Magenta Monster

The man stood and watch the night bleak branches cradle the moon and thought on his predicament, he was here in a street of harsh tarmac and the fields there lay beyound reach. Behind a barbed wire fence. The haze of mist could not cut the remembering from his mind’s eye though it softened the outline of the ruin. His home once but never to be a home again and the icy mud within would lay unchurned by cows with warm steam clouds of pungent breath.

They had taken it away from him in the aftermath of financial apocolypse, they had taken the only place he had ever lived, the only job he knew how to do, and they had ripped the land apart. Built on her grave and his heart had shattered.

They had built and fenced and hemmed in his fields, road kill on the roads rotting in swarms of flies in the summer. Delicate deer became killiers on the highways as their elegance abounded and spilt onto the new roads. His life had dripped away in a slurry of concrete.

He hunched his shoulders showing his age, he had been 21 when the crisis had hit and the government showed they cared not for agriculture, but loved the land owner who would develope and scar and maim the green hills. Farmers do not sell unless they have too, what business plan could that ever be made into?

He stood and looked at the bleakness like some dickensian scene, brimming with potential murder and sickness of the soul. He took some wire cutters out of his pocket, his fingers ached with their cold weight, stepping forward to the accompaniment of cracking ice he took a breath and faced the ghosts, embrassing the past. Seeing before him a vista of white hot memories, brimming to over flow his senses, images and rememberings of the boy-man he had been. Memories of Trish and her plans before the influenzer, before the kisses and passioned bliss and them crying over spilt milk. She had not out seen the farm nor the hurtful gossip of older tongues that denied them the little help that could have saved the situation.

His hands shook with the remnants of the effort to snip the wire, the cold made the cuts on his hand hurt but not bleed. Broken glass crunched now as well as the ice, somewhere in a security office a little light blinked on but no one noticed it.

Jason had come home, he stepped through the half collapsed doorway, nothing remained of the floral curtains but the smell was still there over the frozen earth and the stench ozone from the motorway. He creaked his way to the kitchen, tears etching out grief tracks that were already worn into his tired face. He sat upon a barrel that should not have been there. Spectors filled him up, teasing with love and warmth through a chilly vale, he lasped into half dreams shutting out the cold.

The bleeping light would not bring anyone, not for hours and the air hurt the lungs with it’s moist coldness that clasped all in an iron grip of winter. Yes he would sit here now, a man of 79 and die with his farm. He should never have left.

The mist condensed freezing around him, swirlling into shapes that weren’t there, a bundle of kittens and a sack of potatoes, he hummed an old tune that was true and never had been real for him – Misery Farm, it reverbed to nothing and finally he slept away the pain.

Recently after much begging from friends I started up a Pinterest account and started posting some of my pictures – many had already been added by others which made me very happy. But then I began to see images that inspired me to write or just caused an idea to pop into my head. This had often happened on Facebook and Twitter but I had no way of storing the images without ‘steeling’ the image and say downloading it which I wouldn’t do.

Pinterest tends to have the image linked to the artists websites etc… and people help you track down specific artists so I was happy to use it. I have created an Inspires the Muse board which is full of images I found interesting – I hope you do to. Or maybe create your own 🙂

Shelly moved towards the outcrop. She would have to climb, and that was always the tricky part. A faint clanking and whirring noise came from her with the occational clunk. The rock face loomed and she took a deep breath; of course she didn’t have to climb… Many would not, but to get a proper data set she really did need to. And she wanted this to be the most thorough of expiditions. It had to be, really. Otherwise all the hard work would be for nothing.

She ran her fingers over the slick little groves ground into the slab of rock and nodded to herself. It had to the missing fault. She buckled herself into a harness; something she knew others would often not bother with, but for her, there was no choice. Rummaging in her coat of many pockets, she produced an instrument that looked alarmingly like a gun. She put a rock eyelet cartraige in it and shrugged off her rucksack.

‘She clicked the button on her radio set, ‘Shelly calling Ti, over’

‘Ti Receiving, over’

‘I’m going for a climb, over’

A pause, she frowned at the rock face, ‘Be careful and take your phone and make sure it is switched on, over’

‘Ok love, I will, I’m not a baby, out’

She ground her teeth but knew her husband was only being protective. He was worried the kit he’d made wouldn’t work, or the rock wouldn’t hold, plus a number of other things. Mechanical engineers could be like that. But her adventourous streak and gung-ho-ness had caused two decades of pain and heartbreak for both of them; she could never be that way again. She was 42, and trying to complete the mapping project she should have done as a 20 year old undergraduate. Lab work had never really been her thing.

