The Smuggler

June 21st, 2016

They’d built a super prison on the marsh. It hadn’t been a particularly lovely marsh, situated as it was just outside of London, but it had been home to some tiny little owls with tufts on their ears and it had once upon a time been my home. It was my origin, you could say, and now there was a megalithic monstrosity designed to hold the most foul and dangerous… and the not so bad. There were people who’d written one too many political poems or signed too many petitions, people who had not been able to afford their rent; and others, who had cheeked the wrong person.

Opinions varied as to whether it was a hell-hole or a hotel – the truth of that, I suspected, depended on your crimes, who you were, and whether anyone had bothered to pay the price to upgrade your cell.

It’s big, a city in its own right really. A city were no one counts as a citizen anymore. A city were there were no rights. Babies were born in there, and they were not likely to get out; at least, not with their mothers – the fathers, more often than not, were the guards.

That was really how I came to be involved in it all, how I came to be in I.C.E: Incarceration, Correction and Education. I was the education part. I was teaching the prison tots their ABC’s and numbers; and their parents, too – most had fallen outside of a formal learning system. I was funded by a charity and had to take the abuse the guards and officers gave.

Because the hard part of working in The Prison wasn’t the getting in or the dealing with the prisoners – no, it was getting out again. The place was built to keep clever, manipulative and sometimes powerful people; in and the nosy press, public, protestors and crime lords out. The crime lords, especially.

When you create such a place, such a huge concentration of despondent people, and throw in a handful of political activists, a few religious zealots, and one or two who were just too clever for their own good – something happens. An ecosystem springs up and it becomes a place with its own laws, outside of the guards and the governors control but only just.

Revolts, and draconian reactions to them, where always thick in the air.

It could be sealed. No small-time nuke is going to break out this army of miscreants. It’s self sufficient and enclosed. I would go in, walking through three corridors set into walls thicker than any medieval military architect’s dream. It made the secret nuclear bunkers of the 1980’s look like pathetic paper-walled constructions.

The lighting’s drab, designed to depress and demoralise; and I feel my energy drain out of me as I walk through those halls, and I try not to start shaking. The fear hits – what if I ended up stuck here?

What if they won’t let me out? I’ve studied the construction of the place; my cousin was one of the architects. I know it can and will be swallowed by the marsh; all it would take would be for the Thames Barrier to fail, and no has been maintaining that for a while now.

I’ve never really been that clear on what I’m supposed to really be doing. Oh, of course I teach people to read and write; it takes patience and pretending that it doesn’t matter if they can not or will not or are too bashed up. I just kind of hope that my sessions give them a little respite from the harsh and unforgiving environment they have found themselves in.

And it’s so easy to find yourself within, and once you’re in, you’re lost.

Knowing all of this and being so very very fearful, it is quiet bizarre that I do it, really. It was an innocuous start, she was such a little thing but fed well. I suspected her mother is or was a favourite of who ever was in charge of food or above. Poor mite was what, 9?

And she was a puddle of jelly in the corner gripping her stomach and mewing. Her eyes were large and round when I spoke to her, full of fear. My mind filled with images of plague; disease was becoming a thing, a dreadful thing within the poorer areas of the cities and a prison population was a contained population, and I knew there was a fair amount of recycled air in the place. It was a perfect disease incubator.

Then I thought on what had happened with the poison at the food banks and kids’ homes and all the rest of it a few years back and I went cold. I called the guard and he laughed. Laughed showing yellowed teeth with slime upon them, his mouth open wide and the tongue raw and viscous. I knew what it was then and barely resisted slapping him.

Now suspecting it – I detected the metallic stench of fish. I waited for the guard to go but, without really thinking, I handed the mother my little kit; knickers, wipes, and two pads. Her eyes shone and I had to usher her to silence. I had just broken a huge taboo – I had given a prisoner something.

Of course the next day I brought in all I could fit, inside the books, laid out flat so that in scans they were nothing but book marks. Prisoners where not allowed tech, they tended to hack the internets with them, no matter how crippled the device was.

It took me a week or so to realise that I could not afford to buy pads for the entire female prison population, and the waste issue meant that we all risked being discovered. A little research later, and I bought a bulk order of various devices and reusable cloth pads.

It took me six months to get them to the women, a few at a time. The devices, they were a no go – there was no way to get them in. I managed three by arguing that they were mine each time, but someone suspected something and checked I had it when I left – I had to threaten to let them examine the offending orifice. Fortunately, the threat of menstrual blood was enough and they backed off, but I knew I would not be taking any more of those in.

My second order of material pads was also a disaster. Someone knew, but either they didn’t yet have evidence on me or they were playing with me. As evidence was not really needed any more – I was inclined to be paranoid and think they were playing sick little mind games. When the same skinny man kept turning up every time I did my shopping and pointedly looking into my trolley, I knew I was screwed.

Online ordering was no better; there were pointed traces left and I felt sick and cold, awash in anxiety. Just waiting to be caught.

It took a stupid long time for me to realise that I could make the material washable pads myself, and I set about reducing old bed spreads and dresses to sanitary items for convicts. I sewed after work, but never too late – I didn’t want to risk neighbours complaining about the noise of the machine.

