Yes, I’m bitter. I am a lemon heaving with caustic juices. I am corrosive. I am an electric eel poised to shoot ten thousand volts into the next thing that moves. What is more, it’s raining and there’s a veritable hurricane blowing away, leaves and litter swirling round me. Bloody weather.
I stab at the doorbell.
Immediately, the door flies open and there’s my mother.
“Hi sweetheart,’ she says, beaming at me, and then, frowning, “Oh Evie, look at you.”
One good thing, all that rain on my face means she can’t tell I’ve been crying.
“Come in, quickly. It’s horrible out there.”
And, she’s thinking, it’s just so typical of you, Evangeline Marie, to rush out mindlessly into the rain without an umbrella or anything. Stupid. Once I’m inside, she scans my face closely, like she always does, then puts her arms round me and presses me tightly to her.
“I can’t stay long,” I say, pulling away. I didn’t want to come at all.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she says, beaming again. My mother is a natural born beamer.
Well, I’ve got a surprise for her, too. A nasty surprise. Suddenly I’m convulsed by a shiver, either from the cold or the aftershock of what’s happened. Or both, most likely.
“Come and see,” she says, ushering me to the living room.
She has converted the room into a birthday grotto. A Happy Birthday banner strung above the fireplace. Multicoloured streamers spanning the ceiling. A pile of presents wrapped in hearts and white kittens. Even balloons, for God’s sake. I roll my eyes.
“I’m twenty five, mother.”
“Twenty six,’ she corrects me, beaming yet again. “You just sit down and relax.”
The sofa is like my mother. A hugger. Waits till you sink down into the cushions then wraps itself round you. She’s on her knees now, holding a lit match under the logs in the fireplace.
“Right,” she says, leaping up, “Before anything else I’ll make you nice hot cup of tea. It’ll pick you up.” And throw me down.
She bustles off to the kitchen.
I am twenty six. Nearly thirty, my God. And my life is a complete mess. Because I’m stupid. I sigh heavily. I feel like crying again.
She’s back, triumphantly bearing a chocolate cake bristling with candles. I’ll tell her now.
“Mum, I…”
“Oh dear, the fire’s out.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She places the cake on the coffee table in front of me, and she’s on her knees again, coaxing the fire, lighting match after match and blowing on the logs.
“Leave it, mum.”
“There, that’s better. It’s a bit halfhearted but hopefully it’ll perk up. Now,” she says, getting up, “do you want to open your presents first or blow out the candles and make a wish?”
“Neither.”
She considers me, resigned.
Yes, I know, she’s gone to all this trouble and I don’t deserve it. I’m an ungrateful wretch. Bad as well as stupid. Anyway, here goes.
“Sit down, mum. I’ve got something to tell you.”
She sits, visibly steeling herself.
“You’ll be glad to know I’ve broken up with Will.”
She doesn’t look glad. That wasn’t the surprise.
“And I’m pregnant.”
That was.
She doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me.
“I was taking the pill but it didn’t work. The small print said it might not. I didn’t bother to read it beforehand.”
Still she says nothing.
“So yet again, I rushed mindlessly into things without considering the consequences. I’ve ruined my life. I’m just stupid.”
Silence.
“You’re not stupid,” she says finally. “Everything and everyone comes with small print. The things that may and will go wrong. If we stopped to read it we’d never do anything. Nobody would have children if they first read their small print. The human race would become extinct. You just have to go with the flow and hope it turns out well. Try your best. And often, it does turn out well, more or less.”
She looks tired. Worn down. Aged. It’s me that has has caused some of the fretlines on her face. Most of them, probably. All of them?
“So that’s why my hamster ate her babies,” I say ruefully, “She read their small print.”
“Most likely,” she says and bursts out laughing, laughter lines mingling with the fretlines.
“Have you ever regretted having me?”
“Never,” she says immediately, smiling, “I’ve loved you since the second you were born. Before, even.”
“Despite the small print?”
“Despite the small print.”
Then, she gently places her hand on my face and says, “Of course you haven’t ruined your life. Things happen and people just muddle through and make the most of it. Don’t worry, my love. It won’t be as bad as you think. And you’ve got me. We’ll cope. It’ll be fine, you’ll see. And we’ll love this baby to bits.”
I put my hand on top of hers. I feel like crying again, but it’s different this time. As if on cue, the fire suddenly bursts into life, roaring up the chimney.
“Right,” she says, leaping up, “that tea’s brewed by now.”
When I sip the tea, it blazes a warm path all the way down to my toes, making them wiggle, and I’m positively glowing with the heat from the fire. I kick a balloon to mum and she hits it back and for a few minutes we behave like little kids, hitting the ballon back and forth. Then she lights the candles and it’s time to make my wish.
There is only one wish I can make. That everything will turn out well. And I blow as hard as I can, blowing out the candles, blowing away all the baby’s small print. What the hell.
“Hi sweetheart,” I say softly under my breath, beaming.
Krystyna Smallman lives in sunny Spain and her stories have been published in magazines and online and have even won the odd prize.
