Remembrance by June Webber, rosemary tea

As she walked up the garden path carrying a tray of sandwiches, Mary paused by the lilac tree. It had already clusters of deeply packed buds ready to burst open and release their heavenly fragrance. Bob had planted the tree when she had told him she was pregnant with Bobby.

          ‘It will grow with the baby.’ he had said.

Now the delicate sapling was a robust shrub, and Bobby was a sturdy boy about to start school in September. He had his father’s dark, curly hair and brown eyes and loved playing football in the street with the neighbouring children. Only the rich could afford cars then and petrol was rationed. They had planned to give Bobby a little sister or brother after the war, but it was not to be.

A row of oddly assorted tables and chairs spread along the middle of the street with tablecloths of red, white and blue. Bunting made from any scraps of materiel which people could find was strung between lampposts and telegraph poles. Children of various sizes in homemade paper hats were chattering excitedly as their mothers emerged from the houses with plates of sandwiches and cakes and jugs of lemonade. Mary placed her plate of jam sandwiches on the table and hands shot out to grab one. No fussy eaters amongst these war babies, and cakes were kept back until the sandwiches had all been eaten. Food was too precious to leave.

Mary had met Bob at the local Amateur Dramatics Society, where he was the pianist and she was in the chorus, never quite good enough for a main part but then she only had to learn the songs and was happy to merge into the background. They had put on productions of Ivor Novello’s Glamourous Night, and Careless Rapture as well as Gilbert and Sullivan.  There had been no more performances since the outbreak of war, and the men and young people were in the services leaving the mothers, children and grandparents behind.

Ivor had written a new song, ‘We’ll gather Lilacs in the Spring again’ for a musical Perchance to Dream. Mary softly hummed it, wiping a tear from her eye. Bob would never see the lilac tree grow or his son grow into a man. He had never been abroad, but as soon as his feet touched the sand of Normandy, he was shot down. Mary’s emotions were a mixture of grief and relief that the war was over, as she spotted some khaki uniforms amongst the parents and was thankful that no other wife would share her loss. Bob was buried in a military cemetery, and as soon as she could save enough money Mary would take Bobby and make him proud of the father he would scarcely remember.

About the author

June Webber is a great grandmother living in Dorset. She is a member of a local creative writing group and Zoom writing and poetry groups. She has had poems published, and stories in CafeLit and The Best of CafeLit. 

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Remember, Remember by P.A. Westgate, a mug of hot chilli-flavoured chocolate.

Remember, remember the 5^th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

 

I didn't really want the assignment but even after three years I was still classed as a junior so I went where I was told.

            “Just get out there girl” my editor had said “and find out what the country’s doing”.

            In any case I was fed up with covering England’s on-going sporting successes and the ‘oh, can it get much better than this’ from besotted fans every time we hit a ball a bit further or ran a bit quicker. So they got me a standard fare Overland pass, fired up a com-link and I was off.

            No one could quite remember how it had all begun. No one knew who had put the plans on the Craft Channels or how the clubs had started. But, as if it had always been done, everyone was doing it.

            Children loved it of course. Truth be told, quite a few fathers and grandfathers as well. Both, especially the grandfathers, telling the children how they’d collected old clothes and bits of rag and pestered their mothers for the more complete items for weeks beforehand. The charity shops did a roaring trade, selling as many old clothes as they could lay their hands on and there wasn’t a scrap of rag put into recycling for weeks. The fashion industry loved it. At a stroke any guilt over casting away barely worn garments in favour of the latest fashion vanished in patriotic fervour. People saw it almost as their duty to pass on clothes barely out of their packing creases.

            The more cynical thought the Government had dreamed it up. Anything, they said, to keep people's minds off the worst economic downturn, and the longest, for a generation. Later, when things turned more sinister, people said it was the Russians, or the Chinese, or the French, or this or that religious group, or aliens, or – and even today this was close to heresy – the Americans.

            Treason and Plot clubs had been formed up and down the country. Every village, every town, every district in the larger towns, every borough in the cities had them. The clubs were suddenly there, fully formed and operating. From mid-October the clubs would sort and parcel out old clothes and rags, wood for bonfires, give out copies of the “how to” guides posted on the Craft Channels and generally co-ordinate the production of millions of life-sized effigies of Guy Fawkes. Not celebrated for more than thirty years the revival of Bonfire Night, now called The Gunpowder Festival, would mark the 450^th anniversary of the attempt to blow up Parliament.

            No one saw any harm in this. In fact parents were grateful for anything that got their kids heads out of the Play Channels. Everyone except me, so it seemed, was involved and ‘got your Guy ready yet’ became almost a greeting, even replacing comments about the weather.         

            The Festival suited perfectly an England, now sandwiched between a hugely powerful Europe and a still powerful America, that had been increasingly inward looking; retreating into a world of theatrical pageant. Almost a country-sized theme park. And it was just England of course and ended precisely at its borders. Northern Ireland, now reunited with the Republic, Scotland and Wales, long since independent, had dropped most things they regarded as English in favour of home‑grown heroes and villains.

            Even the weather, so often the bane of English events, couldn’t be faulted. It had been the latest in a line of wonderful summers. The most perfect anyone could remember. Summer had gradually faded into a glorious autumn, which was now slipping gently into winter. Bonfire Night was forecast to be dry and mild with clear skies. Just perfect, everyone said.

