Mainly Fiction

Cold as Ice

2011-12-30T14:06:00.002Z

Here's my story that won third place in the Friends of Harrogate Library's 2011 ghost story competition. The top three entries were printed in the Harrogate Advertiser on Friday 9th December.

Martha pulled the blanket closer and snuggled down into the sofa. The darkness was softened by the blue glow of computer power buttons. Outside the world was yellow, street lamps reflected by snow. The wind groaned and white flurries sped by.

It had been a busy day. They had started work on the kitchen. She wanted the offices opened by the New Year and had harangued the foreman, Phil, to complete the renovations.

“We don't want to be rushing in here, love,” he had said. “Less’n’ you want flooding.”

Somewhere on the other side of the kitchen’s back wall was Hebble Brook, the stream that babbled through and under Dean Clough, Halifax, once-mighty complex of carpet mills, now home to insurance and software companies.

“Just get it done. And I'm not your love.”

She knew he gossiped about her with his fellow workers. She was known as The Ice Queen. That was fine. As long as she could open on the third of January and get the developers started on the web site, they could mock her to their hearts' content.

There was an exhilarating solitude in the office. It was minus twenty outside, but in here she was cosy and alone. Her ex-husband, Dave, had always said she preferred her own company. It had been worse when their ten-year-old daughter, Liz, had said it too. She had really meant it. Martha had tried not to let it get to her.

Liz was spending more and more time with Dave, and Martha was only slightly ashamed to admit that it suited her – she needed those extra hours to pour into the fledgling business.

After lunchtime Phil had called her into the kitchen. She found all five labourers standing around an alcove they had uncovered. It was a rough cubic foot of darkness. The brook sounded close, bubbling past just a few metres beyond. The space held several small dusty lumps, and in chalk at the back was scrawled:

MARY

SORRY

7/5/1875 – 24/12/1878

Her first thought was, “How long is this going to delay the refurb?”

Ignoring the oversensitive pleas to leave the site undisturbed, Martha picked up one of the lumps and dusted it off - it was a humbug, sticky and ancient.

“Victorian teenage mum?” Phil suggested. “Keeps this Mary a secret, one day she drowns in t’ brook?”

“Aye,” added another. “Mum’s devastated, finds this hole. Maybe she worked here. Makes a secret memorial.”

“Dobson’s humbugs for t’ babbie’s Christmas present.”

Martha had noticed it was snowing. This was the builders’ cue to leave for the day. Phil had asked if she was staying. She had shrugged, and she thought he might try and persuade her to go home, but in the end he said nothing and left.

By five o’clock the blizzard had made travel virtually impossible.

She snuggled further under the blanket and found herself wondering about Mary and her mother. She pictured a harsh December in a nineteenth century Dean Clough, the skies black with smoke, the mills coated in dirty snow.

A haggard young woman and her child walk along the banks of Hebble Brook, grimy grey dresses billowing in the wind, bonnets tied tight. The mother veers into the girl, perhaps accidentally, and knocks Mary into the black water. She does not help, but hurries away, apparently deaf to the bairn's juddering cries who shivers uncontrollably from the icy water. Her squeals and splashes quickly subside as she is washed downstream, and her mum disappears into the winter without a backwards glance.

Martha waited for some strange sound to rise from the humming computers and blowing wind, expecting the scrape of stone from the kitchen, wet footsteps...

“Childish,” she thought to herself. The only sounds were the settling of the mill, the drone of the blizzard.

A loud gust of wind rattled a window. The chattering of tiny teeth a couple of feet from her ear made her heart lurch and start pounding like a drum. The chattering was accompanied by a tremulous moan. She dared not open her eyes. The fluttering drone came right up to her ear, fetid breath tinged with mint broke on her cheek, and the edge of the blanket was lifted. Frigid air washed over her. A tiny quivering body, freezing and damp, climbed in. Martha felt wet hair wiping across her face.

Still she kept her eyes closed. The blanket came back down, sealing them together. She tried to scream, mouth agape, but all she could manage was a thin, empty whistle. The visitor clung on, its damp seeping through Martha’s t-shirt and jeans, sapping her body heat.

Against her breast, Mary gurgled two pitiful, pleading words.

“Mummy. Cold.”

Martha’s heart stopped.

#FlashFiction: Ethanol

2010-09-23T19:19:00.001+01:00

His shoes were red with blood.
The streets were clogged with gore.
He tramped through flesh and juices
And wished he was no more.

He wondered who was left.
He'd walked for lonely days.
City-wide, the only sounds
Were roaring homes ablaze.

Everywhere the carpet
Of crimson offal spread,
Of baggy human bodies,
All dead, all dead, all dead.

Some had burst asunder
Splashing cars and vans
Which stood now at a standstill
A bloody traffic jam.

Joints had failed on others
Skeletons with errors.
Folding up like jellyfish
Twitching rubber terrors.

Faces hung on lamp-posts
Eyeless, swinging masks.
Maws wide open, stretching
Like melting candle wax.

All his fault, this carnage
Plus the MoD.
Craving research into
Bio-weaponry.

The pathogen he'd worked on,
Hadn't worked at all.
But vodka gave him insight -
It needed ethanol.

Drunk and bio-suited,
He tripped and dropped it all.
Misanthropic mishap
Bred of alcohol.

The Leeds Savage Club ebook

2010-05-17T14:58:00.000+01:00

A new post! And this isn't fiction. No. It is solid fact.

The inaugural ebook from The Leeds Savage Club is out. It's got all the stuff we exhibited at the Launch Party. And my God, is it good? Yes. The answer is yes.

Download it here. Perhaps you could download it over a chilled bottle of Sauternes. You could read it while sitting in a comfortable leather chair. You could print it while leafing through some Virgil or Homer. The options are virtually without end.

FlashFiction: Smoke and Mirrors

2010-04-15T13:36:00.002+01:00

Here's a short Cornelius von Boza story, the old crypto-zoologist adventurer occultist clubman.

The fire which hit the Minerva Club last week killed two of its members. One was burned alive where he sat in his Chesterfield – a civil engineer aged 91. The other died later, while crossing the road, knocked down by a 1974 E-Type Jaguar. The driver fled the scene. While this second death sounds unconnected to a fire, it is in fact intrinsically linked. For the second person whose life was extinguished was the arsonist who caused it in the first place.

The library at the club was crowded. Every chair was occupied by old gentlemen reading such varied publications as 19th century copies of The Gentleman's Magazine, the works of Xenophon, and old Ordnance Survey maps.

Cornelius von Boza, a long-time member, had interests that were... spicier than most. He had avoided the mundane and skirted the ersatz his whole life, until now, at the noble age of a hundred-and-ten, he was hard pressed to find anything in the library that piqued his attention. This is why he read nothing, and simply dozed, wrinkled head nodding, the odd snort erupting from his clogged sinuses.