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The director cursed under his breath for the fourth time.
“Goddamnit! He’s shaking again.” He turned to his assistant. “Does our star have a problem that I don’t know about? Is he taking something?”
“Not that I know of, seems a straight-talking, straight-shooting guy, I don’t think he’s into drugs or anything.”
“CUT! Okay, get his ass up here, there’s something wrong that needs sorting out, and I’m getting it sorted right here, right now!”
The actor appeared shortly later, wrapped in a silk dressing gown, face lined with stress and bags under his eyes.
“What the hell is going on, Augan? You were shaking like a goddam leaf. That’s the fourteenth take this morning, I’ve had enough!’
“Sorry, Tony, it’s the weed, I’m trying to quit.”
“Pot?”
“No, cigarettes. I’m trying to cultivate a more clean-cut image: Augan the organic.”
Tony thought briefly about the Viagra that was diluted into Augan’s drink supply, the plastic surgery and bionics that the studio had invested in to keep Augan at the top of the porn trade.
“You’re a jackass, Augan — do you really think people who watch porn are really into things organic?”
“Well, there was that scene with the carrots…”
“For God’s sake, Augan, just have a smoke, will you, then let’s get it done.”
“Okay, boss.”
“Augan?”
“Yeah?”
“With all the women, the fame and fortune and everything, why did you start smoking in the first place?”
“Stops me masturbating, boss.”
Douglas Pugh lives in Northern Ontario with a logical wife and an insane menagerie. He likes to believe that he fills the gap in the middle. Bleeding words onto a page help with his delusion. When he’s not writing, he’s probably painting or out riding his bike. He writes poetry, short stories and has two thriller novels for which he’s looking for an agent. During 2009 he has been published in The Smoking Poet, Leaf Garden Press, Every Day Poetry, Mnemosyne Journal and Short Story Library. He hopes to one day publish at least one book of his words.
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Podcast EDF010 — “EF 5” by J.C. Towler, read by J.C. Towler
“EF 5” was originally published in EDF on December 18, 2009.
J.C. Towler spins tales of mystery, suspense, science fiction and is particularly fond the deep, penetrating horror tale. The Outer Banks of North Carolina is his home which is odd considering he’s afraid of the ocean and doesn’t eat fish. His latest suspense story “Lottery Winner” appears in Your Darkest Dreamspell available at Amazon and other fine retailers. You can check out “The Fall” at Spinetingler.com and “Scales” in the Monstrous: 20 Tales of Giant Creature Terror anthology.
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The guests gathered at Dismal House. It was time to dance the Macabre. It was a very old dance, and a great favorite among that set.
“I am infinitely grateful to you, my friends, for gathering here on the occasion of my expiration,” said the Marquis. He was properly aged, amply wattled, brandy-complected. Lace overflowed from his cuffs and collar, presaging the upholstery of the coffin. “As you know, fellow Christians, it is in death that we can finally embrace one another in the true spirit of equality and fraternity, as Christ would wish. In life, wealth and breeding may separate us — sad to say, but these are the exigencies by which the world operates. The farmer may not abandon his plow, nor the beggar his lice, nor the bishop his crosier — so the noblesse cling to their oblige.” Applause; the Marquis was a renowned wit. “And, yay, verily, a heavy burden it is. But I have borne it proudly for my threescore and seven, and now I shuffle off.”
“Fuck that,” said the farmer, the one invited representative of his trade. “He can take his obleej to Hell with him.”
“I hear ya,” coughed the beggar. He never spoke; he hacked, or wheezed, or gurgled, the tubercular effects of a life in gutters. “We’ll circle close during the Dance, you and I, and together stick this shiv twixt his ribs.” He displayed a sharpened scrap of iron. “At the final crescendo, before he passes natural-like — a violent, painful death for him. He’ll not escape retribution.”
The Marquis tapped his glass to regain attention. “But, it is also the privilege of my class to see beyond the veil of perception, and now I deign to share a fact or two with you. In tradition, bishop, king, slave, all go shuffling to the grave…”
“All go shuffling to the grave!” The guests picked up the refrain.
The Marquis waved his hand. “But, it is not so! I am pleased to announce the première of a new Paradise. It never seemed right that those of us who contributed to civilization so much more than the base villeins should have to rub elbows with you after the grave, so I spoke to God – yes, God, and hie thee to Hell if you don’t believe me. We unrolled the plans and made a few changes. Now, when you die, your eternal reward will more resemble your lot in life; we will go on helming the ship of society, and you serfs can go on in the nobility of your labor, forever and ever, amen. I would not have you face a fearful and unknown territory; what would the working class want with an endless holiday, anyway? They would not know what to do with their leisure and would spend all their time drunk on gin.” Applause. Even the farmer clapped. He admitted to himself that the prospect of eternity at God’s feet terrified him with boredom. The plow was comfortable. To labor for the benefit of someone better than him was all he had ever asked or desired. If work was holy, he could be a saint.