I really could only smuggle a few at a time now, and the guards were becoming more thorough in their searches. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was caught. This added a weird sort of urgency onto my self imposed mission.

You see, the thing is that I had started; I’d already broken the rules. I say rules, because law went by the by a while back. It was a gradual and bad thing but there it was, so I did not feel any guilt for what I was doing, only fear, a deep seated fear that I would end up in there with those women, were the only respite to bleeding would be pregnancy, and maybe not then, and certainly not at the end of it all. Babies are born and then the women have the biggest periods – all of that without a few cloth strips they can wash out.

I had to stop myself grinding my teeth.

And someone already knew, I was going to end up in there or dead and that time was closing in. I could not leave the country, I couldn’t even leave London, not since the lockdown to stop terrorism. I was stuck, but not poor; no, never that, but not rich enough to leave, either.

So the urgency was kind of selfish when I think about it – the more of the damned things I got into the place the more chance I would have of finding something for myself when I finally ended up within.

Getting your head around something like this can take a while and I was only just starting to come to terms with my double life as a smuggler of female hygiene products when things started to get truly weird.

After a long and harrowing day at the prison I came home and found my door would not open properly. I had to barge my way in. There behind the door were clothes, and scraps of cloth. They’d been posted through the letter box; someone had to have given who ever had done it access to the building to begin with.

I scooped them up and dumped them on a kitchen chair and stared. They were old clothes, holy cloths, and some of it not too clean. I needed more material but cloth doesn’t just fall from the sky – where had it come from?

I waited a week. I washed the lot that first evening after a flea jumped out, but I waited before cutting and threading and sewing and another before smuggling. I felt vague alarm that maybe part of it was smart fabric, that it would report what I was doing or blow up in my face as soon as I started sewing – like those uniforms of all those poor police officers – the ones I wasn’t supposed to know about. The ones the “protestors” blew up.

But I couldn’t see any electronics built in, no wires or tubes. It was of little comfort, as neither had the police uniforms that went nova. I quaked and quailed but in the end I snipped and created and tried to stop the women beaming at me as they opened books and extracted their little pads. It was demeaning in a way I can not explain – for me, not them. Each grateful smile hurt me. I didn’t know what any of the women had or had not done to earn themselves a stay. There were going to be murderers and artists and doctors who spoke out; there would be thieves and abusers, and desperates and activists. Some would be more than one and I did not know which was which.

At the beginning, when I first started teaching them – that had mattered, had disturbed me and followed me home at night to haunt my dreams. But not by this point.

Here they were all just in need of something I could provide, so I provided. And mysterious parcels of material and old clothes continued to arrive and I continued to sew.

Then it happened. I arrived at the outer perimeter and the guard did not smile, did not make lewd comments. The one at the door did not pinch my arse or try and prod me with his nethers. No one was smiling, no one was making eye contact with me, always looking slightly behind me as if I didn’t really exist. I knew it was up.

I wondered about running but feared being shot. My heart thumped in my ears. There was a tremor in my voice as I spoke softly to my students, the little ones gathered for story time.

The man walked in then, he wasn’t like the normal guards, he was wearing a suit and no apparent stab proofing. Shaking, I read a story about a train and a plane and another about a teddy bear who gets lost. He smiled a half dead smile all the way through. Unlike the guards, he stared at me and at nothing else. For him I was the only thing that existed and that was somehow worse.

I felt giddy as I stood to go, the eyes of those around me told me that I was not the only one to fear. I got up to walk out. He stood; my heart leaped painfully and full in my chest as I noticed one of the little sewn pads in his hand.

“You appear to have forgotten your bookmark.” He said with oil slicked tones, his lip could not help curly up in disgust. I reached out to take it but he snatched his fingers closed, I staggered away as if hit.

“You know there have been rumours,” he said, “rumours that you have been smuggling the women contraband items!” I tried to swallow; I could not have lied if I’d wanted to, I opened my mouth to make a triumphant stand. He held his hand out at me palmwards whilst he examined the little strip of cloth. “but all I see is a little cloth strip used for marking pages. This must be easily lost – no? Always falling out of your books?”

I nodded unable to really think, “Tell me, these are crude, where do you buy such shite?”

‘I.. I make them” I whispered.

“Pardon?” he said tilting his head in an almost alien way.

I cleared my throat, “I make them.”

“Ah, I see, apologies no offence was meant – these little book marks can be made by hand yes? No machines?”

“Yes, it just takes longer.” I wanted to snatch the words back; it was basically a confession, his eyes held mine and the universe ticked around me.

“I think this would be a good project for the non-violent groups, good training, I.C.E. can not pay for materials of course same as they do not pay for your time but I’m sure suitable materials can be found.”

I nodded, trying to think.

“You should go now, before they lock you in,” and he grinned, his teeth were perfect and straight and gleamed. I wanted to whip the smug from him but I just whispered a “Yes, Sir” and scuttled from the room, not daring to hope that I was actually leaving.

At each door I expected the tug, at the perimeter fence instead the hand landed on my shoulder. “I hope you will not be offended,” he said quietly like a snake belly loose in the grass, “but do you know what your book marks get used for?”