            I had visited Treason and Plot clubs and spoke to the people busily organising the clothes or supervising the Guys’ production. Either they didn’t know how the clubs had been formed or by whom or they weren’t telling.

            And then, as soon as the preparations were complete, and as mysteriously as they had been formed, the clubs vanished, as if they’d never been.

            But people seemed not to care where the clubs had come from or why there was a revival of Bonfire Night. Most saw it as a way of expressing their patriotism. Not a few, angered by what they saw as the failure of successive Governments to get to grips with the Country’s problems, thought that perhaps blowing up Parliament wasn’t such a bad idea after all. No one believed anything the Government said. The increasingly wild promises of the opposition parties were seen as either ruinously expensive or unworkable. All agreed though that ‘someone should do something’.

            However, as the Festival approached, people became more and more uneasy and many spoke of a feeling of dread, though of what they couldn’t say. Certainly, once made, no one cared to be near the Guys. Children refused to have them in their rooms and most were banished to dark corners of sheds and garages until taken out for the Festival. The country had gone from eagerly anticipating Bonfire Night to just wanting to get it over with.

            It was unnerving seeing all those effigies. Because of the clubs and the instructions all were exactly the same, except for the variety of clothes they wore. And all with the same face. That was the strangest thing of all. The instructions were absolute on the image to be used and where to get or how to make the mask, providing a template for the purpose. This was rigorously imposed by the Treason and Plot clubs and no deviation was tolerated.

            By the evening of the 4^th of November practically every garden, every park or open space had its Guy perched on a mound of wood ready for the anniversary. But when people woke up on the morning of the 5^th, instead of patiently awaiting their fate, the Guys had gone. Not gone in the sense of vanished but gone in the sense of being somewhere else. Only the night owls, the shift-workers, the party animals and the down-and-outs saw them go. In interviews ranging from incoherent to unbelievable people described how the Guys had sat up, looked around and climbed down from their pyres, untying the most elaborate knots and, forming up in ranks, had marched off.

            Stories of disappearances began to flood the Chat Channels. MPs, community leaders, journalists, webcasters, anyone with popular influence, senior police and army officers were visited by two or three Guys and, however much they struggled, were taken away.

            It wasn’t until the late afternoon that the country realised what was happening but by then it was too late. Every police station, fire station, hospital, army barracks and local government office was occupied by the Guys. Central Government was the same. The House of Commons’ and the House of Lords’ Treason & Plot clubs, with much amusement given the subject, turned out their Guys. Both Houses now consisted of row upon row of rag-clothed Guys seemingly perfectly at home. Even Downing Street and Buckingham Palace now had resident Guys. Both the Prime Minister and the King had young families and had entered into the spirit of the event, in tune, as they thought, with the mood of the country.

            My sister had invited me for a Bonfire Night party.

            "Please come" she'd said "the kids are so excited. There’ll be the bonfire, Mike's doing a barbeque and we'll have some fireworks. Dad says it'll be like old times. You'll enjoy it".

            I knew I wouldn't but Jean and I were close and I hadn't seen the twins for a while. But the bonfire remained unlit, the barbeque cold and the fireworks stayed in their box. We were on-line to the Info Channels. Didn't matter which one, they were all to show the Prime Minister's special webcast.

            Everyone, and I do mean everyone, had gone on-line. When the webcast started it was not the PM who sat before us but a stranger. But not a complete stranger as his face was somehow familiar; someone met briefly perhaps some time ago but who couldn't quite be placed. Then it dawned on us. We had seen that face a million times; whenever we had looked at a Guy.

 

About the author

P. A. Westgate, Paul, lets his imagination run wild through short-story writing. In addition to writing, Paul enjoys an eclectic mix of activities including reading, singing, the Arts and cocktails. He lives quietly in his native Essex where he tries, with varying degrees of success, to keep his house and garden tidy.

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Librarians by Peter Lingard, a glass of flat beer

 I fancied Philomena until I found out she was a librarian. I told my mate, Jasper about her and her job and he said I was stupid. ‘Ya read books, dontcha?’

‘Well, yeah, but …’

‘But nothing. Get in there.’

I rummaged through my wallet and found an old library card. Was it still valid? Is the issue date in the code at the bottom? It bears an instruction to report its loss to the library. That could be an excuse to go to the place. Rather than get a book?  I didn’t see an expiry date. If I get a couple of books, won’t Philomena see in her computer that I haven’t taken one out in years? Should I apply for a new card? No, she’d go into her computer and come up with the same info on me. It has to be the reported loss routine. It was weak, but it’d get me in the door.

 Why hadn’t I rummaged through my wallet before? What else is in there? A telephone number without a name – how old is that! A bakery’s loyalty card. Two hundred-dollar notes. I must do this more often.

               

‘Excuse me, I want to report a lost library card.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place.’ The brunette’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wagner, isn’t it?’

‘Er, yes. Do we know each other?’

‘Not exactly know, but I gave you my number a couple of years ago and you never called.’

I took out my wallet and extracted the paper with the number. ‘Would this be it?’

The librarian smiled. ‘Yes. How come you kept the number, if you didn’t want to call?’

