Friday Flash Fiction: Blink

Blink
By Neil Beynon

Matt had always been angry.

No one was sure why, least of all him. It would well up inside him, bubbling higher and higher until like a kettle it tripped a switch and suddenly he would be calm again. Wondering why he had reacted like that. Trouble was: the size of the kettle kept growing.

It was a Tuesday when it first happened. Matt’s anger settled on him like an iron cloak, pulling his neck and shoulders tight, his head spinning with the strain of it. He closed his eyes as a last attempt at grabbing at some self restraint.

When he opened his eyes the object of his anger was gone.

The man – his name was Jeff, he had twin baby girls called Sally and Sarah, and a wife called Alison who was rumoured to be having an affair with Nick from Accounts – had been talking about the need for rationalisation. He had been in mid flow. Now he was gone. There was no sign of him at all.

Confused, Matt waited a few minutes before wandering from the room, reasoning that Jeff had finished and left whilst Matt zoned out. Matt zoned out frequently, it was a way to cope with the dull monotony and so it was not an unreasonable supposition.

But it was wrong.

As he discovered when queuing for the train that evening, the heaving conga pushing him this way and that. Matt’s mobile was knocked from his hand, shattering and drawing stares from those around but not from the person who had knocked it. Matt seethed. He closed his eyes to count to ten and then –

They were gone. Everyone in the station concourse: passengers, guards, shop attendants, cleaners, tramps, all gone. Frightened Matt ran out of the station towards the street. People still walked around, buses still ran, there was nothing untoward. Still the station was empty.

Matt got the bus home.

Matt was calm for a long time after that. Maybe as long as a month but eventually the memory faded to the sepia tones of something he’d imagined rather than something that had happened. After all, people don’t just disappear?

It was a Saturday when he finally lost control. They went to a supermarket, they being Matt and his girlfriend Anne. Matt did not like supermarkets, insisting if he were to come that they leave early to avoid the rush but half the city had the same idea, it was after all sale season. Instead of arriving in good time they had to queue for an hour to get in the car park and wrestle with a man from Finchley, who stank vaguely of urine, to get a trolley. Really it was a miracle Matt lasted until they got to the marmalade section.

In the marmalade section, Anne talking about some trip she had booked, Matt tried to make a decision but it wasn’t easy. The supermarket had stacked enough marmalade for half the western world: orange, lemon, lime, prune, thin cut, thick cut, traditional, finest, gourmet, home made, free range, super-size, medium, small and, of course, not one was the actual jar he was looking for.

He picked up a jar to look at it and, so tightly packed was the shelf, the jar toppled from the shelf, meeting the floor with a loud crack as it shattered, spilling its sugary innards across the lino. Everyone looked.

“You’ll have to pay for that,” said the attendant behind Matt, the same attendant who had just over-stacked the shelf.

His heart was pounding in his chest like a mule kicking for freedom; over the sound of it he could hear Anne berating him. Aware that hitting the attendant was not a good idea Matt closed his eyes.

Silence – and then he remembered.

Matt’s eyes snapped open. It was too late: the supermarket was empty. No attendant, no staff at all, no shoppers and no Anne. Matt ran out into the street, a cold hand twisting in his gut, bile in the back of his throat as looked for Anne. In the car park people went on with their daily business.

Back in the supermarket: silence.

Matt sat down on a pile of tins. The cold fear was slowly subsiding, along with the shock and in their place some other emotion was rising, at first in small bubbles and then with increasing violence. Matt was angry, angry with the supermarket for being so busy, with Anne for bringing him here, with the world for making him angry and with himself for being so angry.

Matt screamed long and hard until his throat was raw, spittle flecking the side of his mouth. When he was done the supermarket was still empty. People from the car park ambled cautiously towards the shop to see what all the noise was about and Matt reached a decision.

He closed his eyes.

Afterwards no one could say what happened. The people who came in from the car park asked about the screaming but no one in the supermarket had heard anything at all. Other than a lady who was convinced she had lost something – although she had no idea what – there was nothing else out of the ordinary that Saturday.

Carefully Anne stepped over the marmalade that had been spilt on the floor. Some people, she thought, have no idea how to clean up after themselves and she left the marmalade section. After all, she didn’t like it anyway: too bitter.

