet. I didn’t want to call the nurse because I knew my time was almost up with her. So I improvised. Looking around the small room I saw a small red plastic table adorned with children’s books and toys. I raced over and picked up a cardboard book with a family of bears on the front, all with fur lined bellies. I hoped it would be soft enough to calm her down. I tried to lift her wrist but her bones had locked into place with panic. The blood pounded so loud in my ears that I couldn’t even check to see if she was breathing. I flipped the book over and rubbed the fur across the back of her hands, hushing softly over and over. My breaths were shaky and my face was wet with tears and mucus but I didn’t care what I looked like. I needed her back. I needed her more than the air she was depriving herself of in fear. In fear of me. Because to her was a stranger that only fades in and out of existence. Sometimes my face was friendly and she would smile when she saw me. Other times I was the sum of all her greatest fears coming to destroy her. But I never knew which I was to her, a friend or a monster. Right then I must have been a monster.   

 It took several minutes and my arm was seizing from the motion. But it work. Her body relaxed and went limp in the bed. The glowing purple drained from her cheeks I remember thinking in that moment that Annie was right after all. I would have been a terrible nurse. If I couldn’t even look after Annie, how could I possibly look after those who meant almost nothing to me? I rested on the side of the bed, trying to ease my nerves before I leaned over her with shaky arms and whispered.

“Annie, it’s me. Please, please remember me.” I curled my fingers through hers as tightly as I could.

“Please, Annie. Please remember me.” I was crying into my arm when I felt her fingers twitch in mine. I looked up and saw that she was looking down to our hands with something similar to simple curiosity clouded her face. She ran her thumb over my hand and her waxy lips curled into a smile.

   “Mar-tha.”

She said it. She said my name. And for the first time since that horrific winter night I saw Annie again. I saw my Annie.

“Yes, of course, darling it’s me.” I held her face in the palm of my hand and rubbed her temple covered in red tinged bandages. “How are you feeling? Are you in pain? Will I call the nurse?”

Annie gripped my hand tighter. “Oh, Martha. I’m so glad you’re here.” A small tear formed in the corner of her eye and dribbled down her face. I brushed it away with the pad of my thumb.

“Of course, I’ll always be here with you.” She smiled and closed her eyes for a few minute and I was the happiest person in the world once more.  

But then her eyes changes. I saw it happening. I witnessed it, the moment she forgot everything. The doctor told us afterwards that before… before the… that everything fires up one last time. One last hurrah before the end. But at the time I didn’t know. So I just kept screaming at her to remember me, to remember my face and remember my name over and over. But I was too late. I was so tired of trying, trying to save her, of holding on to that last glimpse of a dream, and when I looked to her once more I saw her face was grey. She was scared of me. I wept openly because right then I really was the monster she saw in me, this stranger lying in a hospital bed. And the world started spinning.

I was vaguely aware that the door was knocking behind me. Then a tall, African American woman with wide hips came in and told me I had to leave. But I didn’t want to leave. Not when she had just started to remember me again, or so I thought. The nurse told me I had to leave, that there were other people in to see her and that I couldn’t be there.

“But she said my name. She remembered me.” I told myself out loud. But she didn’t believe me and she didn’t notice the fear in Annie’s face. She didn’t care. But I did.

 “She did. She did say it. There a second ago before you came in.”  But the nurse was starting getting angry with me, said that I was being a nuisance around the hospital and that I had to leave. But I didn’t want to leave. So I just stood there and held on to the end of the bed shouting at her. It was terrible of me, looking back on it now. She was only doing her job. I just kept telling her over that she had said my name, with my own ears I heard her say it. She came over and grabbed my arm, pinching the skin with her nails. I can still feel it sometimes; the pressure of her grip on me. When I looked at her I knew she didn’t want to kick me out. I knew she was under orders from a higher authority, and I wasn’t paying her bills. She dragging me to the door but I wasn’t going without a fight. So I kicked and screamed like a child and called back to Annie

 “Annie. You’re going to be okay. Everything will be back to normal. I promise. We will have our lives back. I promise.” And I immediately regretted my words because when I looked at her in the bed, Annie was lying with wide bulging eyes and was reaching with thin fleshy arms towards the sky.

Suddenly a loud high-pitched tone sounded from the cardiac monitor. And a wave of nurses rushed into the room.

