Stalked

Robin Wrigley

 

a dirty martini

Mandy hung up her flight attendant’s jacket on the back of the kitchen door, took four miniature bottles of wine from her flight bag and opened one. She emptied the contents of the bottle into a glass that had been left to dry on the draining board, sitting down at the breakfast table she kicked off her shoes and took a sip of the wine.

     She looked idly around the room noting the calendar was still on last month’s page, she took a packet of cigarettes from the table pulled one out and lit it. Exhaling loudly, she made the ninety-ninth mental promise to give up when the door-bell rang.

     ‘Oh shit, who the hell can that be?’ She uttered bad-temperedly to the empty room, lodged her cigarette on an ashtray and moved to the front door.

     There was a sheet of porridge-coloured cardboard sticking out of the letterbox; she could see through the glass panels of the door there was no-one outside. She pulled the sheet out turned it over and gasped in horror.

     It was made up of letters cut from a newspaper, rather like the sort of message crooks use for extortion or blackmail-letters in movies. Walking back to the kitchen she mouthed each word as she went.

      She slumped down into the chair, put her elbows on the table, her head in her hands and quietly started to sob.

He was back, the bastard was back. Her life was not worth living.

And Pigs Did Fly

Robin Wrigley

 

a long and spicy Bloody Mary

“Is he my real dad?” Henry looked up at his mother visibly shaken after the most recent fight with the man in question. He had just left, slamming the door so hard it was a miracle it was still on its hinges.

     His mother Jocelyn stopped momentarily from picking up a chair that had been knocked over in the fracas, to wipe the blood that was trickling down her chin from a cut on her lip.

     “That truly is a good question son, I ‘spose you are of his blood, (in truth she wasn’t absolutely sure), but if you want to call him dada, that’s up to you.” She moved over to the sink and wetted a tea towel under the cold water tap and dabbed cautiously at her cut lip.

     “Well, is there anyone else I can choose?” At ten years old and never living with anyone other than his mother all of his life, the question was beyond him.

     On the one hand Henry didn’t want to choose the man who periodically bursts in on their lives creating mayhem, but conversely, somewhere in his undeveloped sense of male loyalty, it seemed wrong to deny him as his father if in fact he was.

     As if to delay answering the question he carried on where his mother left off, picking up bits and pieces that lay strewn around the floor. 

     Jocelyn’s thoughts turned to more immediate problems of what to feed the boy with before she went on her night shift at the care home.

     “I’ll make you a fried egg sandwich for your tea. You like them don’t you?” The boy had not eaten since his school dinner at midday but looking in the fridge she knew there was little choice.

     “Yes, that’s okay and anyway I ain’t that hungry ‘cos I got Abbie’s piece of pizza at school. I dunno why her mum puts her in for school dinners ‘cos she only ever eats the puds and not always them.”

     “That’s ‘cos they’s free boy, that’s why. If she be payin’ herself she wouldn’t, believe me.” She finished tending her lip and set about making his sandwich.

     Looking up from the egg sizzling in the frying pan she glanced over at her son. “What you goin’ to be doin’ tonight boy? Did they give you any homework?”

     “No, I was thinking of going along to see Abbie but she said her dad was a visiting so I might just watch TV for a while, I fink there’s a football match on later.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders he did his best to smile even though he was still concerned over the father subject.

     “Ain’t you got no boys to play wiv?

     “Yea, but the uvver side of Peckham so we only get chance at school or sometimes at the weekend. I’m alright mum, really.” He wasn’t and the truth was he was scared to leave the flat by himself at night. He’d been threatened more than once for not being a member of any of the gangs.

     She finished the sandwich and put it down on the table for him along with their last can of Coca Cola.

     “There you are, I knows it ain’t much but it should see you right till I gets paid tomorrow and we can have a real meal. Now, Leroy said he was coming back later so you’d better keep the door locked. Is that understood? Lock it and bolt it after I leave for work, you hear me now?”

     “Yea momma okay I will.”

     He carried his plate and can to the sink and went into the other room, flopped into the sofa and switched on the television with the remote control and started to channel hop settling on ‘The Simpsons’ halfway through an episode.

     His mother came into the room dressed in her care home blue and white uniform. She had managed to hide some of the cut on her lip with make up.