And a further, deeper concern that he scarce dared acknowledge was the howling void within himself that he glimpsed on idle Sundays. After a busy week at the plow, he did not know what to do with himself. He did not care for reading or contemplation, and was weekly paralyzed with shock at the sudden company of this stranger, himself. He regarded with horror his declining years when failing health would enforce idleness, and he knew he would probably die quickly, as his father and his father’s father had, when they could no longer grasp their tools.
Only the beggar withheld his applause, scowling at the Marquis.
“I’m still going to do it, even if you ain’t,” he said. The farmer reached out to stop him, but the virtuoso struck the first note on his viol, and there was no resisting the dance. The beggar pushed his way through the crowd.
The dancers joined hands and circled, singing the first and last song:
Be you bishop, king or slave,
All go shuffling to the grave.
When you hear the call of the crow,
Dust and ash you will know!
Their bones creaked. They spun faster and faster, coming together with lifted hands, and back out again. Their tight harmony unraveled into dissonance. The melody lost its path, dissolving into senseless syllables floating on the tempo like flotsam in the rapids. It was a dark thing, a burgeoning thing out of the antediluvian past, a tune of the monsters outside the little light of the night-fire, a sinuosity of dread, a caustic glowworm that nestled in the mind. The orchestra played faster, faster. As the harpsichord trilled the final notes, the guests raised their cups and cried, “Memento Mori!”
“Memento Mori!”
“Memento Mori!”
A wordless shout shattered the joyous reverie. The beggar stood before the Marquis, shiv pressed to his throat. “In the name of the people, justice will be done!”
But the Marquis made no move to resist him; he was dead.
Realizing this, the beggar dropped his crude weapon. He dipped his fingertip in the Marquis’s goblet and touched it to his tongue.
“Cyanide!” he said.
Jens Rushing is attacking your mind.
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My father is a photograph. He smiles in his uniform, medals pinned to his chest, a flag in the background.
He was with us in the living room for the last three years, but when Uncle Jim started visiting Mum regularly, she insisted that I build a shrine on my bedside table.
I told her both of us needed a shrine and not a distraction. She told me that Uncle Jim was not a distraction. I told her that was not what I meant, even though that was what I meant.
Uncle Jim was a mechanic who smelled of gas and I was not particularly fond of him.
He bought me a couple of video games for my birthday and I made sure that he saw them in the bin, when he took the trash out after the party.
We frequented the movies on Saturdays and I refused to sit between them. I didn’t need a false impression of security; I wanted my father munching popcorn in my ear.
Every morning, I would leave the photograph on top of the television and Mum would return it to my room when I went to school.
I have moved on, she said, when I asked her about it. We have to adapt.
I remembered how in the beginning she would cry herself to sleep every night with me holding onto her. It was like those candlelight vigils people held. We did not adapt, we wept.
You will not understand, she said.
Is it because of his face? I asked.
She did not reply.
I caressed the photograph. I kissed my father. His face was charred, his nose was missing, his eyelids were absent and his scalp — the surface of a bloody moon. He was beautiful.
The house felt alien now that there was a trespasser living in our midst. Some nights, I listened to the vast gulf of silence that separated me from the secrets in mum’s bedroom. I dreamt that I was locked in a closet while a creature of fire and smoke, barely visible through the gap in the door, paced my bedroom.
One Sunday morning I was informed that Uncle Jim was moving in, and in response I spat out the piece of toast I was chewing on and went straight to my room.
A few hours later, Mum knocked on the door. She wanted me to say hello to Uncle Jim and help him set up his large screen TV. She said that he was even happy for me to play my Xbox on it.
She banged on the door.
I could hear Uncle Jim say, let him be, but Mum persisted.
The door stayed locked.
I listened to the sound of things being moved, to conversations that were meaningless and irritating because I was considering my unfortunate situation.
What would become of this new ‘space’ that I shared with the intruders and traitors?
I would not join in Mum’s delusions. I was not going to let their fake antics, especially the touching and kissing, spoil the memory of my father.
So later that night, when Mum announced that she was going to drop some stuff over at her friend’s place, I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to express my displeasure. I waited till I heard her drive away. Then I grabbed the can of gasoline from Uncle Jim’s workshop truck and burned down our home.
Strangely, I felt no sorrow for the burning structure that housed my memories. It occurred to me that a home was a creature of change, like a butterfly. A home perhaps at some stage in its lifecycle could be a bonfire for what it once contained and now cannot be revived.
I stood watching the flames, my body bathed in its heat and light, and when I had seen enough, I took the frame from my pack.
My father is a photograph and I am a reflection.
Nikesh Murali’s poems and short stories have appeared in ebooks, ezines, anthologies, journals and magazines all over the world. His works have been translated into several languages. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia for which he was awarded the Griffith University Award for Academic Excellence in 2005, and his Masters in Teaching from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia and a Bachelors degree in English Literature and World History from University of Kerala, India. He is a tutor and researcher at James Cook University and is working towards his Doctorate in Creative Writing.
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