I shrugged. ‘To be honest, the paper got stuck behind a baker’s loyalty card and I’m not even sure what I was doing with that.’

‘Really. So, you kept your bakery card but lost your library card? Not sure we can trust you with a replacement of such an important document.’

‘Perhaps if I take you out to dinner, I might be able to convince you of my ability to look after things. I did keep your number safe for a couple of years.’

‘Hah! Have a big presentation in mind, do you?’

‘No, just a pleasant evening. Are we on?’

‘How about Friday?’

‘Friday’s good.  By the way, does Philomena work here?’

‘How would you know about Philomena? Yes, she’s a friend of mine. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You came hoping you’d meet her and you got me, someone who recognises you. Put a spanner in the works, did I?’

‘No, not at all. I, er …

‘Never mind, Wagner. Your card will be ready in a few minutes, if you’d care to wait.’

I look at my watch. ‘I can’t, I’m afraid. Can I pick it up tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Philomena will be on the desk then. I’ll tell you finally showed up to ask me out.

About the author

  Peter Lingard, born a Brit, served in the Royal Marines, was an accountant, a barman and a farm worker. He once lived in the US where he owned a freight forwarding business. An Aussie now because the sun frequently shines and the natives communicate in English. 

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Saturday Sample: In Fields of Butterfliy Flames by Steve Wade, white wine

 

 A Mother’s Love

She pretends to be my daughter. “No, Mommy. Please, Mommy, don’t,” she says. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I love you.” Her bright eyes pleading desperately to infect me with the blindness she has brought to others.

Only I can see behind those green eyes, eyes that draw men to her the way the blue sea sucks bodies into its drowning waters.

Because of her this family is in ruins. The first thing she did was take him from me. Helplessly, I watched it happening in this very house where I had raised her as my own. The ankle-socked girlie-laugh could no longer disguise the swelling flesh, the intentional hitching up of the checked mini-skirt, revealing sinful thighs, as she prostrated herself on the couch before the TV in the evenings. 

My heart bled to see him peering out from behind his newspaper - a black panther sizing up its prey in a jungle clearing from behind a mesh of snarled vines. Except the doe-eyed antelope innocently grazing on popcorn was its own lure. Prey to entrap the predator.

I begged God to severe the umbilical cord attached to this gestating horror. I promised to be a better wife, to never again deny my husband the rightful pleasures bestowed upon him by our matrimonial union. No use. The pull of the drowning waters was, for my husband, too strong, the temptation to swim into the voluptuous horror too great.

Even then I did not despair. My faith was full. I persevered. I approached God on His terms. If he He gave me back my husband and my child, I was willing to forgive, if unable to forget. The rest of my life I vowed to dedicate to Him, to the spreading of His Gospels. I was ready to endure discomfort and pain, to undergo hardship, to rise long before daybreak in deepest winter, to fall to my knees before His image and worship for hours, until my body gave way to fatigue and famine.  

All in vain. That’s when I knew that somehow I had spawned one of the Devil’s minions, if not the Devil incarnate.

In the early stages, this thing confined its abominating ways to those occasions when I was absent. But I saw it in their smug and satiated faces on my return from morning worship. He, who never whistled, whistling as he pottered about the house, hands in pockets, his eyes, like a serpent’s tongue, flicking at that thing, tasting the air between them. And she, it, stretching shamelessly on tiptoe to reach something in the high kitchen cupboard, already goading him, tempting him with her indecent white flesh for the next encounter.

Soon even the thin veil of supposed normality was cast aside. Responding to her demonic summons, he was compelled to leave our marriage bed deep in the night-time. With my hands clamped against my ears, I’d pray aloud to deaden her hedonistic screams woven into his heavy grunts. I prayed that He might at least spare me the sickening sounds of betrayal by removing my sense of hearing. But it was He who chose not to listen.

Forsaken. I had been forsaken. But wait. Was not this a test of faith? After all, had He not put his own son through just as great an ordeal? For a while I did succeed in turning the other cheek - with the help of pills and vodka. That changed when the others came.

Now working hand in hand with the Devil, the two conspired to draw in others for the sake of Mammon. Like swarms of flies they arrived, buzzing through my home, to gorge themselves on her oozing, naked flesh. Each evening, when the last of the swarm left, slaked and bloated, the pair of them unashamedly counted out their filthy lucre on the kitchen table. They then celebrated, the only way they knew how, atop the table among the pestilence-stricken notes and coins. You would have imagined that even the Devil must sometimes tire of excessive indulgence in fetid fornication.   

The temptation to shut down the world and close forever the night was colossal. A handful of pills and I could escape in my sleep. I had wonderful visions of being welcomed into Paradise. In the place of pain and suffering - perpetual springtime. A place filled with brightness and birth, budding flowers and laughing babies. But then the Light was infiltrated by an enormous grey shadow that swallowed up the sky. The flowers wilted and decayed, the laughing babies grew pointed canines, turned black, sprouted tails and moved about on cloven hooves.

That I should succumb to the ultimate sin against Tthe Light was part of her scheming. But just as I realised her strategy in time to sabotage her twisted plans, I was confined to my bed with a sudden illness that left me enervated and begging for death. Miraculously, I pulled through on the seventh day. The significance of my recovery on the symbolic seventh penetrated like the first hammer blow pounding home a bolt into one of my outstretched hands. I had a purpose, a true mission, and a reason for being: to beat the Devil at his own game.