I can still heart that sound. It haunts me every night when I try to sleep. The sleepless nights have caught up on me to the extent where the world passes by and I barely register what’s happening. When I awoke from another void blankness, I was standing in the doorway of an old church. It was raining sideways into the doorway and my feet were getting wet but I didn’t feel the cold. I ran my fingers along the wooden panels of the doors trying to feel something, anything at all. I just needed to feel sensations again. But it didn’t work. I saw the splinters in my fingers and the blood run down my wrist, but I didn’t feel a thing not even heat. I felt like I was watching the life a character on screen through a grotty spy glass. I remember an elder man in a black suit told me to stand aside as six men in matching suits walked by carrying a wooden coffin. It was only when I looked to the long black hearse ornamented with flowers that I realised where I was. It was spelled out for me in daisies, her favourite, Annie’s favourite, my beautiful wonderful Annie. People didn’t sympathising with me because they didn’t know about me. They didn’t know about the life Annie and me had built together over the last eight years. No one shuck my hand, not even her family. Because we were in sacred grounds, and according to them I was not sacred. After I watched the men in black suits put Annie, my poor Annie, in the back of the hearse, a young woman came up to me. She was a friend of Annie’s from home and she knew about her and me and our life in the big city. Then she hugged me. And I felt it. Like lightning. Sadness burning in my chest. It was the heat I wanted all along. She pulled back and big fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Martha.” She whispered to me and pulled me in tighter. When I looked up I could see Annie’s mother staring at me with big red puffy eyes. It was the first time I had ever seen her in person. And hopefully I’ll never see her again. I hugged the girl back to make it look like I was consoling her and to take away from my humility. I never said a word. I couldn’t push the words past my lips, waxy with the cold. I was just so tired, too tired to speak. Then I watched as the hearse drove out of the yard and down the street away from me.

I remained in the courtyard of the church as the crowd left and made their way to the small graveyard at the bottom of the hill behind the hearse. I could see them all congregate in black around a hole in the grown. I don’t know how long I stood there in the cold watching from a distance as they lowered the love of my life into the cold, hard grown in a cold, dark box. Annie had always been afraid of the dark and that just made the fire burn hotter in my chest.  

I lifted my hand palm out and whispered to her before walking out of the courtyard.  

“Goodbye Annie, my beautiful, wonderful Annie.” 

Simple Pleasures - Fiction

The Jacuzzi bubbled around her thighs and tingled along her spine, caressing every inch of her tenderly and unwinding the build-up of tensions in her knot-bound shoulders. A long purr escaped her lips. Julio emerged from the terrace and dropped the small towel from around his tight waist. Ursula’s eyes bulged at the size of his glass of refreshing iced tea. He brought the glass up to his lips and swallowed the cool liquid. His bronzed, toned chest heaved with the motion and glistened in the light of the Mediterranean sun. He lowered the glass to the patio and climbed into the pool. His muscular arms broke through the surface of bubbles as he glided towards her. He pulled up in front of her, reached between her legs and curled his fingers around a bubbling hose. He lifted it from the water and held it over his head and let the liquid slide over his face and down his body. He lowered the hose back into the water and combed his finger through his long black hair back. He lowered himself onto Ursula’s lap and cupped her face with his large muscular hands.

“Come. Come to me, darling.” He licked his lips as a growl erupted from deep inside his chest. Ursula moaned and inched closer, closer, closer to his… 

“Can Hans Gunter please report to the front desk?” Ursula was dragged back to reality by the intercom buzzing over her head. The poolside of L’hotel de Rêve and the glistening body of Julio evaporated and disappeared into the ether of Floor Thirteen. She looked around her small cubicle and sighed.

As if I would be anywhere else. She checked her watch and realigned her tights at the groin. 9:14am.

How can I only be here twelve minutes? She lowered her forehead to the desk and sighed. Her mind wandered back to the Jacuzzi, to the heat of the sun on her skin, to Julio’s large glass of refreshing iced tea… Her body twitched and she shot up straight in the seat. She looked back to her watch.

Only four hundred and sixty-five minutes to go. Ursula pulled several books from her shelf and placed them on her seat. She sat down on the unsteady stack and peered over the partition. The room around her was grey and massive. She spotted the main door, only one hundred and six steps away. On the opposite wall the female rest room was only seventy-four steps away. The room was icy cold. The intercom buzzed somewhere in the distance. She could hear the hard plastic casing of a computer mouse nearby scrape against worktops in wide loops, stops and clicks somewhere in the distance. The stench of scented body lotions mixed with body odour and cheap coffee wafted through the aisles. She noted that for a room full of people, there was very little sound. The room should have hummed with the multitude of awkward small talk and early morning gossip happening around her, but she looked up to the high warehouse-like ceiling and realised that the enormity of it had probably drawn the life from the voices. By the coffee machine men reviewed the sloppy tactics of football games from mispronounced French teams. Three cubicles away two women older than Ursula scrutinized the romantic endeavours of their co-workers and consoled each other’s singularity. The only thing that unified the two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four people that occupied Floor Thirteen was the bitter resentment of everything related to Floor Thirteen.