But old men do not doze for long, and the call of nature woke him up. He was to be congratulated on this, for it was often the case that his bladder failed to tell his brain of its requirements, and just did its business without waking him up. He stopped snorting and his head lifted, and he struggled out of his deep leather chair with several colourful oaths. Out of the library he shambled, like a pile of stiffened body parts thrown into a suit. As soon as he'd left, the arsonist made his move.

“Another log?” James said to the civil engineer, who had about a minute left to live.

“What's that?” the engineer slurred. His name was Jasiahbard Fredericks. He had headed up many impressive civil engineering projects, mostly dams, in places such as Romania, Brazil and Finland.

“Another log? For the fire?” the waiter said.

“I'm not bothered.”

James threw the log on anyway, and a burst of blood-red sparks fled up the chimney. He then withdrew, and continued to withdraw, until he had exited the library, and then the club, and was walking down Pall Mall at a brisk pace.

Jasiahbard felt a burst of warmth from the fire by his side. “My God,” he thought, “that fire's coming on some!”

Indeed it was. It was blazing like a furnace, the former yellow calm of the flames transformed into a bright crimson inferno. He looked into it, fascinated by the change. “Must've been doused in paraffin, that log,” he thought. He didn't think anything further after this. His mind stopped working. He just stared into the dancing hotness, his brain coming to an abrupt halt. All it could do was concentrate on the fire.

An acquaintance of his, a retired Bishop of Norwich, the Right Reverend Gulliver Plunkett, was unable to stop what happening next. It unfolded too quickly. He noticed Jasiahbard move in the corner of his eye. Looking up from his Homer, he saw his friend stand up and approach the fire, which he noted was roaring away with alarming ferocity. Quite calmly, Jasiahbard bent down and put his hand into the fluttering flames, grabbing the uppermost log. Gulliver couldn't believe what he was seeing, and just gaped as fire raced up Jasiahbard's sleeve. Seeming to not notice and remaining perfectly silent, he then straightened up and returned to his parliament green Chesterfield, the fire spreading all over his jacket and setting his entire torso alight. He sat down, cradling the furiously burning log in his lap like a cat. His entire upper portion had become a torch, a mass of bright red flames. His lounge chair smoked and then burst into fire as well. It was only then that the man started screaming. Plunkett later mentioned that 'screaming' didn't do the sound justice, however. It had been more of a screeching, like the call of a large bird in terrible pain. It had been, in his words, 'terribly upsetting'.

The fire spread quickly over the poor civil engineer. His trousers caught, his shoes burned, his hair flared up, and now his seat was a bonfire. The surrounding carpet smouldered and then that too sprouted flames.

The old gents nearby rose from their chairs and a wave of panic could be felt sweeping the library. The heat from the burning engineer was extraordinary, and Plunkett left his own chair to get away.

“Men!” someone shouted from near the door to the entrance hall. “Fly!”

The waiters were spinning into action, shepherding the confused and frightened old members out of the room. Most of the doddering codgers were unable to run, and could only shuffle along while the fire spread behind them. Even Plunkett could see they weren't going to make it. They were too many and too slow. Before even half of them could get to the door, they would be overtaken by the fleet flames, himself included.

A waiter came running up with a fire extinguisher and blew its smoky contents at the base of the chair, and the charred figure that sat in it. The figure's screeching stopped at the abrupt blast of the extinguisher. The fire did not waver one jot. It was a sizeable blaze, but the extinguisher should have had at least some effect. But it had none. The waiter performed a second blast, keeping it going for half a minute right at the base of the fire, but to no avail.

“What's wrong with this damn thing?” the young waiter asked himself. “Should have sorted that fire in a jiffy!”

By now, the ex-bishop was halfway to the door, shuffling as fast as he could. The knot of old men who had made it to the exit were stuck, caught in the bottleneck. He wasn't going to get out. No way.

“Out of my way!” someone barked at the door. There was a commotion and angry shouts, and the plug of old men protested in the most emphatic manner they could muster. But they were unable to hold back the man who was trying to get into the room. Through the crowd he pushed, and Cornelius emerged. He looked this way and that, then seeming to realise something, headed straight for the former bishop and the fire.

“Bless me!” Cornelius demanded as he approached.

“I know!” Plunkett concurred. “It's a tragedy! But come, we must evacuate immediately!”

“No!” Cornelius shouted at him. He was now standing before him, their saggy faces almost touching. “I mean, literally, bless me! Perform your rites, do your genuflections, and bless me, blast your eyes!”

The fire was spreading ever further. The engineer was a vague black shape in the middle of it, slumped on the chair whose legs even now gave way, sending a plume of fire to the ceiling. It was mere yards away. Plunkett's eyes were scorched by the incredible heat.

“Come on, old fellow, we must away,” he said, taking von Boza's arm. “No time to lose.”

“If you want to save yourself and this club, you will bless me now, otherwise both you and I and all these others will die. Now...” Cornelius grabbed the bishop's hands in his and held them up between their faces. “... Bless me, damn you!”

Cornelius let go of his hands, and automatically, the ex-clergyman reeled off, “I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” and made the sign of the Cross.

Cornelius walked towards the fire.

A second waiter was tackling the blaze with another extinguisher, but he was having as little success as the first. The fire just would not react as a fire should. It burned just as brightly, and devoured the carpet around the chair just as greedily.

“Mr von Boza!” the first waiter yelped, aghast at the man's approach. “Get out now!”

The waiter would have taken hold of the errant pensioner by the scruff of the neck in the next moment, had Cornelius not done something quite unexpected and unzipped his fly, extracting from its humid insides what could only be described as an exceedingly wrinkled penis.

“Get out of the way! This'll do the trick!”

Too surprised to argue, the pair of waiters and the equally surprised bishop watched as Cornelius strode right up to the conflagration and began urinating onto it. The curve of golden fluid that issued from his nether regions had a miraculous effect where it touched the fire, which began going out immediately. The roaring blaze shrunk before their disgusted but amazed eyes; the carpet was doused, then the collapsed chair, and finally its dead occupant. Ammonia-laced smoke boiled off the charred remains, and with the fire out, Cornelius restored his dignity and put away his member.

“I hope I get some thanks for this,” he said to the dumbfounded onlookers.

“How on earth did you do that?” the first waiter asked.

Cornelius sighed, as if to explain was too tedious. But then he said, “What we had here was no ordinary fire.” He indicated the blackened lump that had been Jasiahbard the civil engineer. “No fire could do that much damage in so short a time, and resist the extinguishers used by you heroic but ultimately useless waiters.”

The gaggle of old men who had been trying to flee the library were drifting back, the hazard eliminated and an interesting tale in the offing proving too strong a lure.

Cornelius continued, “I had left the room to attend to my toilet, but heard a commotion which precipitated my early return. I managed to regain the library through the terrified throng at the door, and saw something most extraordinary. A fire, blood-red, consuming poor Mr Fredericks, a burning log in his lap. Not only that. I saw in the mirror opposite something impossible – the fire had no reflection.”

“No reflection?” spluttered the bishop. “Poppycock!”

