The Clockwork Ballerina

She jumps regularly.  There are many who have seen her, the clockwork ballerina.  She walks through the halls of this old castle, up to the ramparts, and pauses for a while, contemplating the view.  Then she climbs up, with an expression of terrible peace, and lets herself fall.  She fades in mid-air.

She has never been caught on camera, but anyone who wishes can see her.  It’s not timed by the calendar or the clock.  It’s not at the same time of day, or the same time of year, not every month, but most of them.  Every so often, she will begin her journey again, as if for the first time.  Sometimes, sun shines through her, or rain, or snow.

Many have seen her jump.  Only I have seen her dance, as far as I know.

The castle came into my family via an uncle, or a distant cousin or some such, long ago.  It had fallen into disrepair then.  My family had kept it, but it wasn’t one of the properties we used.  Who would want to live here, knowing that she will walk frequently, and jump over and over again? 

Well, me.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t believe.  There are no pictures, no recordings, she cannot be caught on film.  There is only word of mouth, and, forgive me, I thought they were crazy, or stupid, or gullible.

I wasn’t scared of her, the first time.  It was August.  I was out in the grounds, near the lake, and I saw her from a distance.  I was surprised, of course, but not frightened.  It’s hard to be frightened in August, in the sunshine.

When it came to return to the castle, to the few rooms which are still habitable, I began to feel nervous.  I barely slept that first night.  I know her journey is always the same, and that she doesn’t enter my room  - as far as anyone has ever witnessed, a thought which was not comforting – and that thought eventually allowed me to sleep.

I didn’t see her for three months after that, though I looked.  I read up on her.  There were books here, in the few habitable rooms, including histories and diaries.  Veronica, I learned, though no one knew much else.  The diaries and letters reporting her went back dozens over years, perhaps a hundred.  Perhaps the story had been hushed up by an uncle or a cousin, someone far removed.  None of my close family knew; like me, they’d dismissed her as village gossip, the imagination of those who never stray beyond their own back garden.

It was November when I next saw her.  The snow had begun to fall.  I was on the ramparts, a blanket wrapped around me, watching the sunset.  I turned to see her, walking behind me, her gaze fixed on her part of the wall, on the sky beyond it.  Goosebumps came up on my neck.  I followed her, terrified that she would turn around, a ghostly Orpheus to my Eurydice.

She never did.

She stood contemplating the sky for so long that I was able to grip my courage and move in front of her, to gaze upon her face.  It was calm.  She smiled.

She turned and climbed up, in quick neat movements.  She looked up at the sky as she let herself fall.  I darted forward to catch her, forgetting, for a moment, how late I was.  How late she was.  I could see the trees and the lake through her, as she fell, as she faded.

I had been sent to the castle to convalesce, to return only when I would no longer embarrass the family with my hysterics, my upset, my inability to cope.   Mother paid someone to bring food from the village once a week, and all bills were taken care of.  I had no worries, or cares, beyond those I created, which were quite enough to keep me occupied.  I had my piano, my music, and time to devote to it.  It seemed to help.  I hadn’t sought out a blade, though I wouldn’t have found one if I had.  No food arrived which required anything sharper than a butter knife, and I travelled down to the village every so often to be shaved by the barber.  Mother cared, in her own way.  Father liked to pretend I had succeeded.

I started writing music for her.  I tried to capture her peace, her ethereality, her ungraspability, both in concept and reality.  She could never be touched.  I would never solve her mystery.

When June came around again, I had seen her on three more occasions.  I had seen her fall from five different viewpoints now, and was still no closer to understanding why she looked so peaceful, so sure, when she was doing something so terrible.  My death would not have been a tragedy; hers must have been.

I had moved the piano to one of the rooms which was no longer habitable, one in which a wall was missing, opening it to the elements.  The wilderness had begun to encroach and daisies grew through the gaps in the floor.  I liked it, in summer, in the sunshine.

I was playing her song when I saw her.  She was not on her walk; this was a side of her I’d never seen.  Her hair was plaited instead of loose, her face open and bright.  I stopped playing and watched her in silence, a movie I’d never seen before.

She gripped something invisible at the wall – a barre?  - and began to perform movements I recognised from my sister’s childhood.  She was warming up.  When she stepped away from the barre, I regained my senses and began to play.

She was a wonderful dancer.  I had noticed her grace, her serenity, in her walk.  Now I saw those, and more besides.  I saw joy.