The cubicle in front of her was empty. The woman who usually sat behind the partition was probably only forty, but if carbon dating worked on wrinkles she would be as old as Methuselah. The saggy folds of skin around the woman’s eyes puckered and multiplied with every blink. They dragged her face down like fleshy anchors. She had beady blank eyes that she hid behind thick bottle-rimmed glassed. When she wasn’t too busy fixing her very-berry red lipstick, or puffing up her mound of black hair, she often plucked her eyebrows at the desk. She would grab the hairs with a pink tweezers and pull at them until all that was left was two thin black semi circles over her eyes. Ursula reckoned that someday the woman would pull at the hairs so hard she would pull the rest of her forehead off with it. Ursula was curious as to her disappearance and thought about asking someone where the woman in cubicle 11b went, but Ursula didn’t know the woman’s name and she didn’t really like talking to any of the people she worked with. The woman of 11b’s disappearance would have to remain a mystery, right up there beside the Kennedy assassination and the Bermuda triangle, or the contents of the yellow lunchbox in the fridge in the canteen with the blue fuzz growing out from under the lid.

Disheartened at the lack of activity, Ursula stood up and placed the books back on the shelf. They were warm to the touch and that only grossed Ursula out slightly. She looked to her watch. 9:19am. She sighed and reached for her briefcase. She opened it up and fished through the files on her lap. She pulled out a folder of sheets, a notepad, a handful of pens and a banana which had been sitting in the case for four days. Everyone in the office had converted to the more technologically advanced forms of note-taking. But Ursula had fallen behind. She called herself the last of the pencil-pushers. Although she had been given a second generation interactive tablet like everyone else, it sat gathering dust on the shelf beside her warm books with the electronic device still encased in its styrofoam prison. She saw herself as an anachronism, in the office anyway. At home she couldn’t go to the bathroom without her mobile phone and she often paid more per month for a strong Wi-Fi connection than food.  Apart from the fact that she didn’t want to bother updating her skills for work, Ursula always enjoyed the feel of a ball-point pen in her hand, or the glide of an inky nib across paper. There was something alluring, something endless about dragging the pen across the page and watching colour leak into the fibres in lines and squiggles. It made her shiver and think about a refreshing glass of iced tea. 

She shook her head from the traces of an elaborate day dream and looked to her pull-away page calendar. It was Friday and all that meant to Ursula was that the weekly reports had to be filled out before she could go home and spend the night watching movies from the 1950s with her cat Spoofy. She straightened out her notebook and her pens and placed her banana in the top right corner of her desk, out from the lines of her peripheries, because she couldn’t straighten the banana and it would just unsettle her to see it while she was working.

She pulled out a bundle of typed pages from the file labelled Financing and straightened them to the left of her notepad. She fingered the cover of the notebook, the dapple skin of her fingertips was enough to grip the slick exterior. She lifted the shiny page, brought it above and tucked it in behind the rest of the notepad and with a cool hiss of friction, settled it on the cold countertop. She picked up her black pen, turned over a clean page in her notepad, tucked it back under and began writing out the weekly report. Black globules trickled out of her pen and stained the paper. By the time she had finished writing she had filled six pages, single sided in her notebook with black ink. She flicked the pages back and forth and admired her handiwork. It made her smirk because she knew the best was yet to come. Ursula was a woman of simple pleasures, and pleasurable those simple things were. One of the activities that gave her the greatest please was to gently rip the pages from her notepad.

She closed her eyes and lightly gripped the edge of the pages. And pulled. The separation of the tiny linkages from the remaining pages vibrated through her fingers. In the darkness, she could hear the layers of pages tearing all at once and quiver through her highly sensitive fingertips. She fought against the sensations and the itching in her groin, but as her heartbeat quickened, a low rumbling purr escaped her lips. She pulled each bond apart fluidly, like unzipping a perfectly fitted dress. Her skin prickled and the fair hair stood tall underneath her blouse. She could feel her scalp tingle and her eyelids flutter with anticipation. She could feel it, the end was coming. Without even looking she knew she was close to finishing. Towards the end of the sheet she slowed her pace and her hand tightened its grip by the strength of a butterfly’s wing-beat. Her eyes rolled beneath her lids as she tried to prolong the movement and savour the moment. She didn’t even notice she was holding her breath until pressure started building up in her chest. But she held it and let the pressure build. Her skin crawled as she ripped and counted the last connections. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six… Her heart pounded loudly in her ear. Five, four, three, two… She tightened her grip once more and paused at the penultimate link. Her chest was burning with pressure and her body trembled, yearning for release. One. She ripped the last connection between the pages and the notepad. A deep lengthy moan escaped her, one she had forgotten in her throat.

She opened her eyes to the harsh static light of the office, forgetting her place. She twisted her neck and scanned for any sign that her engrossment had been witnessed. But the stalls around her buzzed with inactivity. She stood up on shaky legs and looked around. New recruits watched and re-enacted the appropriate responses to soccer goals on the internet in hushed tones. A man and woman chatted eagerly at the coffee machine. Everything was as it should be. Ursula’s secret was safe, for the time being. 