“Not poppycock,” countered Cornelius. “Seemingly impossible, but occurring just the same. I could see the chair and its unfortunate occupant peeling and turning black, but none of the fire or smoke. I knew at once what was afoot. We had on our hands what is known as a vampire fire.”

“A what?” gasped the first waiter.

“A vampire fire,” one of the returning members said.

“I heard,” said the waiter. “It's silly, is what I mean.”

“Silly, you say? No,” said Cornelius. “Quite serious, actually. A vampire fire – a vamfire, if you will - casts no reflection, and has the power to hypnotise. It must have hypnotised Jasiahbard and made him grab the burning log.”

“Preposterous,” announced the bishop. “How could such a fire come to be?”

“With a log, taken from a tree that has grown over a vampire's grave. They occur mostly in the Baltics – Wallachia and places like that. Of course, not many people know they exist. And I remember seeing one of the new waiters loitering with a log just before I went to the lavatory.”

“Assuming this drivel were true,” challenged the bishop. “Why would someone use such a log to start a 'vampire fire'?”

“They are first rate assassination methods. The target is made to pick up the log which starts a fire. It kills him and burns evidence that might have been left by the assassin.”

“Who would wish to kill a civil engineer?” Plunkett wanted to know.

“Someone from Romania, perhaps, who was disgruntled at the building of one of his dams. He built several, I believe, one or two of which were fairly controversial, flooding some very old estates. Some very powerful people lived on those estates.”

“Why piss on the fire?” the first waiter asked.

“Normal extinguishing equipment cannot douse a vampire fire. Only holy water. I got the bishop to bless me, and then used my own water to put it out.”

“Urine is not holy water,” said the bishop.

“Holy water. Holy urine. It's all the same to a vampire fire.”

When Cornelius finished speaking, everyone just looked at him, astounded at the implausible theory but impressed by the unshakeable conviction with which he evidently believed it.

“And now we have a runaway arsonist assassin on our hands,” Cornelius said. He turned to one of the other waiters, one who wasn't holding a fire extinguisher. “Be a good fellow and bring the car round.”

Dream of the Prairie Dog

2010-03-27T08:31:00.002Z

All the prairie dog wanted was to get up to the clouds. They looked so mouth-wateringly succulent. The thing was a ground-dwelling creature, however, and the sky was inaccessible.

It had to get up there. The food down here was bland and dry – the same old fruits and nuts, day in, day out, with no variety. If he could just get up there and have a nibble, a taste, of those gorgeous white fluffy balls, he would be sated.

He set to working out how to get into the sky. He wondered if he could use a piece of grass as a springboard to launch himself heavenward. He found a promising blade that looked strong enough and grew at just the right angle. He took a running jump across the prairie and leapt at the blade, but it just bent under his weight and he landed in an undignified heap.

He then asked the Higgs Boson if he could have all his mass taken away, so he would have no weight and could float up into the firmament. But the Higgs Boson was unable to comply, being both a theoretical sub-atomic particle, and without even the slightest glimmer of sentience.

He then asked a graviton if he could be imbued with anti-gravitational properties, but this scheme was doomed to failure also, due to the reasons given some moments ago for the Higgs Boson.

The prairie dog saw aeroplanes flying overhead, and saved long and hard to charter a flight. The only thing he was capable of saving were fruits and nuts, which were not a legitimate currency as far as the aviation industry were concerned. So even with a hundred nuts, he found hiring a private plane impossible.

He made a lot of friends amongst his own kind with his stash of nuts, and they offered to help him. They would make a prairie dog pyramid, balancing on each other's backs and forming a great organic triangle, up which the prairie dog could scamper to the sky. The co-ordination required to achieve this, and the feat of balancing it demanded, were quite beyond the capabilities of these simple rodents, and all they managed to achieve were pyramids three prairie dogs high, and no higher. They always came tumbling down in a pile, and never made it even one-thousandth of the way up to the clouds.

The prairie dog had run out of ideas, until one day, a thunderstorm came. He had the brainwave of riding a lightning bolt up into the heights, if only he could predict where a lightning bolt might land. Fortunately, there was an isolated tree that bore the brunt of lightning strikes – a blackened, charred stump, which was still tall enough to attract the electrical discharge. The prairie dog climbed the blasted, twisted tree and sat at the top. The rain lashed down and he looked up through the murk of the stormy day to the great black clouds above. He would have to be careful not to get struck himself, so he stayed alert, looking for any bolts that might come rocketing down.

He didn't have to wait long. A zig-zagging line of blazing white raced down to meet him. He dodged it just in time and it crashed into the top of the tree. The prairie dog leapt through the sparks and fire and grabbed hold of the slippery, hot lightning, and pelted up it as fast as he could. His paws were singed, but he ignored the pain, and in no time at all, he was up in the roiling clouds. The lightning bolt dissipated just as he alighted from it.

All was black and wet and thundery. He'd made it. He sat on an outcropping of grey fluff and sniffed its tangy ozone scent. His nostrils crackled. His mouth gaped wide as he went for a bite, but something in the corner of his eye made him pause. The surrounding clouds were looming closer, brooding black and grey and enormous as cities. The prairie dog quailed and hunkered down, suddenly scared. They gathered around and the wind ruffled his wet fur. Before he could jump back down to the prairie, the clouds enveloped him, eating him alive, and when they had passed by, there was nothing but a new cloud, tiny in comparison to the behemoths that surrounded it. But this one wasn't grey; it was red.

Jenny Gets Watched

2010-03-26T08:36:00.001Z

Her lips glisten like a thumb dipped in blood, plump and wet and suckable. I watch, aware that if someone is watching me, they might discern dark motives. A man watching a woman he doesn't know might be construed as innocent, or the kind of thing men are expected to do, or it could be something more malignant. I know which it is, but would an observer?

She is reading a book called The Inheritors by William somebody... I can't see the rest. I've never read it, whoever it is. It's a Penguin Classic. Not my thing.

Every so often she looks up and squints at the departures monitor through her thick glasses. She's on her way... somewhere. We are on platform ten. The only train coming soon is the 11:11 to Leeds and mine is after that. She is wearing a charcoal-grey business suit with a crisp white shirt, against which (I can't help noticing) her breasts strain in a very diverting way.

When she looks up at 11:04, she catches me staring, and pulls a disapproving face. Then she returns to her book. My face burns red and I feel small.

At 11:09 her train comes and I follow her progress, not to mention her breasts, as she gets up and leaves.

Wow.

I don't feel so small anymore.

***

It pleases me to see her reading something worthwhile like that. The usual choice for the commuter is chick-lit or Harry Potter for the girls, and Dan Brown or Harry Potter for the boys. Snobby, I know. But The Inheritors! William Golding! Good stuff!

