One drink and then home

Just a coffee, he thought. One coffee to show solidarity and then back home. Back to normal. But it was a mistake. As soon as he'd positioned the baby buggy next to table and sat down, he noticed the hush that radiated away from him like the tiny drops of blood in his shaving water this morning.

Two years ago he would have been almost hard at such a reaction, would have looked each person is the eye with one of his too thick eyebrows raised quizzically. Come on fuckers.

Not now. It wasn't shame he felt - real shame was something he'd discovered at the hands of his dad - but a kind of humming disappointment. The ripples of quiet were not fear or awe, he knew, but a pause of discovery: phones were raised surruptitiously, apps consulted and symbols disscussed in hushed tones, glances as people walked passed became scrawled images on beer mats that he would pick up as he left. No, it wasn't fear that people felt now - even after Anders had shown what real men were capable of - but raw, unwavering contempt.

Beer or coffee. Irma was having coffee, which meant she'd be sober to put Liam to bed, so he ordered a beer and waited patiently in the silence that wasn't silence for the ragged waitress to serve him. Irma talked to her friend - what was her name? - about the festival the previous weekend, her high-pitched nasal whine doing nothing to mask the tap and slide of research going on around them.

At some point someone would see the life rune, turn their eyes to the baby, and make the inevitable connection. Someone might say under their breath as they passed "rapist" or "cunt" and he would pretend not to hear.

One drink in a public place to show solidarity - Christ whose idea was that? - and then home. Back to normal. Maybe stick some of the uniforms and flags on ebay and let someone else get the use of them.

It was Liam. Little boy sucking his dummy, occasionally looking over with massive eyes to make sure mummy and daddy were there, as though they might disappear in a puff of black smoke. It was little Liam, a year older than his first steps, happy to enjoy the sunshine and listen to Irma's whining to Clare - her name was Clare - about the heat and the sun and the hangover from the festival.

It was little Liam first crawling, then holding a branch as he walked hunched from the carnage behind him. It was little Liam who watched the man in the tight black and blue outfit raise his gun and calmly fire into a crowd of children, the sweat on his brow not a consequence of fear, but from the effort of killing, of carrying his machinery.

It was little Liam running, calling quietly for mummy and daddy, calling under his breath so the man with the gun wouldn't hear and turn his machinery to his left, fumbling for his phone to send a text to the world before dying.

It was little Liam crawling along the rocks, palms and knees bleeding, to swim through bodies in the water like logs unaccountably wearing bright summer clothes; listening to the cries of help from friends who could no longer swim and would sink beneath the unwavering water; climbing inside a kitchen cupboard almost deaf from the noise of gunfire; holding his breath knowing that a few more seconds under the water was impossible, but breaking the surface would be death; praying someone would arrive to save him before there was no one else left. Little Liam pleading for his life into the blank eyes of a man who knew nothing, understood nothing, felt nothing.

As he waited for his beer, a flush of blood crept slowly from his collar to his cheeks.

Kids change things.

Pushed: A short story

As the numbers on the signs got smaller, the group increased its pace. It was inevitable that Anne and Leon were left behind. The wheelchair that had amazed them in the small town outside Bristol, was now falling to pieces. Earlier in the day, Leon had slid himself down the embankment on the edge of the thick road to pluck some of the fat pieces of long, dark green grass to stuff into the flattened tyres, but now they were falling apart and leaving a narrow trail of crushed grass and perishing rubber on the grey road surface. By the time night fell, they couldn’t even see the fire of the group ahead.

“You alright pushin?” she asked. Sometimes she’d do half hour with her arms but the rotting grass wheels made it painfully slow.

“Aye. Just. Need rest soon though.”

Anne listened to his ragged breathing for a little while in the darkness.

“Can I ask you summin?” He asked.

“Course,” she said.

Leon stopped pushing, came round in from of the chair pulling his baccy from his pocket, and sat heavily on the road, using his bag to lean on. “Stop for a smoke s’well, I think.”

Slowly, with great care, he rolled his cigarette. “We’ve not seen anyone coming or going on this road, except for Alan’s lot up ahead, yeah?”

Anne agreed.

“But loads of people take the pilgrimage. So are we going the wrong way?”

She watched him strike a match on the road and light his pathetically thin rollup. Finally, she said: “We’re going the long way. ’S’no way we’d outrun the bastards in Dover and Folkstown… Well, you might. I ain’t got a chance.”

“My mum told me Folkstown wasn’t real,” he said. “But my dad said there was a hole there that meant pilgrims didn’t need to cross the water.”

“Your mum tell you the bastards made up the hole story to make people go that way?”

“No. She just said it wasn’t real.”

“I dunno love… but we’re well on our way now.”

Leon shrugged the large bag from his back, and began pulling out the popup tent they had used for night shelter since Birmingham and some unlabelled cans.

“We staying here then?”

“Looks like it. Good as anywhere else.” His knife was a dirty red, but the blade he used to open up the dented can was oiled and sharp. As it cut into the tin - his rollup dangling casually from his dry lips -  the noise set Anne’s teeth on edge, but she felt her mouth begin to water as she smelled sweetcorn. He was a good boy.

“Do you reckon we ought to get off the road?”

Leon puffed a long stream of smoke into the dark. “Nah,” he said. “Like you said. We ain’t seen nobody going back or forth. It’s good.”

The fake leg was as useful as her real one, but symmetry was important to her and so she went to the trouble of attaching it each morning, and removing it only after sundown. Leon didn’t really understand but felt too uncomfortable asking questions. He watched her unstrap it and heave it over her shoulder to hang on the handle. The top of her body, as she carried herself out of the chair, moved with grace, but her remaining leg was an obstacle. She had talked, briefly, about working out a way to take it off and make everything easier, but the thought of it left Leon - and surely it would be him who was called on to wield the axe or saw - with a deep, unpleasant tingle in his stomach and groin.

Some nights, Anne would listen to the boy beside her and wonder how she had been so lucky to find him. While the others had ignored her or made it obvious she was holding them back, he had stayed, helped and even cuddled her occasionally. One night he had kissed her gently on the neck and said: “Thanks for looking after me.” She lay awake then, baffled.

Slowly they made their way to the smell of the ocean. The others had waited. They said they knew crossing the water would be impossible for “the slackers” on their own, so they had rested in a tall building with smashed windows and a facade whose old gray paint resisted the warm colour of the spring sun. A white flag had been hung on the colonnade as a signal for Anne and Leon.

Of course, Leon was the one they really needed; not even someone with Alan’s supreme confidence would wonder the roads of France and Spain without a map.

In the four days they had been waiting, the group had found a boat and made sure it was seaworthy. Someone had painted COMPOSTELA on the bow in exuberant tar letters.

After two days at sea, the last of the food had been eaten and there was still no sign of anything on the horizon. Alan said they had some hard decisions to make. They argued most of the night as though Anne wasn’t sat crying just a few feet from them, cold and unprotected. They took the difficult decision, and as a bruise yellow sun broke the horizon on the third day, three people struggled to lift her over the side. The wheelchair - lighter, more compliant - followed.

The thick woollen coat that kept her warm on cold nights dragged at Anne’s body. She knew she would sink as quickly as her carriage. Her arms were growing tired and even crying took too much effort. But still she fought, not seeing the confused and appalled face of Leon watching from the stern of the boat. Right until she could no longer stay above the water; until her disloyal body insisted on trying to breath in the salty water; until her arms became as heavy and useless as her leg, she fought.

Flight fiction (Apostrophien short story)

Here's the idea. I took off today from Geneva. 10 minutes into the flight, I was allowed to switch my laptop on. I had approximately one hour before the 'Prepare the cabin for landing' announcement, which meant I had to switch the lappy off.

1 hour = 500 words (1st draft + line edit)
This is what I wrote.

The Last Cows (An Apostrophien vignette)

The last time Jenna saw her parents they were towering over her, concerned and angry as she clung to her stomach and threw up in the garden. Her father’s hand on her shoulder gripped more than it needed to.

“Stuffed with honey again?” It wasn't really a question.

Jenna tried to reply so Pa wouldn’t be so fierce, but her gut wasn’t finished. With a huge, painful burp she threw another load of tepid sick among the stalks of long dead giant daisies.

“I… I didn’t."

Her mother’s sleeve was already damp with tears and small splashes of vomit. She used it to wipe across Jenna’s eyes and flour cheeks. “Somethin' got in there that wanted out.

“And you were with Abigale.”

“No honey! Just felt sick!”

Ma's voice was a little softer. "You'll be alright today won't you." It wasn't a question.

"Yeh. Felt sick."

They left her crying in the garden.

The sick feeling hung around like a grudge for the rest of the day as the girl amused herself looking at pressed flowers and trying to remember the plant poem Abigale sang on the beach yesterday. She put the corn dollies out, tatty now after two seasons of love, and sang to them in voice thick with the second cold of winter.

The play was a distraction. She was waiting. Waiting to explain and fix the injustice of her parents' anger. She didn't touch the honey. Didn't gorge herself. She was eight now, not five. If she told them, they would believe now. Because she was eight.

Eventually she held down cool water from the stream, then ate stale bread as the light beyond the open windows faded, taking the last wamth of the day with it. The stars came out.

It wasn't Paul and Katie Vizard who returned though, it was Jon Mair. The town doctor being guided by a visibly wilting Father.

"Hello," Jenna said.

"Morning missy," Mair replied. "Can we go in." Not a question.

One of the cows had keeled today, Mair told her, and her parents would have to spend 40 days in Crofter's Cottage to be sure they were good and safe. The keeled cow had already been burned, he said, and the other two would be skinned by Hans Rish and then their meat burned.

"Can I go with them?" Jenna asked.

"No," he said. "But don't worry. You'll stay with me until they're safe. You'll all be back 'ere in no time, I shouldn't wonder."

It didn't happen.

40 days passed and Paul and Katie Vizard died, Jon Mair told the girl, in Crofter's Cottage from the same sickness that keeled the cow over.

Five days later the girl stood on the beach with the rest of the town and watched as the burning raft floated out past the surf, orange flames grabbing at the sky and sea like a thousand desperate wishes pressed into a dirty page. She felt Jon Mair's hand land on her shoulder.

"You'll be fine."

Bloody miracle

This is a short story I wrote a while ago. It has nothing to do with my novel. It got to the stage of an outline for a complete novel, but this was the only bit I decided to save.

Bloody Miracle

Pilgrims set to arrive at church to witness bleeding window

Church officials have denied that a window featuring a depiction of Christ as a child at St Mary's church in Banton has begun to 'bleed'. The window, which graces the eastern wall of the church's Lady Chapel, has been covered since March 2001 and can only be viewed from inside the church.


Rev. Daniel Fable, the vicar of St Mary's said he couldn't comment on the claims as the church had launched an investigation into the matter. "St Mary's has been, and remains, open to anyone who cares to visit," he said. Since the rumours began, though, Rev. Fable said that the congregation had slowly been growing, but that movement within the church would still be restricted to the main building.


"We're glad to see so many people interested in the church, but the Lady Chapel remains off-limits to any visitors as it's currently not safe," he said. The Bishop of Bristol said the window was damaged during a storm in 2001 and, while a fund-raising drive had been launched to repair the damage, it had fallen far short of the £20,000 needed to refurbish the window. 


"The Lady Chapel at Banton was damaged quite severely during the storm and the repair bill has so far been beyond the funds of the church," he said. 


"Suggestions that we're covering something up, or keeping people from 'a miracle' are nonsense. It would be irresponsible for the church to put parisioners in danger." Banton resident and churchgoer Edward Sampson said the church should come clean about the window. "My wife and I have been members of the congregation at St Mary's since we moved into the town 15 years ago. To deny us access to one part of the church smacks of a cover up," he said Sampson claims another member of the church saw the blood spattered window after getting lost in the church. "My friend was too scared to come forward," he said. "But she didn't think the church should keep quiet about the miracle any longer. I've written to the Bishop, the Archbishop and [local MP] Quentin Neil demanding answers."


Banton Herald and Guardian. May 16, 2008.


The window was bleeding, but Dan Fable – the reverend Daniel Fable – couldn't recall when he'd actually known this. It must have been more that two years ago but less than seven. Oddly, he'd grown to accept the faint visions he'd seen above the head of each parishioner as he stared out from the pulpit, and just put it down to stress or madness. Mrs Johnson always dreaming of her mangy cat Jerico; Mr Johnson thinking of dear departed Paula who didn't reach her first birthday thanks to the bad aim of a Luftwaffe pilot; Edward Sampson's desire for money; and his wife's constant subconscious pleading for Edward to avoid her arms next time because summer was near and she'd look silly wearing long sleeves.

It probably would have come to light earlier, Fable thought, except the window was in the back of the church, and as the congregation diminished, so too did the reasons for anyone but him going beyond the main building. But it was bleeding, and bled still. And now someone knew – someone who wasn't Dan Fable – and things were changing fast. The Bishop had scheduled a recce for the Archbishop and the congregation had started to look hungry.

The really terrifying thing was that Fable had seen everything that would happen, including his actions that would destroy the window and shatter the hopes of millions of pilgrims, but was helpless to stop any of it happening. He was a passenger screaming bloody murder into the ear of the driver, but totally unable to force himself – themselves – from the path of an oncoming double decker bus. After two years of floaty-parishioner visions and destruction dreams, he'd finally given up trying to stop things from happening and had let events wash over him: a baptism of apathy.

No, not apathy. It had become a fascination, a meditation on the power of God and a surprising anticipation of his role in the coming five week tragedy. The very opposite, some would think, of a test of faith; but it was a test nonetheless.

The test was this: Fable knew exactly how and when he would smash the window; he knew precisely how many souls would be lost, spared, resurrected and saved because of his action and could see – and occasionally feel – the grief of those who lost the opportunity to seek fulfillment under the bloody gaze of the Son of God. The test was also this: the moments after the event (as he came to think of it) were the deepest darkest void; like witnessing the picosecond before the big bang on an infinite loop. He knew that, for everyone on earth who wasn't Dan Fable, he would be Judas. Some days he relished the notion, but most of the time his terror was like a living thing pushing simultaneously at his guts, heart and brain. Often he thought the knowledge would kill him, except he knew and understood (did he understand?) God's plan.

The first real pilgrim arrived on May 17th. The sun was bright and high in the sky as Julie-Anne Eldridge negotiated the narrow path, her father wheeled before her like a chariot of piss and cancer, and hammered at the black door of the church. Her knocking persisted as Fable carefully put down the hymn books he'd been inspecting, smoothed down his white shirt and crossed slowly to the door, his footsteps eventually matching the pace of the knock.

He grabbed the sliding lock aware of, and in many ways prepared for, the flood that would follow. He fixed the smile to his face and greeted his destiny.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Dan, would you like to come in?"