     “I’m off now Henry, remember what I said about locking the door now. I’ll see you in the morning before you head off, bye. Oh, I nearly forgot if you get into any problem you call Mrs. Ayalougu in number 32. I never thought that we would ever need the help of some Hausa, us bein’ Christian an all but she’s been good to us and she knows how to deal with the likes of Leroy.” With that she left.

    

Henry woke with a start; Leroy had cuffed him around the head. He had fallen asleep during the football game and had no idea what time it was. Startled and scared he realised he had forgotten to lock the door.

     “Where is she? Come on look lively you little shit, where is that bitch? I won’t ask you agin before you get the choice of ‘ospital or the morgue,” he thrust his tattooed fists one after the other at the boy who was attempting to shrink away from him to the far end of the sofa.

     Leroy unsteady and the worse for drink leaned over and grabbed the boy catching hold of him around his slender upper arm. Henry instinctively bent his head and sunk his teeth into Leroy’s index finger and bit with all his might.

     “Yeow, you little shit you’re goin’ to regret that,” he snatched his hand away and Henry shot around the room away from him into the kitchen and out of the main door on to the balcony.

     His first thought was to go to number 32 as his mother instructed but something changed his mind. He knew if he ran he would possibly escape this once but it would not be permanent.

     It seemed as though a red mist took over his fear as he braced himself against the balcony wall and faced the vision of Leroy lunging out of the door at him. Instinctively he dropped to his knees grabbing hold of the big man’s right thigh with both his arms. The combination of Leroy’s mad rush and completely missing his prey he was already off balance, Henry heaved himself upright with all his strength sending his assailant clean over the balcony. With a blood curdling scream Leroy sailed head first into thin air landing with a loud crash onto the rubbish containers three levels below.

     Everything went eerily silent for several moments. Henry sat on the floor his legs now outstretched in front of him. His face devoid of any expression apart from the mildest look of self-satisfaction. Job well done. Several doors opened and residents ran to look over the balcony first to where Leroy’s body lay in an ungainly repose over the bins, then to Henry.

     Amongst the gasps and chatter Henry heard the calming voice of Mrs Ayalougu from 32 who was patting his arm and helping him to get up. She was smiling a huge grin on her broad face showing the big gap where her front teeth used to be.

     “It be alright now there young Henry. You go on back inside and I’ll call the law. You and me will have a little talk before they get here, okay? We’se goin to tell them that pigs can fly ain’t we?”

Old Billy

Roger Noons

half of mild ale

    I first met him when I was twelve; I used to deliver his morning newspaper. He was always shaved and smartly dressed no matter what time I rapped on his back door.

    ‘Ow do young un,’ he would grin, displaying his few remaining teeth, as I handed him an Express. ‘Any good news today?’ I always shrugged. My job was to deliver papers not read them.

    When the summer holidays began, I stood in for the evening paper boy while he went to Rhyl with his parents and younger sister. It was during that week that I got to know Old Billy better. Everyone in the street had a comment about him.

    ‘He was in the War, got blown up.’

    ‘Prisoner of War, in Germany, he was.’

    ‘I heard he never left England.’

    ‘Don’t believe a word, he makes it all up.’

    ‘Supposed to be a chain maker, but he hardly ever goes to work.’

    ‘Never fell out with anybody as far as I know.’

    Were just a selection of comments from the residents of Cokeland Place.

    On the Saturday evening, after completing my round, Mary Anne, in the paper shop, asked me to drop off a Sports Argus to Billy as he’d not turned up to collect it.

    ‘P’raps he’s not very well,’ she said, ‘And it’s on your way home.’

    Arriving at his back door, I found it open. Thinking he was in the closet behind the wash house, I stepped inside to place the paper on the sideboard. 

    “That’s good on yer, lad,’ came from Billy who was lying on the floor. He seemed to be wedged between his armchair and a cupboard in which he stored his groceries. ‘I’ve had a bit of a tumble an I can’t get up.’

    ‘I’ll go and fetch somebody,’ I said, and ran out, along the entry up to our house. When I returned with my father, we found Billy had passed out.

    ’Go to Miss Willets,’ Dad told me. ’She’s got a phone, ask her to ring for an ambulance.’