Watching her dance I knew I could never keep with her.  I was a hundred years behind and losing more ground every day.  I could never dance with her, speak to her, hold her.  I could only be her accompaniment.  It was enough.

She faded as the music reached a crescendo, though I kept playing through to the end.  I hoped she would return.

I kept the piano there as winter rolled around again.  I played for her at midnight, as the wind blew autumn leaves around my feet.  I played for her when my fingers began to numb with the cold, when my mother had long since grown tired of me and threatened to stop keeping me if I didn’t begin doing something, anything.  I didn’t know how to tell her that I was doing something.  I played her into spring, through rain, and sunshine, and snow.  The scars on my wrists stopped hurting.

I saw her jump again, several times.  From that room, I had a view of the ramparts, and of the lake.  Sometimes, I would look up, startled, to see her fading, her long dark hair streaming out above her.  Other times I would watch her as she stood, contemplating the sky.  On more than one occasion I ran towards her, despite knowing that I would be too late, that I would always be too late, that I had always been too late.

I recorded the music.  Veronica’s song.  I began to play the phonograph when she came in.  As she began to dance I stepped into the circle of her arms, following her movements.  I wasn’t quite right; I had watched her enough to be in time, to predict her movements, but still there were times when we were not in sync, when our arms passed through one another.  Her eyes were closed.  She felt of nothing.

There was once last time that I saw her, when summer came around again.  Now they dismiss her like they do all other ghost stories.  They believe that she is the product of fevered minds, of boredom, of some gossip that has had all the detail leached out, like a photograph left in the sun.

I was lying by the lake, as I had been when I first saw her.  I lay on my back, contemplating the sky.

When I looked up she was there, sitting beside me, looking up as I did.  She turned to smile at me; I smiled back, my heart pounding.  Had she sat here with someone else, a hundred years before?  Had that lead to her walk, to her leap?  What else could this be a recording of?

I saw that her eyes were brown.  I had never been close enough to know that before.

She said one word, before she disappeared from my life forever.  She said my name.  “Sebastian,” she said, and I realised she was seeing me, really seeing me, like no one has in a very long time.  Not in the years I’ve spent living here with her, and not in the years before either.  Perhaps that’s what I did for her.

She smiled again and added “goodbye….”

I reached for her like a drowning man and grasped only common air.

Hopel

+ Once upon a time there was a beautiful Principality, ruled by a Princess.  Well, maybe it wasn’t that beautiful – it was rainy, and muddy in places – but the citizens liked it.

+ The Princess lived in a tower with her companion and defender Row, also known as Relationships-With-Others.  The Princess and Row normally got along well, although sometimes the Princess would be irritable or snappy, or simply decide to be alone, and Row would disappear for a while.  When the Princess was lonely she was always sorry, and Row recovered, but the Principality was always weaker when Row was away.

+ The tower also held two librarians.  The junior librarian was called Nostalgia, while the head of the library and keeper of Happy Memories was called Hamen.  There was also a Dark Librarian, who stored those things the denizens of the tower would rather not look at too closely or too often; he was called Mescar, and he mostly worked in the shadows.  He also cared for the two ravens who had lived in the palace for longer than anyone could remember.  Their formal names were Re-enacting Childhood Patterns, and Need-To-Be-Loved, though they were generally called Sakid and Needsy.  Sometimes, they would attach themselves to the Princess’s shoulders and whisper terrible things in her ears while Slove tried to shoo them away.  They were allowed to remain in the palace because they were a useful warning system.  Sometimes though, when things were going well, Slove wondered if they were too delicate, too easy to trigger, and too quick to warn of something that wasn’t really a danger.

+ The Princesses three academic tutors were Fari, who taught crafting, Rea, who taught creating, and Lems, who taught problem-solving.  The Princess normally found her lessons absorbing, and when she studied frequently the Principality was a better place.

+ The tower was also hope to Physe, who taught dance, swimming, and walking, amongst other forms of physical activity.  Again, the Principality was happier, more reasonable place when Physe was in residence, although sometimes he would abandon the Principality for weeks on end.  Slove – who we will describe momentarily – was never sure if the Fog of Despondency, which coincided with Physe’s absences, came about because Physe left or whether the Fog was what drove him away.

+ Slove had a number of titles.  Love of self.  Ability to amuse self.  Ability to be happy in one’s own company.  Lack of neediness.  Lack of unreasonable reliance on inappropriate sources of affection.

