Friday Flash Fiction: Endings

There’s flash this week largely because I wanted to write something new but I wanted a warm up before I started. It is likely that F3 posting will continue to be a bit irregular as I need to start trying to write stuff that I have a chance of getting published elsewhere and so I’m planning to focus F3 more on story forms that only really work on the internet

This will by its nature mean that I have to be more selective about ideas and that will, in turn, take longer.

I’ll experiment to see what a likely frequency is and then let you know. For now here’s this weeks:

Endings
By Neil Beynon

I can tell their story just as easy as looking at them. Always can.

There is the woman leaning against the wall as if listening for something, only she isn’t listening. Not any more. Her purse has spilled open on the paving stones, a big chunky black Mercedes key, a mobile phone, and a note – a shopping list – flapping between her fingers in the breeze. A time written in biro on the back of her hand bearing the legend KIDS.

I move on. The sound of sirens in the distance speaks of comrades on the way and I know I could wait but the screams are still coming from inside. I move up the steps. The grip of my gun is slick from the sweat on my hand and I can feel the sun burning the back of my neck as I move up to the doorway. There have been a lot of slipstreams this summer.

I don’t know why they always pick libraries.

The man that’s sprawled between the automatic doors is still breathing but the black pool of blood underneath him, slowly seeping into the files under his arm, means he won’t be for much longer. Nothing I can do. The pink charity rubber band on his wrist tells enough without the too pale skin, the broken spectacles taped at the arm, the ghost of a ring on his wedding finger and the take away belly.

I avoid the blood and step through the doorway into the building. The aircon is cool on the back of my neck. My shirt envelopes me in a misguided effort to keep the heat that feels more like being covered in a wet flannel. My gun is loose in my hand but I dare not wipe my hands dry.

Bodies and books lay everywhere. Tales entwined with stories, lives with legends.

An out of work writer down on his luck but who believed he had one more tale in him, on the verge of getting signed by the look of the letter clutched in his hand.  A coked up dealer next to him, possibly hiding from one of my colleagues…but no… a chemistry book lies next to him. The man’s stash has spilled across the floor and has turned pink with the creeping blood as if mocking him.

The working mum on the phone to one of her family when she shouldn’t have been, her Bluetooth flashing in the dim light of the library like an LED heart. I can hear someone calling, concerned, over the little headset speaker as I round the corner but there is no one to reply.

There is too much glass in here. It’s not like how libraries looked when I was a boy, now they aren’t just full of books but computers, CDs and magazines. Everything spread out in chrome and glass in an attempt to acknowledge the 21st century, to cling to life just a little longer.

I can see my own face, reflected, as I turn the bend. I don’t recognise myself. I haven’t been able to for a while. For all my certainty about others’ stories I am uncertain what my own is.

The slipstream stands in the next corridor. It pays me no attention as it lowers its mandibles to tear the head from the body of the security guard whose shirt looks worn on the shoulder, his hat fallen to reveal a Mohawk and whose right hand nails seem to be a tad too long. I wonder if he was a good player.

I lift the gun and remove the safety.

The creature looks at me. Its carapace is a mottled purple that shimmers in the light and makes it seem almost insubstantial and its tar black eyes are bigger than my mouth. I can see myself in them but I look different again, distorted and almost heroic if with a dash of the tragic – grey around the temples does that. We stay like that for what feels like an eternity but in reality it is only as long as it takes it to swallow the man’s skull. I place the gun down in front of me and move back five paces. My eyes do not move from the creature until I am a way back. Then I run. It seemed like the only thing to do.

I could see my story: and I didn’t like the end.

A kind of magic

Because I miss Freddie more than I will miss Michael:

Also, in the rest of world: shit is happening. Just saying.

Overboiling

Hot isn’t it?

I spent most of the weekend seeking shade and working on a long-hand draft of a new short story.

I really enjoyed working on something new, even though I know that what I produced fell short of where I was at with short stories this time last year. In many ways that was the point of the exercise. You see in trying to avoid one trap (not finishing things) I fell foul of another trap: overdrafting.

When I last updated you on the writing I was redrafting (despite promising myself I wouldn’t) The Scarred God in an attempt to turn it into something of marketable length. I made good progress at first until, as it does sometimes, Life got in the way. When I returned to the work I found the new material poor and awkward, it felt wrong, it felt like the story was being overboiled and bending out of shape.

It was depressing as hell.

Meanwhile, in the real world Life was happening, things weren’t panning out as I’d hoped and I was feeling pretty fed up. I decided to write some flash to finish something, anything, new in the hope it would kick me out of my funk and let me get on with stuff. I couldn’t make it work. Hell, I couldn’t even think of a thing to write.

I was blocked.

I’m not impervious to writer’s block. I distrust it. I don’t really believe in it as a thing in itself but as a symptom of other issues.

