Magenta Monster

WE I wrote a couple of shorts, a couple of poems and then I hit a snag – one of the stories based on a nightmare I had, kind of didn’t want to be a flash fiction, nor a short story as it turned out.

Nope it wants to be a novel or a novelette or some such. So it is kind of consuming all my writing time at the moment and that is fine. I will still be attempting to push out some shorts and share inspiration as I go!

Unsurprisingly it is part of the Punk Universe 🙂 Though it is more on the crime/thriller type of tale this time, I still need to sort out some of the plot details but thing it is a solid story.

She’d found it on the beach. It wasn’t much of a thing, just a fake gem from some piece of costume jewellery, but it was glass and not plastic at least. A lovely domed oval of blue glass with little flecks within. Bov held it up to the weak sun light and imagined that each fleck was a fairy hiding within the glass; she smiled, and pocketed the trinket. On the walk home she ran through the scenarios in her head about how the fairies would come out of the piece of glass at sunset or dawn and grant her wishes.

She would not show it to Granny-Ann, the old lady could sometimes be a kill joy and no doubt would decide to send the gem to the police station. Bov could not allow that. At the edge of the woods, just before the path leading back to Granny-Anne’s, Bov removed her “proper” clothes and got changed. She hated the restrictive garments but had her dress, she’d stolen it last summer from a washing line on the way to the station. Neither her mother nor Granny-Anne knew about the dress. They would take it away, no doubt burn it.

The dress had lace hem and cuffs; they were dirty and frayed now and the buttons where over stretched. She’d been saving money from mowing lawns to buy a new one, one that fitted. She was going to say it was for her sister.

She buttoned a gingham shirt up over flat chest and transferred the pebble of glass. The dress, re-wrapped, was placed firmly in the hollow on the tree and Bov wound her way back for supper.

Granny-Anne was standing at her gate. She looked ancient and decrepit; Bov felt bad for not liking her, but it was horrible to be sent here every school holiday, to the middle of no where, to the bogs and the mountains and the beach. Well, she liked the beach but the rest of it was so closed in and wild and the beach was sometimes over run with tourists.

“Dafydd!” she called and, reluctantly, Bov waved at her.

“I was playing on the beach. Sorry, Granny-Anne”

“Never mind, get in the house and wash up, cariad,” Bov smiled but was careful not to hug the woman; she smelt of urine and it was distressing. The house, on the other hand, was clean and tidy with a smell of lavender oil and stew. The ritual of prayer was observed before eating was allowed, and most of the furniture was thick old stuff Granny-Annes ancestors had made. They were ancient, and Dafydd was always surprised that they didn’t powder into wood worm shit.

“What did you get up to today?” the old woman asked.

“Just walked the beach.” A standard answer with a shrug, the old woman seemed hurt but did not push the subject.

“There is a meeting at the chapel tonight, you coming boyo?”

Bov shook her head, it was pretty much the last place she wanted to be.

“Bethany will be there,” it was a sly statement and made Bov blush and look away.

“I have reading to do, for school… you know.”

Granny-Anne sagged slightly; it was alarming that she did not right herself and become the resourceful old witch Bov knew her as. Granny-Anne truly was old; she was Bov’s Mother’s great grandmother. Bov decided that perhaps she should be kind, after all it was not really Granny-Annes fault, she didn’t know Bov was a girl, didn’t know how much she hated being called Dafydd or that she hoped to have an operation when she was older. One that would make her like the other girls.

Bov had had to change schools twice already, but that was not Granny-Anne’s fault.

“I’ll, I’ll come to the Sunday service,” she said, and the old woman instantly perked up. Bov made a show of getting her school books, which were stacked by an old and ancient radio, huge and made of wood. As she lent towards it, it crackled to life; music blared for a second and then it hummed. She stepped back and the sound subsided, it had been a strange echoey music.

Granny-Anne was suddenly by her side, claw like hands digging into her upper arm, “What did you find?” she hissed. Bov turned to stare. “What have you brought back with you!” the woman was frantic and hurting her. Bov extricated her arm and tried to back away but it set the radio off again.

“Is it glass? Or a carving?” the old woman’s eyes were bright, she was animated in a way that Bov had never seen.

Mind racing, she brought out the gem, spooked and worried. Her old and wrinkled hands, knuckles big and sore looking reached out and snatched it up. “Oh clever boy!” and she shuffled to the thick heavy set dresser and with a creak opened one of the drawers and began rummaging.

“What is it?” she asked, intrigued.

“It’s a Mabinogi,” Bov looked blankly at her. “A stone wizard, it tells us history if we know how to listen.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she scowled at that.

“You must have heard of the Mabinogi? Tales, I am sure I read to you many stories when you were younger.” Bov thought and shrugged.

“I used to be scared of your stories Granny-Anne”

To her surprise the old woman laughed and then with a single statement made Bov’s heart leap. “It is interesting that you should find this, they are rare and handed down from mother to daughter, some believe a man can not touch them.” Bov blushed and tried to look away but she had caught the younger persons’ jaw in her wirey old fingers. “You stole a dress and your mother tells me you have moved schools again? I think the old spirits got confused… don’t tell Owen I said that, he would not forgive me.” Bov smiled at that as he thought of the strict Chapel preacher full of grit and booming harshness.

But also she was trembling, she’d been so sure Granny-Anne would hate her or punish her or something, she knew her mother was angry, still felt the bruises of where the boys had found the lipstick. But, biting her lip, she asked what turned out to be the right question, “Granny-Anne? Will you teach me how to hear the Mabinogi Stone?”

The myth ran somewhat like this – There was a time when the Master made all the races that filled the earths and the skies and the seas. A great dwelling rose up higher than the tallest mountain and that was were the Masters lived with their chosen, they gave them wings and they would sing into the chasm beyond the clouds. Created as guardians they swooped through the celestial spheres, majestic and mighty.

Some of them though hungered for those they guarded, and took a lesser people to their beds. The slaves of Earth with whom they produced the halflings. The halflings roamed the earth and heavens, viscous and stark and the Master was displeased.

And from the heavens they were cast, wings ripped from their backs, they fell… an army led by Luc, he who had been the brightest. The rebellion failed but the halflings endured. So did the spheres hanging in the clouds.

The Master cut the heaven and the earth asunder, each now unable to speak to the other… the angles bide their time, warriors awaiting the call. The chasm beyond grows restless. ….

It was an old tale and distorted in many ways in many cultures, but going through The Archive suggested that it was however, real. Sitting on the Orbital Prometheus a women with magenta curly hair stared at a light wall that chimed with little bubble floating up – thinking. Earth/humans had been in space for a couple of hundred years, they had sent a couple of probes beyond the helio-sheath and that was it.

They were still stuck in the solar system, the oort cloud and beyond – a dream. The cynic in her thought that it would only become something to do once the mineral and organic riches of the asteroids had been depleted. But as a species or rather mix of species they had survived this far. What was worrying her was that strange things had been found on the asteroids and rumours of ghosts and monsters were coming to her from the exploration crews.

Punku stood up and stretched blinking her eyes to clear the Archive link she had been embedded in, her stomach rumbled and she went in search of something protieny. Her early memories were still not all accessible on demand but there was something there – it niggled. They’d spoken to the sky, not in pray though that later took it’s place.

She feared that after all their trials and tribulations Tia would win.

The question was before Babel, before the three empires fell – did they have space technology? She had been born in Babel, had survived millenia herself, that was a long time for people to be trapped in space, cut off from the civilization that had sent them to the limits.

The empires had imploded with self hate, a race for racial purity – a war that was barely over now – what if there were groups still harbouring such thoughts out here in the stars, hidden amongst the asteroids and planets? It had not really occurred to her before… until the strange signals had appeared. Just an echo of light really, a blip on the spectroscopy but it had rung alarm bells.

Aten was not playing fair again, he was still concealing secrets, he always gave half truths, always felt he knew best for everyone. The fact that he was generally right was just infuriating. Punku ground her teeth.

The corridors of Prometheus were old now, but the fish tanks they had installed gleamed at her, the swimming creatures calmed her as she searched out The Architect – The Aten. He was sitting in the board room with his little elite, she was one of the them so she didn’t know why it bothered her especially as here it was the core. Here earths destiny was decided. Here a future was being forged for everybody, no slaves anymore, no poor dying and the wars within quelled. Now they had hoped to focus on the real enemy – disease and ageing. Something Aten had done really well millenia gone before the empires had collapsed.

‘Archetect,’ she said, he nodded his large broad head at her, the old formalities had reappeared too soon. ‘We may have a problem, there are echos in the light. Did Atlantis have space travel?’

He closed his mouth of pointed teeth and looked with over large eyes to ceiling. ‘Yesss… but I never thought it possssible that any of them could survive. The programme wasn’t finished, there was sabotage.’

‘Do we have any idea of what the space programme entailed?’

‘No each of the three had their own Alantis, Heva and Pacifica and then… each of the council had secrets, none of us trusted the others.’ He shrugged, mottled skine beginning to look very creased. His hands were freely webbed and on display, something that had not happened in thousands of years. His existence was now known, all of them where now exposed but only a few extreme religious people had bad things to say. And those they had monitored.

‘So we have no idea what might be lurking in the asteroid fields and beyond?’

‘No.’

Everyone looked around hoping for reassurance from the others, the exploration teams were jumpy and now it looked like they had very real reason to be worried.

Punku pulled the data up on the table, cutting edge optronics and electronics mixed with solid state and liquid crystals. Aten clicked in that way he and the other Masters had.

Jonathan who still looked barely middle age, scratched at them with his calloused finger pads. He began his humming – they all knew he was thinking and processing and did not interrupt. Prometheus was his space station, the first of the orbitals.

He sat back and tapped the table. Sound crackled out, a string of unintelligible words, just ghosts of sound. The Aten tilted his head listening intently.

‘It is old, communications between… the Spheres… I need to analysis this more the language is slurred and wrongly ordered but it is 2nd Empire elite speak.’

Punku shivered and looked at the observation screen, she had a bad feeling, where they about to feel heavens wrath?

It was there beyond the Sandy Hills; everybody knew it, though no one could now recall where the stories had come from. All the elders were certain that the edge, the barrier to their world was beyond the Sandy Hills.

Most were scared of what lay there in the beyond but not Inanu. She had always felt the bite and the pinch of their little world, nestled as it was, and things were changing, had been for a while. The sandy hills were encroaching and the gardens where struggling. People had started to get hungry. Everyone was worried.

Some said that the world was ending, others that sacrifices where needed; no one had suggested they leave. Lanu looked out of the Ponic’s Tower and looked at their world. It was dying, but she was sure that did not mean they had to die with it. Looking around the tower she decided the world had been dying for a long time. Crystals glinted in the wall; her grandmother had told her that her grandmother had said that once upon a time it had lit up, that once it held the secrets of Heaven and the stars, of the end times, of the chariots that rode the prophets up and away to be with the Sun or God or Benevolence, depending on who you asked.

Now there was a darkness on the air and the priests said they could speak directly to the Gods, to those who dwelt beyond the stars. Inanu stared out at the flat area where they had once sent people to far away places the Priest said were the preserve of the dead. There had been an increase in sacrifices of animals, baying in fear as the floods had reduced and the river had clogged and stagnated.

Babylonia was dying.

Great gashes in the walls told her that many things had been ripped from the tower. There was also still soot, thick and black and oily; there had been a fire, the Tower had fallen and now it was nothing more that the centre of the Ponics. Great hanging gardens that stretched out away from the tower fed with water and nutrients from the river. Her father helped maintain the giant screws and solar pumps that shifted the water up the hill from the river.

She’d asked him how it worked, he’d said he didn’t know, he just mucked about with the thing and hoped one of the solutions the older teams had shown him worked. Even so, he was aware that not enough water was getting up there. ‘It also tastes salty’, He confided in her.

She’d frowned at that and that was really why she had taken the steps up the tower. She watched the water bubble and pulse its way out to trickle down to the plants. She’d bought a cup with her, and now she removed it and scooped a sample. Placing it to her lips she tasted it. Frowning, she wasn’t sure if it was salty but it didn’t taste right at all.

She set a pan up and began to boil the water. If there was salt in it she would extract it. She could have just left it to evaporate but she wanted answers quickly; the priests were running out of animals to appease the gods.

Glancing out of the window, she could not imagine them coming back. If she was a god who could travel to the stairs and Heaven beyond, she wouldn’t bother with a city that had forgotten how to build to the sky, a city that built with mud and worshipped the river even though they would all deny that that was what they were doing.

Worse, her hands were webbed; she was the first in five generations born like it, the Priests had decided she was an omen, they thought the gods would reincarnate. Now they looked at her with side glances, and she’d heard her father’s fears for her safety. She knew that sometimes the priests decided that animal blood was not enough.

There was a hiss as she poured more of the water into her pan; she would boil it dry and see. Whilst she waited she looked at the pictures on the walls, carved over the years.

People with great heads, and webbed hands, hands like hers. She wondered where they were, she wondered if they were the only people left, she wondered why they looked so similar and yet so different from these creatures the priests called gods.

She thought of how they had named her city the gateway. That suggested comings and goings; not everyone had gone up into the sky, surely some had come down? Surely people had ridden into their city from the roads. There were records of trade!

Would the people beyond the hills be large-headed or not? Would they have webbed hands? The day was evaporating faster than the water.

She glanced at the pan, felt an uneasiness as she looked at the white crusting. It was definitely salt. Staring out at the Ponics, she noticed similar residues down the pipes and things feeding the plants.

Inanu stumbled over her own feet as she ran from the Tower, she needed to tell her father, she needed to tell the elders. She collided with a Priest on the stairs. He grinned at her unpleasantly.

She stuttered an apology but his large fingers were still holder her upper arm where he had caught her, ‘Communing with the gods my Lady Inanna?’, he asked. She froze with fear and stared at him, her title was not extant, her father worked hard to hide his nobel birth. It was unsettling to hear it uttered by the Priest. But more so the fact he had dropped the juvenile u off of her name worried her more.

She gave herself a mental shake and looked at him, ‘I have no title sacred one, I was simple investigating why the plants are not flourishing and I feel I have an answer for the King.’

The Priest smiled at her again, her heart started pumping harder. ‘Oh, the King is looking forward to a solution to the situation and you will provid,e my Lady. Your title is eternal and the lands are missing your celestial presence my dear.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, already trying to squirm her way out of his grip, this was not sounding good. Another priest appeared, he was holding silk rope and ball gag. She twisted more frantically. ‘No, please, I must talk to the King! There is salt in the irrigation water, there are ways we can get around it! Please!’

The priest struck her and she collapsed, ‘My Lady seeks to help but once she is free, once her earthly body’s blood has been spilt, then she will achieve all that seems unsurmountable to her now.’

She was unconscious as they trussed her up. If she died the key to Babylon’s survival would be lost. She dreamed of the Lands beyond the Sandy Hills.

Story inspiration – look at the picture of the two children in the wooded bower maze, what are they feeling? Why are they there?

Now set a timer and begin writing 🙂

Photo can also be found here and to find out what they were actually doing look here.

Just a quick note to say that you can now get The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry as a gift set with personalised bag I have made and illustrate for each order. There are also keyrings and stickers and things in there. The book itself has ten poems, space for kids to write their own poems and is illustrate by me 🙂

You can order them for about £10 from Etsy.

I can’t remember where I saw the call for story ideas now – weather it was via twitter or the leaflet I picked up about the Brum Lit Fest when I was delivering my Cuddly Science puppet show and workshop at the British Science Festival (I was in the library) or via some other random means… but I discovered that Rachel New was looking for story ideas and attempting to write a silly number of stories whilst in residence at the library.

So I sent her a tweet and she has written a story from them as part of her epic flash fiction writing marathon – here it is

It is GothNoWriMo and I am attempting to write lots of horror and/or spooky halloween themed stuff this month – I am also sorting ideas for future writings 🙂 So here are my 30 story ideas for the younglings:

1) Dino Raw

2) Alien’s Landing

3) The Dragon Over There

4) The Goo

5) Vampyra’s First Teeth

6) Pointed Conversation

7) The Hound of the Basket Ball Court

8) Little Ghost Says Boo

9) Mini Monster

10) Ten tangled Tenticals

11) Knock on Wood

12) Hetty Peglar and the bothersom Banshee

13) Hetty Peglar’s Day at the Beach

14) Hetty Peglar and the Robot of Doom

15) Hetty Peglar’s Ware Slippers

16) Hetty Peglar and the Whispering Wardrobe

17) Marly and the Glitter War

18) Pumpkin Dragon (a Horace the House Dragon story)

19) Creatures from the Deeps

20) Gladace the Glittery Ghost

21) Muse Monsters Comic Adventures

22) Pumpkin Bear’s Stare (Part of the Berry Bears)

23) Witch Bear is Where? (Berry Bears)

24) Vampire Bear Beware! (berry bears)

25) Spider Bear’s Hair (BB)

26) Wear Bear Cares (BB)

27) The Spiral on the Hill

28) Under Glass

29) Ghost Captions

30) Monster Moo (No Dairy Mary)

Remembering Us

Written for National Poetry Day 2014

Remember the tide lapping at the shore
How we walked on shingled beach
War bomber fractured in the mudded flats
Metal bones peeking at low tide
Recall the estuary filled with birds calling
You showed me the eddible weeds
That grew there
Warm salt, bitter
Remember the old lady who swam
Hat of neon pink, skin of blue
There by the wall
They build it as wave defence
Black tar oozes and regular concrete blocks
Bring to mind the pill box set inside
Full of junkies’ needles
And discarded love

Remember the storm that ripped the sky
Spiking down and blazing the land
How the sky turned dark
Blistering heat and oppression
Broken in the thunder
The tent sagged upon itself
I got wet
But was denied the shelter of you
I caught you a green crab
By curved chimneys reaching into the sky
Their roundness cloud factories
You said it was edible
You said it didn’t belong
We put it back
But I got a rash
From algal blooms
You drove me to town for my prescription

Thinking now
Of how thisteled sand spiked my feet
You carried me to my tent
Where an adda lay in wait
I scared it and felt sad
We saved an orange ladybird
The first we’d ever seen
That night I was cold
A whole in the canvas let in the night
I thought of your arms
And dreamt of tangled feet
Throbbing footpaths greeted us
In a misty summer dawn
The mass of creatures writhed
Lady bugs of all colours
And not just dots but all kinds of shapes
They made fitful crunches as we walked
I gave up trying to save them
Most starved, some bit
And the sun set like a child’s painting
With a moon that arose on it’s heels
The whisper of the waves
Lapped froth at day glo sandled feet
You gave me a padded shirt
To keep me warm
It smelt of you

Remember the belt of rope you wore
To keep up the cut offs frayed to faded fluff
A sometimes shirt tight across your chest
The skin turned bronze upon you
Whilst I hid in sunblock and gingamed cotton
There was no hair upon your chest
Though you were older than me
We went swimming in the sea
I cut my foot on carelessness
Oh my polluted sea
I wept for the crimes of people
You smiled
I have always wondered
Was it for me?
My heart hurt at it’s beauty
As to keep you I enthralled you in
Greens and greys, browns and blues
Blending together in landscapes only we saw
I rescued a fledgling
So sickly small
It hopped on to me
I was filled with hope
Later laying in long sun dried grass
You said it would be fine
I believed you though I knew it could not be true
And little rabbits stopped near us
I caught them to pet
You laughed that I released them
Each with a new name
That meant nothing but my love

Do you remember the bike rides, in the ink of night
Drunkness a murmur on everyone but ours breath
The smell of wood smoke as we cooked
And chatted without care
Subjects and philosophies dripped from our tongues
The stars were pin pricks of ice
In my spin

Remember how it could not last
How they said we could not be
The disapproval
The anarchy
We did not have the guts to try
And the summer evaporated
Autumn put dreams under glass
We said goodbye
So chaste the taste of you
The scent in my mind
A look of longing
You held my hand
And gave me a memory

Thought I’d just collect some story ideas together:

So we have mythical creatures, other dimensions, historical figures with gruesome acts attached to their names, murderers, being lost and fearing nothing at all, being locked in with your own guilt, plague, change, torture and suspense.

There is a question of who populates the story – warewolf, school girl, fire deamon, witch, ghosts and so on.

Then where is the setting? This world, another world, interlocking worlds, the past, the future, an alternative past, within oneself.

Are there good guys or bad guys?

Does someone need rescuing, destroying, finding?

Ending… happy, sad, both, neither.

Taking this all into account I’ve thrown together a list of stories titles to be getting on with – 30 grown up stories and 30 for kids. I may not stick to this but it is a starting point.

Grown Ups:

1) Vampire Smoothy 2) Dark Origins 3) House Guest 4) Revenant 5) Triptych 6) Whispers from My Pillow 7) The Clouds of No Where 8) Scars 9) Elemental Wishes 10) Miss Match 11) The Warrior 12) The Ice Man 13) The Star Glider 14) The Water Waif 15) The Earth Bound 16) The Leaf Cutter 17) The Sky Moment 18) Six Little Things that Told of Apocalypse 19) REsources 20) Mice 21) When Blight Bites 22) Laths 23) The Dog Collar 24) Glitter, Glamour and Gore 25) Grinder 26) Seeds 27) Slither Snake 28) The Girl 29) Gone, Gotten and Garotted 30) Mites

I may post the kids story titles later on in the month but for now I shall get back to writing rather than procrastination!