    By the time the ambulance came, Billy had died. Sergeant Bills arrived and after they had carried the old man out, he found a box that must have been under Billy’s body. He opened the lid and showed us the contents. It was a funny-shaped cross with a lion and a crown on it, attached to a maroon ribbon.

    ‘I bet the King would have presented that, at Buckingham Palace,’ the Sergeant announced.

    As we walked back to our house, I asked. ‘What’s valour mean, Dad?’

Bad Smell

Cathy Leonard

un coup de champagne

Sipping a coup de champagne on one of those famous French boulevards when the call came through. From home. Heart sank. What now?

Bad smell in the study.

Well, what do you want me to do about it? Figure it out. Trace source of bad smell- it’s not rocket science.

We were on our twentieth wedding anniversary weekend break and damned if a bad smell was going to ruin it.

But as we joined the queue at the Glass Pyramid in the expectation of a glimpse of that enigmatic smile, however minuscule, the bad smell enveloped us.

Food left to spoil by careless brother? Dead mouse? Or dare we venture? Dead rat under the floor boards?

How long did it take a dead rat to disintegrate?

And so the dead rat scuttled alongside us around the Ile de Saint Louis. It circled the gargoyles, snuck past the bouquinistes and imbibed our every other coup de champagne in whatever rue we ended up in. Our ubiquitous topic of conversation-rats turned to plagues, bilboes as big as apples.

There were of course the frequent updates by text.
It’s still there.
Can’t use the study.
My mock leaving cert starts in 3 days
When are you coming back?

Can’t she move the fecking computer?

And then the arguments about our parenting skills, or lack thereof?
The Celtic cubs’ lack of initiative, the infantalisation of the modern teenager, their hopeless dependency, how we in our day would have sorted it out ourselves, how long does parental obligation last? She’s over 18. It’s our twentieth. For Christ’s sake!!!

And so Paris was one long whine about children, parenting and dead rats.

About the author

Cathy has been writing and teaching for over thirty years. She has published poetry, short stories and children’s stories and has been shortlisted for a number of awards, most recently runner up in the Fish Flash Fiction Award 2013 and the Sceine Poetry Competition 2014. She had a short story selected for publication in Baubles 2016. Cathy lives in Dublin with her husband Stephen, two adult children, Molly her trusty red-setter cross and our new arrival- a stray one eyed three month old kitty- Sherlock. Now all we need is a Watson!

http://bake-a-yarn.blogspot.ie/

 

The Patio

Roger Noons

 

a glass of home-made lemonade

My mother and brother giggle on the patio. They are ignoring me as I stare from the hammock slung between the apple tree and the holly. I remember my father creating that crazy-paved area where they sit with their fancy tumblers and the jug of home-made lemonade. I helped him break up the slabs which had previously been a boring rectangle of grey, an area to collect leaves during the autumn.

    Dad arranged the fragments of two inch thick concrete and with me mixing the sand and cement, gradually filled in the joints. Here and there he left spaces in which, after filling with rich, well-rotted compost, he planted roses. My father loved roses, but never allowed a stem to be picked from the bush. He favoured the long established varietals, ones that had a scent. Ena Harkness, Peace and Orangeade were his favourites. He was not a skilled gardener, but roses being his passion, he studied and learnt how to cultivate them and each summer produced many beautiful blooms.

    It was always a topic for discussion between my parents, leaving the flowers on the bush. After I had gone to bed on warm summer nights I would hear their arguments. My mother’s common sense case against my father’s emotions. 

    It was late August, a Friday. Unusually for me, I was downstairs and ready for breakfast at eight o’ clock. My mother stood in the kitchen, her face wet with tears, her hands wringing a tea towel.

    ‘He’s gone,’ she announced.

    Embarrassed, I looked away. On the window ledge there was a slim-necked vase containing a single stem of Peace. My draw dropped.

    ‘Look outside,’ my mother whined.

    I stepped through the doorway and saw that the roses had been slashed. Every stem, even those without a bud or bloom lay on the patio. Petals were scattered across the entire surface. They appeared to have been stamped on, rubbed to confetti by a grinding, heavy boot.

    ’And he won’t be coming back,’ my mother added as she came to stand alongside me. ‘I only picked the one,’ she snivelled. ‘It smelled so ...’