She turned back to the pages, now separated from their bonds. She picked it up and brought it close to her face and inhaled deeply, spreading open her chest to increase her lung capacity. The wet inky reignited the lax nerve points of her skin, bristling the hair molecules. She brought the page back to the table and aligned it meticulously against the pre-ruled margins of a rubber mat she recovered from under her desk. She retrieved an empty blue hole-puncher from her drawer, wiped clean from its previous use. She threaded the pages into the small mouth of the blue machine that hungered for small perfectly circular cuttings of pre-lined paper. She rested the entire length of her thumb against the handle of the hole-puncher and in one fluid motion, the circles were forced from the pages and captured in the small plastic containment beneath the belly of the fierce tiny machine. Her chest heaved over and over as the pain of the pressure continued to burn her lungs. She grabbed a blue inhaler from her desk drawer and took a long gasp from its mouth. When she had composed herself, she reached for a blue folder. She opened it up, wrenched apart the large spiral prongs, slipped the curled prongs into the punched holes and snapped them shut. She looked at her watch. 9:43am.

A good day’s work, if I do say so myself.

She pulled a small square pillow from her drawer and placed it on her desk. She pulled her desk lamp from the corner and positioned it over the pillow. She lowered her head onto the pillow, switched on the lamp and let the heat of the Mediterranean sun and the intoxicating scent of a refreshing glass of iced tea wash her away.

The Witching Hour - Fiction

This is a story I wrote as part of my Fiction writing class in 2014.

The story is dark, mysterious and brings to light exactly how far someone would go to reap justice for the helpless. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Carlos di Maria was a man of splendid tastes. He enjoyed fine port wines and late Baroque composers, often at the same time. He styled French lacquer through his silver hair and used a fine bone comb to set it. On Fridays he only ate smoked salmon. He once took great pleasure in picking out brightly coloured silk handkerchiefs from the tailors on St. Laurent Street. Since his retirement, Carlos found it exceedingly difficult to get his hands on decently crafted handkerchiefs. Each morning before he was served breakfast, Evangeline would enter the master bedroom and present a selection of the East’s finest silk handkerchiefs to Mr. di Maria. Sometimes he would choose the eggshell tinged silk from South Korea, often he would pick the rich, burgundy Vietnamese silk, but one particularly cold day he itched for black Chinese silk. He had acquired this particular item during a ‘business’ trip in Beijing. It nearly cost him his life waiting for his grand initials to be stitched in gold thread into the fabric. The tailor had told him that the silk was unnaturally coarse to the touch, which he believed to be a bad omen and that death would follow those who held it. But Carlos was an almost practical man. He only believed in his own superstitions.

 A harsh and bitter wind blew in from the Atlantic and whistled through the forest of wild, sparse trees that encircled the di Maria private estate. He found solace, and anonymity in a small dusty town called Goshen in the heart of The Green Mountain State. He was never bothered by his neighbours, being so few in number that he could go for several weeks without have to converse with any of them, and in the unfortunate case that he stumbled across one rambling through the forest, the company would rarely stand closer than ten feet beside him. He didn’t care about isolation. Dealing with the worst of mankind had given him a distaste for their company.   

Carlos cradled a small tumbler of Cognac La Gabare against his chest; 1958, of course. The dark liquid left a trail of warmth as it slid down his throat and spread through his chest. He hummed along as the chilling air of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion animated his lonely dining room. He watched as amber flames flickered in unison to the piece from a large red-brick fireplace. In the corner of his eyes, Carlos spied the large bushy tail of his only currently living companion. No more than his master, Clarence’s eyes had seen many moons, though only in his own years. The large grey hairy feline stalked proudly across the floor, positioned his legs beneath his fat body and lunged himself onto his masters lap. Carlos only broke his gaze from the fire for an instant before he rested his lazy hand on the cats back, stoking minimally. Carlos curled the long, manicured nails of his left hand into the plush armrest. A low husky growl rolled from deep inside his chest as the voice emanating from his original vintage record player reached unnatural, breath-taking notes. He raised one finger, then two from the cats back and they twitched gently to the rhythm. The hair follicles on his arms budded waiting through the progression of dramatic movements. The crescendo of soprano, bass and icy violin crashed together, growing louder and bolder and wilder until the needle slipped, and Jesus was allowed to pray in the garden of Gethsemane all night long. Carlos opened his eyes and saw pristine light shining through his window. He rested his hands on the arms of his chair and forced his weight onto his wrists, to ease himself to his feet, but the deep rumbling monotone of distant chatter dropped him back into his seat. He looked down to Clarence and sighed.

“The Witching hour grows near. Bach will have to wait.”