Friday Free Fiction: Bag Lady

I went over, hence the change in title. This is an experiment. Feedback welcomed.

Bag Lady
By Neil Beynon

I confess there are days when I do not feel like writing. Days when the page flashes a white neon tundra at me and the cursor blinks accusingly at me. On these days I fear it - whatever it is - has gone for good and panic wraps its steely arms around my chest.

Bad form I know but still: it’s true.

As I sit here struggling to think of something to say, something new to grab your attention, my mind wanders, it pulls at the thread of memories past, picks them up, turns them around, looking for new ways to stitch them, new patterns that might entertain. One by one they are discarded like used tissue.

I type a sentence. Something to hook my attention. I let it sit there, its naked serifs flapping in the wind. This is going to be hard.

The memory when it comes is not picked up. It invades.

It begins with a smell. A faint whisper at the edge of my nostrils, an odour dancing on the slight swells and troughs of the air as it curls around you like a silent, invisible gas. It is the smell of dust undercut with bad perfume and urine, shot through with notes of faeces. It is the smell of old age. It is the smell of death barely postponed…

#

…It is the smell of the old woman pressing against me before I can even get to the paramedic. She is bleeding. Her forehead is a mess of grey skin, pink flesh and blood. The woman’s movement is so violent she gets blood all over my uniform. And dirt, her right hand leaves dark smudges all over my uniform; I won’t get them out, no matter how hard I wash.

“Don’t let them take it,” she exhales in my ear. Her breathe could strip enamel and it leaves me feeling giddy as the paramedic separates us, helping her to sit down. She is clutching something, a small bundle of rags, to her chest with her left arm. The paramedic makes the mistake of touching the bundle in trying to help her to rest easier and earns a swift cuff from her free arm.

It leaves a welt on his cheek, red and angry, as he stumbles backwards.

“Jesus,” he says.

“Looks like you’ve made a new friend Matt,” I reply.

Matt is a good paramedic and he doesn’t give me shit like a lot of them do. That he’s here is a good sign: calm under fire. I can feel the crowd watching me as I lead Matt to one side, the old lady with his partner.

#

I delete the line. It was a stupid hook: melodramatic and self-indulgent. The starkness of the page is hurting my eyes, a migraine loitering with intent and so I look out the window at the street.

There are kids playing. Harmless, shrieking and laughter but it jars against the inside of my skull, jacks my shoulders up. And I never used to be like this so…

#

“…so what happened?”

“Apparently, she’s been wandering round all day,” says Matt. “Then some kids turn up, start jeering at her, trying to take the bundle off her, throwing things at her and she goes down hard. She cracked her head on the curb by the looks of it.”

“Right,” I reply. I know the answer before I ask but I need to none the less. “And no one said anything to the kids?”

“No,” says Matt. “No they didn’t. And they’re long gone. As soon as it gets serious they all run.”

“OK,” I reply. “Is she ok to give a statement?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But give it a go.”

I turn to talk to the old woman then stop.

“Why is she talking to the bundle?” I ask Matt.

“She thinks it’s a baby,” he replies.

It does in fact look baby shaped. My eyebrow must have risen to full mast because Matt continues: “It’s not a baby, just some rotting vegetable she’s picked up somewhere along the line. She won’t let go of it.”

#

I select all the words I have just written and delete them. Hollow things unworthy of the save command. I look up vegetables on Wikipedia. I can’t find the one the old woman had. I do see a pumpkin. I hate pumpkins, even the smell of them is…

#

…is turgid and I do not wish to experience it close up again. That fetid stench is wafting from the woman, if she were in a cartoon green lines would be streaming off her. Still, a job is a job.

My throat is burning by the time I’m within a foot of her.

“Hello,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“Hello,” she replies.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Ann,” whispers Matt.

“Ann,” I repeat. “Ann, can you tell me what happened?”

“Trolls,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“Trolls,” she repeats. “Pigmy trolls attacked me, tried to take my baby. Please don’t let them take my baby.”

Her free hand grips my arm with surprising strength and attempts to bend my will to hers.

I step back, extricating myself with care. There were no trolls here, just children without the empathy to leave an old woman at home, depressing but hardly a newsflash.

This woman’s mind fractured a long time before she cracked her skull on the concrete and I don’t have time to piece it together. I look at the crowd. No one meets my eyes but that’s ok, I’m looking for something else.