When I thought about it I realised I hadn’t written anything substantial and new since autumn of last year. I’d produced a couple of first drafts before starting the aborted redraft of Forever and then shelved them as I laboured at that ill-fated draft for five months and then mucked about with The Scarred God for a couple of months. I needed a change.

Hence I have put The Scarred God to one side. I have decided to produce some new short stories to clean off the rust and then I plan a final line edit of The Scarred God (not worrying about length but just polishing the prose). I will decide what to do with it when I’m done but I imagine, to keep me tinkering, I will release it as a podcast or some such thing. Not, you understand, to self-publish but to move on. We’ll see.

I have also set myself a minimum amount of new fiction, novels and short stories, to produce (and submit) a year.

Lesson learned.

Review: Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay returns to cinemas with a second installment of the Transformers franchise, that glorious silly commercial-in-disguise piece of Americana film making. I’m not being sarcastic: I enjoyed the first film as I marked on this blog at the time.

The question for me was: could Bay continue to surf the nostalgia or would he wipe out?

The story picks up a couple of years after the first film. The Autobots are working for the U.S. government hunting down Decepticons, Sector Seven has been disbanded and Sam is still seeing Mikaela as he heads to college. Things are ostensibly going well but that would make for a dull film. It turns out the federal government are growing concerned that the Autobots are actually attracting the Decepticons, in reality the Decepticons want something called The Matrix of Leadership for someone called The Fallen and Sam appears to be channeling the same information that drove his great grandfather mad.

Keeping up?

No, and to be honest I didn’t either. The film has plenty of Bayesque action sequences that do exactly what you’d expect and involve big explosions, breathtaking CG and provide plenty of spectacle on the IMAX. There’s also the requisite leering camera all over Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas pushing this film hard as the boys own adventure that it is. Plenty of laughs from a comedy double act of Autobots, John Turturro back as the mad Agent Simmons and Kevin Dunn and Julie White are a cringeworthy delight as Sam’s parents. All the elements are there for a successful sequel.

But.

The film is plagued by odd decisions and poor choices. There is a confusing, complex storyline that really has no place in a film that should be light-hearted fluff.  A poor choice of actor for the character of The Fallen in Tony Todd*. Todd’s distinctive voice is instantly recognisable, as well as totally out of place, and breaks the suspension of disbelief because of his association with other iconic characters, destroying the point of doing photoreal CG. I didn’t see the Fallen, I heard the Candyman.

I am flummoxed by the decision to have Shia LeBoeuf play the straight man as it throws off the dynamic of the central characters and necessitates the presence of an extremely irritating sidekick in Ramon Rodriguez. LeBouf is entertaining as a comedic lead but dull as a straight out hero verging on the tragic.

The combined impact of these flaws is to make the narrative arc much harder to follow than in the first film. This lack of coherence is further compounded by sloppy editing and poor continuity that makes the first act feel more like an episode of the cartoon than a multimillion pound blockbuster and not in a good way.

That said, at its core Transformers is – selling toys aside – about giant alien robots kicking the shit out of each other and that’s something I, for one, can live with. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Revenge of the Fallen. Unlike it’s predecessor there are much more extended and frequent Transformer fight sequences, sweeps of new robots and the welcome addition of Soundwave. The film hits enough of the high spots to provide the spectacle and enjoyment of a decent popcorn film that doesn’t tax the brain too much. Even G – who has no childhood nostalgia built up around Transformers – enjoyed it.

If you’ve seen the first film, are prepared to go in without expectation and enjoy popcorn films then you’ll have a good time.

Otherwise: give it a miss.

* Note: I am not saying Tony Todd is a bad actor, just that his casting in this role is problematic because his voice is so distinctive he is recognisable and that I find it hard to hear his voice without thinking of Candyman.

Yes, erm, long time no see…

There are various reasons I haven’t been around and I don’t intend to get into them here.

It seems like I’ve been saying that a lot for which I apologise. I anticipate a more normal service resuming tomorrow with either some flash fiction or a review. Beyond that I think there will be a writing update very soon and perhaps some updates about what I am doing with this here blog.

Tonight I am writing The Plan (an actual plan or the plan to be precise about it, as opposed to a story).

May be back later with some friendly plugs for folks that you should check out.

Bye for now.

Britain

“The elections are a matter for the Iranian people, but if there are serious questions that are now being asked about the conduct of the elections, they have got to be answered,” – Gordon Brown

I applaud Brown for this sentiment.

Bloody good thing we don’t have to worry about an unelected Prime Minister and a divinely appointed head of state, don’t you think?

Pass the tea.

Luck

So I turned 30 this week.

I am now at an age which I never, when I was young, imagined being. Other than that and a distressing inability to read without my glasses, I don’t feel much different. Anyway, I’ve been celebrating this week.