Hooking the lazy animal under his arm, Carlos stood up from his chair and strolled across the room. Both Clarence and Carlos gazed across the front lawn and spotted the source of the commotion. Three figures bulked with padded winter jackets swayed in crouched animation over a large object glistening in bleached October moonlight. From this distance, Carlos couldn’t see what was happening, and he didn’t like not knowing. He opened up and reached into his top drawer and pulled a small wood-cased brass telescope from an indented, felt-lined wooden box. Holding the end, he flicked the barrel towards the floor to its full length and lifted it to his eye. He could see three young man huddled around a large grey sports bag. He needed to know what was in that bag. Carlos opened the window quietly and pushed it out. He listened to the deep toned northern drawl of the young men’s accents as they bickered among themselves.

“How many is in there?” one of them spoke, a stretched teen with shiny black hair.

“About five, give or take.” the second man faced away from Carlos. The smallest of the group was a younger looking boy to the rest. He stood with his hands in his pockets, kicking snow off tufts of grass.

“Five! Are you kidding me! They won’t last than ten minutes.”

“It’s more than you could get your hands on.”  

“Okay, Jees. Come on, let’s go. This place gives me the creeps.” The three figures dashed into the dark expanse of trees that surrounded the di Maria estate. Carlos followed the pathway of the hooded boys from his window, approximately north east, he thought.

“What charming young trespassers, Clarence.” The cat continued to purr loudly in his masters arms. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that bag of theirs seemed to contain objects that might damage my lovely trees. I think I should kindly escort them from the premises.” The vibrating purrs ceased in Clarence’s throat and the small animal looked up and locked eyes with his master. Carlos sighed and slowly lowered the cat into a large beanbag, grey with thick hair, beneath the window. The floorboards creaked as Carlos walked back across the room. He plucked a thick woollen coat from a hanger and slipped his arms into the sleeves and placed a wide brimmed hat on the crown of his head. He opened out a large mahogany wardrobe beside the crackling fire and pulled a small leather carry bag from a high shelf. He swept dust from the surface before opening the zips. He smirked and pulled an object from the bag and pushed it into his coat pocket.

“Time to hunt some witches.” Carlos smirked and exited the room. Clarence said nothing and resumed cleaning the spot between his legs where his testicles once lay.

The three young men made their way through the bare trees of the Willow Forest. Snow crunched beneath their boots. The wind was sharp and ice cold and made their teeth chatter in their head’s. To the back, Samuel, the youngest of the group, scanned the darkness with quick harpy-like jolts.

“I-I think this is a bad idea.” The older boys continued to trudge through the snow, ignoring the pleas behind them. Samuel continued on. “I’m serious. This is bandit territory. These lands belong to that crazy old guy in the black house back there. Nathan says that he is ex-special forces and that he’s known in the south as El Barbero, because he uses a cut throat razor to-

“To what, Samuel? Give his victims a really close shave?” Hunter, the older boy turned to Samuel. Don’t be listening to the likes of Nathan. The guy in the black house is a recluse. My cousin Ev’ works for him. Says he’s just some ancient rich guy looking for ‘tranquillity’ in his final years or something. The poor guy probably can’t even wipe his own ass anymore. Trust me, he ain’t going to be slittin’ any more throats.”

Jacob, the boy with the black hair and Samuel’s brother, four years his senior, turned and locked shocked eyes with his brother.

“Lighten up, dude. There ain’t no way that guy will be out here.” He spoke, softer than before. Samuel sighed and smiled his assurance to Jacob, but remained on edge. They continue on, in silence, in their hunt for suitable grounds. The terrain thinned and they passed under the overhang of a weathered bolder. Dark mulchy detritus lined the floor-bed, a warming welcome to their snow-clogged boots. 

Hunter kicked at a circle of stones resurrected around a circle of burned soil, which possibly once held a campfire. He laid the sports bag beside the campfire and dropped to his knees beside it, opened the bag and pouring the contents onto the ground. Jacob turned to Samuel and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Stay back here-” He whispered and started to push Samuel back out from beneath the overhang. “You’ll be safer out here. There’s an arsonist about this guy deep down.” Samuel shuck his head.

“I’m sure you don’t need to dig too deep to find it.”

The two boys grinned reluctantly in unison before Jacob joined Hunter in sorting the fireworks by size. Samuel leaned against a large oak tree and picked his nails into loose bark chunks, observing everything from a healthy distance. Rummaging in the hazy light of the moon, Jacob pulled a thick wide-barrelled firework from beneath the sports bag.

“Whoa! Look at the size of this!” The older brother squinted in the pale light to read the label. He couldn’t make out the language but he easily recognised the vibrantly colourful oriental dragon printed on the label. Plumes of animated fire were painted across the background banner.

“How did you get your hands on this thing?” Hunter looked up from his organising and his eyes widen at the sight of the monstrous firework in his friends hand.