She mounted the rock gun on her shoulder and placed a squeeze trigger in her arm pit. She shedded the water proof, too. Her phone with its geolocator was strapped to one muscly arm. Her tight black vest top made her look like an aged Lara Croft; baggy combats hid the bulky frame that was her legs. Two metal stirrups were visible around her £200 stained-leather hiking boots. She slung a camera in a padded case around her shoulder and neck so that it hung down her back. Taking a deep breath, she began to climb.

She pulled herself up by finger tips alone, a technique learned from an extreme French climber. Her legs dangled uselessly below her. She would have laughed at the sight of herself except the precision climbing took too much effort and concentration. She beaded in sweat, though the climate was cool and temperate. She did a weird sort of chin up in order to shoot the first ring into the rock. She swayed slightly with the back force, and then anchored herself to it. Not that she planned on having to rely on them, but it was a safety precaution. She moved on, pulling herself higher and feeling the strain in her arms. She reached the end of the overhang, and the climbing was easier now that her body was not hanging out over the open drop. She moved upwards and across until she found a fissure in the rock. Weathering along the fault! Exactly what she wanted to find. She scrabbled up and a whirring noise followed as she kneeled on a ledge, breaking a climbing golden rule – no knees. But hers were padded. No risk of a broken knee cap for her.

She shifted, and sat, and then using her arms moved her legs into the crevice. She squirmed in and relaxed, panting.

‘Shelly to Ti, over’

‘Ti here! Over!’ She could hear the relief in his voice, though in truth she was no more than forty feet above the ground.

‘I’ve made it up and am wedged in a crevice about to take readings and samples and photos et al, over’

‘Received! Let me know when you get back down, out’

‘Will do, out.’

She began to hum happily as she craned her neck to look at her compass clinometer. The little thin red line shifting to give an angle that she duly noted. She could see parasitic folding. There were several stages of deformation here and she would have to unravel them all to get a good picture of the area.

She hooked the hammer out of her belt loop and extracted a sample.

And then it was the bit she’d been dreading, she had to get down again. She hit an anchor pin into the rock and sorted her ropes out. She paused but decided to radio in anyway. ‘Shelly to Ti, over.’

‘Ti receiving, over’

‘I am about to descend, over’

‘Have you anchored two pins? over’

‘No, one will do! over’

‘Shelly you promised to do things belt and braces, over’

She sighed.

‘Adding the extra mount, out’

Grinding her teeth she added the extra pin and sorted out her ropes. She had spied a slightly easier descent path and so was going for that. Her breath was catching with nerves, she might even be able to use her legs in abseil for the first bit. The strange sound accompanied her as she moved out slowley over the edge, using a rope jammer in lieu of another human on the ropes. She swayed from side to side but with some effort spread her legs enough to become stable. She inched her way down, bunny hopping was definitely out. She switched to a Prusik loop for the overhang and let herself drop in increments. She felt overwhelmed, and like she was in a dream – this was her dream, had been her dream for decades.

She made an inelgant landing but did not fall over. She whooped with joy.

‘Well done!’ came Ti’s voice from the scrubby bush.

‘You spying bastard! I was supposed to show I could do this on my own!’ She shouted but with no real anger. After all, this was all his hard work.

‘Mum! You did it!’ came a second voice and a strong string bean of a girl came hurtling out of the undergrowth to hug her. A camera click caught her attention as she hugged her daughter – the child that had finished off the spinal injury during labour. The spinal injury she’d gotten climbing up dangerous rock faces to collect samples during her year in industry. They hadn’t let her do her mapping project; she’d been stuck in the lab – labs were indoors.

Ti came over too her and hugged her too. A whole crowd had sprung up from nowhere.

‘They would like to see the brace, Shelly – I hope you don’t mind?’

Feeling hot with a mix of emotions she nodded and released her waist cord. Her daughter, now almost a grown up herself, helped her out of them. A fine metal frame covered her legs with a padded hoop round her pelvis, another thing that had been mangled in the accident and then made worse with the stresses of childbirth.

She hadn’t wanted all this exposure, though. What could Ti be thinking? It was just supposed to be an exercise to prove she could manage a fieldwork based PhD.

