Tenor and Bass

The audience fell quiet. He was the finest Bass of his generation, for many the finest Bass of all time & the chance to see him was something to covet. After what felt like a lifetime his mouth opened........... & bubbles came out. What a fish

Dead Men's Shoes

Walking past the charity shop he paused to look into the window. It was not usual for him but something had caught his eye. He glanced through the collections of cut glass, china, books and DVD’s but couldn’t trace what had made him stop.

Through the glass he could see the two old ladies looking up from their desk in hopes of a sale. It was then he saw what had subconsciously caught his eye. A pair of beautiful brown leather brogues. Not his style at all but somehow they just seemed ….. right.

He was running late already but he decided to pop his head in the door to ask the size. He somehow knew they would say ‘size nine’ and sure enough the older of the two women confirmed what he thought with a smile.

He glanced at his watch and decided he could be a few more minutes late for his meeting.

‘Can I try them on?’

The smaller of the women held out a tortoise shell shoehorn and indicated a seat near the back. He took the shoes and the rather quaint shoehorn sat and slipped off his shoes.

As soon as the first went on he felt different, the second completed the change. He looked down and almost didn’t recognize his feet with this new look. When the laces were done up he stood and glanced in the mirror.

He liked them, liked them a lot. Of course they really needed a new suit and as if the two old ladies had read his mind they were there with a brown tweed double breasted suit and waistcoat. He checked the time. Better to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb he reasoned.

Standing inside the changing room he smoothed down the waistcoat and looked at himself in the mirror. It was perfect. He sniffed the sleeve of the jacket, it smelt fresh not like something from a charity shop so he decided to keep it on.

Parting with money at the desk he added two white shirts and three ties and left happy for his meeting.

The two old ladies smiled as he left before the younger spoke.

‘He looked the spitting image of your Ted in his clothes.’

‘He did,’ the other said with a tear forming in her eye. ‘wonder if he realised they were a dead man’s shoes?’

‘I hope not, but I wonder if he will be so quick to jump into his grave.’

Sitting in his meeting after apologising for being late and receiving compliments for his suit and shoes he began to feel a tingle down his arm and a tightening across his chest.

Back in the shop the two ladies rearranged the displays. ‘Make sure you leave room for the shoes,’ said the elder

The Pain

He couldn’t remember when he first became aware of his ‘gift’. Before he realised others were commenting on it. His parents grew quite used to their friends saying things such as ‘isn’t it odd how he never falls over’ when he was just a toddler. For him it was simple, he could anticipate pain, he could see what was going to hurt him.

So even when learning to walk he would see himself about to fall over and would stop to steady himself before it happened. At school he was able to avoid playground clashes by knowing when to walk away. He excelled at rubgy with his teachers thinking he was great at the sport. He wasn’t, he just knew when a tackle was about to hurt him. He understood he had appendicitis before it started and mimicked the symptoms to make sure he was at the hospital before it started.

As he grew older and began to care more about others and less totally about himself his ‘gift’ meant he could feel the pain loved ones were about to experience. However this started the sense that his ‘gift’ was in fact a curse, what good was feeling pain if you could do nothing to prevent it. He experienced his Father’s fatal heart attack half an hour before it happened but being before the time of mobile phones he was unable to do a thing to prevent it. He bore his Mother’s pains of sadness inside him for years.

Later the ‘gift’ began to presage major disasters. He saw the planes, the bombs, the natural disasters with a helplessness that slowly increased the sense of uselessness.

But then, the day. Waiting in the pub for his girlfriend and toying with a pint in anticipation of a wonderful night ahead he felt it. He felt the wracking pain of a car crash, his girlfriend’s Toyota crushed by a lorry, he felt her life ebbing away. This time he could do something. He picked up his mobile and called to warn her.

Driving along the motorway she heard her phone go from her handbag, she looked down to reach across taking her eyes off the road for a moment.

The Library

The pub was perfectly placed just near to a conference centre guaranteeing a regular crowd of new faces most nights, people away from home and looking for a good time. In addition it was dark and the CCTV covered just the till and the bar focused on preventing staff pilfering rather than customer safety.

He carried the two drinks back to the high table in the corner and put her prosecco onto the stained bar mat in front of her. He placed his own red wine on the table before seating himself.

She wasn’t stupid, she could see that feint lighter band of skin where his wedding ring should have been. She listened, apparently attentively, whilst letting her mind drift around the words he was saying. They laughed a few times and she revealed very little about herself. Finally he made the suggestion of ‘another drink here or shall we move on?’

‘I can read you like a book,’ she said

‘I doubt that,’ he smiled knowing the thoughts of what he would like to do to her were running through his head.

‘Why not come back to my place, it’s just round the corner?’

Gathering their belongings they pushed through the crowd that was growing more exuberant by the moment a nd made their way to the door and out into the cooler, quieter air of the street.