Careful consideration brought me to a conclusion that, initially, I found impossible to accept, but which steadily washed through me for what it was: an irrefutable truth. My husband was completely blameless for everything that had taken and was taking place between him and the abomination masquerading as my daughter. What good man stood a chance when pitted against the greatest evil? My role was to rend the Devil’s mask asunder, divest him of his cloak. Only then would my husband regain his purity and learn again to see the ugliness and deceit that lay hidden beneath seeming beauty.

The Devil made a mistake when he chose to inhabit the thirteen-year-old body of a fragile girl. Stripping her, for me, was easy. Watching the welts rise and the white skin bruise red and purple as I beat her, firstly with my fists and feet, and then with the back of the wooden hairbrush until the handle snapped, sent a flurry of excited sparks shooting and ricocheting from my stomach to my head. Her screams and pleas for me to stop, and the way she curled her skinny arms around her brazen body, where she lay twisted in the bleeding earth, was putrid animal fat tossed onto hungry flames.

“No, Mommy. Please, I’m sorry, Mommy,” the thing whimpered in a perfect take of my daughter’s voice.

“Begone Satan,” I said, working the syllables to the rhythm of the blows I rained upon her. “Beelzebub,” I went. “Lord of the Flies.”

Her evil green eyes were petrified at having been rumbled for who she, he, it really was. 

It was my turn next to endure punches and blows when he came in from work and found his chattel spoiled. Outwardly, the wreck of a pubescent human being, she lay trembling on the couch where I had bundled her, having dragged her living carcass in from the back garden where she’d tasted the beginning stages of my retribution.

Everything continued then as I had foreseen it. From where he stood in the living-room doorway, freeze-framed, his incredulous eyes, rounded and horrified, telescoped onto the blackened and blood-caked mass of battered flesh. It seemed minutes, but was probably only seconds, before he tore his gaze from her to me. I closed my Bible and placed it reverently on the coffee table next to my armchair and allowed the joy washing through me to break across my face in a smile. It had been so long since last I felt so filled with bliss and goodness.

He reached me with such speed he might have been carried on the wings of angels.

“Yes. Yes,” I said through the dazzling flashes of light that came with each successive knuckle crack against my jaw and face. I had finally reached him. The pain from the beating was as nothing compared to the knowledge that the man I was joined to in Holy Matrimony had taken his first steps on the journey away from evil.

The combination of our weight, together with the increased ferocity of his attack, tipped the armchair backwards and left us sprawled upon the floor, reunited lovers in a deathly embrace. The heat and rising scent, a burnt-umber manly smell, humming from his closeness, and the intimacy throbbing from his squeezing fingers wrapped around my throat, delivered me to a state so glorious, so divine, he must have seen the look of ecstasy in my face.

I clearly passed out for a while, for I next remember my demisting senses grasping that I was reseated in the righted armchair. Across from me in the opposite armchair, he sat resignedly, his eyes locked onto the stained carpet. His face now wore the expression of a man who has had the greatest of all wonders thrust upon him.

Too sore to get my body to carry out my divine impulses for a number of days, I, like Job, waited until I was ready to continue my Crusade. My husband’s absence facilitated my mission – he left that day he saw the Light, and has yet to return. Sometimes the truth is too enormous and needs contemplation to fully accept what is put before the senses. He’ll be back. This I know. I’ll be here for him.

It’s surprising how much the human body, even that of a thirteen-year-old girl, can withstand: being tied naked to a leafless tree beneath a clear moonlit sky on a freezing night in January, being constantly beaten with a rolling pin, a diet for three days of foul meat, and repeated suffocation with a plastic bag to the point where the deprivation of oxygen turns the face blue.

Although he, the Lord of the Flies, tries to convince me otherwise, with his girlie-pleas to me as his mother, my faith has kept me strong and rational. After all, what ordinary child, a child who hasn’t been infested by demons, could survive for so long such extreme efforts at exorcism?

The past few evenings have brought with them the return of the misguided mortals swarming ravenously around my doorstep. For the sanctity of my marriage and the sake of my daughter’s soul, He has bestowed on me the strength and courage required to counter this locust plague. While she lies broken-boned, gagged and bound in the wooden barrel at the end of the garden, I close my eyes and pray as the locusts feast upon my offered flesh.

The Day of Judgement is nigh. No sacrifice is too great, no suffering too painful, for a wife and mother with the might of God to guide her along the path of righteousness.

Amen.