+ He was, technically, the Principality’s general and chief protector.  He also organised the Princess’s schedule, ran bubble baths, fetched books, and generally buttled his way about the place.

+ Slove was a weedy little guy.  He wanted to be powerful, strong, and noble.  He wanted to protect the Princess, to keep her safe and to stop her from being kidnapped all the time.

+ He was lazy, that was his weakness.  When everything was going well he’d start slacking off.  He’d let the Princess stay home, respond to conversation only when spoken to, and stop keeping up with her interests.  Then when things got bad – when the Principality faced money troubles, or was lonely or just bored – another disaster would pop up.

+ Normally it was Hope-of-New-Love-Interest – Hopel -, who would kidnap the Princess, locking her in a whirlwind of confusion.  Her hopes would constantly rise and be dashed, an addictive rollercoaster that was hard to escape from.   It was even harder when Row was away or otherwise weakened.  Fari, Rea, Physe and Lems tried to help Slove with his rescue attempts, but they were struggled to awaken the Princess from her daze.  Nostalgia and Hamen were no help at all in the matter. 

+ The very worst thing of all, and the reason that Nostalgia and Hamen were unhelpful, was that Hopel was not always bad.  If Slove and the others kept the Princess in check, and kept the ravens away, and Hopel was *good* then sometimes Hopel would mutate into Eros, Ludus, Pragma, or a combination of the three.  Row still wore many of the capes and accoutrements that Hopel had brought in the form of Pragma, while Nostalgia and Hamen had many volumes written by Eros or Ludus.  Whenever Hopel had appeared they would refer to these volumes, contributing the Princess’s heavy daze.

+ Hopel was a creature of fire; the Princess was a creature of water.  She could not get too close without being changed.  Hopel could add a gentle warmth and simmer to her life – or he could boil her away to nothing.

+ As well as confusion and distraction, Hopel had the power to show himself in many different guises, in multiple places at once.  He was much weaker in this guise; when he appeared as multiple suitors, the Princess would divide her focus between them, weakening the distracting/confusing effect of each one, and allowing Fari, Rea, Lems, and Row to distract her, and pull her from the fog.  Slove would then step in, at the last minute, to deal the final blow to Hopel.

+ Sometimes, Needsy and Sakid would attach themselves to the Princesses shoulders, weakening her defences against Hopel and allowing him to mutate into Unhappy-Relationship, or, worse, Abusive-Relationship.  The few times that had happened, Slove and the other denizens had successfully rescued the Princess, but it had taken months to recover.  Slove still had scars from those encounters.  Mescar had been very helpful in rescuing the Princess and his Dark Library had gained more volumes for his trouble.

+ Word had recently come to the palace that Hopel had been seen crossing the border, heading to the palace to try to win his Princess once again.  Slove began to train.  This time, he swore, it would all go right.  The Princess would not slip into a daze.  He would not let her neglect Row, and she would continue to attend lessons with the tutors.  He would carefully monitor Nostalgia and Hamen, to ensure they never appeared without Mescar, and vica versa; all three librarians must be kept in careful balance.  And he would strangle those bloody ravens.

Breathe In/Out

So this was it.  I was finally desperate enough to respond to the advert, the to-good-to-be-true advert.  I knew what the catch was, I wasn’t stupid.  I was just desperate.

My heart was hammering as I picked up the phone.

Don’t do it I kept thinking, there must be another way.

But there wasn’t another way.  I’d spend weeks going over and over my meagre income and my substantial debts, and there was no way the two would ever work out.  Not unless I sold my body, the most lucrative thing I owned.

Someone picked up.  I was so distracted I barely heard her greeting.  Somehow, I pulled myself together when it was my turn to speak.

“I’m calling regarding your advert,” I said, only a slight hesitation in my voice. 

The advert was circled in the newspaper I clutched to myself.  Breathe in/out, it said.  £500/£250 per breath.  Easy money.

I got the job, not that there was ever any question about it.  The interview would have been less of a joke if they’d just held a mirror up to my face and waited to see if it fogged up or not. 

There were ten of us starting together that day.  Most of us seemed to be about the same age, my age, mid-twenties.  A few were older.  One girl looked to be about sixteen.  The road that lead her here was built from the tracks on her arms.

Half an hour of training.  The guy was manically cheerful, grinning his head off, telling us all how lucky we were to be here.  How fortunate we were to have this chance.  How we were going to make ‘a wad’. 

That afternoon we were lined up outside in our safety gear, waiting for our chance to hop on and join in.  I fidgeted as I waited, taking in the amazing sight.  The breeze – it was always blowy here – rustled my hair.

I’d heard of it, of course – who hadn’t?  Even seen pictures.  But to see it up close like this was something else entirely.  The sheer size of it; the way its body stretched over the horizon.  I’d have been awestruck if I wasn’t also paying attention to how shattered my new co-workers looked as they walked past us, heading home after a brutal shift.

Shifts were twelve hours long.  Twelve hours of hard, back-breaking work.  If you fell off, you didn’t get paid, not a penny for the entire shift.  Not even if it was the eleventh hour when you slipped.   Four shifts per week, twelve on, twelve off.

I came to the front of the line, watching the little teenager hop on ahead of me.  That was the official terminology, “hopping on”.  What she actually did was more like an undignified shuffle, climbing across people until she reached her space.

Then it was my turn.  I climbed up into the space recently vacated by another worked, the weak link in the chain.  I hooked my limbs around the people around me, holding myself in place.  Then I braced myself.  My core muscles were aching within the first ten minutes, but I had no choice but to hold on, now I’d committed myself.

Just think of the money, I thought to myself, trying desperately to distract myself.  The money.  £500 to breathe in.  £250 to breathe out.

I had plenty of time to think over those twelve hours.  What I thought about most was it.  The giant thing I was performing CPR on.

I wondered what the aliens had been playing at.  It was five years ago now, when they’d first arrived, dragging it behind their spaceships like one of those giant balloons you used to see at parades.  It’s as big as a mountain range.

The transcript of the conversation is available online.  I tried to remember it, line for line, as I braced myself there in a mesh of other people.

Our ruler is dying they had said, in their strange language, full of beeps and boops.

If you do not save our glorious leader they added we will raze your planet and revive benevolent with the blood of your species.

Then they had left, leaving their ruler behind them.  But not without first destroying Australia, just to prove they could.

And that brings you to me, and to all my co-workers hanging beside me.  They were right when they said their ruler was dying.  The world’s best doctors – within those first, frantic, 24 hours – realised that he needed CPR.  And that was exactly what we were doing.  Over and over.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Each of the giant alien’s breaths took 5-8 hours and you’re paid based on how many of those happen in each of your shifts.  A lucrative shift might get three – one right at the beginning, one halfway through, and one right at the end - while the next rota would only manage one.  It was a lottery. 

A few times, over the years, we’d tried building a machine to replicate the task we were performing by hand, but none of them had worked.  After the last disaster had culminated with the Glorious Ruler almost dying it had been decreed that the wages would be doubled.  It was hard, tiring, back-breaking work.  There was no respect and no joy.  But the money was good.

Every time the breaths slow down beyond one every ten years, every world leader is lit up by a red spotlight.  The same red spotlight which heralded the destruction of Australia.

Sometimes, they try a different approach.  Sometimes, when the breaths slow down, they light up a billion or so people instead of the world leaders.  One in every seven or eight.  It’s never been me, but once it was my mother.  It’s a lot scarier when the person destroyed might be you or your family than when it’s happening to a stranger halfway around the word.

So we breathe.  Or we die.  Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.

The Earworm - a Horror Story

Tracy sighed when she heard the beep in her ear. Patiently, she waited for the whisper to finish – it was a new one. She couldn’t quite make out the words.

“Hello,” she began, as she’d done fifty times already that day. “Thanks for ca-“

It was then that Tracy toppled from her chair and onto the floor, blood streaming from her ear. The agent next to her – Vince – began screaming. His manager, Sarah, came over and carefully checked Tracy’s pulse.

“Auto in!” she snapped at Vince, who was gawking. It wasn’t every day that the person next to you suddenly fell out of their chair. Reluctantly, Vince took another call.

Beside him, and her fellow manager, David, quietly discussed what to do. Sarah gently laid a coat over Tracy – who still hadn’t moved, Vince noticed – while David walked away. Vince wondered if he was calling an ambulance. This guess was confirmed when a couple of paramedics arrived fifteen minutes later and took Tracy away. Vince noticed that Tracy’s phone had somehow switched itself off; she wasn’t just logged out, the phone was completely dark. That was odd. Maybe the manager had unplugged it when he wasn’t looking, but why would Sarah do that?

“What happened?” everyone whispered. Vince shrugged. He thought about asking to go home early, but decided that was unlikely to be allowed. Besides, it was raining and the thought of going outside was just slightly more horrible than staying at work.

When Vince came back from his break, later that day, another agent had disappeared.

“She just collapsed!” someone told him. “Exactly like Tracy did!”

Vince was now spooked. He wondered if some sort of awful illness was going around that was making people faint?

When the third person collapsed, an hour later, he was more than spooked. It was Tariq, opposite him, and it happened exactly like Tracy. A call came through, he started to speak, and then suddenly he was never going to speak again.  To satisfy his own curiosity, Vince had put himself in natural and gone round to try plugging Tariq's phone back in, to try to get it working. It was completely dead.

One co-worker had put herself in natural, gone off to have hysterics in the ladies, and was refusing to go back on the phones. Eventually, she was sent home sick. Wait times were increasing, as everyone started spending more time in aftercall, discussing the three agents who’d collapsed so far, wondering whether they were dead or just ill.

It wasn’t long before another two people collapsed; an agent and the manager who’d been listening to her calls, giving her side by side coaching. Vince tried telling David about the weird way the phones had gone down, and the fact that they’d all been listening to calls when they’d fallen unconscious. With trepidation, David opened their call listening program on his PC and started listening to one of the calls on his earphones. He collapsed as well.

Vince took off his headset, put himself back in aftercall and refused to take another call. Sarah finally agreed that something weird was happening, and that getting them all off the phones was for the best. With a sigh of relief, the remaining agents – only six of them, since most people had gone home at 5pm – either put themselves in aftercall or logged out. Vince watched as the last agent tried to log out, but, without realising, put her phone on speakerphone instead. The buttons were right next to each other.

With a feeling of dread, Vince to call out to her, to get her to turn the phone off, to make sure no sounds would come through. He was too late.

They heard a beep, and then a grinding, whirring sound. It only lasted a second, but seemed much longer. By the end of it, everyone in the room was dead.

The After Lives of Lydia Montmorency

I hate my body.

I really hate my body.

It's not in bad shape, I guess.  Comparatively speaking.  I'm thinner than I've been in years.  This new diet - hahaha - is the first one I've ever been able to stick to.  Funny that.  I've stopped bothering with make-up, though.  And fashion.  Any interest I had in fashion has long since fallen by the wayside.

"When's the last time you washed your hair?" I ask myself.  Rhetorical question.

I sigh, and float through a wall so I don't have to look at myself any more.  Stupid body.  Despite this part of me having long since evacuated that shell, I still feel attached.  We would resemble sisters, I suspect, if there were anyone who could see both of us.

I stuck my head back through the wall.  My body looks over at me.  Like a dog.

"Come on," I say to my own rotting carcass, with a sigh.  "Let's go get you some brains."

I Hold Your Hand

I hold your hand.

It's so warm.  Your veins stand out across the back, from all the exercise you've done.  There are calluses from gripping, climbing, pulling, clinging on to life and vibrancy in a way that so few do.  The nails are bitten.  Your fingertips have those sensitive teardrops on them, though you've numbed them through repeated exposure.  So do mine.

I'd give anything to hold your hand, but now that I finally am, I wish I couldn't.  It's hurting you.  I see your frustration, as you learn how to do simple little things, like eat, and type, and tie your shoelaces, without the use of your left hand.  I'd give it back to you if I could.  I'd give you anything if I could.  But letting go of your hand now won't give it back to you, and I've been starved of you for so long that I can't let go.

It was two years before we met that I...that I became cold.  It was an accident, a tragic accident.  You were never meant to be without me.  Your life wasn't supposed to be this hard.  We could have been great together.  We will be one day.

For now, because of that accident, I can hold your hand.  I know you know that, because when you feel my cold fingers on your warm phantom limb, you jump, sometimes, startled.  Then you smile, a hopeful smile, and I feel reassured.

One day, we'll start over together, in two new lives.  For now, I'll wait.  For now, I hold your hand.

Summat Dead Weird

I dreamt this.  I literally dreamt it, then woke up and typed it out, just as it is below.