The Late Joe Berry

R.B.N. Bookmark 

lager

1980 something……….

Back then, Joe Berry was banned from just about every major football stadium up and down the country. 

 

A hard man who neither gave, nor expected quarter and whose battle scarred reputation, earned on the Scoreboard terraces at Old Trafford, demanded respect from lesser men. 

 

The stretches he served in prison had only served to make him more rebellious and an even greater threat to society.  Joe`s parents had all but given up on their only son, who it seemed was hell bent on a life of crime.

 

The present

Long gone is the trendy Stone Island casual clobber and the “Fuck Off” attitude - that was the swashbuckling Joe Berry of old. All that remains is the ACAB (All Coppers Are Bastards) tatoo on the knuckles of his right hand, the ink like the past faded with time.

 

Let me now introduce you to the present day Joe Berry.  

 

Gone the six pack and the once intimidating physique of a streetfighter. You see before you an overweight family man, with a receding hairline that has stopped halfway up his back.  A seemingly average 33 year old home owner, living in an average leafy suburb of Cheshire in North West England. A once illustrious past has given way these days to mortgage rate worries, bringing up two young boys and raising them in the designer clothing bubble all budding Man Utd hooligans should be accustomed to. High blood pressure and cholesterol levels one could drown in, were it possible to wade in his bloodstream were the only thing fearsome about him nowadays.

 

Joe had married and settled down with his childhood sweetheart Mona, and they went on to become the proud parents of two young boys now aged six and seven. 

 

It was no easy task, yet he had turned his back on the past and had become a respectable member of the community. Still, despite the aura of repectability, he always slept with a baseball bat under the mattress. 

 

Joe`s parents were understandably relieved, and as proud as can be of their reformed son. No longer was he the family renegade once dubbed by his father as “The Blackberry of the family”.

 

Yet Joe found the stresses of family life, surburbia and encroaching middle-age far harder to digest than his inglorious past – he missed the old days.

 

Little did he know his middle-age crisis would get a helping hand in the shape of Bingo, the family black and tan Belgian Hovawart.

 

It was the 3^rd July 2013 and Joe Berry had decided it was time to remove that troublesome wasp’s nest, from under the guttering above the boys` bedroom window.

 

Mona had implored him to employ Anticimex to do the task, but to no avail.

 

Joe Berry was a stubborn chap, and even more so should it involve money. Mona would wryly call him Stingey Berry, noting it was a wonder he could part with wind let alone money.

 

‘I`ll be done in a jiffy and it won`t cost us a penny’ he said as he nipped off to fetch a pair of step ladders from the garden shed.

 

Perspiring heavily and out of breath, he returned with the ladders, placing them just under the boys` bedroom window. Wearing a motorcycle helmet and a pair of Mona`s flowery kitchen gloves as protection, Joe`s cumbersome frame slowly made its way up the ladder.

 

Once at the top, he opened up the black bin liner he was clutching in one hand, carefully placing it beneath the wasp´s nest until the nest was within in its confines.

 

 

It was just at that moment a magpie landed on the bottom rung of the ladder.

 

All of a sudden Bingo the dog caught sight of the magpie, an ill omen if ever there was one.

 

Bingo you see was a fervent Sunderland supporter who hated the “Magpies”.

 

With one fateful lunge the dog removed the ladder from the equation, and Newton`s Law did the rest.

Bingo - a fait accompli.

 

 

It was like waking up from a dream: there was an ambulance in the driveway and two paramedics crouching over a figure while swotting irate wasps that were orbiting whoever it was that lay there. The figure was lying prostrate on the crazy paving Joe had laid the previous year, but had never got round to finishing the pointing. 

 

Mona and the boys stood ashen faced, looking on from a short distance. Mona embraced the boys, each clinging onto one of her legs, hiding behind her back whenever an angry wasp made a beeline for them.

Perched on top of the Meyer lemon tree, that Joe and Mona had been given as a wedding present, sat the magpie, peering down at the proceedings below.

 

At the base of the tree, staring up at the magpie sat Bingo, oblivious to the commotion going on around him.