I blinked.

“They use them as sanitary towels! I find that funny, there you are trying to teach reading and writing and they take what is necessary. I do not like filth in my prison and I can not sanction sanitary items for them but a craft project teaching a skill? And literacy? That I can. Enjoy your rags.” And he winked.

I watched him walk away, the guard had to “oi” me to get me to move.

So now they make their own little pads and I… I’ve slipped in deeper and deeper and bundles of rags turn up still and one day I will find out who has been sending them. The prison is weird, I think it is becoming something more. London is sinking though, and the marsh will reclaim its land. I still fear every time I go there, that they will not let me out, especially if they find the recipes I’ve been smuggling in.

Rainbows and Rivets – Picture a Story

June 19th, 2016

Rainbow and Rivet

Please use this picture to help inspire or start a story or poem. Picture a Story is where I share my photography or art work or occasionally a guest bloggers work. This one is the rainbow wing of a glass and metal butterfly – I liked the contrasts.

Pen the Dragon

June 16th, 2016

Once a Ruler thought it would be funny to hunt dragons so collected together a bunch of knights and solders and other such people. Then they built themselves many weapons including a load of rockets which they took to the local woods. A solider spotted a dragon nest so they set up the rocket launcher and on the rulers nod lit the fuse. The rocket flew into the sky and knock a dragon from it’s perch where it had been sleeping, the rocket hurt the dragon’s wing and so it could not fly away. So they caught the dragon and took it to a tower deep in the woods. It was a tall round tower and once the dragon was within they sealed it up so the dragon could not escape.

The dragon who’s name was Pencil, Pen for short was very sad and scared and spent many days wondering the tower alone. At night Pen was afraid as eyes would appear and disappear in the growing darkness until shivering with fear the poor dragon would fall fast asleep from exhaustion only to have nightmares about woooing and oooing creatures in the shadows. And so the days past and the nights though they seemed longer until one night fed up with quivering and being so alone Pen called out to the mysterious eyes – for Pen knew there was no one else in the tower as the dragon had looked and looked and searched and cried at the lack of others and the absence of an exit.

Calling into the night Pen invited who ever it was to come out and share supper for there were guards or maybe just kind locals who would throw supplies up into the tower. But no people appeared to answer the dragons invitation instead the eyes floated there in the half light and drifted forward. Pen tried not to show nerves and tried to back away but the poor hulk of a creature was shaking so very very much.

All Pen wanted to do was flee but there was no where to go and the loneliness was getting far too much to stand and then the was a faint noise growing louder by the minute. It was a wooa ooooooah wooooooooahhhhhhhhhh and then they were there a multitude of ghosts hovering not far from the dragons nose.

Pen squeaked and one ghost hovered further forward “helllooooo” it oooed and Pen returned it’s greeting and then they began to talk and talk and it felt so good not to be alone. And though they were ghosts and therefore some would say they were never really truly there Pen knew that no more was there a lonesome dragon in a tower for now the dragon had friends. Spectral friends who had story after story to tell and it helped Pen a lot but… a trapped dragon is still a trapped dragon and trapped dragons never thrive.

The dragon began to wilt, with pale scales and dull eyes, so the ghosts helped Pen escape. After all as much as they liked Pen they did not want a great big dragon ghost in their tower – dragons are noisome and ghosts are quiet and a ghost dragon is neither and both and as such could never be content to just be – Dragons make bad ghosts and it was not meant to be.

They found a boat and bits for a winch for Pen’s wing had been badly injured by the rocket. The poltergeists amongst them were very useful as they could actually move thing and so Pen was free once more but would not remain so for long and had to get far far away from that land. So they squeezed themselves into the little boat and with a wave and a flame in the twilight said goodbye and a big thankyou to the ghosts and set off across the sea.

The sea was calm and once beyond the coastal zone the tide did not carry the boat and so Pen had to use dragon claws as oars and push the boat through the surf. This was just what the injured wing needed and it grew stronger and stronger. There were many islands with great big trees on them, laying beneath such a mighty tree one night Pen looked up into the sky and saw all the stars gleaming there, ice white and twinkly and thought about how lovely it would be to go and visit those stars.

Stretching out both wings and only wincing slightly Pen gave them an experimental flap and then launched into the inky dark night, flying higher and higher into the sky, swirling and zooming and enjoying the feel of freedom – of life – for this is what dragons are made to do and a grounded dragon is a sad dragon though they do often find many other wonderful things to do.

Pen zoomed and swooshed and then hovered and looked and thought and then pushed off out of the atmosphere into the dark emptiness of space. Getting further and further out until the Earth was nothing but a little dot and still Pen the Dragon kept going.

On and on Pen went deeper and deeper into the vacuum beyond the planets. At last another star with it’s adamantian glint came near and was a diamond in the sky, an actual giant diamond. And Pen rested on it’s multi-faceted surface and looked at all the reflections of the dragon within and saw right down deep within were everything is small and over lapping that there were many many other stars out there and smiling Pen Dragon took a leap into the unknown knowing that there were whole new worlds out there to explore!

Broken

May 15th, 2016

Black was such a comforting colour when he thought about it, and it suited her making her eyes seem darker and her hair glossier, such long long hair. But mainly it covered up the gentle soak of the stomach wound, he hadn’t meant it but sometimes things just broke when he got mad with them and he’d gotten made with her.

Maybe it would heal, it wasn’t very large and she was walking if rather slowely, he hadn’t meant too…

Her large eyes seemed to swivel in slow motion to him, she stared at him but he could not work out if she was angry, she was definately scared. That much he could tell.

She stumbled and he caught her, she did not shake him off, he felt that was a good sigh, earlier when she had smashed the plate, back then before his careless thought had wounded, well then she hadn’t wanted him near her, had rejected any attempt at touch.

He dressed her in black after the yellow sun dress had been streecked with red. He’d been amazed at how much blood had bloomed from such a small gash. She hadn’t screamed, just gasped and clasped her hand over the wound. “Help” she had whispered and crumpled to her knees.

They were bruised, he saw the bluish hurt on them as he’d pulled on the trousers. She’d asked why he wasn’t sure if she meant the wound or the clothing. He had not answered either way. The fight had gone out of her.

He wasn’t really sure what he was doing, he was pretty sure she needed help but then they would ask questions wouldn’t they and he knew where that lead – his body hadn’t scarred but it could never forget the pain of them trying to make him die, over and over again.

And then he’d gotten out, when they were killed and caught by their enemies, he’d walked out of the camp, into life… but where were his people?

He couldn’t find them, they were not among those leaving the camp in various advanced levels of dying, they were not in safe houses or in other countries – he looked for them, over and over. He found other, similar but not the same, faces he vaguely remembered from trade but they were not his people.

And then he’d found that people were soft, so fragile around him and he learnt to be careful because it was so easy to accidentaly kill. With a thought, a single thought but only if he was consumed by the rage. He’d almost caught it in time, but the split second was enough, and now she was dying, he was pretty sure of that, and he didn’t know what to do or where he was taking her. She probably thought he had a plan, she might not even have realised it was him that had hurt her, some how he thought she knew perfectly well that it was him but he pushed that thought down low low into his gut, he couldn’t process that – not right now, not when he had to think.

She was walking again slowly, it reminded him of being there, back there in time, in that place, with the filth and the muck and the fleas. Where were his people?

He felt so lost and alone, she had made that go away, she had made it go away for 12 fantastic years, but then she said it, he knew she would, but he had hoped, he had said, he always did and they always said it was ok and that they were the same and then… then often sooner rather than later they would change their mind.

She stumbled again, he did not catch her in time and she landed heavily on the ground. A passer by noticed and ignored his attempted to shoe them away. They got out one of those things, the talking things, the phones that he could not use and dared not hold.

Everything was chaos then, she held his hand and whispered “stay” that was all an it was barely air from her lips. He stayed, flinching as they entered the amubulance, it was not the same but some how the same as the thing they had transported him in back then… back when they thought he was an animal.

He would have run at the entrance to the hospital – it smelt that same way, the shit and disinfectant, the long corridors and metal beds, somewhere he sensed people were being sliced open, and… to his right, yes his right they were burning bodies or parts of bodies. It was a marble of sensation carving its way through his mind. He could feel the hospital’s layout, the annoyance and pain and joy and heartache that seeped into the walls and floors and occasionally the ceiling.

But he didn’t run because she fitted, arching her back and twitching, they rushed her through the doors and he lost contact with her, the world zoomed in small and he was a small floating dizzying bug.

They would swat him soon.

He was guided to a relatives waiting room, it was full of people waiting quietly or sobbing openly, no one was really aware of the others around them. He didn’t need them to tell him were she was, he could feel her. He could feel how weak her heart was now and he needed to be with her but they would not let him pass.

So he sat, and he waited. And the weak heart beat stopped… and then started again, but there… there in the quiet bit there was another little flutter and he sobbed then. Hot wet tears, huge and uncontrollable dripped out of his eyes.

They came and got him after an eternity, exhausted as he was from crying there was no way he could sleep, the dual heart beats were slicking within his mind.

“Your wife is quiet ill,” the young nurse said, “it was an old hernia operation site that opened up, she is lucky to be alive.”

“An.. an old scar?” he asked.

The nursed nodded not really paying him any attention, he was taking up time they could be doing worthwhile stuff in and though they were well trained not to let emotions leak, he could tell by the resonance of the body itself as they stood there waiting for the lift.

“Do you…” he swallowed, “do you know what caused it?” he asked, his felt nausea at not asking how she was but he knew she was stronger now, he could feel the beats throbbing, strong and big, if a little wobbly.

“Probably some deficiency but I’ll leave that to the Doctors, she’s just down here” and he had to fight himself hard not to just run away because he’d seen steel bowls and there were points and edges and he remembered the blood splatters and here he could smell blood and faeces and he began to shake.

“She is going to take some looking after but she should be alright.” and then the nurse was gone and it was just the three of them. He wondered if she knew and then chastised himself – of course she knew that was why she had brought the subject up. the horrible painful hurtful subject. She was on oxygen, her lips were still blue tinged.

She turned her eyes to look at him, the whites were blood shot, she was scared. Her lips moved.

“What are you?”

“A zigeuner” he said and shrugged, she knew it had been him, he had to run, she would be fine now. “I should have brought you here, I panicked” he said.

She stared at the ceiling tiles.

“I’m sorry” he whispered.

She nodded and closed her eyes, a tear glistened as it fell. He did not move, he couldn’t. He waited for her to raise the alarm.

He waited for the question, she did not speak german, she wouldn’t know what the word meant. He wasn’t really sure what it meant, not in the deep sense not in the sense of who he was.

“Will it be like you?” she asked softly.

He hesitated but then felt the little flutter of life, his shoulders sagged, “yes”.

She turned her head away as he took a step towards her, he stopped, the moment hung around them. “I am sorry, I will go, I will send you money.”

“You can’t go” she said barely audible.

“I must”

“You can’t it will kill me”

He nodded, knowing it was the truth.

“Maybe…” he began but she shook her head.

“It is too late,” she lay there, her hurt was to palpable, he went to her side. Her agonies where his as he rested his hand on her.

“Can it hurt you?” she whispered.

Her felt the shape of the life in his mind again, “no… only as one human to another”

“I thought…” she murmured, “I thought you weren’t human”

“I’m human,”

“Not like me”

“No not like you, I don’t know if I am like my people or not” he said slowly.

She nodded, she was tired, she wasn’t properly awake.

“How old are you?” she asked.

He shrugged, she didn’t see and the silence between them grew, he became aware she was asleep. They’d told him at the camp he was sterile, he’d believed them and no other women in all his long decades had succumbed. His brow furrowed as he watched her sleep as he felt her and the child and wondered how he had missed it being there for the last few months. It had become a subtle presence, slowly becoming, it had creeped up announced.

He loved it but she was right, it would kill. He thought of snuffing them both out but knew he would not, he had never intentionally killed, always by thought, careless not meant thoughts.

They had tried to get him to direct the thoughts, he remembered that now, making him hate himself had been a big thing. Hating all that he was, his history, his culture, not that they had really known what his culture was, he’d known that much. He hadn’t been fully grown when they separated him from the rest. They were not jewish, his people, many marked the same were and they had had variants to try and tell but they hadn’t know what he was. He seemed unique, they told him his people were vermin. He’d had a rat catcher dream.

He’d felt so alone, and his endless search since had turned up no one, not one person who was his. He hadn’t expected them to be like him but just that old familiarity. He had after the first 30 years given up and took what companionship he could get, he’d learnt the hard way how to control his temper.

No one connected until her, and he’d almost killed her, he’d just let all the others go when they started bugging about kids but he couldn’t let her go. But now he knew he must, she couldn’t stay with him and the baby, he hoped birth would be survivable for her.

She stirred and looked at him, “are you a witch?” she whispered on the edge of conciousness.

“No just a gypsy,”

“Romma?” she asked.

And he smiled sadly.

“no”

“Irish?”

“No”

“…” she didn’t ask the question but he felt it anyway.

“I don’t know, my people… I was too young”

She nodded, “like my nan” she whispered and drifted off once more. But he didn’t need to ask, he’d seen it or her imaging of it but it was more than a picture made from a story. She’d plucked it straight out of the old lady’s mind. He stroked his wife’s hand, looking at her properly for the first time, he smiled sadly and wished he’d realised sooner.

He’d been looking in the wrong place for his people, they were scattered, a kid here, and straggler there. He felt them now, deeply rooted but grafted now with features of other peoples. They still had a smell, a shape though and now he knew them he could find them. Maybe they all were a little like him.

“You killed them” his wife whispered dispelling his warmth of future hope.

“W-what?” he asked, checking all the new minds he had just found.

“In the camp” he stood still, not wanting to listen and knowing he had no choice.

“They conditioned you to do it, dream therapies and things”

“no!” he hissed.

“Yes, it’s all there, you killed them”

“You can’t know that!” he wailed.

“A kid’s story…” she whispered and he sagged.

“The piper” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said and drifted away. Tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed the white linen. He’d found his people, a remnant because they were not asleep when he’d dreamed. He couldn’t risk finding them. There was just him and the unborn child, even his own people he could annihilate with thought, with dreams, with half rememberings.

He stroked her hair, and stared into a future he could not bear.

Happy New Year 2016

January 2nd, 2016

It’s a new year, so it’s time to think and plan and prepare. This year I plan to submit more things (ie actually getting around to submitting them and not just starting to write a million new things!). I also plan to get The Doomsday Collection properly out there, I’ve got a couple more zines in the pipe line and some tutorials to write 🙂

Of course no year for me would be complete without the insaneness of my writing challenges, so you’ll find me signing up for them once more.

On that note the year always starts with poetry for me 🙂 January is the Month of Poetry which is a Poem a Day challenge. I’ve changed it slightly so that I spend a total of 30 hrs on poetry in January. This shouldn’t be too hard and is also needed as I am currently working on a visual-illustrated poetical piece about identity called A Stranger Dream, it is non-linear and inked images with the writing hidden within. I’ve been working on it for months and it should be ready for The True Believers Comic Festival in Feb.

And that is just the beginning of the year 😀

The Zombie Quintet

October 8th, 2015

It turns out that within my Punk Universe which is Scifi though sometimes presents as fantasy and/or horror there are in fact 5 types of zombies!

They have been present for a lot of history but something happens and there are suddenly lots of them.

If you don’t like spoilers then look away!

There is one zombie apocalypse which along with various other factors drives people into living on sea steds (where we first found the Punk). But there are 5 types of zombie and it happens over a couple of decades.

So that means there are five main zombie stories though also the potential for lots of shorter bits of fiction.

This means what I started in July was the beginning of the Zombie Quintet!

I also found a chapter or so I wrote last year of a second zombie book and have a short piece that is connected/might be the beginning of the third.

Anyway at the moment the titles are:

1) The Flesh the Word

2) It’s Not What You Think

3) Blue Lotus

4) The Ghetto Breed

5) The Blood

Halloween Story Starters

October 1st, 2015

A little something for fellow writers out there who maybe a little stuck – these are story starters just write down or copy and continue the story. I’ve had lots of success using mine and other peoples story starters – they are there for free for you 🙂

These ones are halloween themed mwhahahahahahaha.

1) Her feet were cold, she shivered awake with the pain of it and realised her leg was outside of the cover…

2) A strange smell, cloying and thick was wafting up from the drains again…

3) The scream was piercing and short, as if it had been cut off, now the night was completely silent as if it were waiting…

4) Trembling fingers could not operate the door lock, and she knew the shadows were creeping in, could feel them at her back…

5) Vlad blinked at the moonlight, it was a vonderful night and there was so much to do…

6) Their bodies were laid out, in size order, as if they were nothing but things to be organised…

7) The pumpkin was rotting, furry tendrils escaping from the crude square sockets…

8) The shadows lurched across the sky black on the deepest purple, somewhere an owl whooted…

9) They were prepared for the horrors of the deeps and those from the depths and those from the fathoms of no return but it was the darkness inside that got them in the end.

10) Mist oozed into the little hollow, it came silently, seeming to climb up onto the various tree stumps. It covered the pale mound completely…

GothNoWriMo 2015

September 25th, 2015

I spent September working out what I was going to do for GothNoWriMo, a novel writing challenge with a gothic twist. I normally use Octobers writing challenge to warm me up for November.

I thought long and hard about this though – should I set myself a goal this year?

With the way my head has been since I hit it I was unsure so I am kind of going with no…. but I still want to see how many words I can write.

But I have maps and time lines and plan of attack – ie both kids in school so I should even concussed be able to get this thing done!

The Green Man Crossing

September 18th, 2015

It was all a bit weird if I am honest, but I can see how it happened. Britain has a soul of old old gods and creatures, not entirely here or hidden away. It is thinly overlaid with Christianity; and when I say thinly, I mean thinly. Most of the great stone churches still pay homage to the older gods in some form, whether it is the shape of the doorways or the stories in the stained glass.

So I reckon these old spirits are all still floating about, maybe sucking up all that spirituality from the goddies praying. I myself am an atheist – even after what’s happened. I mean, just because you see and talk to a god doesn’t make them the divine, doing and know it all – does it?

This is my theory… the old ways have nearly been forgotten, the rituals and songs to call these creatures and give them forms we can see. Where they came from before the rituals? Buggered if I know!

But there are lots of hidden bits of it still around, like morris dancing, which has always kind of freaked me out – men with sticks and bells and costumes – I mean, really? Oh and wassailing and maypole dancing. I do quite like the maypole dancing as long as it’s not followed by jazz versions of folk songs or folk versions of pop songs – just no, guys, NO! Don’t make me break your instruments.

Anyway, it’s all my daughter’s fault – what she does is she sings, sings at festivals. I like the festivals and she always takes me along to look after Maddy. Maddy is five and cute with chocolate brown hair wound up in the tightest curls, she is also hard work and I spend more time chasing her than I do listening to the music; and guess what little madame likes doing?

Yep, she likes finding the story tellers and the morris men and watching the wood carvers – I like carving wood myself and have been meaning to get my lathe out once more. So anyway Maddy and me wonder around these festivals and they range from big music festivals to folk gatherings to what amounts to a book signing in a tent. And her mother, my daughter, sings her heart out.

My daughter also makes up songs for Maddy, little snippets really, a brushing the teeth refrain, a tidying up song, and a crossing the road chant. And this is the crux, Maddy expects a song invoking the green man when we are standing at traffic lights. Not that strange, I suppose, but then there are the festivals and she saw a carving and heard a story or at least I am sure she must have… The Green Man.

The Green Man is kind of not one myth but many, as each small part of this accursedly rainy island has its own little set of stories about a man of the woods, or of nature or of the hunt. They are mixed up with the Roman gods and even tumbled into our Christian heritage, what ever that is supposed to be.

I myself bought a beautifully carved wooden goblet with a crinkly eyed man made of ivy and other vegetation carved deftly into the wood – much better than anything I could have made – I can just about manage a passible hedgehog!

Right, so what we are talking about here is The Greenman, the spirit of the woods, of an older Britain, maybe from when it was Albion or possibly older than that.

And I often walk Maddy into town and she expects a song at the road crossing to call the green man. She even tells me about the adventures he has looking for his bike and stopping either a pee or cup of tea or if it is a complicated junction and he seems to be taking too long… both.

Now that she has heard of The Greenman however and even met someone dressed as “The Green King” at the Christmas Fete, she talks of his forest and how all the traffic lights are tunnels leading to the old dark forest where she would like to play.

I started to notice leaves and blossoms swirling down upon us when we stood at the lights and sung the song asking the green man to come – I don’t think anyone but another granddad can quiet describe the humiliation you happily go through for grand kids. So I am 64 years old and not a smart gentleman, I kind of didn’t entirely leave the 60’s and then crashed head long into the 80’s and 90’s, where part of my soul stayed as my daughter introduced me to the Indie Music scene and I drove her to music lessons and events.

Pretty much I’m a bit of a scruff bag, I would like to think I am hippy and cool but I know I am not as I’m more grunge than glam, but I am happy. I have silver hair and iron grey eyebrows that I can comb up and do impressions of sci fi characters for everyone’s amusement, and I wear Steel Eye Span and Led Zepplin t-shirts and often have to hunt Maddy’s shoes in the morning so run out of time to shave.

I also have a walking stick, I made it in my late 30’s in a wood in Wales for fun. It is a thumb stick, so basically it still looks like a lump of tree. I now have to use it all the time and walk slowly – I keep falling off the waiting list for the hip replacement. Basically I am old and falling to pieces and don’t look like I belong in a toffee advert. And yet there I am with a little person who insists I sing a song at the traffic lights EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!

Even when I am on my own I find myself humming it, people either laugh or shy away from me. Especially as I can not actually sing, my daughter got her musical talent from her mother and I warble out of pitch and out of key, though I used to do a mean nursery rhyme on the keyboard back in my own parenting days.

Anyway, I would stare at the blossom and leaves that rained on us like snow and Maddy would excitedly try and catch the petals announcing “flower snow!” or decide that a leaf was a gem that just had to be taken home. Then I kept feeling like someone was watching me and would look around but there was never anybody there. Except I swear I then caught glimpses of shadows darting away, I’d shake my head to clear my vision and decide I needed an eye exam, which I then promptly forgot to book.

Then last Tuesday it happened. Me and Maddy were standing at the lights when a man dressed like a morris dancer stepped up next to use at the lights. It is not that unusual for a morris dancer to be wondering around here – we live in what is known as The West Country so strange ruralness rules, even in the cities and towns.

Maddy got very excited and started jabbering to the man, and it was as I turned to apologise that I noticed the large horned headress. They were dark eyes and a dark outdoor face that looked at me from a sea of tangled and matted hair and beard. I blinked and saw the twigs, stones and flowers threaded into it like ornate beads.

He winked at me and then bent down to talk to Maddy, it was deep and smooth and lulling like afternoon sun in the meadow and the mud that eats your welly on the footpath. Beneath it was the rumble, it thrumbed deep within me and I wanted to cry for my Welsh mountains that I now lived so close to but never visited.

I could not understand what he said to her, and my lips where still moving in the chant; he passed her a small stone and stood once more. Smiling, he clapped me on the back and his booming laugh was the shrill of the crossing, telling those who can not see or whom are perhape to occupied with phone or book or natter, that it was indeed time to cross. I looked forward and, making sure Maddy’s hand was secure, we crossed.

The raggedy man was not there, nor behind us or anywhere to be seen once we got to the other side.

I would have thought it all imagination, except Maddy had a little river pebble in her hand. It had moss or algea or something growing in the cracks, if I squinted I could see the crinkled face grinning out of it.

I had to have a sit down, Maddy was only slightly late and the receptionist at the school didn’t write it down so we won’t get fined. But ever since I see him there at the crossings, not full bodied and in person but as a reflection in my glasses or as a dash of green out the corner of my eye.

Sometimes as I sing, it is as if the wind full of grit and diesel fumes is whispering to me. I can’t understand what it is saying but somehow I feel it is saying “thank you”.

Maddy has taught her friends at school the song and some of the parents have been moaning to me that they now have to stand and sing it when waiting at traffic lights. My daughter said the school had phoned her and asked her to make a recording of it and she is now planning on releasing a “doing and learning” song album. Some education or public department or something has found her some funding and she is very excited.

I, on the other hand, wonder if waking the old gods is such a good idea. He is strong enough to make himself felt to me and Maddy when only we know and sing the song. What if all the kids of Britain were singing it? If only a few of them made the same connection as Maddy then they will tell their friends, and I can’t think he’ll be very pleased when he sees what a mess Britain is in. When he sees that most of us never set foot in the trees.

But then I think of the lonely longing that has opened up within me and that I’ve booked the three of us on a walking holiday through the bit of Wales where my Mother was born and think, it might be a good thing.

This weekend I am taking Maddy to The Forest of Dean as her mum has an event there. I am wondering if I shall see anything or anyone hiding behind the trees. I still don’t believe in gods, but something old is there and we’ve awoken it. I don’t think it was ever truly asleep.

Pearly Costa

September 10th, 2015

I collected them, so many of them, little discs of shimmering colour, white and silver and mucky and lovely. In a little velvetine bag I found in my Nan’s button collection.

They were, in truth, her buttons, and my aunt’s buttons and my great great aunt’s buttons and then my in-law’s buttons, but only the special ones. These ones I had singled out with their swirl of almost no colour.

They were what I sought.

No one really wanted them anymore, they didn’t wash well but I had plans, at least that was how it started. Some crazed concept of making jewellery to sell. And I did and it was made of buttons but not those buttons.

And at some point in my 20’s I stopped being hungry, stopped having to struggle, and the buttons got forgotten and lay in a green plastic box that had once had broken pin badges glued to it. I’d found my treasures in the street, washed into the gutter by the autumn rain. Scratched but beautiful and fine. They were mine, I found them and rescued them but now they were gone.

The buttons weren’t

I got given all the old hats and spanish style skirts and the shoes of the oldest and dead of our family, no one else who was young would take them. I was the only one within my clutch of cousins and half cousins and second cousins. The others saw it as macabre, but my great gran had always told me not to waste and so I ended up with it all.

I had a big house and kids who liked dress up and it was fine and I had an idea that I could sew them on and make patterns – like my great aunts did.

And the project sat, forlorn and gathering a disgraceful amount of dust in my attic. I’d gotten distracted by phones that could ping someone on the other side of the world and take photos and kids and dance recitals and the things I’d found in my mother’s kitchen.

Hidden at the back of the cupboards, glass and wood – a wash board. I remembered what to do with such things and it did not involve washing – I had a hard time finding metal thimbles that were sturdy and small enough for my fingers, pretty much that involved charity shops and car boot sales.

I could rat-a-tat a beat upon the ridged blue surface, nothing like my great uncles, but it was a start.

Then I found beneath my parents side board there was an old tea chest, wooden and heavy and flaking from sea damage. It had been my granddad’s as he sailed out of the Thames and into the realms of ice seas in the north. It was full of photographs. I put them in albums of faux leather and satins after making them digital and sharing with an uncaring world.

The chest had a hole in it, I knew what that was for and the thrum of the music was driving me insane. It had to wait; there were birthday parties and late library books and music lessons. The eldest nicked my wash board and was a zillion times better at the wash and the beat and the chungungering than I was.

So another couple of years passed and I was well and firmly in my 30’s and cascading at a pace towards the big four O. I found yard broom handles in the DIY store were wood and sturdy and just the right size. The tea chest boom ba BOOMED and the little tap shoes of the middle kid skidded around the lid, she’d been doing this for years with toy boxes and hair ribbons and it was a fine thing – the tap moves made it, though it broke the box and we had to fix it.

Then there was the accordion and mouth organ, I can’t even remember where they came from, some arts event I think. My husband picked up the unlikely bellowed contraption and squeeked and burbed his way through to something that sounded decent – eventually.

And second youngest found that she could attach the mouth organ to her guitar, from somewhere a cymbal appeared and age wise they grew and I aged and then there were no more great greats and then no greats and it hurt.

But funerals always resulted in the clanging of cutlery and somehow the youngest learnt to play the spoons, learnt to rattle and jam and click and katchata the metal together. Flourishes and flips, and all the time I was still collecting the buttons.

That was when the eldest fled the nest to go and study, except she didn’t – she turned up with an inappropriate boyfriend who happened to be her lecturer or class room assistant or some such. What ever it was it was ok, she assured us, and he mainly stayed silent except when explaining his passion for history of the ordinary.

I thought he was going to die of joy when we started the evening off with a little skiffle. This was strange as most people hid for the grating and skidding sounds and my voice warbling in non proper speak like. That was when he started on about kings and queens and traditions and parades.

We all went to the attic and dug through the boxes, I found a heavy dress, dark and old, smelling acridly of moth balls and grease. There were Spanish style trousers and now that I knew to look I saw the seam of buttons, some chipped and cracked but all irridescent, gleaming in the dark fabrics.

It did not take long to kit ourselves out – it did take an age to dry clean, repair and sew all the faffing buttons on! And it turned out we really did have a lot of buttons.

Now though they were swirls and flowers and pictures and I was having the concept of back speak and dark l explained to me. Still don’t really know what any of that is but we do now play in our hodge podge band and people take photos of the Pearlies.

The young man explained it all, about how the traders would find buttons and sew them on their clothes, how a young homeless lad had set forth to make the world a better place.

We didn’t even come from the east end, we were outside of London – well, until they built the M25. We were Essex, we had the dock… she split up with him and to our relief went out with some biker chick for a while instead, all tattoos and piercings.

It’s strange how things work out though – we get invited to festivals now – playing main stages and everything, oh not as headliners but still MAIN STAGE!!!

But the main thing that always has me up in stitches in that my name is Pearly. And when they crowned me the Pearly Queen of Plaistow last year I could barely accept it for the laughter in my sides.

Well the big five O will be here soon enough and I need to enjoy life and the band is getting new members – apparently they are to be called grandkids and not band members, but you get the general idea.

I probably should go and practice or teach a kid how to play the spoons or something. Back in the big when, before when tech meant telly, no one wanted this music, but the beat, I suppose, moves on.