She is dressed smartly. She has a briefcase. It is open (left so when she'd taken the book out) and, forgive my nosiness, but I can make out the red ribbon and buff folders of actual briefs. A lawyer. Doing well for herself, then, and let's refrain from the usual jibes at lawyers, just for the time being. I want to appreciate her without it being deadened by cynicism. As a teacher, it makes me happy. Not that we don't do well for ourselves generally – women, I mean. Barriers are coming down all the time. It's just that when you teach where I do, in the comprehensive of a run-down village with deprived pupils, you start to lose hope a little. Yet here she is, a lawyer.

A young man is looking at her. His eyes move up and down. He looks intent. I don't like him one jot. When she catches him gawping he looks away, abashed. Good for you, Jennifer! I always said in lessons, don't let things get you down, Jenny, but tackle them head-on, and you'll go far.

Now she's getting up and boarding her train.

So is he.

Great Responsibility

2010-03-25T08:42:00.002Z

He felt intimated. It was really nothing to feel intimated about, but he felt it all the same.

All it had been was a fly. A tiny grubby fly, that he’d swatted out of existence. He’d read in the paper a discovery by scientists concerning flies and how to swat them effectively. Apparently they had very cleverly-wired little brains that enabled them to anticipate an impending swat. If the compound eyes on their twitchy heads saw the right kind of motion, their legs would push them off into the air and they would buzz off on an escape route pre-calculated by their special avoidance system. All very ingenious and fascinating.

The article had gone on to say how you could outwit their avoidance system. Instead of aiming directly for the insect with your rolled-up newspaper, you had to aim slightly ahead of it. The fly’s calculations would send it right into the path of your falling club.

He’d been reading the article on a boring Saturday afternoon, and as chance would have it, a fly had been bothering him. Eager to put the science into practice, he rolled up the paper and watched the fly loop and swoop around the living room. It flitted through the shafts of light slanting in from outside, making glitters of dust swirl and eddy in the most exquisitely slight and subtle ways. While he waited for it to choose a place to land, he found himself admiring how unexpectedly beautiful the scene was. The fly, a little motorised speck. Its drowsy, quiet buzzing. The twinkling motes, meandering in the air in many directions at once, some winking out as the light left them, others fading up like microscopic bulbs on dimmer switches. They gathered into sheets and streams and blobs, scintillating globular clusters of shining dots shepherded by air currents.

The fly circled through them like a shark through a school of fish, and despite its minuscule influence, its fragile but frantically flapping wings caused enough wind to disturb them. Lazily floating specks would careen and tumble away and some would disappear into the gloom between the shafts of light.

He watched until the fly left the light itself, and landed on a bookcase. Forgetting the prettiness of what he’d just seen, he got out of his chair slowly and carefully made his way across the room. The fly bustled around on the third shelf, first facing this way, then deciding it didn’t like this way, and turning round to face that way. Maybe it didn’t like the books on that particular shelf – history wasn’t a favourite subject of flies, evidently.

As he passed through the shafts of light that hit him at head height, his eyes became flooded with brightness from the side, and he lost sight of the bookcase. His vision was filled with gold, which quickly disappeared into the relative darkness between shafts, only to be replaced by another flash of gold, and so on – four gold flashes as he went through four shafts. He wondered if the fly had sensed the same thing, the beautiful gold followed by the cool gloom, time after time. It was a pleasant experience. He didn’t expect the fly knew about things like 'pleasant' and 'unpleasant' in the same way he did. But it could sense the light and dark, he guessed.

Then he was at the bookcase. The fly was still there, preening its head with its legs as it faced a weighty tome on European history. Aim ahead of it, the article had said. He lifted the rolled-up paper, held tight in his right fist. The fly turned to the right, in the direction of the light, and he brought the paper down, aiming for a spot just in front of it. The fly saw the danger and pushed off with its legs, its wings springing into action and lifting it further. But the scientists had thwarted it. His papery club smacked it out of the air and down onto the bookcase shelf, and then it wasn’t only the books that were history.

As soon as he’d done it, he felt remorse. What a stupid thing to do, he thought. He looked at the little squashed body. It wasn’t moving. He’d given it a mortal whack.

At the back of his mind he was aware he was feeling bad over an incredibly trivial matter. Maybe he was having one of those moments of clarity.

The gold and dark flashed in his eyes again when he went back to this chair. The fly wouldn’t be seeing those alternating stripes again, that was for sure, whether it had derived some basic fly-ish form of satisfaction from it or not.

The Watcher by the Thought

2010-03-24T08:56:00.002Z

My eyes were taken from me and carried across the universe. Away they sped, faster than light. They were wired into a thing that watched and took note of events from all over the cosmos. The place this thing resided in was on the far side of space, untold galaxies away. When it looked at Earth, it saw it as it had been at its birth, a molten ball with no continents, seas or life.

This place was near the region all thoughts traverse as they move around the universe, from their origin into the minds of living things. I saw my own thoughts, visible as lights and images, pass by, as my body back on Earth dreamed. All I amounted to here was a couple of little white eyeballs, yet I was still aware and cognizant, thanks to the proximity of those racing thoughts.

The thing that watched had eyes from a million other creatures, so it could see in all directions and all wavelengths. Strange organs of liquid and ice, flesh and metal, had been purloined from all manner of beings from across the awesome breadth of space. Some of the minds accompanying those organs hardly registered on my consciousness; others were glimmers of warmth but barely sentient; still others were like blazing constellations of stars, vast and complex and burning too brightly to turn my full attention on. And the watcher held them all, bending their senses to its purpose.

The watcher could see things my eyes could not, like gravity, emotion and things I had no inkling of. It surveyed reality, deeply and broadly. I got the impression it was looking for something in particular. In fact, it became obvious to me it yearned for something. Its longing was subtle and faint, but if I let myself drift, I could start to sense the thing's mood.

My perceptions softened, and its yearning became more of an aching loss. The thing was missing some other. A companion which had left a long time ago and never returned. That was why it had stolen my eyes, and the eyes of those others – to hunt for its lost friend.

The more time I spent with the watcher, the less apt did that word – friend – seem. It had been more like a lover, some inhuman but still tender lover that had gone away.

And then, after an unknown time, the stream of racing thoughts grew brighter, and I saw the lights of my ideas and feelings pulse. The torrent began to exert a pull on me, and before I knew it, I had made a titanic lurch across the universe, and my eyes were back in my own head.

Mere minutes had passed. I was in my bed. I knew in my bones it hadn't been a dream, for whenever I looked up at the stars from that day on, I felt the pining of the watcher, and its restless search for its departed love.

The Streeking Soles - A Blackwood Article

2010-03-03T12:12:00.001Z

This is a Blackwood article, as defined by Edgar Allan Poe in his satirical stories How to Write a Blackwood Article and A Predicament. It follows three strict and silly rules arrived at by Poe.

1. If you mean 'bread and butter', do not by any means say it outright. You may say anything and everything leading up to and around it. But, if 'bread and butter' be your real meaning, be cautious, and never say it.
2. Every article must include a misquoted French, Latin or Greek saying, such as the use of 'cul - de - sac' in the article 'The Spanish Fly who Never Stopped Dancing': "I put down my good dancing ability, due to being born with a certain cul-de-sac...."
3. The article must be, objectively and positively, absolute nonsense!

NB: 'streeking' is an arcane term for 'stretching'.

The time I bought a pair of shoes from The Egypt tavern was a tumultuous one. The London fogs were getting so bad one could scarcely see one's hand in front of one's face, and the gas jets of the street lighting appeared as little shining ghosts that showed themselves only when one got right up to the post. Everywhere was swimming in murk, and concealed by this roiling gloom, the incidents of assault, cutpursery and cold-blooded murder had soared to unprecedented levels. The workhouses were closing thanks to a nasty spate of tuberculosis, meaning all manner of lowly scum were lowered still further into vagrancy and the wicked ways that poverty breeds. All in all, bad weather and ill health were laying waste to all semblance of civilised behaviour in that teeming metropolis.

I had been tasked by my editor at The Times to report on the straits the wretched members of the working classes now found themselves in. He'd been reading a lot of Dickens, or so I am led to believe, and his heart had softened towards the oiks and urchins thanks to some new work of his entitled something like Gulliver Twit. I do not read much Dickens, finding his style to be about as fresh and spry as a long-deceased and cobweb-shrouded man weighing no less than three hundredweight in life. I trust my feelings on this matter are clear.

Nevertheless, I must perform my master's whim, and so I had ventured into the East End and mixed with those deprived creatures to gain some first-hand knowledge of their predicament. Lack of education, lack of sanitation, and lack of inclination were my three major insights. The smell was awful, and the content of their character, virtually to a man, was of the basest and most unwholesome sort. Were they not regarded in law as human, I would be advocating a sequel to The Great Fire of London to solve the problem. I trust my feelings on this matter are clear.

One frightfully mournful and foggy day, I happened upon a stinking pile announcing itself as The Egypt by dint of a maggoty old sign nailed to its frontage. Its mean little windows flickered with brown light, and a parade of ne'er-do-wells came and went through its low door. I was sure to get more material for my article in this den of iniquity, and in I went, a gentleman passing into a pit of squirming, villainous vermin.

I stationed myself at a table and drank from my hip flask, not wishing to order the foaming poison they pulled at the bar. It didn't take long for one of the grizzled denizens of that diseased hole to detach himself from the general gilravage and approach me. He had with him a battered basket full of shoes. He was extremely inebriated. He said to me, in his repugnant, glottal way, “'Evenin', squire. Care for a shoe?”

I replied, “I am in the custom of regarding footwear in the plural, sir. In the singular, they are quite without purpose.”

“Owight, maite, shooz ven.”

I am not in the habit of purchasing goods of an uncertain provenance from the common or garden Cockney species, but I calculated it might increase my knowledge of this simple people, and so help my article. I picked out a pair of black leather shoes of surprisingly fine quality. I went to retrieve some currency from my pocket, but he waved me away.

“Nah, nah, nah. I trast ya. Pay me next time, eh? Lavley.”

This was a very queer turn of events. A creature such as this, declining payment?

“Very well,” I said.

“Promise, though, eh? Carn 'ave a good gennelman like yourself owin' manney wivvart a promise to pay, can we?”

“Certainly not. I promise.”

“Good on ya. 'Cos if you don't, who knows what'll happen? Whatever it is, you'll be seein' stars, that's for shoo-ar!”

A squalid little threat to which I paid no heed. I had no intention of returning to this hovel once I'd had my fill. He would never get his money, especially as his wares were undoubtedly ill-come-by.

A little later I left the loathsome lair, and met with an unfortunate incident involving a puddle. My own shoes were thoroughly wetted, but the pair I had procured from The Egypt made for a passable substitute, and I donned them willingly. No sooner had I tied the last lace that I found myself a foot taller. The sensation was most queer, for I had not noticed any especial height in the soles of the footwear. But here I was, twelve inches more in the y axis by virtue of wearing them. I could see the tops of everyone's greasy hats as they scurried about the misty street. My eyes were level with the grimy lintels of the tottering buildings that lined the filth-carpeted thoroughfare.

Then I shot up another foot. And another. I stopped walking and up I shot, a foot more. I could see into the second storey windows, and witnessed many an unpleasant sight which I won't befoul the pages of this remembrance with. And still I ascended. Looking down I saw the soles of the shoes were growing beneath me. My alarm was fairly pronounced by this turn of events, as was the bestartlement of the working classes around me, who expressed their disbelief with many a crude intonation.

“Bezonter me!” I exclaimed in distress. “Send for the constabulary!”

“The ol' bill dahnt cam darn 'ere, maite!” was the amused response.

By now I was above the houses, and had it not been for the fog, I would have been treated to a splendid view of the city. I could no longer make out the ground below, and the roofs of the buildings were just now fading into grey invisibility. The voices of the irksome locals were growing fainter. I felt a shuddering that came all the way up my legs, no doubt from some sort of instinctive aggression from the Cockneys upon my streeking soles, whose reactions are often out of all ho. I decided not to waste my breath on shouting out, as I was in the wilds of the East End, far from any sort of civilised aid. I would have to see this one out on my own.

The fog rushed past my astonished eyes as I flew up and up. A chill wind blew past, ruffling my overcoat. Had it not been for my quick reactions, my top hat would have been dislodged from my head and death from a chill would surely have been my fate. I was grateful for my cane, which would serve as an adequate weapon should I need to fend off whatever roamed the rarefied and unexplored upper atmosphere.

Before long, I popped out above the fog and got my first glimpse of the untarnished stars for a whole year. All about was a bowl of milky mist, stretching to the horizon. It was getting evermore intemperate, so I did up the top button of my overcoat to ward off the elements and tightened my scarf. Directly above was the sun's night-time counterpart, staring down at me, its face agog. Its apparent size grew as I rose into the firmament. The edges of the fog patch enveloping London became discernible below, and I could make out the outline of the whole south-east of England. The black soles of my miraculous shoes plummeted down into that fog, like a pair of cables connected to my feet. It was as if the whole world dangled from my toes. Peculiar indeed!

I saw the horizon curve, and looking up, a softly glowing film spread across the entire starry sky. I presumed this to be the innermost of the Ptolemaic spheres which carry the heavenly bodies around the earth. Without further ado, my ascent breached that soft membrane with a pop, and it was this that marked my departure from the atmosphere of the earth and my entry into the airless reaches of space. I shivered and held my breath, anxious to retain any oxygen within my person.

The nocturnal orb sped towards my person, its white face gawping at me. Its size was becoming quite disturbing. Conversely, the size of the earth below dwindled with frightening rapidity. Caught midway between the two worlds, I was forced to plunge my hands into my voluminous pockets to keep them warm.

Before I knew it, I was upon the satellite, that mysterious circle much bayed at by wolves and much favoured by lunatics. It appeared as a great ball, some three miles in diameter, and blow me, if I didn't espy something most unusual spouting from its surface. A crater, half in shadow, was spewing a jet of mist out towards the earth. Examining the phenomenon as I approached, I saw the cloudy jet was directly feeding all that fog that now shrouded the busy town of London. Moreover, from the flecks of brown and green I spied within the silver column, I became convinced that this, too, was the source of the tuberculosis which ravaged the population. I was amazed and outraged in equal proportions. That the earth's companion should have such wicked designs! Intolerable! But how was I to put a stop to it?

The answer revealed itself without further ado, for I was upon the evil world. Or rather, the surface of that cold sphere formed a curving ceiling above my head, which I presently crashed into. My determined soles thrust me deeper into the strange lunar matter, which turned out to be cheese, as the leading minds of our age had supposed. And even though my soles exerted a very great pressure, the cheesy soil resisted, and I felt my body being squashed. Already my back had been compressed so much I had lost a full six inches in bodily elevation. My only recourse was to begin eating, and eat I did. I chewed at the cheese above me, and affected the relief of the pressure on my frame. I bounced back to full height and started working my way through the innards of the pale world, chomping and swallowing for all I was worth. The cheese tasted like no earthly dairy product, and I wondered how it had come to be. Perhaps God, in His infinite wisdom, had seen fit to milk a star-cow, churning its lactose issue into the immense cheese ball I now devoured with gusto.

My soles pushed me ever further into the curdled heart of the dairy orb, and I tunnelled onward with my powerful jaws and gullet. At what I judged to be the centre of the ball, I broke through into a cavern, and there I saw the thing that spewed out all that fog and tuberculosis. It was, as I had conjectured, a star-cow, of immense dimensions, half a mile across if it was a yard. Its nose was jammed into a hole, through which it exhaled its diseased, misty breath. My trajectory took me right past its posterior, and as I passed, I lashed out with my cane and gave it a jolly savage prod up its delicate hind quarters. It bellowed in agony and turned on me, but I was already eating my way out of the cavern. It could not follow, though I felt it savaging my soles. I was flung this way and that as I tunnelled upwards, and the motion was such that it combined with my swiftly-filling stomach to make me feel a trifle queasy. I was getting full, and my tunnelling slowed.

And then I felt a horrid wrench down below, and I began to fall. My soles had been broken! I plunged into the star-cow's cave, and as soon as I emerged, it clamped its jaws on me, biting me in two, and swallowing my lower half. My upper half continued to fall, right through the cavern and into the tunnel I had excavated. My descent through that narrow pipe was swift, and I plummeted out into space. But – joy of joys – the fog-jet was no more. I had stopped it. The mists of London were already lifting, and the disease too, of that I was sure. I could see two long dark lines down there, the remnants of my soles, cracked and shattered across ten square miles of that fair capital.

Not wishing to cause a stir, I did my best to keep my insides in place as I fell. In a very short space of time, I had completed my descent, and smashed into the street from whence my adventure had begun, splattering into a veritable jammock of gore. From my vantage point across the façades of the great many buildings in the district I had splashed, I enjoyed the lifting of the fog and the vanquishing of the illness, which lifted with it the spirits of all those sorry Londoners. They gazed up and beheld the stars for the first time in months, and I was reminded of what the shoe-seller in The Egypt had threatened - If I didn't pay him, I'd end up seeing stars. He had been very drunk, but maybe his idle comment had actually been the truth. A wiener veryfast, as the saying goes.

The Final Course

2010-03-02T23:00:00.001Z

Dr. Grayson bit, and a shower of corpuscles sprayed up.

The preceding sentence may be incorrectly interpreted, so here is some clarification.

It does not mean that a person called Grayson bit, in the sense that teeth bite. Nor does it mean that his bite caused a gout of blood to spray forth. The corpuscles in question are not blood cells, which one may have been troubled to assume.

Rather, the bite of Grayson was of the verbal variety – a cutting remark that bit the honour of the man it was aimed at.

And the shower in question was not of the wet persuasion, but instead, a collective noun from the vernacular to describe a particularly shoddy assemblage of persons.

The corpuscles were the members of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the name given to students of that venerable institution. None of those from Corpus Christi, Cambridge, were present, having not been invited.

Finally we come to 'spraying up', which can be dealt with quite easily. The cutting remark of Grayson was so monstrously shocking, that it caused every last corpuscle to cough and choke on their wine, fountains and mists of claret billowing into the air above the dining table.

Grayson's comment was certainly not the kind of thing they were expecting when he'd proposed a toast. Dr. Neil Grayson taught late antiquity. He was a well-respected lecturer and Fellow in Late Roman History. He was thought of as 'sound'. He had seemed to be enjoying himself in the usual, spirited way that was expected at these dinners. He had drunk his wine and eaten his starter and main with relish. All had appeared at it should be.

The diners, a hundred of the students at the college, along with most of the lecturers, filled the length of the panelled Tudor Hall. The rumble of conversation and the clatter of cutlery created a wonderfully convivial atmosphere.

The person to the doctor's left was Lawrence Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, an undergraduate under his tutelage. The person to the doctor's right was Laura FitzClarence, another undergraduate. The doctor was aware of a love affair the two had been having. This was most disagreeable to him, as he himself had designs on the girl. All perfectly improper, of course, for the lecturer to have feelings for the pretty young student... but it wasn't as if it hadn't gone on before. Indeed, it wasn't uncommon at all. But one had to maintain a certain veneer of decency. If the parents found out, there'd be the most awful scandal. The Daily Mirror would have a field day.

But he was rapidly losing patience. He wanted her. It was quite simple. And he knew she wanted him. It had been deliciously apparent when he'd marked her paper on Augustine of Hippo. The 54% he'd given her had been a trifle harsh. A little rub and a little kiss had convinced him of that. 70% was a much fairer mark.

But this pesky Scrymgeour was in the way. They had been seeing each other. If the ghastly boy could be removed from the equation, the lovely Laura could be his.

Thus, the toast.

He rose and struck his crystal glass with his silver knife. All eyes turned to him and the drone of conversation fell away.

“A toast!” he began grandiosely. “We've had several admirable toasts during the evening, for which I am sure we are all grateful.”

A grumble of 'here, here's and table-thumps demonstrated the hall's concurrence.

“I have here, by my side, one of the finest students it's ever been my honour to teach. The young rascal knows almost more about the bally Byzantine than I do!”

A murmur of polite mirth from the diners.

“He is a fine young man, and a welcome addition to these hallowed halls.”

The hum of mumbled accord rose and fell once more.

“Or at least, that would be so, were it not for certain facts that have come to my attention. For this man...” He pointed at 'this man'. “... Is a scoundrel and a plagiarist!”

The aforementioned corpuscles sprayed their wine into the aether, spluttering in amazement. The drowsy air around the hall was shattered. People sat up straight and became instantly more attentive.

“For my book on Gregory Nazianzen, the fourth-century churchman, I have done extensive – extensive – research. I had kept all this in a file – a paper file, mind. I did not wish to use my computer for it. For e-mails and research, computers are fine. But I prefer to have actual documents which can be taken anywhere and read without the need for electrical support. Old habits, and all that, eh?”