‘The medical implications of the exo-suit are staggering. I thought they would have better stuff but apparently not – someone saw yours at the University and tracked us down they want to develop it further,’ he said and she nodded mutely; smiling, a little perplexed, at the journalist.

‘Yeah Mummy was always sad she wasn’t in the field so Daddy has spent years and years – well basically my whole life on building this and Mummy went and trained with athletes and things and I turned out to be good at programming so I helped with all that side of thing..’ babbled her daughter to a happily scribbling reporter.

In the group she noted the PHD supervisor – he gave her the thumbs up. She smiled and hugged her family.

It had started snowing heavily, being on his own these days Jed had crawled into bed after banking the fire and praying it would not go out attempted to make himself comfortable. There was only him for miles, a little farm house in the wilderness, all that was left of the acres his father had owned. He had no children to pass it on too and no will in any case, he didn’t really care what happened too it. His bones ached.

He slept in a wooly hat knitted by Isabella, long gone now, death had stollen her in what seemed a distant time now. The house creaked around him as the snow settled on the roof and beams took the extra weight sometimes he hoped they would collapse on him. He sighed at the thought and then at another – he would suffer tomorrow for not stocking up on wood inside, his shins burned with the cold, with age and with fatigue.

The warmth of himself and the water bottle slowly soaked into him and he drifted into sleep, nose red with the cold but his toes and body snuggly warm. He looked grey and shriveled in the luminous half light of snow glow.

He dreamed of her and the house seemed full of her presence once more. Laughing and singing and the smell of curing bacon, lavender drying by the bunch from the beams. They should have been so happy together, should have had a life time. They got a few short years and nearly all that she had made and brought to the house had weathered away with age – as he had.

He awoke expecting her by his side, his heart broke that she was not and angrily he shoved the blankets off of him. His breath condensed in the cold air and a daisy garden of ice crystals adorned the window, on the inside. He put his cloths on over the thermals and the faded pajamas he always wore and wondered creakily down the stairs.

Prodding the fire he sighed in resignation, it had gone out, it was warm but there was not enough heat in it to rekindle, he would have to clear the fire place and start again. His fingers were already numb and the kindling was in the shed. He put on his green grey fingerless gloves, they would have unraveled along time ago except the grease of years had turned them almost solid. Big boots that had been repaired too many times went on his feet. He put his jacket on and clutched at the pain in his chest, he had tablets for that somewhere didn’t he?

The smell of lavender filled the air, the house hummed with the after resonance of her singing once more, he shook his head, his teeth hurt. Opening the door he stood still for a moment in shock. small foot prints stretched away from the house, not small like a child but small like she had been, dainty that was the word wasn’t it?

The edge of laughter tugged at him from woods.

‘Isabella!’ he called softly and followed her out into the wilderness.

That night as Alicia remembered it had been full of wonders, the weather had been all over the place during the day ending with a full moon on snow that had stuck to the tree trunks reaching into the clear sky. The frosty covering sparkeled under the lunar light and fingers of cloud whisped upwards.

Venus had shown her red glinting presence and though the moon was so bright the landscape fairly crackiled benieth it the stars still showed in stealy brightness.

There had even been a moonbow, magestic in the sky, muted colours blossoming like a special irridescent plant of the dark places, she had watched it all with awe until the cold had driven her in.

Alicia had slept badly that night, so badly. There was a pressure thumping at her head, crushing her temples and the temperature seemed to fluctuate, one minute hot and humid like midsummer in a surna the next cold and brittle. A thrumming had built within her until she could not take it anymore, she had got up to make a cup of tea – none of the lights were working, she’d grabbed her torch, it would not work, she opened her phone to use it’s screen as a poor exuss for a torch but the milky light of the screen was not there. It appeared the battery to that had run out too.

And so she’d sat huddled on the setee until the rose of dawn begain to lighten the sky – and that was when she first saw it. The black lines in the sky, arching above her, seeming to eat the dawn as it passed by. The whole sky criss crossed in an isometric grid. She had choked on her scream.

Thinking herself mad, maybe fevered she hurriedly dressed, still no electricity, the phones were all out, even changing batteries did not help – nothing electric was working.

She had exited the house and stared at the sky alight with green and pink ribbons, her neighbour had been out staring too, ‘it’s the aurora, don’t normally get it down this far! My be alot of electrical stuff going on in the atmosphere.’ She’d nodded and shrugged, tried to take a photograph but the thing wouldn’t switch on. Alicia wondered if the lights were anything to do with that? It was after all an electrical storm was it not?

She shook her head, it was as if the grid was disappearing from view, neither of them mentioned it. The day stretched to full light and it was there, the black grid in the sky and nothing worked, engines would not start, she walked to her sisters who had gas, but the gas plants evidently needed electricity to run. They got one cooked meal and a cup of tea.

Alicia stared at the sky from her sisters window. And frowned. ‘It’s a Faraday cage,’ she whispered though surely that should protect them and allow the electrics to work. Her sister nodded and picked up her sad toddler.

‘There’s a low laying electrical storm this side of it, it’s trapped in here with us.’ they stared at each other and then at the kid.

‘People will start panicking soon,’ Alicia said.

‘I’m amazed they aren’t already. Do you think we could walk to Dad’s?’ Alicia nodded that would be the best place for them, it was 26 miles outside town though and the weather was icy cold though the snow had gone in the night.

Alicia’s brother-in-law entered the room looking pale and shaken his arms loaded with bags of purple bottles, meths Alicia realised and nodded. Their camping stove ran on that didn’t it? They bundled all the food and blankets and tools they could into a small trailer and attached it too a bike. The three kids were bundled up tight and ruck sacks full of more supplies were upon all three adults backs. They would not make the farm by night fall. They had only paused to fill a thermos with hot water.

People were beginning to throng the streets though not really doing anything, just staring at the grid in the sky, the one everyone seemed to notice and then forget. Tension was mounting though, as soon as people realised that the electricity was not going to come back there would be hysteria. She hoped they could protect the farm. If they couldn’t they would all be dead weather by murder or hunger.

Alicia thought of her brother too far away to walk home but did not mention him. They walked and the kids moaned and then a fight broke out behind them with screams and anger and they scooped the kids into a run to get out of town quick. They didn’t dare turn to see what was happening, out in the lanes it was quieter, but there were still people wondering around looking lost, if they didn’t go home they would likely die of exposure.

But they were thinning out and two hours in Alicia poured the first hot drink. The bike could go faster so they sent it on a head. The children had stopped whining and that was a bad sign, it was a long hike. It had begun snowing on night fall obscuring the grid from sight. She ended up dragging her sisters rucksack as she strapped on a child carrier and put the too big for tot within.

The bike returned after a cold eternity and they bundled the kids into the trailer.

‘Hows dad?’ they both asked.

‘He hadn’t even noticed there was no electricity.’

They smiled at each other and the kids were gone. They trugded on through the cold, hoping and fearing and hearing a strange chittering sound that turned the blood cold. Warm food was bought in the trailer and the three of them plodded on with Alicias brother-in-law filling the trailer with snow encrusted wood.

The night fluoresced with neon sky colours and Alicia stared at the grid she could not see but she could see something else. She screamed.

It is a new year and I have over 100 Flash Fiction I’ve realised and after putting together the DoomsDay Collection I have a thirst for putting books together so I am thinking that I want to put out a flash only collection this year if I can. Now I have lots of other writing goals this year so I might not manage it but that is the aim.

Also in May I want to sit down and write a Flash Fiction a Day as part of the writing challenges I set myself.

I also feel I should be giving stuff back to the writing community – I run the Gloucestershire Scifi, Horror and Fantasy group on FB and sometimes post stuff on there as writing exercises but might start putting them on here – like I used to with the story starters.

Here is the story I have been working on to raise money for Shelter – you can still sponsor me 🙂

Percival’s Christmas Wish

In Gloucestershire, many magical things have happened; especially on Christmas eve at the midnight hour in the city of Gloucester itself. People have spoken of it for centuries. You see, at that time on that day all the animals can talk!

Of course animals can always talk – but not always be understood. A meow sounds different to a bark, which sounds different to a squeak.

But on this day at that hour they can all talk to to each other and to humans too! If the humans bother listening, that is. The creatures who love this the most are the little mice. Gloucester, and indeed all of Gloucestershire, is full of mice that spin… and sew and knit and sometimes use fabric glue and velcro though the older mice do consider this to be somewhat cheating.

The Mice that Spin are so important to the region that if you look at a lot of the churches in Gloucestershire (and Gloucestershire has a lot of churches) you will see a stone block carved with a relief of scissors and needles and thread and other cloth related things.