Find your copy here  

 

About the author 

Steve Wade’s award-winning short fiction has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies. His work has been broadcast on national and regional radio. He has had stories short-listed for the Francis McManus Short Story Competition and for the Hennessy Award. His stories have appeared in over fifty print publications, including Crannog, New Fables, and Aesthetica Creative Works Annual. His unpublished novel, ‘On Hikers’ Hill’ was awarded First Prize in the abook2read.com competition, with Sir Tim Rice as the top judge. He has won First Prize in the Delvin Garradrimna Short Story Competition on a number of occasions. Winner of the Short Story category in the Write by the Sea writing competition 2019. His short stories have been nominated for the PEN/O’Henry Award, and for the Pushcart Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Absofruit Truth by Dave Traer, pina colada

The drone from the craft overhead subsides; I endeavour to keep my withering self from toppling onto the blue grass. My mutilated skull fights inescapable transformations. My dry throat has developed an unbearable craving for the contents of my favourite mug. The spectators are silenced and I receive the signal to begin. Nodding my appreciation for being allowed, while I am still able, to share my version of events, I face my bemused audience. They have heard too many stories such as mine. For them reminiscences fall like dead leaves that rot on the forest floor. However, it is commanded that, for the record, our memories must be shared. Wasting no time, I begin to speak:

         “As I recall, it began soon after daybreak. Trying to shake off the residue of a hangover, I forced my short, plump torso, through my café door and onto the city pavement. Ignoring the chill, I placed coffee, newspaper and book onto the solitary table and ran my fingers through my receding hairline. The sun was casting streaks of redness through wispy grey clouds.  I stood for a few seconds and welcomed the uncommon silence. Gone were the frantic rushing crowds of workers, doing their headless chicken impressions. Gone too, were the noisy, polluting queues of traffic.  Only occasional, distant vehicle noise disturbed the unusual tranquillity.  I dropped into one of my plastic chairs and unfolded the previous day’s broadsheet. This ritual was the highlight of my year. There were no customers, no distractions. Just me, my favourite beverage, plenty to read and blissful peace and quiet. I raised my mug and wished myself a happy Christmas.”

        The word triggers an emotive response among the listeners. I pause, allowing them to settle. Prods in my back compel me to continue:

        "As I perused the Yuletide headlines, a sudden rumble attacked my ears. I peered, over the newsprint, at a loaded sack barrow moving up the narrow road towards me. The man doing the pushing struggled, as the trolley’s metal wheels fought through the cobbles. His stocky boiler-suited frame moved past me. Long white curls draped his sallow face. He appeared focussed, resolute, totally oblivious to my presence. His load consisted of four enormous fruit boxes.

          “Season’s greetings,” I called.

          “The words struck the surrounding walls, but drew no visible reaction from the interloper. I watched as he continued along the empty street and disappeared into a side turning. I shrugged and stepped back into the café to replenish my empty mug. As I returned to the door, the telephone rang. I waited, for the briefest of moments, as the answerphone clicked in. One word was uttered; the unfamiliar voice had a strange, guttural, foreign tone.

     “Help.”

      “I stared at the device and, determined not to let anything else spoil the moment, shook my head as I stepped back into the stillness of the morning.

      “After around fifteen minutes. I refolded the paper, emptied the mug and skimmed through the blurb on the book’s back cover.

     “The sound began as a mere whisper, before becoming so loud that it echoed around the surrounding office buildings.

     “Help.”

      “Then I saw it rolling and spinning down the road. One lone fruit, its green, spikey crown, fought to slow its momentum. The cry resounded once more. I rushed towards the side turning.

      “The ground was littered with yellow fruit. The man was on his knees, frantically trying to retrieve his load. As I approached, I saw his tears. Like two parallel waterfalls, they dripped from his cheeks onto the cold, dusty cobbles. Cradled in his arms was one large pineapple.

      “I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry. Please, please stop staring at me.”

       “I offered him my hand, but be looked right through it. I told myself to walk away and leave him to struggle unaided, but that would have been both uncharitable and unchristian. After all it was, ‘That time of year.’

       “Bending forward I recovered the two pineapples closest to me and placed them into one of the empty containers. The man gave no reaction to my act of kindness and continued to wail his pleas. It was apparent that his entreaties were directed, not to me but to the yellow fruit he was holding close to his chest. I continued with the task of running back and forth collecting the spilled produce. It was not until I had returned the final box onto the barrow that I returned my attention to the penitent man. He sniffed back the remorse and, with his head low, offered his precious pineapple up to me.  

      “I took it but as I stared into the fruit’s many eyes, it began to pulsate. Panicking, as its vibrations travelled through my outstretched limbs, I stepped back to the trolley and dropped it, in the top box, alongside its companions. The man, again ignoring my offer of help, struggled to his feet. Without thanks or acknowledgement, he grasped the barrow and continued on his way.    

       “And a very merry Christmas to you too,” I shouted after him, as he staggered off into another side street.

       “Pushing aside my aggravation, I ventured back down to my café. I went back  inside and shook my still tingling fingers, I stepped behind the counter and pondered. Decision made, I pushed aside my hankering for solid nourishment, lifted a bottle and glass from a cupboard and returned to my table.

    “As I sat and perused the amber liquid, I tried to comprehend what had just occurred.

     “Perhaps he was deaf, he was certainly neither dumb nor blind.  I allowed the warming flavours to work their magic and contemplated further. Then I asked myself the obvious question: Where on God’s earth had he come from? There was neither van or lorry in sight, also where the hell was he going? Nowhere was open for business. Nowhere. Save from myself and the office buildings’ entrenched skeleton crews, the city was empty. It was Christmas Day, for Christ’s sake.

       “What if he was Santa? I chuckled. Or maybe a tall elf? With hindsight, maybe I should have kept hold of that pineapple, I’d have been able to make the world’s first self-shaking cocktail. Just imagine the office types queuing for it and bopping along to work like the cast of a West End musical.’ I’d have to name it after myself, of course, ‘The Bopping Bob’ or something similar.

       “I emptied the glass, smiled myself back to reality and, submitting to my passion for science fiction, returned to the dog-eared paperback.

       “It had been a while since I’d first been introduced to its pages. I thought I remembered its opening, something about a day not feeling quite right.

        “I read the first two chapters and laughed at the thought of the city being overrun, by hordes of meandering pineapples.  I dropped the book onto the table: I really must stop reading that kind of stuff.

       “The rumbling sound returned; he was coming back. The man emerged from the side road and hobbled towards me. With his load delivered, to who knows where, he was progressing much faster than before. The barrow carried just one large fruit. As he drew level he slowed and turned towards my door. I closed my eyes in despair: Jesus, would I ever be rid of this intruder?

       “Merry Christmas, Sir. I don’t suppose you’re open.” Startled, I looked up at a young constable. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”

       “No problem, Officer. A very Merry Christmas to you too. I must have been dozing. Had a bit of a heavy night. No, I’m not open, but take a seat anyway. What can I get you?”

       “That’s very kind of you, Sir. An Americano would be good and, if can you do me a freshly squeezed juice…?  Pineapple would be great.”

       “Orange or grapefruit, is all I have.”

       “He pointed to the gift which guarded the doorway.

       “I rubbed my eyes, “So I wasn’t dreaming.”

       “I’m sorry, Sir?”

       “Not for sale I’m afraid. Not until I can verify its source.”

       “With trepidation, I grasped its spikey leaves, strode into the café and deposited it on the counter.

       “Suddenly a crescendo of breaking glass and shouting resounded along the street.

       "I watched through the window as the policeman shouted into his radio and, truncheon in hand, charged away.

       “A loud banging drew my attention back to the bar. The fruit juddered violently on the wooden surface, lasers from its many eyes cast a multitude of coloured spots onto walls and ceiling. It was like a seventies disco without the music, just a horrible ear-piercing whine. I watched in amazement as its spikey head broke loose from its base and hovered above me. The last thing I remember was the smiling delivery man standing beside me.”

      I look at my entranced audience. They have been hanging on to my every word. Perhaps, my account has rekindled distant memories, of their own fateful day.  Even the few outwardly skeptical amongst them, now appear to believe. Their leaves twitch as they whisper their thoughts.

      The multi-eyed being behind me detects the changing atmosphere and chuckles, “And if you believe that, my young friends, you’ll believe almost anything.” Tears of laughter, flood from its yellow head onto the fertilized soil. 

        Rows of plantlets basking under the orange sky, join in the creature’s merriment.  My disfigured head shakes with despair, as the delivery man steps forward and manhandles my sprouting body onto his barrow. My craving for hot, bitter coffee passes into oblivion. The man’s white locks shroud his deadpan expression, as he wheels me to the edge of a cultivated field. With calloused hands, my helpless head is dropped into a freshly dug hole. A solitary police truncheon identifies the plant beside me. My leaves detect another transporter of victims approaching through gaseous clouds. More catalytic pods to help populate this dying world.

        The delivery man wipes damp pink earth from my spikey crown. In a soft reassuring voice, he whispers. “If you can still hear me, a word of advice. No, you’re not dreaming, but if you hold on to that belief, your sanity will be preserved for a little longer and your offspring will be far healthier.” 

Laughing, he trudges away.

          I choke, as wet, sweet soil fills my screaming throat.

About the author

 

Dave has spent many years writing short stories. He had decided that 2025 would be the year to dip his toe in the water and start to put some out there. This is the second time that he has submitted one to Cafe Lit 

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Like Father, Like Son by Jane Spirit, strong tea and a lemon biscuit

Roland had spotted the carrier bag lying under some tatty jumpers as he’d been sorting his way through the mahogany chest of drawers in his father’s cold bedroom. He’d extracted its contents carefully from the bag which bore the unmistakable 1970s orange and brown logo of W. H Smiths. As soon as he’d seen the torn newspaper cuttings wrapped round the plaster of Paris figure, Roland’s interest was piqued. Balancing the miniature sculpture carefully in his palm for a moment, it occurred to him that it was likely to have been the model for a larger piece. Then he had glanced at the cuttings that seemed to be about an exhibition held in the sixties and felt none the wiser.

 Roland had been finding the clearing of the house a wearisome process and the necessity to complete it quickly so that the place could be sold to secure his father’s future in the care home had only added to his malaise. It was just unfortunate timing, he told himself.  His retrospective exhibition was due to open in a month’s time and he still had weighty decisions to make about which of his recent figure sculptures should be included. The human forms had to meld satisfactorily with the earlier pieces already selected to represent the engagement with nature for which his work had long been feted by critics and sought after by collectors. Now, abruptly, he decided to take up his aunt’s invitation to pop round for a cup of tea at any time he needed some company. She would have helped him with the sorting if she could have managed the stairs, he knew that. He had always been fond of her, though he hadn’t seen a great deal of her when he was growing up. Older than his father, she had left home early to become what people used to term a ‘career woman’. Still, he was glad that she had settled close by to his father in Croydon after her retirement.

Roland placed the Smiths bag with its contents into the inner reaches of his vintage jacket pocket, locked up his father’s house and made his way to his aunt’s cul-de-sac bungalow a few minutes’ walk away. Once seated on a smart modern sofa, and enjoying his aunt’s powerful central heating, he had pulled out the bag from his pocket and told her how he had found it and that he was puzzled by what was inside. Then he questioned her. Had his father at some time done an evening class in pottery or sculpture? And why would he have kept the prototype piece for so long? He showed her the torn newspaper pages too. Did she know anything about some kind of exhibition in which his father had somehow been included, perhaps a charity event his father had supported in some way?

‘I thought you knew’, said his aunt.

‘Knew what?’

‘Surely he told you?’

‘What about?’

His aunt hesitated, offering him another cup of tea and pressing one of her home-made lemon biscuits on him before she answered. When she did speak, he struggled to take it all in. ‘As a young man, long before he met your mother, your father showed a great talent for art. The school managed to get one of the tutors at the art college to take him on outside lessons. That was when he tried out all sorts of stuff and realised that he wanted to be a sculptor. Honestly, Roland, I thought you knew. He got himself a bit of a reputation as an up-and-coming young artist. He had a few exhibitions, just in Croydon, but they got visited by all sorts of gallery owners, curators, collectors even. By then he'd met your mother and after they’d married and you came along, I think your father decided to do something a bit more secure. That’s when he joined the civil service … he did so well there didn’t he, working his way up? It meant he could look after you and your mum….do you proud.’

Roland still remembered how much he had hated the exclusive school to which he'd been sent. Yet it was there that he had been able to spend long hours of escape in the art room, being encouraged to try all kinds of painting, textiles and pottery. Finally, he’d constructed out of chicken wire his first ever version of the hare he’d watched bounding across the school playing fields, before slowly, painstakingly, turning it into his first sculpture.

By the time he'd left his aunt’s house, reeling from the impact of what he had learnt about his dad, it was dark, and he could not face returning to his old family home to be confronted by all the stuff still to be sorted. Neither could he face going straight back to his central London flat with its uncluttered spaces and artfully placed curios. He would get a later train back, he decided. All he wanted to do now was to walk and to think things out. His legs chose the direction for him, taking him down the hill towards the shops and beyond towards the care home into which his father had moved, or more accurately been moved, a few months ago when it had become impossible for him to live independently any longer. Roland visited him as often as he could to sit with him. His father said very little these days, so that Roland inevitably filled the silence with chatter about his latest projects, his studio, his new partner, and his children, all three of them talented adults in their own ways.

No, he said to himself as he walked speedily, he had never known. He had always been fond of his dad but had grown up seeing him as rather a dull man, generous and always encouraging, but dull. Dad had worked hard to fund his education, his study trips, his spell at a sculpture studio in Berlin. It was Dad who had offered to subsidise the rent on his shared studio at the beginning of his career.  Roland had always thought of his father as kind to him, but without aesthetic proclivities. For a moment he felt almost angry. Why had his father never told him that he too had been a sculptor? They could have talked about Roland’s work together, perhaps, as well as about the more mundane things they usually discussed.

Pounding along, Roland found himself suddenly standing outside the Meadows care home. It was too late now to visit his father who was usually tucked up in bed shortly after eight. As he paused by the railings, Roland realised why his father might have chosen not to disclose his early artistic life to his son. Roland had no doubt that his father had stowed the Smiths bag away only for his own remembrance, that he had never wanted Roland to feel that his birth had made his father abandon what had obviously been his vocation, to provide Roland with a secure, happy, childhood and a fulfilled adulthood. Roland could only hope that his father had found in his son’s success a vicarious sense of achievement.

After glancing at his watch, Roland trudged on towards the station, re-appraising himself as he went.  The thing was, he’d always thought of himself as a one-off, someone whose artistic life had sprung spontaneously into being. Now, it turned out, he had inherited his conception of the world and how to represent it from his father. Buttoning up his jacket’s top button against the evening chill, Roland reassured himself that his many quirky interests were surely his and his alone, not bestowed on him by a past generation. He cited to himself the interest in Germanic culture that had led him to study in Berlin and become fluent in the language. Or there was his passion for collecting the tiny, netsuke toggles from Japan. They had fascinated him since he had been a student at the British Museum. His father had never expressed an iota of interest in them.

Happy that not all his interests had been inherited, Roland arrived in time to catch the fast train home, to tell his partner what he had discovered, to sleep deeply, rise early and return to Croydon to continue his sorting. Later, he dropped in on his aunt again to report on progress. His aunt, hospitable as ever, enjoyed looking through the family photographs he had unearthed that day and which he would take back to his flat for safe keeping. She paused, peering down at the image of a well-dressed woman who stared into the camera with no ghost of a smile.

‘Let me see’ she said, ‘Oh yes, Roland, this is your great -great aunt. She was from Germany originally, you know, Hamburg, I think. It made things hard for her during the Great War, you know, being married to an English man, even though he was a very cultured man. I believe he had travelled widely in the far East and owned a large collection of Japanese miniatures.’

When Roland’s delayed retrospective exhibition opened the following spring, the critics applauded the inclusion of a new piece that Roland had been working on right up to its installation there. They agreed of course that the hare sculpture from his first exhibition had been a joy to see again, alongside the plant forms of his thirties and forties and the human forms representing family life from his forties and fifties. However, for them, it was his newest work which stood out with its complex construction and decidedly abstract expression which established a new direction for the artist. The reviewers universally expressed the hope that the artist might go on to develop that final piece’s rich themes in other works to come. The sculpture they liked the best had been entitled ‘Like father, like son’.

 

About the author

  

Jane lives in Woodbridge, Suffolk UK. With the encouragement of the local creative writing class which she joined in 2021 she has been writing stories ever since, some of which have appeared on Café Lit. 

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Chosen by Dawn DeBraal, hot cocoa

 The windows frosted over, it was hard to see outside. As beautiful as the decorative ice was, Rita knew frosted windows were a sign of too high humidity in the house. Stepping outside, the bitter wind struck her face, and she pulled her scarf over her mouth, resting below her eyes. Rita tugged the garbage bin down the driveway for collection. Bert used to do this chore, but with his death a few months ago, the job now rested on her.

She never realized how much Bert did for her until he was gone. Their marriage of over fifty years was a slow dance of give and take. Now, in the cold of the season, she realized how much she had taken him for granted. Bert would have fixed the humidifier so that the windows didn’t frost up. He would have moved the garbage can down to the end of the driveway and shoveled the snow for good measure before coming in for breakfast.

She grabbed the shovel and began clearing the snow from the driveway. There was only an inch of light, fluffy snow, but if she didn’t get it off the concrete, it would compact into ice, and she’d be stuck with it all winter.

Rita leaned the shovel against the rail on the back porch, stomped off her boots, and hung her coat inside. The heat of the furnace had melted the frost on the windows, and the sun shone in. Icicles hung from the eaves of the house, dripping.  

It was the loneliness that got to her. Even if she and Bert didn’t talk, his presence in the house was enough to keep her company. Now the house felt colder.

In the afternoon, the garbage truck lumbered by picking up the can and returning it to the roadside. Rita put on her coat and boots. Seeing the ice on the roof was freezing, she got out the cat litter and sprinkled it around the back steps. When she reached the can, she heard a slight meow. A small black kitten with white paws had hidden itself in front of the can.

Rita shooed it away and dragged the can back to the garage, only to see the kitten had followed her. It meowed again, looking at her with the cutest face she’d ever seen.

She went to step inside, and the kitten ran between her legs, hiding in the house somewhere. What was she to do? She searched the house but didn’t find the kitten. Rita grabbed the kitty litter, spilled some into a cake pan, and placed it near the back door. She then got a bowl of water, opened a can of tuna, and put the smallest amount on a plate.

When the kitten thawed out, both physically and mentally, it emerged from behind the couch, drawn by the tuna smell that wafted in the air. Cautiously, it walked to the fish and ate it, then drank some of the water and dutifully used the makeshift litter box.

“My, you are a smart one,” Rita murmured. Then she went into the living room and turned on the television. Rita put her feet up and sipped her tea, almost forgetting about the kitten until it jumped into her lap and curled itself into a ball. Its loud purring was reassuring, and the kitten allowed her to stroke its soft fur. They both fell asleep. When she awakened, there was another inch of snow on the driveway.

She put on her boots and coat, holding the door for the kitten, Rita let it outside, and began shoveling the driveway for the second time that day. If she let the snow get too heavy, she’d have to hire the boy down the street to help her. The kitten followed her around, jumping at the snow she tossed to the side. Its comical motions made Rita laugh. It had been a long time since she felt this happy.

Rita returned to the back door and opened it; the kitten was gone. It must have gone home. She thanked the little soul quietly for entertaining her that morning. She should think about getting a pet. While it was there, she felt its presence and no longer felt the loneliness she had been living with.

The kitten raced between her legs, making Rita laugh. She stooped to pick it up and realized it was a female.

“My, you are a determined little thing. You’ve picked me to live with, and now I pick you. First, I must check with the neighbors to see if you are theirs.” She put the kitten down and called several of her neighbors.  Everyone said no, with some explaining that the kitten had been hanging around for a week and that they were leaving food for it. She told them the cat had a home with her, in case anyone was looking for the kitten.

“Now what am I going to name you?” The kitten meowed. “How about Miss Sassy?” The kitten meowed. “Miss Sassy, it is then.” After supper, Rita turned on the television set and pulled the lever on the recliner. Miss Sassy jumped into her lap and curled herself into a ball. Rita stroked her soft fur, and the purring followed. Rita sighed contentedly.

Tomorrow she’ll go to the store and get proper cat food and a litter box, perhaps a collar with a small bell, and a cozy bed for Miss Sassy. The little body rose and fell; the kitten had complete trust in Rita, and she would respect that Miss Sassy had chosen her.

Miss Sassy was a gift, she was certain, from her husband. Bert had always wanted a cat, but Rita refused, saying she didn’t want hair in the house and gave a hundred excuses. But this one little kitten somehow found its way to her home and into her heart. On that bleak, snowy day in the middle of winter, Rita found warmth and love again.

About the author 

 

Dawn DeBraal lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband, Red, a rescue dog, and a stray cat. She has published over 700 stories, poems, and drabbles in several online magazines and anthologies, along with three novels. 

https://www.facebook.com/All-The-Clever-Names-Were-Taken-114783950248991 

https://linktr.ee/dawndebraal 

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