The young lad to his left was looking up at him with an unreadable expression on his smooth face. A deliberately unreadable expression, if you were to ask Dr. Grayson.

“It is interesting that young Mr. Scrymgeour-Wedderburn has recently had contact with a chap from Penguin Books. Furthermore, it is very interesting what they have been talking about. Nothing less than a complete academic study of... Gregory Nazianzen!”

Gasps of shock and disbelieving cries of, “No!”

“I know this because I paid a private detective to track this bounder's movements. I have incontrovertible evidence of his dastardly scheme. He stole the notes and manuscript in my file and was going to pass it off as his own work, knowing I had no other copies. Taking advantage of a forgetful old lecturer's lax working practices. Can you imagine anything lower?”

It had to be admitted that no one in the appalled hall could imagine anything lower. Several of those in attendance went so far as to actually voice their inability to imagine anything lower with grave intonations of, “No,” and “Absolutely not.”

“Well, sir,” said the doctor. “Your plan is revealed. The file is back in my hands, thanks to the sterling work of the detective agency. Constable, if you would.”

A policeman had quietly entered the hall through the kitchen doors. He approached Lawrence Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, who stood up, red-faced. He avoided all eye contact, save for one last glance at his beloved Laura. She turned away from him in disgust. Happy day! the doctor rejoiced in the dark secrecy of his mind. Thank God for dishonest students!

The policeman led the disgraced undergraduate away in total silence. Dr. Grayson watched his walk of shame with barely-hidden triumph. Once the policeman and his prisoner were out of sight, the hall erupted into an excited hub-bub. The doctor retook his seat and offered Laura comforting words, which she gladly lapped up.

The dinner continued, the festivities fuelled with the unhealthy energy of gossip and scandal. Everyone got very drunk, including Laura and the doctor.

Later on, in her digs, Dr. Grayson bit, and a shower of corpuscles sprayed up.

#FridayFlash: Who Dreams?

2010-01-29T00:01:00.002Z

by Peter Etherington @petherin

In my dream the air tickled the inside of my head. The back half of my skull had been cut away, and most of the brain removed. What was odd about this (if you'll forgive me overlooking the obvious) was that I was on the operating table, but I was also one of the surgeons.

The me on the table couldn't see anything. It was unaware. But the surgeon me looked inside my head and saw a complicated layer of brain clinging to the inside of my skull, like porridge in a hairy bowl. There were metal struts in there, holding the squashy grey matter in place like scaffolding for my thoughts. There were also guide-rails, along which I intended to slot a new lump of brain. I held it in my hands – it felt like a wad of sticky minced meat. It had an irregular shape, like a large potato you'd reject at the supermarket, stuck atop another and shunted forward so it overhung. Two slender red rails ran along one side, which I assumed was either the top or the bottom.

I lined it up with the rails in my head and tried to push it in, being careful not to trap any stray strands of meat - I didn't relish forgetting how to pee because I crushed the piece that controlled the bladder muscles. But it wouldn't go in. I jiggled it, but it refused to slide any further than halfway. Loathe to force it, I took it out with great care, and a colleague relieved me of the stodgy mass and turned it round, slotting it in with ease.

My head felt heavier, though a draught still cooled those secret internal crevices that no draught had ever cooled before. My head, sliced open like a boiled egg, felt vulnerable, but in this operating theatre, it was a vulnerability I didn't mind. I felt safe. I was not concerned that, say, a bird would flap into the cavity and scratch its claws against the exposed tissue. No one was going to sneeze into it. It would be all right.

“Take a picture,” I said to my mother, who sat nearby, observing. Her red hair snaked from her scalp and her white coat sparkled. I pointed to the back of my noggin – that of the surgeon, not the me on the table. I couldn't see the back of the surgeon's skull, but I assumed it had been excavated in the same drastic way as the patient's. Yet the surgeon was up and about, not asleep on the slab. It would be far more interesting to get a picture of his swede, hacked open and on display as he walked and talked. Or rather, as I walked and talked. For a surgeon, I was finding this quite disorientating.

She had an instant camera, as providence would have it, and she pointed it at the back of my surgeon head while I jabbed an excited forefinger at the gaping hole in the patient's head. A mind-bender, that, I told myself.

She took the picture and the flash made its weird poppy-squelch noise, then the photo slipped from the camera's slit. I took it with excitement, and watched the greyness fade into an image. There was the surgeon, but it wasn't me. His head was intact. He had a pale pink pate with thinning grey hair where the yawning red skull-pit should be. The patient on the table wasn't me either. His head was gouged out, but it wasn't me.

I looked at my mother. She had changed. No longer was she a woman in a blinding white coat, aged around sixty. Now she was a white box covered in lights, red leads sprouting from every nook and edge. On the front were the words CEREBRA-BOT 500, and underneath this: SURGICAL BRAIN INTERFACE. But the fact still remained; it was my mother.

At the end of the operation, it was switched off, and my dream came to an end.

#FridayFlash: Porridge-Chops

2010-01-15T00:04:00.004Z

by Peter Etherington (petherin on Twitter)

Porridge-Chops the micro pig was heavily into porridge. There was nothing she enjoyed more than eating bowl after bowl of the stuff. And because she was a micro pig, a mere eleven inches high, she could actually get into the bowl and wallow in it, delighting in covering herself in molten oats. When she'd eaten everything in the bowl, she would lick herself clean. This was how much Porridge-Chops revelled in porridge.

Her companion, Grunter, also liked the odd spot of porridge, but he wasn't as into it as Porridge-Chops. Aside from this, they got on famously, as micro pigs are a very affable species.

They were owned by a pensioner called Old Mrs Withers who gave them as much porridge as they could eat. But one day, the old woman fell under a Tube train and was electrocuted and carved into four separate pieces. For some days, no one came to feed the two small pigs, and the more oat-obsessed of the pair became desperately hungry. Grunter was happy with the leftover vegetables that were available. But Porridge-Chops started suffering from oat withdrawal symptoms, and laid on her side in her blanket-lined basket, shivering and sweating. Her plaintive oinks for assistance went unheard. She decided to take matters into her own trotters.

“Don't go,” said Grunter. “Someone will turn up. Here, have a carrot.”

Porridge-Chops swatted the offered vegetable out of Grunter's trotter. “I want porridge!” she squealed. “Will you help me?”

“You've lost your mind. No, I will not. You need to get off the stuff.”

Ignoring her friend's advice, she left him behind and plunged through the pig flap, leaving him forever. She made her way to a fellow micro pig who lived some miles away. They had met during a micro pig social event – Candice was the only one who could help her. When Candice saw the sorry state Porridge-Chops was in, she agreed to help at once.

“What's your plan?” Candice asked.

“I need porridge, badly,” said Porridge-Chops, “but you have none here.”

“Unfortunately not. I am allergic to it. But I recognise your need and will help you find some.”

