Magenta Monster

Vanity (first published on Red Monster)

I remember the red oozing down my face and the shock that it was cold, that I felt cold and I swooned, and sat down heavily. The room seemed to tilt and I waited, transfixed, wondering if this time I had really done it. If I had through stupidity killed myself, and the marshmallow thoughts I was now consumed by where dying concussed thoughts.

There was a smell of tin or thunder or electricity and I thought that my blood would run into the electric sockets and fry me where I sat with the hard plastic of them pushing into me.

I looked at the shoe in my hand the redness of it and the dark dampness where my blood had soaked the heel, the vicious spike that had fallen out of the crate I was trying to remove from the wardrobe.

I had always been told as a child that vanity was dangerous and I had always laughed. This time I smiled a crooked little smile and felt drowsy.

Story Starters are first sentences that can be used in writing exercises to get yourself writing – here are ten of mine I am putting out there for people to use.

1) The breeze russeled the top of the trees sending whispers across the school field

2) I have as of yesterday been dead for 12 yrs

3) The glass shards had been hidden in the sand pit

4) Echos that was all they were, or at least that’s what the kids’ mothers kept telling them

5) The light twinkled a warm green-gold, patterning the ground below

6) The reeds were bent almost flat in the relentless wind

7) Millie was dressed in pink, she liked pink

8) It had been commissioned in one of those rare periods of culture

9)Darkly the world spun in the void

10) Brought up playing genteel games the siblings were not prepared for the cruelty

The world drowned in litter and most of the people with it, but Jacko was a bit insane to begin with – the sort of person who got obsessions and when the world collapsed he was into origami, in a big way.

Whilst most survivors felt they had been plunged into hell Jacko was in heaven – all that paper and thick plastic bags! Just right for folding. And so he did, he folded whole gardens of flowers out of magazines and newspapers, and boats out of plastic bags. Large litter created dinosaurs, roamed the rubbish strewn streets. And when the paper ran out and the carrier bags – he simply moved on.

Until finally the world – or at least the bits of it he could walk too, where filled with sculpture instead of rubbish. As the historians noted centuries later, he saved the planet – it was a shame none of the governments had seen the solution lay in the hands of a mad man – they where too busy arguing semantics and ignoring the calls to re-use, recycle and upcyle. Jacko did it for them anyway so all’s well that ends well – except that most of the human population of the planet had to wiped out for it to work.

Jessica Was about eight years old when they moved to the Village, they lived in a cottage on an old derelict farm. Min lived in a tiny cottage just over a hedge that had gotten out of control and shot up into the sky. Min was an old lady with waist length course grey hair that she plaited in a single braid down her back, the end always had some sparkly flower or butterfly adorning it. On her head were a variety of floppy hats in various colours, often these would have flowers or something on them too, but somehow they were not old lady hats.

Min didn’t really seem much like an old lady to Jessica, she was tall and willowy unlike Jessica’s nan who was large and jolly and had short wispy white hair with red cheeks. Min’s clothing was always made of stripped fabric with the seams on the outside, long and flowing tended to be what appeared most. Even in the autumn when the rains started and the mud came, she donned a series of bright floor length coats with things like flowers on the pockets, they all tapered at the waist and made her seem even taller.

Jessica would take biscuits round that her mother had made and Min would give her a cup of tea, at least she said it was tea, it was always sweet and smelt of berries and was often a virulent purple.

Min’s house was full of bead curtains and cushions in silk patchwork. Min’s smile was beautiful, even when she took her false teeth out to entertain Jessica. One day she gave Jessica a bag covered in tiny little seed beads, the beads made up a pattern of the sea with creatures roaming the depths and the waves and sun at the top.

‘Find me some pieces of silvered wood in the forest during you holiday,’ she said grinning. ‘Silver, mind! Not blond or red!’

Jessica had promised and took the bag carefully home with her, that coming half term saw her family exploring the New Forest and staying with her mum’s old friends, they all helped her find the silvered bits of wood for Min.

Min was delighted with the haul and gave Jessica a purse made of shells, ‘find me same small thin pink shells when you go to the beach next,’ Min said Jessica nodded and with her father’s help picked up a bucket full of shells, Jessica had been afraid of the sand worms so had to be cuddled for most of the exploration. But Weston Super Mare was the perfect place for such delicate little shells.

The presents and requests continued, plastic beads from Leigh-on-sea and pine cones from the forest of Dean. Quartz from Ben Nevis and slate from Snowdon.

Jessica was 13 before she thought to as what all the bits where for, ‘My Weather Warner,’ Min said as if it should be obvious.

‘Weather Warner?’ she’d asked.

‘Different bits will spin to tell you what will be coming, a storm, hurricane or tempest.’ Min had grinned and patted Jessica on the head. ‘If all the levels start turning at once you know it’s time to hide in the cellar!’

Jessica had laughed and forgotten promptly.

Around Jessica’s fifteenth birthday Min began to build a strange sculpture in the garden, Jessica’s father shock his head muttering about batty old hippies and her mother had told him off and made him take a tray of cakes over. It grew in fits and starts over the next few years and then Jessica was packing to go off to university. She packed with care the funky cloths Min had given her, they were ones she hadn’t dare wear around the village but she thought they might be good for university.

And then it was Christmas and Easter and Summer. And the cycle repeated and suddenly Jessica was coming home to Min’s funeral. Tears streamed down her face and she found she had been left Min’s house and the strange Weather Warner which was apparently finished and sitting like a rickety sky scraper. Jessica pondered selling the place and paying off her student loan but somehow it called to her and she found herself moving in.

‘You’ll go batty just like Min was.’ her father had muttered.

‘Shush you!’ her mother had glared, ‘they girl was always going to be a reclusive genius and at least she’s next door!’

‘What about grandkids though? That’s what I would like to know.’ he’d muttered in defeat and stormed off.

Jessica watched the Weather Warner and noted that it did seem to predict certain types of weather – Min had a hand written catalogue of what meant what. Jessica kept quiet about this though as people would think her crazy.

Then one day when her brother was visiting with his wife and kids Jessica was in the garden, it was a thick sultry day and the air lay heavy upon them. Without a breeze without warning the whole Weather Warner begain to spin erratically. Jessica watched in horror as all of the different layers, shells, drift wood and plastic beads began to spin. Min’s words echoed through her skull as if the woman were shouting in her head. She rushed to her parents home but when she said they had to hide her father laughed and started saying the house had cracked her.

He brother looked skeptical though her mother bit her lip, ‘Min’s Weather Warner?’ she’d breathed.

‘Yes Mum!’ she’d said in desperation. Her sister in law was looking worriedly at the children.

Jessica grabbed the baby and ran to the cellar. ‘Jessica for heavens sake!’ her father had called. But her mother grabbed the toddler and a hysterical mother followed them into the cellar.

‘This is stupid!’ her father called just as the sky went dark, her brother dropped the phone he’d started dialing and they followed into the cellar after a moments glance at each other.

The Artists arrived on an unsuspecting Earth; they arrived in shining spaceships curved into weird and disturbing shapes. It would take the humans no short time to work out why the ships were so disturbing and by that point it was a bit mute anyway.

The Artists were sleek, looking as is they were made from shiny rigid plastic in bold shades of red and black but they were flexible and their skin did not wrinkle or furrow when they moved. There heads curved up like an over grown gnome hat but it was all their flesh. Flesh that turned out to be as hard as armour plating and not brittle in the least. They were pretty impenetrable. Their mouth parts opened in four pieces but there were no teeth, they ate algae filtered from bodies of water, this lulled the humans into thinking they were safe.

Worries over plague were the initial problem but that soon died down as other species from other planets had come with them. They were welcomed.

Our first contact.

They gave the humans wonderful fabrics and jewels, selected an elite to wear creations they had made. People flocked to the fashion shows. People of just about every body form where required and all exulted in it.

And then one morning those who survived got up to find the streets painted in blood and gore, vital organs hung from the trees in various shades of purple, green and pink, tendrils of fat where draped artistically over the branches. A garden of hands on spikes reached up to the sky. And in the town centers or general open spaces there where people some of whom where still alive, impaled on stakes arms and feet missing, the ends of the bone sticking out just so. These where arranged in tablos, a family here, a couple there.

Bows of flayed flesh adorned park benches. The survivors retched up their meals and screamed themselves horse, then wondered in desolation amongst the gristle and guts of their peers. And then… then the tourists began to arrive, aliens of many shapes and sizes carrying what amounted to cameras and guidebooks. And then the true horror started, some of them commissioned art work from the Artists and the rounding up began this time the victims know what was coming and all they could do was run until this latest art fad died a death.