After a short walk they were stepping up a driveway to what must have been one of the oldest houses in the town. He found it hard to contain a ‘wow’ as she opened the door onto an impressive classic hallway.

She threw her coat and bag onto a central table and turned. ‘Wine?’

‘That would be great,’ he stumbled slightly thrown by the scale of the house.

‘Go through and make yourself at home,’ she pointed to a doorway and he tried to look casual as he walked over and stepped into the room. It was like being in a film set. He hadn’t realised he was staring open mouthed at one of the paintings until she had reappeared with drinks and asked ‘like it?’

‘It’s beautiful,’ he replied trying to regain some calmness and authority, ‘is the house yours?’ He turned to look at her taking his red wine from her outstretched arm.

‘It belonged to my Mum and Dad but now it’s mine.’ She loved calling them Mum and Dad knowing how much they hated the shortened form of the more formal and respectful ‘Mother and Father’ she had to call them when they were alive.

They sat on one of the sofas, raised glasses for a slightly awkward cheers. His mind was racing ahead to what he wanted to do to her. She had opened the painful memories of her life in this mausoleum. Her Father spent every day in his library, her mother in the garden or kitchen. Never together except for meals where words were frowned upon. Theirs was not the love she read about in the fairytale books she devoured. Long, painful, resentful, hateful silences not the joy that the heroes and heroines deserved. They both thought she was fanciful, a dreamer and spent their days trying to undermine her hope.

She heard him speaking and snapped back to the present. She could see he was beginning to get woozy. The drugs in his wine were taking affect. In a few moments she would propose that they move. ‘I can read you like a book’ she said again. His slurred reply told her it was time.

With the help of her arm he was able to stand and stumble out of the room back into hallway. He wasn’t so far gone that the fact they didn’t make to go up the stairs but rather to another room off the hallway surprised him.

Through droopy eyes he could see it was a large library. His eyes could just about focus on what seemed like a hospital gurney in the centre of the room. She was helping to take his clothes off and folding them neatly on a plastic sheet. She led him naked towards the trolley and helped him lie down. A part of his brain was letting him know that she was a ‘kinky one’.

His last memory was of a white hankie covering his mouth and nose before everything became dark.

Later, changed into her special clothes and with the instruments next to her she lifted a scalpel and quietly spoke, ‘I can read you like a book’.

Starting at the chest she peeled back leaves of skin, faced with the ribs she cut through the sternum and pushed back the covers, making sure not to damage the spine, to reveal the heart. Once again she was disappointed with the ending. His heart was not black, despite his clear wrongdoing, his infidelity his heart was not as the fairy tales had told her.

Slowly and carefully she gathered the plastic sheeting around the body and placed his folded clothes at his feet. She shuffled a clear body bag around him and zipped it up, pushed the trolley over to the bookshelves where she had fitted hooks and hung him up.

She pulled the trolley away from under him and let the body find its natural position alongside the others. On a new library card she wrote the initial of his first name ‘k’ neatly before placing it into one of the catalogue drawers.

A new clear plastic sheet was placed on the carpet and the trolley rolled back. As she wiped it down in case anything had leaked she looked at the row of bodies hanging in various stages of decomposition. There were now sixteen, all first editions and she wondered whether she should rearrange them in alphabetical order. After a moment she decided not to. It was somehow fitting that the shelf started ‘M’ and ‘D’ and that they were close together in death having avoided it in life.

Words of the Day

Word of the Day - 'Poultrification' - meaning: the look of a forgetful chicken staring disconsolately back to the other side of the road

Word of the Day - 'Basilistis' - meaning: the disquieting suspicion that the herbs in your garden are mimicking your voice

Word of the Day - 'Picklemongering' - meaning: To create small models of famous battles & battlefields from chutney

Word of the Day - 'Shaveletting' - meaning: the irrational fear that all the pencil sharpeners you've ever lost are plotting against you

Word of the Day - 'Corviglum' - meaning: To creep up to single magpies and tell them how sad you are feeling

Word of the Day - 'Ipsumobruent' - meaning: The belief that every bottle has a genie inside but nearly all have now drowned

Word of the Day - 'Olecraneist' - meaning: the feeling you have when you suspect one of your elbows is planning a bank heist 

Aponatime

The Aponatime is a most curious animal

It is a time shifter, a mover of the mind

Once mentioned life begins to twist

You can return to childhood

Familiar voices echo in your head

Stories begin, fables unfold

And it only has to be spoken once

Just once 

Once Aponatime

See, I told you

Accident

She was an accident 
An accidental conception 
An accidental admission 
A severed relationship 
A dropped bottle
Don't cry
Distracted in memories
A glance to phone
An accidental twitch to the wheel
An accidental lapse
She was an accident