“Give me that!” he snatched the object forcefully from Jacob’s hand and held it to his chest for a moment. He felt his heart beating against the shaft of the unlit destructive force. He felt the powerful potential throbbing through his skin, then he laid it on the ground beside the other categorised fireworks.

“We’ll save the best for last.” He smirked and ran his finger along the smooth cylinder.

Across the expanse, Samuel spied the horrific looking firework and gasped.

      “That’s going to make one hell of a racket.” He shuddered and looked back in the direction of the black house.

“It sure will.” Hunter replied, grinning widely. Hunter picked up a long thin firework with an extra-long mounting stick and fuse. He rolled it in his hand and ran a finger along the grainy surface up to the coned tip, licking his lips.

“Well. Let’s get this show on the road.” He planted the stick into the scorched earth in the centre on the opening and crouched down to view the estimated trail the miniature rocket would take with one eye. He pulled a box of matches from his jeans, pushed the inner container from its sleeve, plucked a long fire-safe match from the package and struck the red tip against the course ignition strip. The match burst into white heat and light before it sobered back to dull flickering yellow.

Samuel had his arm wrapped around the back of the tree and balance his weight on one foot. He watched Hunter grin at the firework and meet his brother’s gaze. Jacob shrugged his shoulders and tightened his lips into a line across his thin milky face. 

“Stand back ladies.” Hunter chuckled coyly and dropped his hand to light the fuse. Just before the flame of the match licked against the material, a loud, ear-piercing scream reverberated through the forest. Hunter dropped the match. The sound was everywhere, trapped in the trees, in the dead leaves, rustling up the wildlife, echoing it all back to the three men. When Jacob and Hunter turned back to the source of the noise, they saw Samuel backing away from the tree he was standing beside.

“What the hell, Sam!” Hunter scowled. Samuels face was ghostly pale and his hands were visibly shaking.

“What happened?” asked Jacob, standing up. Samuel turned to the older boys, eyes wide with fright.

“N-nothing. I thought- I- something touched my hand.”

Hunter groaned begrudgingly. “We’re in a forest, there is wildlife everywhere. Something probably just ran down the tree and crossed over it.” Jacob smiled to his brother to second Hunters theory.

“This place is crawling with critters, Sam. Look there?” Just at the edge of the snow, a small mouse walked by the campfire. It froze when the three boys turned towards it, like it knew it was being watched. Samuel’s body tensed up at the sight of the small mammal. Hunter stared intently at the mouse. A cruel smirk crossed lips and he began to crawl towards it. Resting his weight on his fingertips, he waited. The mouse inched away bit by bit, but Hunter lunged forward and caught a firm hold of the tiny creature. Jacob walked across to Hunter and looked at the mouse.

     “It’s so… small. Look, Sam. Hunter won’t let it-” He turned behind and stopped suddenly when Samuel was nowhere to be seen. “Sam?” He called out. But there was only silence.

     “Sam!” he repeated and stood up. “This isn’t funny, man. Come on.”

     “He probably ran home, like a little bitch.” Hunter jested with a smirk.

     “Hey! Not cool. And besides, we would have heard him leaving. Or he would have told us.”

  Hunter grunted and continued to stare at the mouse. Jacob crossed over to where Sam was last seen. He examined the bark with his fingertips. Through the scattered light, Jacob searched for footprints in the snow. He recognised two indents to the left of the tree where Samuel was standing. He peered slowly around the corner and saw two deep lines and a series of indents behind it like two people dancing. No. Not dancing. Jacob froze and became acutely aware of someone behind him. But he didn’t move. From the side he could see a large black gloved hand reaching around him. A small cry escaped Jacob’s mouth and the hand covered his mouth. His whole body tensed and hot tears escaped his eyes as he whimpered into the glove. His neck twitched as a warm breath blew against his ear.

       “You’re on my land, boy.” It whispered in a deep rustic voice. The heat grew closer to his ear and he could feel his knees weakening beneath him. The hand over his mouth tightened. “So I suggest you follow that other little shit back home to where you came from.”

In a second the hand was gone. Jacob spun around and a man cloaked in shadows loomed over him. All that were visible were two piercing eyes through the darkness. Jacob was only vaguely aware of a warmth running down his legs. The man leaned down his massive size to eye level with the boy and whispered.

     “Boo.”

     And with that Jacob sprinted back up the path through the trees following another yellow trail in the snow. Carlos smirked and watched the boy running away.

     “Two down-” He whispered to himself and peered around the tree. “-One to go.”

  

     Hunter rubbed his thumb over the animal’s soft underbelly, only vague aware that Jacob had gone away.

“You’re so… pretty.” Hunter brought the mouse to his face and inhaled a deep breath full of earthy rodent.