Adriana shivered, the night had a clammy clinging quality to it and she was only wearing a thin cotton shirt, the cloying moisture of the air condensed out onto her ashen hair plastering it to her head. The streets looked deserted and bleak, most people had evidently decided that this was not a night for being away from their cosy settees and blazing TV screens. She lent against a damp brick wall, regretting it instantly as the coldness seeped through her inadequate clothing. At this rate she would look dreadful when he finally turned up, if he turned up. Adriana half smiled, the pink diamond gloss shimmering on her lips, making her look more washed out in the sickly yellow of the street lamps. She was nestling inside one of their relatively cosy pools of light, waiting for Judd to turn up and was becoming quiet bored.

She examined the brick wall she had lent against only to see an oozing green trail of slime mold oozing mere inches from where she had been. The relentless drip of some overflow eroding the pavement in a slow and patient way had given this monstrosity life. Feeling slightly edgy and invaded by the gelatinous mass she bounced on the balls of her feet with impatient and watched the clouds of her own breath dissipate into the murky night. Somehow the clamminess seemed to be deadening sound and only the faintest echoes reached her ears, her pink pearlised patent leather handbag bounced with her keeping warm ritual as did her moderate breasts . Mist seemed to be clinging to her ankles, something that she had not yet realised. Her golden strapped shoes allowed it to billow around her toes; the candy nails shimmering in the strangely incandescent light. Adriana’s brow furrowed as a disquieting sensation reeled through her, something wasn’t right, the night was too dead, to closed in, to lonely and yet she had begun to feel watched. Some faint nose in the distance caught her attention and she strained her ears to catch every last echo. The thud, thud of running feet, the noise deadened by rubber soles. A nervous tension began to build within her, half recalled news reports poured into her brain, fear tightened her throat and her mind swam with darkness, it had come again, ‘no not now,’ she whispered as she staggered backwards to rest prompted up on the filthy brick work once more. Her gray eyes shimmered with tears and she panted closing them. Finding the warm red tinged dark of her own head, locked away from that hateful world beyond. Adrian fought to control herself and then opened her eyes once more.

The night was exactly the same as it had been, she smiled again, chiding herself for an imagination she had not asked for, the mist still wrapped itself around her, working its way up her calf. The thudding of the runner was stronger now, they would be here soon, Adriana felt as if all her energy had began to trickle from her, leached into the night, her warmth imperceptibly sucked into the cold. Feet tingling Adriana fort for repose, the running feet may well have been Judd and she did not want him to see her flaked and slumped against a filthy brick wall, that would do nothing for her dating prospects, if the bastard hadn’t stood her up that was.

She felt the wrongness of the night in the pit of her stomach but resolutely ignored it, she always did, it was the best way she had found of being able to survive and be normal. A shape loomed at her out of the night, dark and indistinct but she knew it was him, knew that Judd was running to her, annoyed at being late and seething silently at her for dragging him out on such a thankless evening. His dark brown hair gilded with gold looked black and his warm liquid eyes seemed to burn inside his ashen face, pale under the tan. Something’s wrong, that thought again echoing in her mind, resonating with what her senses told her and still she ignored it and smiled brightly at him.

‘Adriana,’ he gasped as he came closer, ‘time shifts,’ he whispered as he fell at her feet, in panic and exhaustion, his eyes wide with fear, the mist instantly began to entangle him. The fog seemed to deaden his voice as he whisper, ‘run.’

But she could not leave him to the things her gut told her lurked beyond the dense mist. The air seemed hard to breath, like it really was fibrous cotton choking her lungs.

‘I can’t leave you!’ she cried, the night stole the sound and she tried to lift his dead mass, his eyes were closed and he looked greyer, age worn lines etched him like stone – she’d never noticed them before. Concern furrowed her own brow.

‘Run – time shifts Adriana, run, runn n nn,’ he shuddered and she dropped him, her breath was sharp and painful panic blurred the insidious evening. Her all told her that they were there waiting in the white tendrils, tendrils that attempted to shackle her as she took flight into the milky depths. The echo of clacking heels did not reverberate off the buildings.

Alex carried his tranquilised wife into their now empty home, the toys that were now obsolete scattered the floor and he pushed his tears down deep. The house was chill and clammy damp. The hospital smell was all over him but there was nothing he could do. He dropped Clare on the settee and picked up the toys and put them away, then he sat in the half gloom and stared at nothing.

The numbness he had was a protection and he clung to it. The house had seemed such a good idea, room for Anna to run around now she was a child, but the front room had been plastered in floral wallpaper, as had most of the house, the same climbing roses everywhere.

They had scraped it all off and had only just finished the decoration when Anna’s apparent cold had not gone away. The last few months had been spent to and throw from the hospital. His wife had grown thinner and he had aged. The funeral came and Clare came out of herself slightly – someone he wasn’t sure who had given her a framed photo of Anna and it was placed on the wall in the lounge.

Eventually he went back to work but Clare rarely left the house and would just rearrange the smallest bedroom when he wasn’t there. Then one day he came home and there was another photo of Anna on the wall, this one was not framed but a canvas like a painting, he recognised it from a holiday they had had in Wales.

He looked away unable to bear the blue eyes that stared at him from the giant happy face, he shuddered but kept his thoughts to himself. And then he had a business trip, two weeks away, he almost didn’t go, Clare was strange and the Drs where of no help, she was ordering things on the internet – he didn’t enquire what they were. But she was busy washing down the walls when he left.

When he returned he heard Clare singing and sighed with relief, he frowned slightly when he heard the nursery rhyme lyrics but quelled the fear. Opening the door he was confronted by hundreds of eyes, hundreds and hundreds of blue eyes, smiling eyes and they were all looking at him. His breath caught. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in photographs of Anna. They were large and small but none the less all of one little girl, his little girl. A little girl who no longer existed except in those photographs.

‘Clare?!’ he called shakily, his wife appeared beaming from the kitchen. ‘What have you done?’ he asked hoarsely. She looked confused and then her face split into a beautiful smile.

‘Oh! Me and Anna have been decorating, do you like it?’ He closed his eyes, her and Anna?

‘We’ve done the whole house!’ she said with enough enthusiasm to stick his heart to his lungs.

He tore past her into the kitchen, blue eyes eating ice cream, skating, singing, doing everything, blue eyes smiling and accusing. Shakily he made his way up the stairs – the hall, landing and bedrooms where all the same, his breathing was fast. It was like the pictures where drilling into his head. He ran out of the house.

His neighbour was mowing his lawn, he looked over curiously. ‘You ok Al?’ Alex answered with an automatic yeah. ‘You know Al I’m sorry about your little girl but my Mother reckons it’s the house you know, she’s sort of got this crazy idea.’ Alex tore his eyes from the house and stared disbelieving at his neighbour.

‘W-What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh its just the old lady being silly, but the O’Donalds had similar luck after moving here you know. Their little Rosa got sick, such a shame, lovely little thing she was too, bit like your Anna. But then Shelly she couldn’t take the kids death and started doing strange things, I wasn’t around much off at university but mum remembers.’

‘What sort of odd things?’ Alex asked though his tongue was glued to the top of his mouth.

‘Not sure mum could tell you more, MUM!’ there was a thump thud as the old woman worked her way patiently down the stairs.

‘You’ll want to know about poor little Rosa now.’ She crocked Alex shook himself, everything suddenly looked wrong to him, he nodded and stared at the old lady, ‘she died and her mum just sort of snapped, began decorating the house with all that wall paper, like it was a way of bringing the kiddie back. She even started talking to… well to the child.’ Alex laughed loud and false. Gimlet eyes stared at him.

‘Your wife slipping the same way?’ she asked gently, without thinking Alex nodded.

‘She’s… the walls… its all Anna. But that’s not the same as that rose wall paper is it?’

‘I’d get your wife out of there quickly if I were you Mr, Rosa wasn’t the first and yours wont be the last, and the mums often follow.’

“Mum!’ his neighbour smiled a pained apology. But Alex had looked back at the house he thought he saw… just a flicker but it was as if the house were full of people.

‘Clare! Clare!’ he yelled running back to the house.

‘The others killed themselves Mr!’ Alex didn’t turn around, he re-entered the house, it was like walking through treacle, whispered echos bounced inside him. Clare was talking through the alphabet whilst setting the table for three.

He caught her arm, she dropped the plates, the house seemed to shudder, the lights flickered and she was laughing light pretty laughs, ‘Daddy’s playing Anna, look Anna,’ Blue eyes looked at him and not just from the walls.

‘Anna,’ he breathed tears.

‘Join us Daddy.’

Broken in the woods the aluminum pole that had once been a black and gold hiking stick lay. The leaves half covered it before anyone arrived looking for it’s young Mistress but unfortunately by that point she was many miles away and on the verge of death. The police bagged it up like a dog turd and threw it in the back of a vehicle. Of course if it had been able to talk, if it had not been an inanimate object, it could have told them what had happened. How the two men had jumped Nancy and how she had dodged them and the swung the hiking pole at them connecting jarringly with the side of one of the assailants heads.

As it was, it would take the police two days to find the blood and test it, and a little longer to work out that it was not the girl’s blood.

The stick could also have told them about how the force of impact had hurt Nancy whose slight frame had crumpled with the force of the second assailants body-tackle, as she dropped the pole. It had been broken and bent then and in anger the man it had maimed picked it up and through it with scant regard for the fact he had lost a leather glove somewhere in the scuffle. His fingerprints were picked up pretty immediately but he was not a criminal or at least not one currently known to the police.

If it could have, the stick would have told the forensic team that the leather glove lay near a rabbit whole a few feet away but as it was they didn’t find that until a third sweep just after a spring shower had washed off suspect stains that could have given them at least a connection. It did however have skin cells and even a hair on the inside.

The rucksack lay in the evidence bay next to the stick; the contence so precious to Nancy had been of no interest to the two men who had left it on the wood floor just below the bus. The notes and files were a soggy mess that would have made her cry.

The diary within told the police what the stick knew already, of the boyfriend Miles, who was worried about her keep taking the short cut through the woods so that her parents wouldn’t realise she was getting the later bus. Of the boyfriend who had a temper and had been on the wrong side of law when it came to his mother’s safety in his parents devoice. Of how he feared his father’s retribution and of course of how he was excitingly older than she.

The stick could have told them, then and there, that all the pieces where in place but they got it wrong. The police turned up to Nancy’s boyfriends house and arrested him with apparently oblivious for the fear and worry he showed for the girl.

In the end the DNA profile cleared him, as the woods had not been wet enough to show footprints and the fact there were two assailants. Miles also pointed out that if he had done it he would have taken the diary – the police considered this suspicious and informed him that he would probably still be charged with statutory rape.

Which was news to him and made him reassess his girlfriend quite clearly and cry with frustration at the realization she hadn’t lied. She had just let him assume things. As it turned out Nancy tended to let people assume things but none of this was much help with finding her and the days flew by in desperation.

Two and a half weeks and the chances of the girl being alive where remote. And then a teenager covered in blood and naked was found wondering around with a bent hiking stick in her hand. Dangerously weaving among the cars on the motoway. She could remember little at first but she always carried a pair of hiking stick incase of rain as they made the leave litter hard to navigate.

It was put in the evidence locker with the first stick were they exchanged tales of daring do and a kidnapping – ending with the death of Nancy’s future father-in-law. She had simple finished what Miles had started. The sticks however kept their silence on where the body could be found.

I am part of an online community called Friday Flash – it started off as a twitter thing and grew from there. Each week on Friday we post links to our pieces of flash fiction, we add them to the collector and we read each others works (sometimes when time permits!).

There is now a dedicated website and a Facebook page :).

After a year of this madness they decided to produce an anthology or collection of the best stories. So submissions opened and to my surprise my story got in. It is called Deamons which I’d posted as one of my first flashes.

My main astonishment about this piece is having read it out at events and things – people like it but it started life as the beginning of a novel I never wrote. I edited it a bit but the story was actually written when I was 14.

The collection Best of Friday Flash is a great collection and is edited by the Father of Friday Flash J.M. Strother.

The Maiden’s Dream (first published on Turquoise Monster)

Green and leafy forest light

Watching over maidens plight

Purple night dark and cold

Witches plot, evil bold

Red rose lips cold to touch

Drank the poison with her lunch

Black and dark the misery sleep

Hoping waiting faeries peep

Greying hags place dragon there

The maiden sleeps in its care

Silvered moonbeams lead the way

show the beauty where she lay

Golden hair and silken gown

Waiting for her lover’s crown

Chestnut hair and tempered blade

Prince comes dragon slayed

Ivory skin smooth and soft

He gently lifts her aloft

Pink lips to hers kiss

Lost in lovers passioned bliss

Brown eyes of liquid grace

Open now – her perfect face

Orange freckles she sees abound

Feels her heart begin to pound

Blue eyes crystal clear

Proposes marriage without fear