 

A small band of neighbours had now gathered across the street. A bit like when Pavlov`s dog reacted to the sound of a buzzer, only their salivary glands were activated by the sound of ambulance sirens – gossip being their reward.

 

While all this was taking place, there you were Joe. The onlooker.

 

It was as if you were still on top of those ladders, looking down at everyone, when all of a sudden your bird`s eye view was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

 

‘Excuse me,’ came a croaky voice from behind him.

 

Joe turned his head slightly and caught sight of the magpie sitting on a branch in front of him.

 

‘I´m afraid this tree is taken man,’ said the magpie.

 

‘I´m sorry mate, I didn`t mean to rattle your cage,’ whispered Joe under his breath as he half heartedly apologised, in disbelief and taking in the strange sight before his eyes.

 

The magpie was wearing a pair of turtleshell Raybans and smoking a spliff in a long black shiny cigarrette holder so as not to get nicotine stains on his wings.

 

Hearing Joe`s barely audible comment, the magpie let fly with an irritated “Squaaaakkkk”. His Raybans slid down his beak and peering over the top of them he said.

 

‘Take a pill and chill dude, that cage jive not called for man. I´m a free bird baby - you ain`t a cop are you?’ 

 

‘Me?’ replied Joe, feeling his hooligan cred had been dealt a low punch. 

 

‘No, I´m not a cop,’ said Joe.

‘I´m just a dude stuck up a tree talking to a magpie smoking a spliff.’

 

While Joe was strongly reiterating his non affiliation with the forces of law and order, he observed as the magpie inhaled deeply from the spliff hanging precariously from his beak.

 

Disappearing behind a thick cloud of Lebanese Black, the magpie coughed and wheezed as he attempted to catch his breath.

 

Wafting away the smoke with his wings, he finally got his bird shit together and said  ‘Man you`re one chillin suspended in the air cool dude.’

 

‘Cmon over to my place and perch your ass beside me brother,’ said the magpie, inviting Joe to share his branch and a spliff with him. 

 

Just then the sound of a moblie phone and a Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe ringtone blaring from his feathered hipster pocket had the magpie clamouring to answer his Iphone.

 

“Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand, hey Joe where you going with that gun in youuuurr hand.” 

 

Magpie: ‘Dude, 

I need you to do me a cosmic favour, it is my old lady being uncool and cramping my style. Will you take this call for me?  Just say I´m helping out a friend moving to a new nest. Tell her I`ll be back for tea……oh and send my love to the chicks.’ 

 

‘Ok,’ said Joe, feeling sorry for the magpie.

 

‘I´ll answer the phone for you.  Hey, did I tell you I´ve got two chicks of my own?’

 

Joe:  (what am I saying….chicks???)

 

The magpie stretched out his Iphone to Joe.

 

Joe: ‘Hello’

 

Iphone: ‘Joe?’

 

Joe: ‘Yes?’

 

Iphone: ‘Joe?’ 

 

Joe: ‘Yes ……is that you Mona???’

 

Iphone: ‘Joe, wake up ……you’re late for work!’

 

‘Oh Mona it`s you!’ exclaimed Joe. 

 

‘You wouldn`t believe the dream I have just had.’

About the author

 R.B.N Bookmark was born in Manchester, England during the late 1950s.

Having been surrounded by extraordinary real life characters all of his life, it comes through in his writing. When times are hard the one thing that’s plentiful is humour…..and its free!

Nowadays he lives and works in Scandinavia.

 

http://www.rbnbookmark.com/

The Good Deed

Paul Westgate

a glass of brown ale

 I’d seen the couple earlier, at the chapel.

‘Took him under our wing like’ the man said.

‘Had him for Sunday dinner as soon as we found out he lived alone’ the woman added. ‘Proper roast dinner, once a month regular’ she continued. ‘Thanked us no end of times, said he really enjoyed it’.

‘Under our wing like’ the man repeated. ‘Some company for him, something different like’.

‘He were a nice man’ the woman concluded.

‘Yes’ I said ‘a very nice man’.

I didn’t mention the many friends, the range of interests or that he’d been a life-long vegetarian.

About the author

Paul is an enthusiastic but sporadic writer. He lives in Essex and works in London and uses the two train journeys each day to read books, sleep and, occasionally, to think up stories; sometimes these are even written.