“I’m going to call you…FUCK!” Hunter howled and unhooked the mouse’s teeth from the edge of his nostril. “You little shit!” The mouse squealed as Hunter’s grip tightened around the small animal. He rubbed his free hand across his face. Warm blood covered his fingers. His eyes widened. He rubbed his hand over the mouse’s head and body. The animal wriggled as the thick bloody finger presses into his skull.

“I’ll show you to behave, mousy.” Hunter pulled an elastic band from his pocket and doubled it over and around the animal, securing its arms in a tight tangled loop. He picked up the small firework and stretched the electric band and mouse over the tip of the rocket. The mouse frantically scrambled against the elastic.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His eyes are wide and glassy. Thick red capillaries opened and bleached his eyes, inhuman and brutal.

He pulled a small army-knife from his pocket, opened out the blade and held it flat against the mouse’s stomach

“Imma gonna gut you, boy.” He put on a deep southern accent and cackled dramatically. Just before he was about to plunge the knife into the animal’s chest, Hunter heard the cracking of twigs directly behind him and he turned, expecting Jacob or the other one to be standing over him. But it wasn’t them. Hunter barely had time to register the tall masked figure standing over him. All he saw was a large black hand hurling towards him at great speed, and then darkness.

When Hunter regained consciousness his hands were bound behind his back and he was propped against a tree. His lower half was frozen from the snow and he couldn’t feel his legs. The world was spinning and his stomach churned in arrhythmic motions with his surroundings. He doubled over and spilled the contents of his stomach onto the forest floor.

“Wakey wakey, boy.” The voice was deep and unnaturally soothing. He couldn’t keep his head straight. His hair hung over his face and clung to his sweaty and blood drenched cheeks. He couldn’t hold his head straight enough to look at the black figure above him.

“I said wake up.” The man followed with a sharp strike to Hunter’s right cheek. He grabbed Hunter’s chin, still smeared in blood, and forced his head straight. Hunter could see between the narrow slit in the mask and stared into the man’s eyes. They were emerald green surrounded in fleshy folds of tanned skin. Hunter tried to move his legs but his left thigh was heavy with lob-sided weight. The man dropped Hunter’s face, ghostly white with fear and blood loss. His stomach churned violently when he saw the wide-barrelled Chinese firework strapped to his upper leg with his leg with shiny black fabric. The bright eyes of the illustrated dragon stared up at him from the cylinder.

“Oh god. Oh God. No. No. Please, I beg you please take it off.” Hunter snivelled, tears and mucus rolled down his face. The masked man stood up, slowly and reached one hand into the inner pocket of his coat. He held up the small mouse in his loosely cupped hand and ran a gloved finger along its head, very gently.

“Oh. That’s not for me to decide. I’m going to leave that to your little friend here.” The man lifted the mouse to his ear and listened intently. The forest went deadly silent as the fate of Hunter’s lower body was being determined by the begrudging mouse. Through the narrow eye slit in the man’s black mask, Hunter saw his eyes narrow to listen and watched them dart from side to side, absorbing in the imaginary words, fleshing out the inevitable. Finally, his eyes widened in satisfaction. A long despairing ‘Oh’ pushed through the fabric of his mask and his eyes locked once more with Hunter’s.

“You’re not going to like this.” Hunter wailed and his whole body shook violently.

“No. No, you don’t understand. I have a scholarship. I need my legs. Please. Dear God, please take it off. I’ll do anything. Please, sir. I’ll-I’ll start going to Church again. I’ll do anything you ask. Just please… take it off.” Hunter wailed hysterically. The older man placed the mouse back in his breast pocket and crossed the terrain to Hunter. He cocked his head to the side and looked defiantly into Hunter desperate eyes.

“Church? What good will heaven do you now?” his voice crawled as Hunter spluttered his apologies. The man reached into Hunter’s pocket and pulled out the box of matches. He drew one from the packaging and struck it against the edge. The extra-long match burned down towards his gloved hands and he twirled it between his fingers.

“There is no place for you there.” The young man cried for his life as the masked man walked back across the expanse, match still in hand. Hunter shuffled back and forth in sheer panic, struggling against his restraints.

“Sir. I’ll do anything.”

He turned around and stared at the young man. He opened his jacket and peeped into the pocket where the mouse lay snug in the man’s body heat. Hunter’s blood was caked into its head and stomach.

“It seems you would.”

He closed his jacket. A small ping sounded and the man checked his wristwatch. He smirked and looked back to the boy.

“The witching hour is upon us. Happy Halloween.” He dropped the match. The end of an extra-long fuse ignited and hissed closer to the large dragon rocket. As Carlos walked away from the opening in the wood, he pulled the small mouse out from his pocket and stroked its head gently, counting seconds. A few moments later he hears a loud sharp boom, and the crackling of tree branches.