“There needs to be four of us to execute the plan I have in mind.”

Together they went to see a third micro pig who Candice knew, and this third pig – Alfonso – knew a fourth – Yvonne. These last two agreed to help Porridge-Chops with her problem.

They obtained a long raincoat from Yvonne's owner, as well as a pair of large-framed aviator sunglasses and Yvonne's owner's bus pass. Thus equipped, they set off for the nearest porridge factory.

* * *

The security guard found the porridge inspector's voice a trifle strange. His head was very small and oddly-shaped, and his raincoat undulated in the most unexpected way. But he possessed the proper credentials for a porridge inspector, in the form of a dog-eared but official-looking Office of Porridge Inspection (O.P.I.) pass. Being the only one on-site at two in the morning, he made an executive decision and granted Inspector Chops access to the premises.

Once inside, the quartet of pigs leapt off each other's shoulders.

“What do we do now?” asked Candice.

“We find where they keep the stuff,” answered Porridge-Chops. “Then we make a run for it. We can't pose as an O.P.I. agent on the way out, we will be laden with purloined porridge.”

“That's too risky,” protested Alfonso.

“You knew what you were signing up for when we started this thing. Don't let me down now.”

Alfonso steeled himself. “Okay. Let's do it.”

“This way,” said Porridge-Chops.

They found the storage room, lined with shelves groaning with boxes of porridge mix. They filled their saddle-bags, and then scampered as quickly as they could towards the exit.

Just as they were approaching the door, Porridge-Chops caught the scent of fresh porridge. Knowing she should stick to the plan but unable to stop herself, she veered off from the main group and thundered towards the source of the maddening aroma. She screeched to a halt as she entered a gigantic room holding a tall vat of hot porridge. This was where they manufactured the ready-made brand. She raced up the spiral staircase to the top of the vat and looked across the enormous expanse of hot, milky oats, being stirred by an enormous steel blade hanging from the ceiling.

“Hey!” hissed Candice from below. “What the hell are you doing? Get down here, we've got to leave!”

Porridge-Chops ignored her. She'd never seen so much ready-to-eat porridge. It made her feel intoxicated. It was too much. Her head swam.

“We're gonna get caught!” Candice squealed with urgency.

Porridge-Chops lowered her snout to the surface of the vat's inviting contents and licked, and the taste was indescribable, magnificent, heavenly. She took a mouthful and swallowed it down – it was like eating stodgy summer sunbeams.

All of a sudden, a deafening alarm started, and red flashing lights began throwing crimson emergency all about. It startled Porridge-Chops, and she lost her footing and toppled into the vat, shrieking in alarm. She tried to get out but her porridge-befoulled trotters could find no purchase. Her terrified thrashing made her sink, and before any of her companions could save her, the creamy sludge had closed over her wriggling body. Holding her breath, she thought she still might find a way out of this sticky blackness, before the steel stirrer connected with her and her body burst asunder.

Her remains were cut into many small pieces and went undiscovered, and the batch of ready-made porridge went out. When someone finally came to see to Old Mrs Withers' affairs, they made Grunter a lovely hot bowl of this ready-made fare, and he snaffled it down, wondering where his friend had ever got to.

#FridayFlash: Blue Skies

2010-01-08T12:07:00.003Z

by Peter Etherington (petherin on Twitter)

Their crinkled hands intertwined and held fast. It was his last moment and they both knew it. They accepted it. A sweetness filled their chests, and with it a soft sadness.

The memory was clear for Daphne. It had happened ten years ago. She was now reaching the end of her life. She lay on her bed and recalled those beautiful last minutes with her husband.

A lot of other memories had slipped away, eaten by the dementia that preyed on her brain. But this one, this crucial, poignant memory, had stayed, perhaps anchored more securely than others less weighty with meaning.

She remembered looking at his tearful blue eyes, and how her sight had been blurred by her own tears. So well-earned, those briny droplets, built on sixty years of marriage and love. Charged with such unshakeable affection.

She began singing the song they'd sung to each other when they'd laid together in the fields, in the first days of their courting. Her voice was quiet and wavered, and it broke his heart for the final time. As always, she had effortlessly breached his defences and poured inside, filling him up.

He joined in, his own voice deep but also quiet, and clogged with emotion. She liked its sound – its baritone manliness, lower even than when he'd been a young man, made her feel happy and safe.

The song had been popular during their first romance, a ragtime number. They sang the first verse:

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

They finished and simply looked at each other, and he squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. For a long while, they didn't let go, for this was what their hands were used to.

And then his eyelids had drooped and he had whispered her name, and she'd tightened her grip. But his hand had held on long enough, and it was time. His eyelids opened up again, for a last look at her, and then his head had slowly lowered. His final breath made a funny little noise, and then his chest stopped moving.

She held onto the memory as she'd held onto his hand. She'd held his hand for a long time, because letting go was too hard, but eventually she had relinquished her grip, for there was nothing else to be done. It was over.

What had happened next? She found it difficult to remember. She was confused about the details of the funeral. There was merely a grey vagueness containing loss and bewilderment.

She fell asleep, and on awaking, she recalled her sweetest moments. Her life had wound down and her memories were now the most precious thing in her day. She remembered how it felt to rest her head against his naked shoulder and hear the beat of his heart. But as for those precious last minutes together when they'd sung their song, she'd forgotten them, and they were never recalled again.

#FridayFlash: Almost Omniscient

2009-12-28T16:27:00.008Z

by Peter Etherington (petherin on Twitter)

The god opened his eyes and a world fell in, just as a mortal opens his eyes and light falls in. The world hit his divine retina and was converted into almighty electrochemical signals, which his eminent brain could then perceive. Everybody on that world underwent a rapture, breaking their fleshly bonds and becoming pure spirit. Just another day in the life of the god.

It would also be the last day. The god, in his near-infinite wisdom, had decided to relinquish his divinity and become a mortal. His fellow gods had not understood. Why did he, greatest of all the gods, want to forego near-omniscience and omnipotence, in favour of the horribly limited existence of a mortal man? The god answered that he held almost all that was known in his mind, but that this was not enough. What of the unknown? He had no experience of this. So what better way of experiencing it than to become a man, ignorant of so many things? The other gods were dubious of the scheme, but did not attempt to stop him.

Summoning his great powers, he began transforming himself into a man while he pushed off towards a little world. As the godliness drained out of him, his memories quickly faded. His knowledge of all there was halved, then quartered, until he had become a mortal man and his feet stood on the earthy planet. His ignorance was complete. He now knew what it was to not know. He experienced a thrill at the mystery of existence. It was stupidly delicious. But the aim of the god was not met. As a man, he knew so little it was impossible for him to quantify just how little he knew. The fraction of all knowledge he held was infinitesimal, a fraction so small, no human could properly appreciate it. Only a god could comprehend something so tiny.

It was fortunate, then, that the world he was on fell into the eye of another god, and he was transformed back into the pure spirit of a god once more.