#

Trolls…I could write about trolls. I wrote about them once but no one else much liked it. The thing about trolls is they are metaphorically limited. A trope that is hard to use outside a specific context.

I look at the news, hoping for inspiration. Instead I see the bag lady staring up at me from the local. I don’t remember it being that bright but…

#

The sun glints off the window of the ambulance. The glare makes me blink.

“Alright,” I say to Matt stepping back. “You can take her. I can’t get anything sensible out of her.”

“We’ve been trying,” he replies. “We can’t get her in the ambulance without taking the bundle off her and she goes mental every time we try.”

“Goes mental?”

“Ha ha. You know what I mean,” he said pointing at his face.

“Can’t you just let her keep it?”

“It’s a biohazard,” he replies.

“It’s a bloody vegetable,” I reply.

“I agree, still I can’t take it in the van,” he replies.

“Then just take it off her,” I say.

“Tried,” he says, pointing at his face and then his arm, a set of teeth mark lining his wrist.

“Oh for f***’s sake,” I reply.

It only takes two paces to return to her. I pull the bundle gently but firmly from her grasp without warning or asking. Subsequently I am out of range again before she registers what’s happened. The vegetable stares up at me from the rags. It looks like a deformed and rotting turnip, surface slick with something that looks like milk. It smells worse than she does.

Ann screams long and loud. Expletives rain down on me like a flash flood. Then the threats: she’ll kill me, she’ll die, she’ll…I’ve stopped listening. Instead, I drop the bundle in a nearby bin.

#

My arse is numb from sitting too long. Still no words. I stand and run my fingers through my hair, some of it comes away in my hands, a little bit every day, soon I’ll have to bite the bullet and shave it all off. Funny, I never thought I’d be bald. Then again I never thought I’d be a lot of things.

That shopkeeper, the one with the CCTV camera, had an awful comb over. He was about as much help…

#

…the shopkeeper sends me away with: “Sorry mate, it’s just a…what is it called…deterrent. No tape. Tape costs money.” There is an awkward beat where I decide that it isn’t worth an argument and turn on my heel.

The street is quiet when I come out. The crowd’s gaze turns on me once more, a hostile look, an accusing look full of unspoken words. I look around for Matt.

I find him in the back of the ambulance. His face is set as he presses down on the woman’s sternum, as if he’s trying to force her back into her body. I watch as his colleague swings shut the door. I’m still watching as the ambulance pulls off, lights flashing blue on blue.



#

The woman died.

It wasn’t her head. She’d had cancer for a long time. The doctors couldn’t understand how she’d been walking around given the pain she must have been in. She just shut down: no ones fault.

I close the laptop. I can beat my mind against the page as long as I want but it won’t let go of that bundle, and trapped behind it are the words.

But there you have it: Some days I just don’t feel like writing.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

It had to happen sooner or later…

OK. After 47, more or less, consecutive Friday Flash Fiction entries I’m afraid I’ve lucked out this week and there will be no entry today. *Hangs head in shame*

I did actually write a piece but - although the idea is good - it’s just not polished enough to post and so I’m going to work on it some more before posting it next Friday. I don’t want to just put things out there for the sake of it - I want to grab your attention, to entertain you.

In the meantime, and so you don’t feel let down, I’d like to draw your attention to some of the stories I’m most proud of from 2008 (the full archive is available on the nav bar above). They are in no particular order:

Pixies
After The Rain
Faraway
Territory
Touched

You can check out Friday Free Fiction at Futurismic. And don’t forget the other fictioneers (apologies if I miss anyone - feel free to self-promote on the comments thread):

Greg O’Bryne
Sarah Ellender
Shaun C. Green
Dr Ian Hocking
Gareth D. Jones
Jay Lake
Martin McGrath
Dan Pawley
Justin Pickard
Gareth Lyn Powell (Originator)
Paul Raven

And remember kids: I shall return Mwaaahahahaha!

Friday Flash Fiction: The Cold Glass

Ok, here’s this week’s offering. Feedback- as ever - appreciated.

The Cold Glass
By Neil Beynon

It started on a Thursday. It was a strange feeling in Nick’s chest that grew steadily throughout the day and continued through Friday. He felt, alternatively, like a large weight had been rested across his torso and then, at other moments, like his torso was entirely hollow, as if his insides had been extracted with a giant syringe.

It was unsettling.

On Saturday matters came to a head and he could no longer hide it from his girlfriend. That morning a shriek rudely woke Nick from his slumber. Startled he saw Susan, his girlfriend, back pressed against the wall clutching a sheet to her front, masking her curves as best she could.

“Susan, what the he..?” Nick began; his throat raw and parched. He tailed off as he followed he horrified gaze back to the bed, there was another figure laid out on the bed next to him. Nick slid from the bed as if ejected by a giant spring. Susan made strange noise in the back of her throat, here eyes darting from the figure in the bed to Nick.

The movement woke the sleeping man and blearily he lifted his head to look at what the disturbance was. Susan slid down the wall in a slow faint, her head making a dull thud as it struck the bare polished floorboards. Nick gazed at the face, both familiar and strange for he had never seen it from this angle.

It was Nick’s own.

Identical expressions of shock did battle with each other for an independent face. In the end it was the Nick who stood that spoke first, his voice cracked and breaking like their sense of reality.

“Who…what…are you?” he whispered.

“I’m Nick. Who are you?” replied bed Nick, his voice equally uncertain.

“You can’t be,” replied standing Nick. “I’m Nick.”

“Bullshit,” said bed Nick. He was angry now, sitting up and raising his finger to standing Nick. Standing Nick stared at his own birthmark on the man’s forearm, ran his hand down his forearm to where his birthmark sat, it was still there.

“Tell me something only I’d know,” answered standing Nick.

Bed Nick blinked. He too had spotted the birthmark. He paused before he answered, uncertain if he were doing the right thing. When he spoke his words were measured.

“When I was a boy I once saw someone killed,” said bed Nick. “We were in Africa, in a convoy, I was supposed to be asleep but I wasn’t, I was looking out of the window from under the blanket…”

“…And you saw the guard at the checkpoint kill the driver in front he…”

“…cut the driver’s throat.”

They finished the end in unison, each staring at the other in shock.

“God,” they both whispered.

Both Nick’s carried the unconscious Susan to the bed; they placed her carefully under the duvet and made their way down the stairs to talk. Upstairs Susan slept fitfully, lost in dreams in which an army of Nick marched through the town taking whatever they wanted.

Bed Nick lit a cigarette before standing Nick had a chance. The smell reminded standing Nick of his parched throat and he poured himself a glass of water instead, refusing the lighter as it was offered. They sat either side of the kitchen table, as if playing chess, each one daring the other to speak, to ask the question.

“How did it happen?” asked bed Nick eventually.

“I don’t know,” standing Nick answered. “I felt weird the last couple of days.”

“Me too,” said bed Nick.

“Which one of us is the real Nick?” asked standing Nick.

Bed Nick paused, drawing deeply on his cigarette. “Maybe we both are.”

“That’s not possible,” said standing Nick. “It can’t be.”

“Well I remember everything you do, feel the same as you do,” said bed Nick. “Doesn’t that make us the same person?”

“Not sure,” said standing Nick. “Although I remember reading something by some philosopher that said it would.”

“It was a physicist,” said bed Nick. “I remember that. Do you think one of us is from another universe then?”

“It would explain this…here right now…but not the feeling from the last few days…it’s like you came from inside…whilst I was asleep.”

“Or vice versa.”

Standing Nick stared at his counterpart, lounging in the chair, cigarette in hand. His mind raced over the morning’s events, reaching conclusions, tickling possibilities and giving birth to hypotheses. Susan was an ever present whisper in the back of standing Nick’s mind.

“You know this could be a good thing…” began standing Nick.

“…we could use this to our advantage,” continued bed Nick. “Think of the possibilities…work…crime…”

Standing Nick looked at bed Nick as he spoke. The way bed Nick’s eyes wandered round the kitchen, the twitching of his cigarette, the stubble on his jaw, the slight but ever present belly and the unspoken Susan on his lips. Standing Nick knew exactly what he was thinking of, exactly what possibilities he intended to start with and more, much more than he ever wanted to know.

Nick turned his back on his counterpart. Gazed out at the garden beyond the window, it was a wild and overgrown place that he’d let get out of hand. He really ought to sort it out. Idly his hand wrapped around a dirty knife on the draining board in front of him. Glancing down, even through the smeared grime, he could see his own reflection.