----

Summat dead weird's been 'appening round here recently. Tek this new school we been going to. It's reet posh like, proper gothic with towers an stuff. Posher than anywhere I ever thought I'd be going, any road up. And get this, reet. This dead famous director was standing reet by the gates t'other day. He'd just got out of his limo and was just standin' there, looking confused.

“Y'awreet mate?” I said to 'im, 'cause you would, wouldn't you?

“Excuse me, young man!” He said. Think he were a bit excited someone had spoke to him, you know. “Could you tell me where I am?”

“Yer at me school!” I shouted back over me shoulder. I was late y'see. “But god only knows what yowm doin' 'ere innit mate!”

The next day, I saw that dead famous actor roll up, in his limo. The director was there, and they hugged like brothers. Least, I think they were like brothers. My brother says only poofs hug, but I don't think they were. Our dad's a proper man, my brother says, and we ain't seem him hug anyone in his life.

There were summat wrong with that actor's leg. He were limpin' a bit.

The next day, t'were more people millin' about, lots of people with cameras and those mic-boom-things an' stuff, so I figure, reet, they must be makin' a movie. One of them looks properly ill; he's kneeling on the ground and droolin' and I wonder why none of 'em ain't got time to 'elp him.

Any road up, that dead classy actress strolls up to 'em, looking like something off the red carpet, all long dress and gloves, with her hair all pinned up dead fancy-like.

“Hello boys,” she said, in that accent she has. “Waiting for me?”

“I suppose we were,” the director said. I didn't hear anythin after that, 'cause I was nearly late again and had to leg it dead quick.

The other weird thing is what happens on the way home from school. Me and me brother, we always see the same people on the way home. Neighbours an that. None of them go into t'pub any more! They look at it, reet, with this dead snooty look on their face, like they're thinking “we ain't going in there no more, no way” reet, and then, as they walk past, they look back, dead longing like. I dunno why they don't just go in if they want t'.

These two old biddies, I know they'm 'omeless because me mam used to 'elp 'em out, I said, “Y'can've me fiver if you like, I saved it fer y', 'cause I war'n't 'ungry. Y'can 'ave it fer y' tea.”

And they said “thank you”, and then they said “no thank you”, and carried on. But they did that dead longin' glance at the pub and all.

Next day, I was walking along behind 'em again, and our other neighbour shouted across to 'em. “y'can come and 'ave a sandwich if you like, loves!”. She's dead kind, that neighbour. She makes 'em for the church, for all the other 'omeless, but she was letting these two have first pick.

They looked up at her, all surprised, like they didn't expect her to speak to the likes of them. She's not spoken t'me in a while, truth be told. Anyroad up, they said “no thank you duck", and kept walking. The neighbour looked all confused after they'd gone, and looked after the way they'd went for a while. She didn't look at me though. Not many people seem to look at me any more.

I'm always cold these days. I can't seem to turn the heating on. My brother can though, he can do all sorts. Says he don't need to though, an' he says he won't teach me. Says I'll figure it out for meself, one of these days.

'course, he's been dead a lot longer'n I have.

You Owe Me!

This story owes a lot of it's tone to Simon Rich's collection of short stories, The Last Girlfriend on Earth.  Take a look - it's really cheap on Kindle, and it's awesome.

----

The banker sat behind his desk, shuffling papers.  “It  looks like all this is in order.  How would you like to start making repayments?”

Caitlyn sat in shock.  The idea of being in debt was completely new to her; until today, she hadn’t realised she’d borrowed anything, not until this banker had got in touch and told her she had to start paying her loan back.

“What exactly am I supposed to have borrowed?” she asked.

“Well, let’s see,” he said, steepling his hands and looking up at the ceiling.  “There was my time for a start.  All those years I spent paying attention to you and running errands for you.  That could have been spent elsewhere.  All the time I spent thinking about you.  All the things I bought for you, all those birthday and Christmas gifts.”

“What?”

“You don’t even remember, do you?  Our first year of uni.  I spent the whole year spending my time on you, paying attention to you, and then, when I finally got up the courage to tell you how I felt, you said you only wanted to be friends!”

“...Thomas?”

“Yes, Caitlyn, of course it’s Thomas.  Or do you make a habit of taking up people’s time and attention?”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We were friends all right, but did you even consider going out with me?  Giving me a chance?  In fact, I’m going to add compensation for emotional distress onto this debt.  You can pay it off by giving me a chance.  Date me for a year – that same year I’ve already spent on you – and we’ll consider it even.”

“Are you insane?  I don’t owe you a relationship, Thomas.”

“You owe me time, attention, and money.  You took all those things from me, Caitlyn, and now I want them back.”

“I didn’t take them!  You gave them, of your own free will!  I can’t believe you’re acting like this, Thomas.  We were friends.  I wasn’t madly in love with you, no, but I didn't owe you that!  You can’t just demand that I give you a year of my life!”

He continued gazing at her over the desk in silence.  With disgust, she’d remembered how he’d do that at uni; go quiet and hope the awkward silence would net him the answer he wanted.

“What if I did give you a year of my life and I still didn’t want to be with you?” Caitlyn demanded.  Despite knowing the trick, the silence got to her.

“You’d have made me waste another year,” Thomas said, “so, obviously, you’d have to pay that back.  You can’t just play with people’s hearts like that Caitlyn.  I’m a nice guy, which is probably why nothing ever works out for me.  I did everything I could to make you happy, and you just wouldn’t even give me a chance.”

“Fuck you, you self-centred, entitled wanker.”

Caitlyn stormed out.  Left alone in the office, Thomas sighed.

“Nice guys always finish last,” he said, glumly.

Eugene Fucking Morris

A short for the Blakenhall Writer's Group.   The original specs can be found here - essentially, a bit of background, and instructions to write a short story or poem.  This is mine.

Eugene Fucking Morris


I swear to god, someone up there has got it fucking in for me.

For fuck's sake.

It's not like I've got some kind of issue with dead bodies or anything.  Really, in my line of work?  Might as well be allergic to money.  Or drugs.  Or to lying itself.

Seeing the corpse of someone I knew and whom I'd never expected to see again?  That fucking threw me.

The chief's looking at me expectantly.  I give a grave nod, and the mortician pulls the sheet back over her face.

"Those bastards," the chief says into the silence.  "It'll be a damn good day when we finally bring them down."

'They' are the local mob, who I've been investigating undercover.  Me?  I'm Eugene Morris, bullshitter extraordinaire.  The truth ain't black or white, and neither am fucking I.  And nor is that corpse on the table.  We were two of the only three mixed race kids growing up on our street.

She - Javina - was my next door neighbour when we were kids.  Her big brother - the third kid - and I were close. Right up until we were all teenagers, and I suddenly found his little sister a lot more interesting.  It didn't even last that long, just a month or two, but that was long enough for Troy never to speak to me again.

Goddamit it.  Thinking of Troy, and his mama, and his mama's baby girl under that sheet?  Christ.  My mum taught her mum how to braid Javina's hair, for fuck's sake.  Her mum was white, and didn't have a clue how to deal with mixed hair.

"It's their style," I said to the chief, commenting on the state they'd left Javina's body in.  Fucking christ.  "Any idea of motive?"

"Nope."  The chief slapped a hand to my shoulder.  "That's your job."

Of course it fucking was.  I'd better get some kind of bonus for this.

***

Finding the motive, it turned out, was the easy part.  Practically handed to me on a silver fucking platter.

It was later that same day; yesterday now, must be.  I'd nipped out for another pack of fags when I'd seen Ernie looming at me out of the shadows.  And trust me, Ernie can fucking loom.

I'd greeted him, with a dash of curiosity.  Ernie didn't normally approach me in public.  Ernie didn't normally come out in fucking daylight, for christ's sake.

He'd grinned, asked what I'd come out for, then offered me a cigarette.  He was holding out a match when someone came up behind me and dropped a sack over my head.

I spent what was probably the whole night having the fucking shit kicked out of me.  Eventually, during one of his fag breaks, he found the time to explain it to me.

"The boss found out about you, Eugene," he said, lighting another fag.  Fucker.  I'd never even got to take a single drag of mine.  I glared balefully up at him from the floor, my head turned sideways.  I was trussed up like a fucking turkey.  Ernie'd never been one for fighting fucking fair.  Probably why he was so successful at it.

He didn't wait for me to reply.  I wasn't fucking planning to.  

"So this," he continued, "is your punishment.  The girl," he grinned at me, "was your fucking warning?"

"You killed some girl to warn me you were going to kick the shit out of me?" I wheezed.  I could taste blood.

He waved the match out, and sat there in silence, grinning at me, like a fucking pumpkin.

"Or are you planning to kill me too?"  I continued, when it was clear he was just going to carry on sitting there with that fucking look on his face.

"We're not going to kill you, Eugene," he said.  Well, thank fuck for that.  "We're to keep you.  And if you don't do what we want, we'll kill another one.  Who was next?  Natasha?  Tia?"

I was having trouble breathing.  Not because of what he'd said, because he'd broken a few of my fucking ribs.

He finished his fag, then stood up, rubbing his hands together.

"You could just offer me fucking money," I said.  "Instead of brutally fucking slaughtering your way through a chronological list of my exes."

"Nah," Ernie said, picking up a baseball bat.  "We'd never trust you if we had to buy you."

Well, shit.

Why I Couldn’t Kill Hitler

You don’t know me, but I love you.

We’ve never met, but I know everything about you.  I know the way you stretch and yawn in the morning, and the face you make when you’re grumpy, and the kind of tea you like.  I'll hold the colour of your eyes when no one else in the world remembers your name, and I know you'd understand that reference, because you introduced me to that book.

It was another lifetime. We worked together and lived together.  I didn’t realise how special it was till it was gone.  I didn’t know it wouldn’t last forever.

You’ll never know that, because I’ll never tell you.  I won’t send this letter, or any of the hundreds of others I’ve written to you.  I can’t.  I couldn’t bear for you to know what I’ve done.  I just pretend to tell you, over and over, so that for a brief moment, I can pretend that you’d understand, and you’d forgive me, and we could be together.

We won’t ever be together, and you wouldn't ever understand, like you wouldn't ever forgive me, but at least you’ve alive.

We were both physicists.  We met at university, and were lucky enough to find a job together afterwards, studying time.  It took twenty, thirty years, but we did it; eventually, we learned how to time travel.

I know how that sounds.

I’m not going to tell you how we did it.  Suffice it to say, it couldn’t have happened without both of us, working as one, devoting all our time to the study.

You had a specific reason.  Killing Hitler.  You had relatives who’d died in concentration camps, and your goal was to go back in time and prevent the second world war, prevent the horror suffered not just by your family but by millions of others.

My reason was less noble; I wanted to succeed because you did, and I love you.

We did it eventually.  There was a lot more to it than killing the man himself, of course.  We had to go right back to the First World War and make careful changes in order to fix Germany’s economy.  We had to lance the boil before it had a chance to fully develop.  Otherwise, someone else would have arisen to take his place, and it would have been different, but it would have been just as bad.  We couldn't measure how long it took; either years or no time at all, really.  To go back and forth and carefully make all the necessary changes.

When we finally succeeded, when we came back after making the last change, you weren’t here.  You never had been.  Your parents had only met in the first place because of the way your grandparents had escaped, and where they’d ended up afterwards.  Without the war, they never met, and you never existed.  You and millions of others were simply never born.  

The entire world was different.  There was technology which didn’t exist without the war, medical advances that we’d never been pressured to develop.  There were people who hadn't ever been born because their parents had been slaughtered.  I didn't care about any of it.

I can’t live in a world without you.  Even if I have to live in a world without you by my side, I can’t live in a world without you in it.

So I undid what we’d done.  It only took one simple step; I went back and doctored my own university application, so I went somewhere else and we never met.  You never found that job posting without me buying that one specific journal, and I purposefully ignored it.  Without us, they didn’t succeed.

I can’t be with you without giving you everything you want, and I can’t give you what you want without killing you.  Worse than killing you. In that world, I was the only one who knew you’d ever existed.

I sentenced millions of people to death.  I know.  In many ways, I’m worse than the man we set out to defeat, because at least he believed he was doing the right thing.  I don’t.  I sentenced the millions who died in the holocaust to a death I could have prevented.  I killed the millions of people we’d brought into life by preventing that war.  I let Germany’s economy be ruined when I could have prevented it, and caused people starve to death when I could have saved them.  When I already had saved them once.

I could argue that I also saved all the people who were only alive because of the war.  I could argue for the medical treatments we developed throughout that war and the people they’ve saved.  I could argue for the internet and the shared knowledge we have because of it, something that only exists because of the code and communication requirements of that war, but I know – and you’d know, if I ever told you any of this, which I won’t – that none of that was the point.

I couldn’t.  I couldn’t sentence you to not existing.  I just can’t.  No matter how much you’d tell me that it would be worth it to prevent that horror.  I love you, and I can’t, and I’m sorry, but I can’t.  

 

I just can't.