24 August 07 - 12:57Thieving Grief

A collaboration with Simon Woodward

It was my twelfth cremation of the week, a record, and I was becoming increasingly nervous. Although I spread myself around the city's crematoria, the more I attended the greater the risk of encountering a vicar or council employee once too often. I couldn't afford to raise  suspicion and threaten her supply.         

This funeral was to be a very small affair. Dangerous. I had considered withdrawing, but  knew I couldn't. She would not tolerate me returning empty handed. The mourners consisted of a stick-thin elderly couple and a man, lost somewhere in middle-age, whose face was a red wash of alcoholic skin. As we waited to enter the chapel - an antiseptic space fringed with purple curtains - he wrung his hands and averted his eyes. His knuckles were tattooed. Was he the son? The vicar invited us into the chapel.         

He began the ... (more)

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23 August 07 - 15:21the sound of children

THE SOUND OF THE CHILDREN  by Anthea Holland and DF Lewis

PUBLISHED 'fantasque' 2000

The sound of children's laughter washes over the parents who watch fondly as little Johnny jumps on his sister's sandcastle, destroying it in one easy swoop.  Around them the beach is full of sun-worshippers, soaking up the cancer-inducing rays as if their life (or lack of life) depended on it - perhaps it does.

      Beach balls and air-beds, picnics and sand-flies, everyone is making the most of the unexpected hot spell, grateful they don't have to spend yet another day following indoor pursuits - museums and art galleries are all very well, but you can have too much of a good thing.

      Happiness, then, abounds.

      But across the bright summer day darkness stalks.

      Several blackened flocks of birds swarmed in like the burnt ghosts of some ... (more)

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23 August 07 - 14:57Absent Without Leave

ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE by Anthea Holland and DF Lewis

PUBLISHED 'ROADWORKS' 1999

Harry fingered the stripes as his boot-burst toes circled the irregular Summer detritus of sedge and mulch.

A pond or pool that was stagnant.  No scent of water lilies hung on the summer evening air; no reeds or rushes bordered its banks.  Green slimy growth covered the undertow.

Cold for Summer, though, Harry thought as he knelt at the edge.  Despite the warmth of the day, little of the sun’s rays would penetrate the thick branches of the ancient oaks that surrounded the pond.  Cold oblivion, what bliss.

‘But smelly,’ a little voice reminded him.  ‘Do you really want to smell like sewerage?’

‘Won’t care, will I?’ he responded casually.  ‘It’ll all be over for me.’

He stood up and shrugged his shoulders out of his jacket.  No point in ruining a perfectly good suit.

The plane appeared from ... (more)

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22 August 07 - 17:43Bricktease

The cracks were deeper and a large slab of sandy stucco leant against the evening sky, poised to fall.  With soft moist fingertips, Jessica felt her way around the side of the building, not pressing hard enough to disturb the flaking surface but just enough to pick up any movement that was taking place now.

     She stopped and nervously licked her lips, tasting the sharp, coppery taint of air that always made her nauseous whenever she got too close to what she deemed to be her twin sentinels, although they were structures of man-made appearance.  Tonight copper mingled with the heavy scent of freshly dug earth for, behind her, seventeen rectangular plots of newly mounded river silt lay in the church yard.  Seventeen was her lucky number.  Her truly prime token of being alive.  She didn’t care that most people’s lucky numbers were single digits, like seven or five. ... (more)

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19 August 07 - 10:13DEAD PETS

A collaboration with Tim Lebbon

Written in the Nineties - Unpublished

Beever always thought death was ugly, a carbuncle on the otherwise spotless gleam of existence. But he had seen something that day that hinted otherwise; a brief glitch in an ordered life, which turned preconceived ideas onto their neat heads and spurned his desire for a quiet, unobtrusive reality.

It was a dog.

It darted from the pavement, all fur and yaps and lolling tongue, and disappeared from view. It yelped as his front wheel left the road for an endless instant, and the sound reminded Beever of one of those squishy toys they sold for dogs. He had always wondered what kind of animal found amusement in a squealing dead thing, but now, perhaps, he knew: the squishy things taught dogs about how they should never scamper onto the hot surface of a roadway. Especially in the morning. ... (more)

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