He didn’t like it.

Review: Cronos

Cronos was made in 1993 and still represents one of the most original takes on the vampire genre in recent years.

The film, Guillermo Del Toro’s third film, tells the story of Jesus Gris, an antique seller, who happens upon a golden scarab hidden in the base of a statue of an archangel. When the scarab, an invention of a 15th century alchemist, pierces his hand, Jesus finds himself changing: he has more energy, appears younger and begins to have problems with the brightness of the sun. Also he can’t stop himself allowing the scarab to pierce him.

Throughout he is visited by a non-made up Ron Perlman (Hell Boy). Perlman plays the nephew of a dying millionaire who has managed to track down the scarab and wants it for himself thus beginning a game of cat and mouse that provides much of the film’s tension.

That the film is an earlier example of Del Toro’s work is evident. In 1993 he has yet to win the critical acclaim and independence he fought so hard for after the disaster that was Mimic. Yet you can see his trademark craft in putting Cronos together, the layers of subtext, the idea that humanity is the monster - the real villains in this film are all humans - and the use of mythology to explore human themes of addiction, family and death. For such a short film (only ninety minutes) it really does pack in a whole lot of story.

The visual effects do date the film slightly as does the quality of the film print from which the DVD was mastered but this doesn’t really distract from what’s going on. Del Toro’s skill as a make up designer (his early career was spent doing this) are overall what keeps the effects in the game and more than makes up for the absence of CGI or modern prosthetics.

The cast was and is largely unknown to me. However the performances from the entire cast were very good but two deserve mention in particular. Tamara Shanath, who plays Aurora, turns in a wonderfully nuanced performance for such a young actress and provides the film with it’s heart as the film’s protagonist, Jesus, attempts to hide his addiction from her. The other is that of Perlman who delivers a brilliantly three dimensional performance as the vain, long suffering, nephew of millionaire De la Guardia. A chilling and intelligent performance.

There’s a lot to like here. This is smart horror delivered in a slick movie that’s not afraid to make you laugh, cry or scream. Most likely all three. I recommend it without reservation.

Friday Flash Fiction: Mary

Feedback -as ever - is appreciated:

Mary
By Neil Beynon

“…I love that curl,” he sighs, flicking the errant lock with his finger as he struggles to finish his carefully crafted and crumbling segue. “I’m going to miss it.”

Mary looks at him with her big brown eyes, bright with the sheen of chained tears; her hair hangs in wild ringlets that refuse to be tamed and frame the light gold of her face. Over the pungent smell of bitumen from the sweating street he can smell faint undertones of strawberry. She always smells of strawberries.

The street is empty save for them. No people. No cars. No one much wants to drive far under the circumstances. Those that are have gone already; fled faraway to the arms of family, friends and faith while the people left behind huddle close in the abandoned detritus.

She blinks as if punctuating a question that hangs unspoken. He reflects that she has eyes that other women would kill for. Hell, if he continues to look into those big brown eyes staring up at him he might just drown. Then again maybe not, his resolve - at least - would falter.

And so he looks away. Up at the stone wheel hanging in the sky above the city, an axe poised over their heads, an axe that will either kill them or set them free - depending on whom you ask.

It is a chance glance. Yet he looks up in time to see a section of the lower side of the stone disc, the quadrant high above and to the front of him, roll back. Above his head the inside of the disc yawns wide, airless and black. He can see nothing within.

“Would you look at that,” he says.

Silence.

He turns to look for Mary but the street is empty. She has walked away, footsteps hidden by the rubber soles of her shoes, leaving the ring he gave her abandoned on the ground. He picks it up as if it is an alien thing he has never seen before, both surprised and not surprised. A schizophrenic response for a schizophrenic day.

Perhaps it is for the best, he thinks, his memory dwelling on her blinking eyes. Then he turns back to the gaping mouth looming large above him, a hollow black that seems to swallow the light and bleed shadow.

He shivers; a vague sense of disappointment draped over his shoulders. He wraps his arms around himself as if trying to capture something, something ethereal: heat perhaps? Or is it the smell of strawberries that has dissipated so quickly? Whatever it is has already flown. He is standing alone in the dishwater grey street with his goose bumps and the smell of atrophying bitumen.

Casually, he wonders what happens next.

Friday Flash Fiction: Fracture

As some readers may have gathered my confidence has taken a bit of a knock of late. A somewhat annoying turn of events following on the heels of stories such as Faraway, Pixies and Territory, that I am quite pleased with. Then my confidence ding happened and out came Devil Eyes, that seemed too trite, and last week’s Quantum Cigars somewhat ambitious and confusing.

In short, I wasn’t sure if I was going to post this week.

Then I thought, when in doubt: scare the shit out of people. Here’s Fracture:

Fracture
By Neil Beynon

Potterton. Louis.

It’s just a name.

Not really. I was a big kid – able to take care of myself. No one much bothered me, then or now and it takes a lot to get me going.

Yeah, that would pretty much do it. You didn’t have many friends in school did you detective?

What’s the point? You’ve seen the CCTV. You’re not interested in what happened. You know what happened – all your trying to do is work out whether you send me to the funny farm or the cage. I’m not sure I’m that interested in either.

Yes but they don’t let you do that anymore. I know my rights.

Jesus, I’m bleeding…get away from me.

Where’s my lawyer? What do you mean he’s on his way? You messed up: I’m going to walk when he gets here.

He’s not coming is he?

You really want to know? Alright. Alright. Just don’t…not again…I’ll tell you everything. Where do you want me to start?

Are you sure? OK? In the beginning there was nothing. An eternity of void. One day for no reason in particular the nothing exploded and there was som…FUCK…you broke it!

OK: I think it started like a migraine.

Yeah, I’ve had them most of my life. Blinding ones…literally. They start with dancing light, like fork lightening that only I can see, winding its way round my eyeballs. A wraith’s warning. It usually stops me seeing. But that’s too simple. I can still see: shapes, broad landscapes but I can’t focus on anything, like I’m gazing at the world through the bottom of coke bottle.

It makes me feel shit. Like the world has gone bad while my eyes were closed.

Well, that’s what it felt like. But instead of ghosting…that’s what the dancing lights are called…I saw distortions. I’d look at someone and it would be like they were smudged, the shapes were there but the detail was wrong. I thought I was going blind; I even got my eyes checked.

Nothing wrong. 20/20 vision.

Thanks. There was a tail wind as well. Not many people could have made it.

Sure. It wasn’t my eyes and it wasn’t my migraine because the headache never arrived nor did my vision ever return to normal. It was freaking me out but my insurance wouldn’t cover a CT scan and so I had to wait for the NHS specialist to see me.

Six months.

Not really, after about a fortnight I began to recognise patterns. The marks began to make a sick kind of sense. The cracks around the eyes told me stories; the translucent skin spoke to me of their defeats and, of course, there were the holes. The holes were the worst.

I’m sorry detective can I have a moment?

People’s lives: every heartbreak, every lie, every laugh, everything. Written all over them. There’s a reason my eyes are closed.

Yes: they’re sutures.

After I…did what I did, I realised that I couldn’t finish it…there weren’t enough bullets and so I made sure I didn’t have to look at them.

I’d be dead. That’s a bit like cutting of my face to spite it.

I’d rather you didn’t.

Yes, that’s right: I’d be able to read you. Not that your questions aren’t enough.

Why do you want to know about the holes?

OK: They’re big gaping holes in the centre of them, like they’ve been pierced by a giant hole punch.

Of course I can see their insides, they have no goddamned stomach but that’s not the worse thing. No. Not by a long shot.

The hole spoke to me. It told me why it had come and what it would do.

Sure, I could of tried to fill them up. I did. But they never made it.

What do you think I mean?

If you drive up to the quarry, I did right by them. It may take a while but you’ll find them.

Various things: concrete was just messy, paper didn’t really stay in, plastic was a bitch to bind and metal…well, the welding torch kept setting them on fire.

Roast pork? More like burnt chicken, unpleasant either way.

It got worse. I couldn’t fill them up but I saw them filled. In vast buildings of stone of every shape you could imagine; the people went in empty and came out full. Faint sheets of vapour marked them, that and the fetid stench of that artificial human polyfiller.

It was the colour of tar.

It just seemed to be passing from human to human, like a virus. In the end I saw people who didn’t have holes using it, I saw them smearing it on their faces to hide the cracks. Saw them use it as tanner to darken their skin. They even tried to give it to me.

I got away.

I realised we needed a desperate measure. Since cure wasn’t possible the only way to get rid of it was to remove the transmitters. So I did.

I did my eyes afterwards. While I waited for you lot to show up.

I told you: it didn’t work. I could still see the holes, the ones who were covered in it and the ones who were full of it. Nothing I did made any difference.

No really you shouldn’t take them out. Surely after what you’ve heard you don’t want…

That hurt.

No I won’t.

You’re a stupid man detective…a stupid man…cracked and leaking. That won’t do at all, but don’t worry: I’ll fix it.

Now, just hold still a moment.

**************************

There are no prizes for working out that I cribbed the style (of only the answers from an interview) from Neil Gaiman’s Orange. I wanted to see if it would lend itself to horror where often the most effective technique is suggestion.

Friday Flash Fiction: Devil Eyes

This week’s entry is more than a little over the word count and to be frank I’m not sure it’s any good. However, I hope you enjoy it and any feedback is - as always - appreciated.

Devil Eyes
By Neil Beynon

The city was small and ancient. It was also wet. The entire time I was there it was dry for maybe four hours in total, the insidious drizzle leaving the cobblestones slick and treacherous. Threatening to spill you out in front of a car or bicycle. A strange place, a city so small you could walk from one end to the other with ease but full of people so tall I felt like an ant crawling on its back.

I think I was more or less nocturnal during my stay. The days spent in a dry airless state of dreaming as meetings ran on around me and from which I would emerge – daylight spent - desperate for some sign of life. The city beckoned me with neon fingers.

The city carved from blocks of stone, shaped over a hundred years ago, then piled upon each other until they reached four or five stories in the air. There is something to be said for wandering around with your eyes at that level, the occasional gargoyle staring back at you, an odd embarrassing collision or two from not looking where you’re going. Yet that is not what the city is famous for.

And so your eyes travel down, your nose gets to the smoke first. It’s heavy, cloying, sickly sweet and temple squeezing; you pass the scattered sources of this fog with a dizzying regularity. At least you tell yourself it’s the regularity that’s dizzying.

Your eyes itch from the smoke. Your gaze travels down below the hashish haze to street level. Slave girls look back at you from their glass wrappers. Some try to attract your attention with taps or winks whilst others merely gaze blankly as they whisper into mobile phones. A menagerie of faces: bored, tired, excited, aggressive, dead, sad – all on display and all available for a reasonable price. Everything negotiable.

You never see anyone actually purchase or rent at the slave market and yet they must because some of the boxes are empty, some have curtains pulled over - a sure fire indication of a transaction. It’s a strange city.

On my last night, I walked down the high street, my friend by my side and the need to have a large cold glass of beer weighing on my wallet. We no longer turned to tapping glass or half heard platitudes but I still cast my eyes round in general disbelief at the naked nihilism on display.

Certain things draw the eye - as humans we can’t help it. We’re all hunter-gatherers that have risen to the top of the food chain by spotting patterns other species miss. Bare flesh is one of those things. My eyes were caught, by what I’m not sure. I suspect it was a thigh. I was always a fool for a good pair of thighs.

My gaze flicked from a shocked American tourist, camera dangling from his neck and his tongue flapping round his feet, to the glass box behind him. First I saw the legs - slim, lithe, toned - a pleasing curve up to hips that were slim but not unsightly, a simple shift of black silk draped the torso. Smooth elegant arms lay folded across the barest rise of a bust. As bodies go it was unremarkable – neither ugly nor gorgeous – but you couldn’t say that of all the girls.

Then I saw the face smiling at me.

The width of the jaw and consequently of the face was too wide for the neck on which it was located, the contours were angular as if the skull beneath had been carved from stone. The nose was small, barely more than a pointy nub of flesh dropped on top of the bone beneath – think Michael Jackson in fifteen years time – and eyes so dark they were void. The skin of her face was not smooth like the flesh she was waving – now in my direction – but rough, calloused like worn leather.

She…he…it leered at me – I won’t call it a smile – and I realised I was staring that there was a perception of interest, a cold flannel of realisation to the back of my neck. My head flipped round so quickly my eyes blurred and a flood of warm pain billowed across my neck to match the burning heat on my face.