Carlos di Maria wandered wearily into his living room and kicked his shoes into the corner. He slid his woollen jacket from his shoulders and hooked it on the back of the door. Cracking several vertebrae, he reached into the bottom of his mahogany wardrobe and pulled out a box. Awkwardly, he tipped the box over and a pair of pristine leather shoes fell onto the floor. He placed the small mouse into the box and carried it over to the low table beside his seat. It scrunched the paper padding and burrowed a bed for itself. Carlos placed his black mask on the table beside it. Clarence lifted his head from his beanbag as his master entered the room and yawned widely as only cats can. He stretched his front legs and arched the base of his back before walking over to the footstool beside the newly occupied table.

“I found you a new friend, Clarence. You are not to harm your new friend. Do you understand?” The cat growled and curled into a crescent moon on the foot stool. Carlos walked back across the room and filled a small glass bowl with water from a tall silver jug and made his way back to the fire. He flipped the large vinyl and finely adjust his record player until the smooth, lulling sound of Schubert’s classic Ave Maria warmed the room. He sighed heavily and placed the shoe box on his knees. He pulled a long piece of maroon silk stitched with gold thread from his pocket, dipped it in the glass bowl of water and began to rub the blood from the mouse’s chest and head with gentle strokes.  

“It’s not the first time this handkerchief has touched someone else’s blood, Clarence, though I thought it had seen its last casualty.” The breathless soprano voice coursed through his skin leaving shivers in its path. His body stiffened for a moment as the high pitched wails of passing ambulance sirens, drowned out the music. Carlos looked up from his cleaning and spoke to his two companions.

“It seems the show has come to us tonight.”

Carlos looked out his window and saw three men dressed in white looking down at a stretcher, bickering among themselves. He smirked and ran his finger over the mouse’s head. As the last notes of Ave Maria filled the room, he looked up to the yellow clouded moon.

“Call back your demons and let them rest, for I have relinquished one in turn tonight.” Carlos reached out into the night and slowly closed the window.   

Just Desserts - Poem

Soft fingertips brush together as

deep luxurious breaths pass over

lapping tongue.

Teeth clench

and relax

in wait of exotic

cravings.

“Your dessert.”

Silence broken

with eyebrow cocked.

One pot, two spoons.

“Your move.”

Caressing the spoon

she lays it down

flat on its back

and taps

hard,

Harder,

HARDER,

Crack.

Thick cream oozes

and smothers the crisp sugar

and steams in plumes like

warm blood blooms in cheeks

And throbs.

Hot breaths entwine

and kiss as the soft

moistness coaxes fingertips to

plunge and tongues to hiss.

Too hot to touch.

Soft lips smack

as he sucks her finger clean.

Again, she plunges in the heat

Indulging in sweetness

that drips down her chin.

He smirks

and braces for

a daring crescendo.

His broad hands dip and slide between

And gasp.

The cool clank of cutlery and

icy stares of

fallen expectations

and Slap

“Bite me!”

Heels tap

faster and

Faster and

FASTER

away…

A lone cab home.

The waiter smirks.

The place that I call Home - Poem

Sometimes I dream of dark and hollow lands

in the hours between dusk and dawn

and of a house I once abandoned

in the company of spiders

and of a beast,

tall and green,

lurking in the shadows

of that lonely house.

I thrash and writhe against my sheets

as it crawls towards me

with snarled teeth and hooked claws,

a frightful sight indeed.

So I run,

usually,

until my lungs explode and choke me.

But the ground never moves beneath me.

And the wicked beast always captures me

in it’s vice-like grip

and drags me to the sea

and drowns me in a whirl of memories.

But now that I am in my summer

these visions do not startle me

or wake me from my slumber.

Now I can lie and wave as those glimpses of a life pass by me,  

fixed in time,

like grains of sand in an antique watch.

And now I can confront that beast

and pet it on the head,

for it can be so placid

on a leash 

left to its own devices.

It is a pitiful sight,

unarmed and drooling,

peering through the window of my dreams.

But sometimes I let my dreams ensnare me

and for a moment we become one:

the darkness, beast and me.

But in my waking

I know that we will never be

together as one.

Because they will not consume me

and I will not drown in that lonely sea

for I have already conquered these dark and hollow lands.

To Never Staying Young - Poem

I never knew why he needed such a big bed

but now I know

that no other bed was big enough

to contain his

monstrous ego.         

He drank nearly as much as a fish that night,

slurping aged whiskey from a crystal decanter

and choking us

with tar-laced fumes.

I don’t know what he said to you

in that gigantic room

with the mahogany dresser and the bone comb set,

because all I heard was muffled voices

and the crash of glass on concrete.

Such loutish, unruly sounds.

I know you cried that night

when you thought you were alone.

But I was there

waiting in the darkness,

holding back my tears

Your eyes had always scared the monsters from under my bed

but you couldn’t keep them from your own.

And I grew up in that moment

because my world grew dark

in the absence of your light.