But the mice are small and often over looked or misunderstood by the humans whose lunch is nibbled, or mistaken by cats for a light bite to eat, which means life can be very hard for these little rodents. However on Christmas eve no one would dare eat a talking mouse – whether owl or cat or human – especially when they are so nicely turned out in the sweetest of tiny clothing sets.

And so on Christmas Eve all the mice in Gloucestershire, plus a few from Cardiff and Bristol, and maybe Oxford and even one or two all the way from London, come together for the bestest of parties.

Our adventure takes place at one of these parties not so very long ago, about 2007 or so. That year terrible floods had affected many homes in the area and humans and mice found themselves homeless.

Percival was one such mouse; his lovely basement dwelling had filled up and he had barely escaped in an old empty baked bean tin. He had drifted in said baked been tin for three days, after discovering that that bread sticks did not make the greatest of paddles – mainly due to them getting soggy and falling to pieces.

After the three days he was a very sorry, soggy and hungry little mouse. Fortunately, though, being a mouse, he did not have much issue with dirty water – unlike one poor little human (who is indeed very important to this story!). This small person is known as Jean and at the time she was but a tiny toddler.

The only home Jean had known had water pour in through the walls. And to make it worse it was sticky smelly water full of cow poo and other fragrant things… you know, the sort that is referred to as a ‘number two’.

Jean’s Mummy and Daddy had had to wade through water and be helped by the police to get to Jean at her Nursery School that day, and then when they finally got home, there was no home for them anymore, not really.

‘Oh dear!’ Jean had chirruped, ‘Oh dear tortor! Tortor everywhere, bad torter’, the little girl announced. She was still too little to say many words; or at least ones that silly grown ups could understand . The other toddlers at the Nursery understood her perfectly well.

That night they camped in the attic and waded through the water the next day with a few bits of clothing and Jean’s favourite teddy – Yellow Bear. They had then headed over to Daddy’s aunt who said she would keep an eye on Jeany whilst things like insurance were all sorted out. Unfortunately more bad luck was in store for this little family – so many people had been flooded that there was no help to be had; at least, not straight away.

And then it turned out that the water they were drinking had been contaminated by flood water. This made it really dirty and meant that everyone needed to drink from special tanks the military were delivering to each road. And the electricity stopped working too as the electricity sub-station had also been flooded, so they could not listen to the radio or watch television. So neither they nor their aunt knew the water was bad and Mummy and Jeany drank the water and became very sick.

Little Jeany had to stay in hospital but she got a new snuggly bear with a purple outfit. It was yellow bear’s new friend and was hugged lots. And lots of hugs were needed at this time – it had been summer when the house was flooded and by Christmas there was still no hope of moving home again. Jean slept in a travel cot that Mummy’s aunt had lent them and every two weeks they moved on to another friends house or flat or office.

Percival was having a similar problem, as were many of the other mice; but it was worse for him. Now as you may well know, Mice that Spin tend to be from very large families so most of the little mice had relatives to stay with (even if it did make things that little bit extra crowded). But poor Percival was an orphan; he had no mummy or daddy and his sister had emigrated to Australia in a box of meringues.

This meant that, unlike most mice, Percival really was on his own; and he felt very sad and lonely.

A nice mouse at the Cathedral helped Percival and other mice like him. The Cathedral was a beautiful place to live – sunlight would stream through the stained glass windows. It was all lovely colours that lent a glow to the sandstone pillars of the building itself.

Percival had a very comfy bed in a piece of blue velvet cloth that was draped over various things in one of the rooms and there were lots of yummy cake crumbs to eat from the tea shop. And he had even joined the choir; but it wasn’t really a home. What Percival really really wanted was a family. He made up his mind that on Christmas Eve, during that magic hour, he would tell Father Christmas what he wanted.

Jean’s family, on the other hand, would have very much liked their home back for christmas – but that was not going to happen. Instead, they were staying with friends and family in Gloucester. Now, living while not in your own home can be very expensive and Jean’s parents had had their own business which was run from their house. The flood had destroyed that too, so they had very little money that year. Fortunately, her daddy had found a new job which he would be starting in the new year and so they were, at least, hopeful.

That Christmas Eve they and their family started preparing food for the next day. Jean’s Daddy is a vegetarian so he was constructing a special dish called Leopard Pie which apparently has no real leopards in it (as that would have made it not a vegetarian-safe pie after all!) Everyone was looking forward to sampling it and Nanny was making her famous sausage plaits (which seemed to be mostly tomato ketchup, as far as Jean could tell).

Poor Granfer on the other hand seemed to be having an argument with a reel of sticky tape – it was a battle he was most definitely losing. There was a warm smell of orange and spice from the saucepans on the hob; these were mulled wine and mulled orange juice. The orange juice was specially for Jeany, and Mummy who was still poorly, and Daddy who would probably have to drive someone to somewhere later that evening.

Jean was helping Mummy make mince pies and Mummy’s friend Clare was helping too! It being Christmas Eve Jean was wearing a reindeer hat and matching slippers and a blue sparkly snowflake jumper with white fur trim – she was very excited and tried to sing along to the songs Mummy and Daddy played.

Then, whilst eating warm minced pies, they sat and watched a film about mice at Christmas. Jean decided she would ask Santa for a talking mouse of her own, a special little friend.

Meanwhile at the Cathedral, Percival was helping put glitter in the Christmas tree. He was also due to sing at the midnight concert that evening. He was very excited and really very nervous; he smoothed his fur down using his reflection in a dark blue christmas bauble. He was so nervous that he had hardly been able to nibble the piece of shortbread that had been dropped behind the organ earlier that day. It had a snow man on it and just the right amount of sugar. And later on, before the concert, there would be candied peel and marshmallows! He just couldn’t wait and was really looking forward to all the tasty food.

But for now there was lots of decorations to be put out – it was getting late and people would start arriving soon.

Back at Jean’s house, Jean had napped and was not best pleased to be woken up and kept shouting, ‘No! No! No! No!’ about everything until Daddy warned her that they would not go and see the Man With The Beard! Jean suddenly became quiet and still and her eyes were so wide that Mummy just had to kiss her on the end of her nose.

They put out a minced pie and some brandy in a mug (Granfer moaned that it should be sherry in a nice glass but it was all they had and he assured Jean that Santa would love it just as much.) For Rudolf, they scattered special magic oats.

Then they all put their coats on to head out to the Cathedral for Midnight Mass, which Nanny just loved going to. They were going to walk but Nanny was feeling too old to walk there in the ice crisp night, so Daddy decided to drive into town and Jean was strapped into her car seat with the minimum of tears and fuss.

Mummy and her friend would meet them at the Cathedral. When they got there Father Christmas was large and jolly and rather loud. Jean became very shy suddenly and snugged into Daddy who was holding her. Santa smiled anyway and handed her a packet of sweets with a “HoHoHo”! And daddy fed a stack of coins into a collection tin. Jean was sad as they walked away – she hadn’t managed to ask for a little friend, all of her own.

When they caught up with Mummy Jean tried to explain; Mummy sort of understood, but not really. It is often a problem with parents, as I am sure all children will agree.

But she did say that Christmas is a special magic, time and hope and love could bring about miracles, so Jean hoped with all her might and told a frozen puddle that she would love a little friend.

Then they were heading over bumpity ground; the Cathedral stood lit up and from inside there was already the sound of singing. Jean sat snugged first on one lap and then on another playing with toys and drinking the beaker of warm milk Daddy had produced from out of his bag. She liked the singing very much especially as she could hear little squeaks that were somehow words. The last hymn they sang was In The Deep Midwinter and Jean climbed down and peered through the chair legs; she was sure there were little mice just over there… but mummy wouldn’t let her go and explore.

Percival finished singing his favourite hymn. It had been the last one of the concert. Little mice applauded, as did a pigeon that had wondered in off the streets. ‘That be good singing!’ it said, and Percival thanked him. Then he stopped and realised what the time was! He was talking to a pigeon! He needed to get to a phone and quick – there was only 15 minutes left! He just hoped that directory inquiries had Father Christmas’ number. He didn’t know what he would do if St. Nick was ex-directory!

He scuttled across the floor but the humans began to all move about – and their feet were huge!

To escape it all he scrambled up the side of a push chair and hid in the folds of the canopy. He was really scared; his little nose was twitching rapidly from side to side. A very small human was strapped into the pushchair and the poor thing really was not very happy about this at all, but it cheered up as the pushchair was wheeled out into the dark night. Percival hung on for his life!

Large flakes of snow had begun to to drift from the sky and the pushchair’s canopy was rolled forwards and with a squeak Percival landed in the little ones lap.

‘Oh No!’ he cried and tried to scramble away but a mittened hand caught him. ‘Hello!’ said Jean.

‘Hello!’ replied the worried Percival as he tried to work out how he was going to escape.

‘Talking mouse!’ the little girl said with glee.

‘Erm, yes’ said the struggling mouse, ‘it’s… christmas… eve… at… midnight.. all. animals… talk!’

‘I asked Santa for a talking mouse!’ Jean commented happily.

Percival stopped trying to struggle out of her grip ‘you did?’ he asked.

‘Yes!’ Jean said excitedly.

‘I wanted to talk to him’ said the little mouse sadly ‘but I now only have eight minutes of talking left.’

Jean thought about the oats and brandy they had put out at home and said ‘he’ll be on his sled now!’

‘Oh, I was going to phone him’ Percival said.

‘Oh, do you want to borrow my phone?’ Jean asked offering him a red and blue plastic toy.

‘Oh, yes please!’ came the ecstatic answer but then he became very sad when he found he could not dial out. ‘This phone isn’t working, but thank you for lending it to me,’ he said as big tears began to run down his furry cheeks. A particularly fat one rolled straight down his nose and off of the the end with a little sorry sounding “Splat!” on Jean’s coat.

Jean tried to pat him better, being very careful to be as gentle as she could, as he was really very small. ‘What did you want to ask him, anyway?’ she asked. ‘My Mummy says all you need is hope and love.’

‘I wanted a family!’ he cried.

Jean paused in stroking him and thought and thought and thought some more and then wrinkled up her nose with the new thought (and the cold) and said ‘We could be your family! Me and Mummy and Daddy and Nanny and Granfer and Uncle David and…. well there are lots of us but mainly Mummy and Daddy and me!’

Percival sat very still. Jean continued, ‘I wanted a little mouse and you wanted a family!’

He nodded and then asked, ‘Do you like fruit and nuts?’

Jean shook her head but at Percival’s dropping whiskers she said, ‘but Mummy does! I’m sure she’ll share with you’ and she smiled and patted him on the head.

‘Thank you!’ he said

‘I’m Jean!’ said Jean happily.

‘I’m Percival!’ he said, just as the clock struck one in the morning. It was Christmas day and time for bed. Jean held Percival up to Mummy.

‘Look!’ she shouted enthusiastically. Nanny screamed but Mummy picked him up gently. ‘Oh, what a cute little mouse! How ever did you catch him?’ And she put him down on the floor, but Percival didn’t want to be left behind so ran back to the buggy and scrambled up to Jean. Mummy and Daddy looked at each other and then Mummy looked at her friend Clare who sighed, ‘I supposed I can dig out the old hampster cage when we get back’, she said .

‘Thank you!’ said Mummy and Daddy, who then checked that Jean was being gentle enough with the little mouse.

Jean and Percival found that they could only sometimes talk to each other after that night; but that it didn’t much matter, like Mummy not understanding exactly what she was saying all the time. After Christmas they went to stay at another friend’s house in London where percival did not even sleep in his cage but had a home all his own in the store cupboard. The little family stayed there for a long time with Mr Andy whose flat it was; he even cooked meals and things for them and in many ways they were sad to leave when their wish was granted and they once more had a home of their own. It was then they realised that they had never really been without a home, just the building to set the home up in, and Mummy had been right all along; all miracles need is hope and love, and even when hope is hiding, it can always be coaxed out once more by gentle love.

Merry Christmas One and All.

As there is a prediction of changing of ages today in the Mayan tradition and people are panicking it is the end of the world I thought I would collect all my flash fictions, short stories and poems together. This however is not all of them but enough to be getting on with!

It contains dark tales so is for adults only I’m afraid! Most of the story content was or started off as Friday Flash stories for the community of flash fiction writers on Twitter! There will be an extend version some day when I get around to editing all the other stories!

So for today it is free! Just click on the cover below to download the PDF 🙂

Hope you enjoy it!

Do to health issues I never got around to submitting anything for this second collection from the Friday Flash community but non the less this is a cracker of a book with some of my favourite flashers in it 🙂

I even attended the Facebook launch party 😉

I’ve recorded the poems from The Little Book of Festive Poetry and added a song – there is also a story called Percival’s Christmas Wish which I have written to raise money for Shelter – I am doing a sponsored illustration of the story 🙂

For updates check out my Wiggly Pets site which is sort of a webcomic thing!