#

The bar was fetid with the sweat of the customers. A dark underground place where the beer was cheap, the spirits strong and the conversation an increasing spiral of bullshit, ever higher as the evening – and beer - rolled on. Just the way I like it. I don’t remember how much I had, just that when I left I had no periphery vision and the cobblestones seemed to be rotating on some hidden axis.

The walk back was a long one, longer than the walk from the hotel to the bar. We got lost in the labyrinth of stone, glass and cobbles, eventually finding ourselves back in the market, now closed. Most of the slaves had already gone to their masters for the night. I kept my eyes on the cobbles lest they move when I wasn’t looking.

It was quiet. Our feet echoed as we walked, a small sound of tinkling glass or the occasional car exhaust backfiring the only accompaniment to our irregular footfall. Consequently when the man swore, his curses punctuated by a chain being yanked, it was not hard to hear. Actually, I don’t know if he swore for sure because he spoke in a different language but certain tones are universal, anger being one of them.

I glanced round because I am an idiot. The man was a little taller than I am wearing a three quarter length leather jacket, a neat beard trimmed round his plump chin, a belly heading south of his shirt. He had a chain in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Attached to the end of the chain was a slave who whimpered and gagged when the man tugged on it, the chain being the kind people used to use on larger dogs but don’t anymore for good reason.

I stopped, shocked. My feet locked, uncertain which way to go.

The smoking guy looked at me looking at him. I blinked, uncertain whether to say something or not and he smiled at me; pointed at the half naked slave who in turn looked at me.

“You like?” he said. “I give discount for rest of night?”

This close and without the glass I could see the girl’s eyes weren’t just dark they were obsidian, her face pulled tight over her too large skull not just aged but actually a different texture to the rest of her body – more like elephant skin. I span away quickly.

More swearing, a meaty whack, crying and the sound of a chain being snapped followed by the clip clop of heels on cobbles followed me into the night. My friend vomited on the corner dragging my attention back to more pragmatic issues like where the hotel had been moved.

#

In the morning, before we left for the airport, sitting alone in the restaurant awaiting poached eggs I didn’t feel like eating but felt I should, I couldn’t remember much of the night before. Just flashes really, glimpses of what sounded like a good night out but had left my head feeling like broken eggshell, and I wondered whether the slave had been made that way or if it was self-inflicted.

I figured there might be a story in it. She…he…it had definitely looked not human, maybe the slave wasn’t? Perhaps it was a demon? Perhaps that was a hook? Perhaps it was time I left for the airport.

The restaurant was one of those every business hotel in mainland Europe seems to insist on having – lots of neon, chrome and mirrored glass. A myriad of me gazed back from a hundred surfaces: Red-rimmed eyes dragging luggage across the hills of my cheeks and the stubbly forest of my chin; a face as familiar in its relief as it was a stranger wrapped in weariness.

But it wasn’t mine.

Holiday Reading

Only three days to go!

I’m seriously ready for my break now and it’ll be great to see C and M. I haven’t seen them in around eighteen months but more on that later in the week. This post is about other things. For today I must compile that all important, critical, make or break item: the holiday reading list.

This crucial document is more than just a shopping list, like a good compilation record get it wrong and it can ruin the whole break. On the one hand - because it’s an English speaking country - the risk is lower as I can always buy more and on the other it’s higher - twenty-nine hour flights do not as yet offer an in flight library.

So here’s my draft list:

King Rat by China Mieville
Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
The Man Who was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth by Malcom Pryce
Fresh Fields by Peter Kocan
Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Yes, I haven’t read it…stop sniggering at the back)
The Ghosts Brigade by John Scalzi
The Complete Short Stories by Franz Kafka

That’s it for now. Of course, I’m a terrible impulse buyer when it comes to books and so I may wind up with a larger haul.

What do you plan on reading on your holidays this year?

Illuminations reviewed

Over at The Fix, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, has undertaken the not inconsiderable task of reviewing every one of the stories that went into Illuminations (featuring amongst others me) and the results can be read here. It’s quite flattering to have a reviewer (and a fellow writer if I’m not mistaken) take time out to look at nine of your stories.

Anyway, take a look and judge for yourself. For me the sun is shining, my head has cleared, I have plenty of food for thought, and I spend nowhere near enough time in my garden.