Last weekend I was in Wales to do the family thing. It was great to see all my family, including a fair few of my cousins and my niece (who is now walking). There were also many incredible gifts, including an awesome chess set that my family had clubbed together to buy, a very cool book of the day I was born from my sister (who is in Oz) and a bunch of other, equally cool, stuff.

On my actual birthday I had my customary day off and pretty much did whatever I wanted: got up late, wrote, read, went to the cinema, hung out with G, the usual. And this weekend I am off with friends (many of whom I have known half my life) for a bloody good knees up.

I have survived three decades, I am healthy, I have a large closeknit family, good friends and G.

I am very lucky.

Back

I’ve been away for the weekend seeing family as my birthday, rather awkwardly, falls on a Wednesday this year.

I had a fab time but am a bit done in by the journey home. Normal service resumes tomorrow.

Comrade Memory

There’s lots of fuss about D-Day, because today is the anniversary, and why we should remember and isn’t it terrible the Brits not insignificant contribution seems to be being glossed over by our French cousins and yada, yada, yada. I know that the Allied invasion of occupied Europe was amazing but we do have a tendency to overlook alternative experiences and contributions to the war.

Why don’t we make more of an effort to tell the story of nations that really suffered?

Case in point – last weekend I watched a BBC documentary on the experience at Omaha and whilst I accept that Omaha was a bloody and hard won victory I did feel they over-egged it.

Look: the losses at Omaha were bad (4500) but comparatively the US lost far more the previous winter at Monte Casino (90,000 from the 5th army alone). In fact, American losses during the war were much less than other participants. In the total run of the war the US lost less than half a million lives and, furthermore, they lost less than 2k of their civilian population. That’s right: more American civilians lost their lives during 9/11 than during the second world war, which may go some way to explaining the US reaction to 9/11.

I digress.

I am not having a pop at America, their entry into the war was critical and, if they hadn’t come in when they had, there’s a good chance I would not be here to thump on about those who suffered the most rarely getting any airtime at all. I’m not even saying don’t commemorate their contribution, more I’m asking what about the others?

No, I’m not talking about Britain. In point of fact, British casualties – like the Americans and others – weren’t actually as high as people like to imagine with total deaths still amounting to less than 1% of the population and half what they were during The Great War (British civilian deaths were actually higher during The Great War).

Now contrast, for a moment, with our occasional sparring partners: the Russians (or the Soviet Union as they were styling themselves at the time). Total military casualties during the Second World War were estimated at 10,700,000; to put that in perspective the British population circa 1939 stood at 47 million and change. Yet the true picture is worse: military casualties were actually lower than Russian civilian deaths that were estimated at 11, 400, 000. Yes, that’s right: during WW2 it was actually safer to be in the Russian army than to be a civilian. In total, the Soviet Union lost nearly 14% of the population during the war and suffered more casualties than any other nation on the planet.

And they still got to Berlin before the rest of us.

The Chinese, again overlooked, also lost a truly horrific number of people with 20 million casualties of which 16 million were civilian and therefore the highest number of civilian dead ever recorded in modern warfare if not history, courtesy of a hideous war related famine. Germany, Poland, the Dutch East Indies, Japan and Yugoslavia also took massive losses by comparison with the US, UK and even France.

The problem with the Second World War as a piece of history, and the thing that distinguished it from The Great War, is that it’s too easy to paint a black and white picture, too easy to draw a line from the war to a few belligerent countries, too easy to portray in terms of good and evil. The Soviet Union, however, doesn’t fit that model very well, after all: they sided with Hitler in the beginning, were just as nasty to their own population and only came over to the Allies when Germany turned on them. My enemy’s enemy may be my friend, if he helps me take my enemy out, but no one trusts a turncoat and Stalin – like Hitler – was that and more.

In the way the rest of the allies behaved towards Russia during and immediately after the end of the Second World War lies the seeds of the cold war. Yet that’s all in the past isn’t it? We’ve moved on now, there’s no need to rake over the past, we don’t care and neither do they. Well, remember that next time you shake your head at the news, wondering why Vladimir Putin is so anxious to control the countries that border Russia, or why China wants very little to do with the rest of us.

Remember that 43, 000,000 dead.

NB – I have focussed this post on nation state casualty figures, primarily because it is common in war documentaries to talk about the sacrifice made by the populations of nation states and I still feel there is a somewhat unfair bias towards the Western Allies. However, it is important to also note that 5.7 million Jewish people across occupied Europe lost their lives, that’s around 78% of the Jewish population of occupied Europe, in case you were wondering. It would be nice to think it would serve as a reminder to the world community on the horror of genocide but recent attempted genocides including the killing of 800,000-1 million Tutsis in Rwanda would suggest otherwise.

Fridays

I’m quite busy today and unsure, as yet, if I will have any flash.

However, it’s been a while since I posted any music and so here’s The Cure: