Little Birdie

Short Fiction

The Canary was reliable but she looked at the clock just to be sure. 5:15am – the bird was amazing, a second later the clock radio lit up and filled Clancy’s bedroom with the sound of gentle jazz. She fought the urge to simply lie quietly in bed and listen to the Canary sing along with Dizzy Gillespie for “just a few minutes” and threw the feather doona back and allowed the cool morning air to caress her naked body.
She sat up in bed, swung her feet onto the rug, pausing momentarily to approve of her toenails. She’d made a quick stop at the “Nail Nook” on her way home from the office the night before, and, almost on a whim, decided against her normal turquoise blue and opted instead for a delicate roseate metallic pink. It had been a whim but a good choice; her feet looked more dainty somehow, and definitely girlier. Just looking at her toes wiggle gave her an odd tingle that was half arousal, and hard on the heels of that, something less pleasant. ‘What was wrong with her?’ It had been nearly ten long months since she’d had a man? Suddenly being successful and single seemed like a poor lie made up to console oneself for being lonely. She used perusal technique for banishing such thoughts, and stood up, stretching herself to her full 5 foot seven height, and tried to touch the ceiling, just to feel her spine stretch.
Her back clicked, twice. She sighed, suddenly her thirty-four years seemed very old. She padded into the room’s ensuite, filled her cupped hands with cold water and immersed her face. The shock of the water brought her runaway thoughts back into some sort of control, and she stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were definitely her best feature, startlingly green and unexpected in her Asian face; she stared back at herself boldly, almost angrily, ashamed of her earlier weakness. She hadn’t got a man because she hadn’t been motivated enough to look for one. No her thoughts paused, actually, that wasn’t quite right. She’d been scared of the kind of man who would hit on her, whenever she went anywhere and looked even slightly available.
She thought of her friends, Alice, whose standards were such that she seemed to go through men the way a forest fire goes through trees, and Meryl in her loose- knit polyamorous four or five person marriage, that seemed to an unbiased observer far more stable than any of the “normal” binary marriages Clancy had seen, where many problems would cause changes in membership or cause an implosion and this one simply changed shape, absorbing new members and simply forgetting old ones. Clancy had received welcoming signals from Meryl’s catch on more than one occasion but some form of trepidation had stopped her accepting the offer. In fact she probably had more in common with Tanya the Schoolteacher, who was snowed in under work that she rarely even had time for first Tuesday drinks at the Rex.
Her bathroom was definitely her favourite room in the house. She had never once regretted having it retiled in the deep moss green that went so wonderfully with the gold fittings and diffused white lighting. She stood up, backed away from the sink, in the mirror, she was well-lit in a deep dark space. It picked up her one-piece maillot swimming costume – her favourite dark green with a jungle of metallic green leaves on it, appreciated how it looked in the mirror for a moment, and then dragged on pair of clean enough grey tracksuit pants from the laundry hamper, hung her front door key around her neck, pulled on a pair of white “Nike” trainers and scooted out of the apartment.
She barely thought about it. The lift was too slow, more importantly, it was a claustrophobic steel box. She took the stairs, charging down in a pell-mell rush, holding the steel bannister and swinging wide around the landings, down all five flights to the ground floor and out onto the street and footpath.
It was ten minutes walk down a gentle down-hill slope, but if you ran it was a lot quicker than that. Clancy ran, sticking to the broad grassy nature strip, and not slowing as she zoomed under low tree branches. She still felt silly making doppler speed noises in her head as she did this but it was a habit that had remained entrenched since childhood.
She fetched up against the white wooden fence that edged the low cliff over the ocean hard enough to hurt the palms of her hands, and took the steps down to the beach two at a time. The sand was still crisp from last night’s dew and the single set of tracks led from the base of the steps to the water’s edge in an almost straight line.
It was, it must be said, not much of a day. The sky was grey and littered with an assortment of rather lumpy clouds of varying shades of greyness. She slid her track pants down her legs, hooked her trainers off, folded the pants and placed them on the sand with the shoes on top of them.
She walked out into the surf; let the highest of the low waves break over her crotch. The water was not cold, in fact it was surprisingly invigorating, and, for this time of the morning, almost warm.
A wave, slightly higher than normal, caught her unawares, pressed her back two steps across the sand.
She stared at the lightest part of the horizon. A pinpoint of white light pierced between two clouds. Her heart lifted, it was the sun. She stood, letting the knowledge sing through her until the sun had become a complete disc, balanced on the horizon by its’ bottom edge. Then, without conscious volition, she caused her body to fall forwards into the water, and started swimming towards the rising sun.
She swam well, taking joy in the completeness of her body and the caress of the water as it slipped past her skin and into a complex slipstream-swirl behind her.

She swam to the point where the threads of her conscious mind reminded her, in the past she would have been at the limit of safety and she kept swimming. The knowledge appeared in her suddenly, and, without argument, she altered course ninety degrees to the left, and swam, back towards the long white beach.

The first she knew of her return to land was the wave. It picked her up and lifted her towards land. The movement in the water was a shock after the calm at deeper depths. On the next stroke, the fingers of her right had dug into the shoreline sand. She stood, walked up onto the hard-pack shore, turned left and walked back along the beach until she found her stuff where she had left it. She sat, wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at the horizon. The sun was now its own diameter and, while it was still hidden behind a grey cloud and showed only as a white disk, it was still high enough to deliver a barely detectable heat, while still being filtered enough to gaze at directly.
Something caused her to turn her head and look down the beach. There, at the waters edge, in the distance, was that a human figure? The afterimage of the sun made it difficult to tell. She blinked, the after-image lost intensity and turned a deep emerald green, and suspended within it seemed to be a human figure, walking along the beach, towards her. Alone. Closer and closer until the figure had blobby arms and legs, closer still and the emerald afterimage was superimposed on his loins. She snapped her head away, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea, looked out at the horizon. The afterimage was overpowered by the now fully risen sun. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth on her eyelids.
Clancy became acutely aware of the sounds in the sand next to her. Feet. Two clicks. Knees. A sigh. She waited an age, trying to rejoin with the sound of the waves, which had once seemed so all encompassing but now seemed to be vying for her attention with the beating of her heart, and turned her head and looked, again.

He was sitting beside her on the sand, in the same position. Squatting, with his arms around his knees. His eye sockets were pressed into his knees, so she felt safer taking a longer look than she had intended. He had, she decided, a pleasantly shaped ear nicely set off by a gold ring sleeper with a single green bead, probably jade, hanging on it. She belatedly realised that staring into his ear was liable to attract his attention and that, moreover, staring into the ears of people you haven’t been formally introduced to was undoubtedly bad manners.

He turned his head and looked directly into her face. He didn’t seem surprised to find that she was already looking at him. His eyes were the same bright vibrant green as his earrings.
His eyes smiled first, open and welcoming
Then his mouth smiled. It said “Hello”
Caught off guard by such an innocuous greeting, Clancy was momentarily lost for words, on one hand, if she was too welcoming, he might take it the wrong way and start chatting her up, spoiling her quiet time, with boring chatter designed to charm his way into her having sex with him whether she really wanted to or not, and while it must be said he was attractive and did have nicely kissable lips, her quiet time was hers, and while he was definitely attractive, the tired rigmarole of small talk that preceded sex, definitely wasn’t.
It really was taking a long time to reply, soon she’d be crossing the line into rude.
“Hello.” Her voice was scratchy from long disuse, but he didn’t seem to mind.
And, as far as it went, ”Hello” wasn’t a bad opening line. It was polite, neither demeaning or retarded, and left the way open for real communication, on an equal footing. So much better than “If beauty was a crime I’d give you a life sentence.” Or, in another bar on another night, ”Are you after someone sensitive and funny? I usually cry after sex, and women laugh at me for that.”
Instead he said; “My name is Declan, I’ve seen you here before.”
“Pleased to meet you Declan, my name is Clancy.” She always made a point of repeating new people’s names out lout, to better remember them “I’ve never seen you, the beach has always been deserted.”
“I was up there – I live up there.” He said twisting his body and gesturing vaguely at the top of the cliff behind them.
“Really?” Clancy was instantly jealous, as only a Sydney native can be, when presented with superior real estate. ”Which one?” There was a row of apartment blocks all along the cliff edge ranging from the splendidly new, to still impressive vintage ones.
“Not thhat one, I live in thethe baby-shit brown brick from the 1970’s. See those white- steel railings on the bottom balcony? I sleep there if the weather is good, and I’ve gotten used to seeing you. I look forward to it.” So,
Far from the worst block, In fact, one of the better ones. Clancy marvelled at how real estate apparently took precedence over potentially far more important topics, like the way he was looking at her.
She waited, a baited trap.
“I’m hungry.”
Interesting.
“For what?” She spoke levelly, putting herculean effort into keeping the slightest hint of coquetry out of her voice. What he said next could be a deal breaker. If his original line had been a set up for some flaccid double entendre humour, the emoji of the little face vomiting green would be a likely response. It’s a pity it could not be effectively verbalised.
“I thought toasted crumpet with butter, slathered with honey, actually.”
Clancy lit up like a pinball machine.
“Wow!” She laughed. “For a minute there I was worried you might say something gross.”
“Gross? How?”
“Well,” Suddenly she was almost reluctant to be clear. “Well, that you’d say you wanted to eat me for example.”
“Jeez – are men that gross?”
“It’s not always men – some women can be like that, too.”
He blinked, and apparently decided not to pursue the idea.
“Well, I’m not. So, do you f eel like breakfast? If a honey crumpet and tea doesn’t appeal, there is a selection of other stuff – and the view of course, though you won’t be in it.”
“If I accept, I’ll certainly be in the view and a lot closer.”
“Please say yes, I’ve got proper muesli and Honey Smacks!” She really had to laugh she hadn’t eaten a honey smack since she was a child, staying at her Dad’s house, on visitation days.
“How could I possibly refuse? Yes! I’ll come”
“The stairs you came down are actually closer than the ones I used. Shall we?”
Clancy let him lead, unexpectedly enough she suddenly felt shy about the size of her bum, even though she felt silly. But she had to admit she didn’t mind watching him from behind as he walked, he had nice shoulders. The side door of Declan’s unit block was a large sheet of frosted glass surrounded by a white wooden frame. The key was in a small pocket in his swim shorts, and the ground floor flat was up one short flight of pastel-tiled stairs. Their footsteps echoed on the hard floor and bare walls even though they were both barefoot. As the key clunked into the lock, Clancy realised that the short walk had made her hungrier than she hadexpected.
“It’s not much, I’m afraid, but please come in.”
She hoped that if there was “good granola”, that there was good yoghurt to mix with it. As for the Honey Smacks, she’d try a few, just for nostalgia’s sake. The crumpet with honey? God, she did have an appetite! *
Clancy’s heart was hammering so loudly, she wondered if he’d hear it when she stepped over the threshold. He had a good grasp of reality and the truth, it was a nice enough apartment in its early 1970’s Soviet utilitarian way, but precisely zero had been done with it. Brick walls covered with cement render painted with flat duck-egg blue paint, doubtless the cheapest the estate agent could find. A chest high bookcase crammed with the spines of brightly coloured paperbacks. Here and there, four pieces pieces of the parquet floor were missing. In one place a small red rug had been used to minimise the trip-hazard. A framed page from H.R. Giger’s “Necronomicon” hung near the bookcase.
A portable black-and white CRT television sat atop a milk crate facing the long pale blue fabric covered couch, at the far end of which sat a glass bong. The water was dirty, and, oddly, Clancy was struck by a strong urge to pick it up and clean it.
“I won’t say it needs a woman’s touch,” she said, tongue firmly in cheek, “But it definitely needs something.”
“At the risk of stating the obvious, it needs the smell of breakfast and, in spite of all the options I’ve mentioned, I’ve developed a hankering for an egg-ring fried egg on a toasted muffin – could I interest you in one, Perhaps?”
He was trying very hard to please but, in Clancy’s opinion had not crossed the line into obsequious, and certainly not creepy. She found herself staring, with disbelief at the only light fitting she could see in the room, on the ceiling, a long white metal box held two long fluorescent tubes. She shuddered to think what the room would look like if they were the main source of illumination.
“Do you use those lights?”
Declan put two eggs from the fridge into a bowl and looked up “Sorry? Oh. Only when I have to – they’re a bit bright. Only to read by at night.”
“You could change to something – else?” She really meant, “Anything else” but the subtext was probably obvious.
“I’ve asked, but, pardon the French- the Landlord is *le dichead*
Even here? The rent must be astronomical.”
“It was when the place was new but now he regrets never fixing it up high but he likes throwing his weight around, keeps saying he’ll redecorate, but he’s cheap like a canary, regards a new toothbrush as a major capital outlay – and he really needs one.”
“I have a pet Canary at home.” Declan looked at her in surprise. ”Yes? What’s it’s name?”
“Frank. Frank Pantangeli.”
Declan whooped with laughter. The teacup in Declan’s hands rattled in its saucer.
You could leave the fluros, never use them and have some nice low lamps in the corners.

Saturnalia

Ashort Story

Saturnalia

“They say no-one will tell you how they made enough cash to start their first company.” He growled this and hunched further forward over his drink on the bar. I had mixed feelings about all of this, firstly – and perhaps most importantly – I hadn’t asked him anything more complicated than “You mind if I sit here?” while motioning at the barstool next to him.
The place was kind of a dump; a long white plastic bar at waist height, eight or ten barstools, the floor curved to conform with the .25 ring of the station. A long white light strip was embedded in the bar to make the drinks glow. Behind the bar a wall with a large cycling picture of a green meadow, blue sky, and an ecstatically singing blonde woman clad in brown. Her voice formed the ever-present muzak but was only audible when the jukebox was silent; which, at that moment, it wasn’t, instead it was playing some pleasantly rippling Philip Glass. There was no barman, just a post-mix dispenser bot on a little railway track that ran behind the bar. The Bot’s face was a lit plastic panel advertising “MescKist” with its brand mascot, a smiling rat in a straw hat. The stuff was a relatively new sensation, a fizzy “Grape Bubbleberry” flavoured drink with the legal maximum dose of added synthetic mescaline. I’d tried it once – seen odd dark things in the corners of my vision, ground my teeth for days, hadn’t slept for two nights – and vowed never to touch the shit again. Still, it was substantially cheaper than beer, even the horrible locally brewed stuff. They’ve never managed to synthesise beer properly. It’s always awful.

I looked at my companion. He was burly, clad in the uniform of a Station Loader of medium rank, and staring – though glowering might be a better word – into his drink, speaking of which, I had no idea what it actually was. Contained in a clear shot glass, it was almost transparent, faintly green, and smelled most delightfully expensive. I couldn’t resist; I asked him, hoping he would take my interest as an intention to buy him one.
“What’s that you’re drinking? It smells wonderful.”
He turned to face me and I was surprised; his face was far more interesting than his right ear. I had no idea how old he was. At a guess, silly as it sounds, somewhere between thirty and sixty, and his upper front teeth were quite large and showed signs of work. It was likely he’d been born with a quite large overbite, which was quite unusual in this age of foetus fiddling. His skin was very smooth, pink, and oddly almost babyish, though his eyes seemed far older. I got the shocking feeling that his eyes seemed to be about two hundred years old, and that what they hadn’t seen, wasn’t worth seeing, anyway. It was, probably, the face of a salesman, not handsome enough to be in movies, or plastic enough to be a reporter or a rep on commercial media, but he was as unlike a Station Loader as it was possible to get, and, I was certain, I’d never seen him before. I would have noticed.

He directed a long look at me, seemed to decide I was harmless, and answered.
“It’s a Bolivan liquor made from coco leaves. Of course this is a synthetic from a digitised earth original.Columbian. Pretty good copy really, they usually are. It’s making me homesick.”
“You’re from this Colombia?” I’d never heard of the place. “Is it on Earth?”

He seemed to find my ignorance amusing, and smiled “Yes. In South America. But I wasn’t born there, I’m actually from another place, a place called Australia. I just had a second house in Colombia because I really felt at home there.”

Two houses on Earth? What was he doing in a Loader’s uniform in an empty bar on Saturn Station?
“I sense a story. The kind of story that the media might want enough to pay for. They rarely pay much, but it’s a sideline Anyway, what did you mean before, about opening your first company?” I decided to go for the throat; after all, being a leggy blonde has Quite oftenhas its advantages. . from “What did you say your name was, again?”
“I didn’t, but it’s Paolo, Paolo Petrovsky. Since we’re on the subject, what’s yours?”
I decided to play it safe and stick with my work name. “Robyn. Robyn Christo.”
“Pleased to meet you Robyn. Now do you think I might buy you a drink? At the risk of your developing expensive tastes, perhaps one of these? I assure you, they taste even better than they smell.” It was an offer impossible to refuse, especially when it was accompanied by his smile.
The drink was called “Agwa,” and Paolo assured me that this facsimile was, if not exactly the same as the original, certainly easy enough to get used to. Myself, I thought it was almost beyond delicious, and obviously brutally strong. I loved the stuff, and when he offered me another, at 200 McPhees a shot, I accepted. After all, the way I figured it, I’d have been crazy not to, it was so far beyond the sort of credits I could afford to splurge on a drink, as to make my eyes water. I mean, maybe, just maybe, 200 Mcphees would get me a really good dress, or a pair of heels, but I don’t think the entire outfit I was wearing that night was worth one of those drinks, let alone two. As you can probably tell, by this time I was positively warming to Paolo and especially the heavy-handed way he treated his wallet.
So, think what you like, the station has a very unforgiving economy. Just see what happens when you can’t afford your air.

I described him as “burly” before, and it’s as good a word as any. Naked, his body was big, barrel-like, and glowed white pink. The nipples on his man boobs were small, bright pink, crinkled with arousal. Not the slightest trace of hair on his upper body. I briefly wondered if this, too, was the result of pre-natal gene tinkering or simply my good luck.
His penis was not that big, but circumcised, and as rampantly hard as any penis I have ever seen. It stuck out from his loins, hard as a tuning fork, looking so excited that it might ejaculate entirely on its own. My mouth watered at the sight. I felt a hot flush and went weak at the knees.

It’s unexpectedly hard to fuck in low gravity. Depending on the angle you’re at, things can get out of balance easily. You can’t trust the weight of your body to hold you in place; this translates as bouncing off the bed. If he thrusts, your body will absorb some of the energy, and recoil from the rest. Depending on your age, you can sustain an injury bouncing off the wall. If you think you’re playing it safe, and you’re at it in the missionary position, and you’ve forgotten the restraint belts, you’re kidding yourself. I had one guy banging away at me like there was no tomorrow, and he pulls out of me too hard, there’s no gravity to keep him in place, so he keeps right on going, orgasming as he goes, like a perfect example of Newton’s third law, with one of the silliest looks I’ve seen on a face, ever.
That’ll teach him to take a cheap 1/8 gravity room.

I’ll say this for Paolo though, he liked to nuzzle. This is the opposite of most men, who get their nuzzling with the person they suddenly remember at the moment they ejaculate and instantly feel guilty at having cheated on. I watch them busily formulating excuses for their hasty departure, after, or even during their tumultuous arrival.
Not this one though, and, it must be said, I didn’t mind a bit, his armpit was a comfortable rest for my head, and smelled really wonderful, I hooked my right knee up over his loins and now flaccid cock and, listening to the deep double beat of his heart, allowed myself a lovely doze. I awoke slowly, thinking over the events that had led us to this bed, this post-orgasmic snooze. I noticed dreamily that I was thinking of Paolo and I as “us” and not of myself in the singular, and hoped he’d be at least open to the idea when he woke up.
There was no middle stage, apparently. He snorted, his eyes rolled around wildly behind his closed lids, then he opened them. The irises were the brilliant blue of a fine summer day on Earth. For a moment I felt a pang of nostalgia that was almost a physical pain.
I played with his right nipple.
“So, Paolo, tell me the Paolo story.”
“What do yo mean?” He was gruff. I wondered what he’d been dreaming of.
“How did you get started? What do you do? What are you doing here?”
He sighed. Apparently, he was taking my inquisition seriously.
“Born in Sydney, city in a place called Australia, on Earth. The area was called Campsie. A poor area. My mother was what was called a prostitute in those days; she had sex with men for money. She formed a relationship with a client, a man she decided she loved. She got pregnant. I was the result. My father was supportive, both with money, and emotionally. I had a good childhood and succeeded in school well enough to gain a place in a good university, but my mind turned out not to have an academic bent. I became interested more in business. It was here that my father came into his own. He had, over time, set up and run, several small businesses, a suburban shop that sold sex stuff and allowed people, usually men, to have sex with each other in private, when they paid a fee. He asked me if I had an idea for a business to set up, and, as it happened, I did.
Long ago, I’d decided that children were weird, especially in their tastes in candy … at that time there was a rubbery jelly treat about the size of a man’s hand, shaped like a Bat, translucent green and lime-flavoured. The head was red and grape flavoured and it contained a small amount of sherbet, so, when you bit the head off, the “brain” burst with a pleasant fizzy zing. These were wildly popular in the 5-12 year demographic as were werewolf fangs, and leg bone lollipops shaped like a human femur and mint flavoured. It was this last that started me thinking about medical candy. Soft, jelly filled burst-in-the-mouth “eyeballs” that would sicken the average parent, and consequently enthuse their child.”

I remembered those “eyeballs.” I thought they were great.

He continued. “But my favourite, the one I was most proud of, was “Mallownomas.” Pink and red lumps that adhered to the skin with sticky sugar and could be bitten off the skin of your friend, and eaten. Filled with raspberry popping candy and sherbet for that special “cancerous” taste. Both tasty and educational. There was a big range.”
“Did you do “schnotz”? They were my favourite.”

“They were one of ours, yes, but the plastic nose dispenser was expensive to produce and made the line unprofitable, so the line was withdrawn.”
“They were good, I used to like the way they spurted into your mouth.”
“Your tastes developed early.”
That was when he started tickling me, and I started giggling.
I love being tickled.
Tickled, at its best turns into tangled, and it did then too, on a longer than usual pause, he spoke again.”Of course it didn’t end there – there was the second big sugar hate. That one nearly put us out of business, but we’d diversified, and now the least profitable company lines became our backbone. There was the pureed Carrot and “Potato” Squeezy Snak, “Apple” Squeezy Snak, a “Steak” one and of course a Brussel Sprout one, for dietary Gemmifera.”
His voice was a deep rumble inside his chest. I’d nearly dozed off again, I guessed why he was up here, on Saturn Station, and not admiring the view.

The Night of the Butler

“Hardcock! Hardcock! Oh drat the man! Where is he?”Lady Skankthorpe jerked the bell-chain imperiously. Far away, faintly a bell tinkled, there was no acknowledging brring.*
Lady Skankthorpe was starting to get testy enough to and actually say, “Drat the man!” Out loud, when a voice spoke quietly at her shoulder. “You rang, madam?” The voice was so deep it seemed to come from below floor level, but in point of fact, Mr. Hardcock, the Butler of Skankthorpe Hall, was taller than the average Englishman, measuring in at five feet-ten-and-three-quarters of an inch in height, in bare feet, which of course was not the case now, since he was wearing his official, black highly-shined leather buttleing shoes, which had heels that added almost an inch, bringing him up to an imposing height of almost six feet, which meant that, as Lady Skankthorpe was seated at her favourite table in the pink rose wallpapered Breakfast-Room, Mr Hardcock’s loins were precisely at her eye-level. And from her somewhat less than cursory examination, the Butler appeared to be at least living up to his name.
Elspeth, Lady Skankthorpe’s mouth watered at the thought of what her good friend Catherine deBurgh had assured her was a good seven inches of dedicated service. Lady Skankthorpe considering herself both a bon vivant and a cultured member of society (being a fixture at the Plebney town cinema whenever they showed a film with subtitles). So, in the case of Lady Catherine’s recommendation of the Butler, Lady Skankthorpe felt herself qualified to read between the lines.
“Mr Hardcock was always ready to offer Lord deBurgh a polish and a brush up, even though that was, strictly speaking, the responsibility of his lordship’s valet, a Japanese man who was always eager to help with such personal tasks, which were common, his Lordship being such a rapscallion.”
“As for herself Lady Catherine continued, Mr. Hardcock was “A Godsend an absolute godsend! Indefatigable. Unstinting in his efforts, and a perfect gentleman!”
Lady Skankthorpe required no great effort of imagination to read between those lines. She offered Mr Hardcock the position without the rigmarole of an interview.
At the completion of several weeks service, he had performed his duties in an exemplary manner, and, as far as Lady Skankthorpe was concerned, that was the problem.
The Silverware always had an impeccable leg of shine, the table was always perfectly laid. The wine served in an exemplary manner, but, as for anything else, there had been no anything else. How, she often wondered to herself, did one cross the line? Did one simply rest in a straight-backed chair, such as this Hepplewhite in the Breakfast Room, stand up, pull her dress up to her waist, and sit down, spread her legs wide and say, imperiously, “Hardcock, kneel down and suck my pussy!” The moment felt so real to her, she could almost read the subtitles. The only thing that stopped her was the horrible doubt that the method might be more brutal, more abrupt than whatever stratagem Lady Catherine had used to start the ball rolling and put that enviable youthful glow into her sallow cheeks.
Hardcock showed no signs of the derangement of religion, but, in truth he was an impeccable Butler and under her minute observation, he showed no signs of being anything else.

Short Fiction

Night flight from Lincolnshire to Nuremberg

It was black, really black. He couldn’t see his hand six inches in front of his face. The dials of the control panel were such a dim red that they would only render up information if squinted at. Years ago and on the other side of the world Mullins had learned photography while in school. The profound blackness of the cockpit reminded him of the darkroom; the barely visible red dials of the safe light.

They hadn’t taught incredible, horrible teeth aching cold at school though and if they had Mullins would have left; they simply didn’t do cold in Molong N.S.W, not cold like this. Back home cold was sitting around a fire, probably in shorts and a singlet. Here, a tray of photo chemicals (if you were crazy enough to have such a thing) would freeze solid, into a poisonous ice block probably in under minute.

Mullins pushed the control yoke ten degrees forward into a shallow dive, stomped the port rudder pedal. The Lancaster went into a shallow dive and veered left. In a moment he would reverse the sequence, and in this way the huge bomber would maintain a gentle corkscrew motion as it followed a straight course across Belgium towards Nuremberg. The corkscrew was a manoeuvre that he had been assured would confuse the enemy night fighters that stalked the night, their pilots apparently gifted with the ability to see in the dark. Mullins doubted that the manoeuvre accomplished anything other than giving him something to do with his hands that would keep him awake, other than the ongoing terror of night-fighters of course. At any instant, completely without warning, his whole comparatively peaceful world of the plane and the night, could dissolve without warning into blood and fire. In a worst case scenario an attack might detonate the bomb load without warning and, in an instant, he and his crew would simply cease to exist.

Or, and it was not the first time the thought had occurred to him, that eventuality might actually be quite far from the worst, travelling along at eighteen thousand feet above the earth in a fragile tube of aluminium, magnesium, perspex and several thousand gallons of aviation fuel and explosives left the door wide open to many possibilities far worse than instantaneous death. One could crash into the ground have most of your bones broken so you couldn’t run, and be cooked alive by burning fuel. One could be very damaged in some sort of nasty encounter, but not die, and live for months under the care of the Nazi Army doctors – who had no love of terrorfliegers. Possibly worse even than that, one could parachute into a burning city during a raid and probably be pushed into the flames alive by the angry citizenry.

The plane droned on forcing its blunt nose ever deeper into the freezing black air. Mullins kept corkscrewing even though he knew in his heart that if a night fighter was sleazing up behind them, they were almost undoubtedly quite fucked, and indeed they had probably entered that state when their wheels had left the tarmac at Warley Fen back behind them in the relative quiet of England. In point of fact, there was no exact point when “not too bad” had degenerated into “fucked” but if he tried hard enough, fighting his way through the clinging spiderweb layers of memory, it had probably been during a lunch discussion on world events at school.

It was brutally hot in the playground; too hot to move, certainly too hot to run, so they’ taken to congregating in the stairwell of the brick building and talking, and back then, there’d been nothing else to talk of. War was coming! There was no exact point where he’d decided to sign up, it was more of a foregone conclusion. He was moved inexorably in the current which he could not fight away from the life he had been sure of, out to sea, far from the sunny beach, out into the cold open embrace of the ocean, to drown.

LOUD! over the intercom, a scream. Wordless, conveying no information except utter terror and pain. The big plane lurched as Mullins’ body spasmed at the controls. In shock and instant sympathy.

The was a procedure for even this, especially this. He pushed the throttles hard forward and simultaneously forced the nose down into a dive, while stomping hard on the starboard rudder pedal; but all the time thinking that he should have seen the flash of tracer, either from the fighter or from the return fire from whichever of the crew had screamed a warning, and from the sound – either died or been mortally wounded. And, as for everything, there was a procedure for this too. He had to shout to make himself heard over the pandemonium caused by recent events. He tried to sound calm but even as he heard his own words he knew that he didn’t do a very good job of it.

”All right you lot, shut the fuck up! Sound off one at a time if you’re O.K.”
The thing was that the person who’d made that noise was definitely not O.K., in fact the person who had made that noise was probably already dead.
“Bomb-Aimer, O.K Skipper” Mitchy sounded quite startled by definitely alive.
“Mid-Upper Gunner Ok” “Radio-operator alright sur.” Both spoke at the same time, their voices garbling over the circuit, but both somehow remaining recognisable.
“Navigator – it wasn’t me Skipper, I’m alright” Pruett sounded aggrieved, probably shocked into making a mistake in his sums. Silence; well aside from the all – encompassing roar of the engines.
“Co-pilot, I’m fine too.” It’d have been funny if it wasn’t strict procedure. Staples was sitting next to him , their opposing biceps inches apart. Surely if Staples had been the source of that scream he would have known? Would have heard it above the engines? On the other hand, perhaps not. He twisted his head as far as it would go to the right without dragging his oxygen mask off his face. Staples had turned toward him too, his masked and goggled face was practically invisible in the gloom, misshapen, insectoid, faint red reflections from the instrument panel adding to an aura of evil. Mullins knew was reflected in his own shape.

The crew was not complete, ”Cookie?”
“Rear Gunner? Did anyone hear Cookie sound off?” ”No Skip; No.” A series of denials and “Mid upper skip. I’ll check on him if you like.”
“Thanks, Les- I know your arse hurts but I’d be happier knowing you were keeping a look-out. Pruett, you’re closest – go and check on Cookie.”
“OK Skip” he didn’t sound happy about it, but he’d be less likely to have an attack of the vapours than Les. Silence, if the roaring and rattling could be called silence.
“Les? Did you see any thing outside that might’ve done it?” That was Staples, pulling rank to chat on the intercom; Mullins said nothing.
J-Jane quivered as she passed through a small patch of turbulence and Mullins felt the airframe flex slightly under his feet.
“Fuck! Shit!”
It was Pruett’s voice and the lack of solid information contained in it was irritating. Given the situation, doubly so.
Mullins, “Fucking What?” Blended with input from everyone else that sound like the arrival of a fox at a duck farm.
“Sorry skipper, I’m up the back, just at the turret, I’m plugged into the port here. I wish I had a fucking light, It’s horrible!”
Mullins was terrified, and judging by the noise, so was everyone else.
“Sal! No lights! Are you fucking mad? You want to attract every Night fighter in Belgium?”
“No Skip – but it’s Cookie. The doors to the turret were open, and he was half out and I think the back of his neck is missing.”
“It’s been shot out?”
“No, the turret looks fine. It’s just; I put my hand – his head…” Pruett made a wet noise in the back of his throat.
Mullins jumped slightly as he remembered that he was not weaving the plane in the sky, felt the plane quiver in sympathy, resettled himself on his profoundly uncomfortable seat, and stomped the port rudder pedal into a comparatively brisk left turn and pulled the control column back into something of a climb. In the excitement it seemed they’d lost nearly five hundred feet of altitude and that was dangerous. The bomber stream they’re part of had an assigned altitude of eighteen thousand feet and altering height and course massively increased the chance of colliding with one of the seven – hundred and-fifty other planes on the same mission. Mullins squinted furtively out the panels of the cockpit bubble and saw nothing except a few faint stars; it seemed that the high grey haze of cloud was clearing. That was good, it meant that they could not be silhouetted on it by searchlights. His mind went back to the minute of the mission with something like relief:
“Navigator, time to target!”
Nothing. “He hasn’t come back yet Skipper, people usually bump into me on the way past.”
That was Les.
“You poor thing. I’ll tell you what, if you’d like to stretch your legs, you can pop back there and tell him to get back to work” Mullins said this with the air of bestowing a great favour.

”Right away mate.” Les didn’t sound thrilled about his new mission and his Australian twang reflected it.
“Don’t call me mate.”
Silence. Apparently “right away” had meant just that.

“He’s not here Skipper.” There was no preamble; it was Les’ voice.
“Whattaya mean? Pruett isn’t there? Could he have fallen out?”

Les was breathing quite hard. ”No; the turret is rotated and the doors are closed, but there’s blood everywhere, so much blood. My feet are sticking to the floor, its trying to pull my flying boots off!” Les was breathing rapidly, starting to come ugly gulps.

“Get a fucking grip Les,” cut in Mitchell’s voice. “Its just fucking blood mate. It can’t hurt you.”

Les breathed in, a big gasping whoop of air and Mullins reflected that people like Mitchy were beyond any price.

“Alright for you, fucker, right up the other end, lying on an escape hatch; there’s something back here that kills people! It killed Cookie, then it killed Pruett and now I think it’s after me!”

“Something? What do you mean Something; you daft cunt?”

Les’ scream stopped suddenly, mid-scream. It sounded as if his intercom wire had been pulled out of its socket.
“Fuck. That didn’t sound good.” Mitch’s normal optimism seemed to have been worn thin.
“Fucking Fuck you’re fucking right! I’m fucking closer to it than you you colonial bastard!” As radio operator, Symthe, a welshman was closest to the rear of the plane his station being just forward of the main spar.
“Smythe! Stop stalling and come up to the cockpit, but before you do have a squid at The Nav stuff and see if you can work out where we are; it’s important.”
“I can tell you that Skipper.” It was Mitch. He was very sure of himself.
“Care to enlighten me?” They were functioning less as a crew and more as a collection of disparate individuals.
“We’re more or less on course for the target about ten miles out.”
“You can see it?”
“Hell yes! Massive fire, one set of marker flares still going down. They’re really catching shit! “ It wasn’t really a giggle, not really.
“Correct course to target.” It was an order.

“Fifteen degrees starboard. We’re a bit low too.” Mullins pressed the right rudder pedal, watched the compass rotate. “O.K. I’ve got her.” Mullins watched a one degree course change further starboard, and a river back to Port.
“There’s a dark patch in the middle of the fires- I’ll try to hit that.”
He’d have his work cut out for him; the thermals from the fires beneath were already making “Jane” jump like a crazy horse, the control column was wild in his hands.
“Wait for it, wait for it,” ‘Jane’ rocked so hard that his head banged hardback on his headrest.

The cockpit was flooded with the light of the orange fires of hell beneath them. Something burst into the cockpit, grabbed at him, faintly, over the noise of the engines. The roar of the fire beneath and the incessant concussion of the bombs, he could hear that it was screaming. It was Smythe; he was evidently crazy, he was waving his large service revolver, pointing it down the narrow companionway towards the rear of the plane, firing twice. Through the thick baffle plates of his headphones the shots were muted, subsumed into the generalised roar of the engines, the bombs and the flak barrage that surrounded them. For a single horrible second the cockpit was incandescently bright as a searchlight passed over them.

Smythe fired again and something black, the size of a dog, that looked like a spider, pounced on him, grabbed his hand and bit all his fingers off. The gun fell to the floor, the port wing fuel tank exploded, and the wing folded in onto itself near the root. The fuselage rotated port longitudinally with terrifying rapidity and Mullins was thrown hard against the canopy.

He awoke several thousand feet lower in freefall to discover that his parachute had been irreparably torn on his progress through the canopy. He landed, long seconds later in the burning ruin of an apartment building, and died instantly on impact.Mitchell’s parachute did open but the immense column of heated air from the fires carried him to the border of the main conflagration where he broke an ankle on landing in a back kitchen garden where he was captured by a detachment of middle- agedVolksturm anti aircraft gunners who took it upon themselves to douse him in diesel fuel and ignite him where he lay. He died when one of them took pity on him and cracked his head with a hoe.

Smythe was still inside the ‘Jane’ when she landed in what had once been a municipal park, travelling at some four hundred miles an hour, at the moment of impact he was struggling to access the bomb-aimer’s escape hatch while fighting with the thing, whatever it was, that had eaten his fingers.

Short Fiction

Share this:

Saturnalia

Share this:

Share this:

Night flight from Lincolnshire to Nuremberg

Share this: