The Towers (Fragment)

An excerpt I have written of something I will attempt to add to as an when the mood takes me. Companion piece for a couple of earlier efforts.

'The towers are haunted.' Declared Piers

'What?' Asked Red still only in his first week at the institution, tipsy and a little incredulous.

'Yes – haunted. By ghosts.'

Red's face persisted with its doubting shape – go on.

'Ghosts are the hopelessly drunk, utterly classless ones that they never mention in campus media, prospectuses or, for that matter, acknowledge at all. I heard one of the management say they're here simply to fill quotas and that they're encouraged – financially - not to attend any lectures. They've nothing to do, so at night they roam the plaza beneath the towers looking for victims. Be careful, Red.' Piers burped for effect and then waved, dismissively at his own superstitions.

The towers to which Piers -

'Why do they call you Red, anyway?'

Red delved into the rapid retrieval part of his brain for his memorised response:

'Apparently I was a very red baby.' And quickly anticipated the follow up question

'Surely loads of people were red, or at least pink when they came out?' Burp.

'Yes – but they never thought about taking it for a nickname.'

- was referring were located to the south of The Union, the centre piece of the campus, at their base was a plaza with a small arcade of shops, three bars, a smattering of coffee shops which seemed to change name and ownership almost twice daily and a large oak at its centre. This area was seen by the richer students to be the dirtier, more exhilarating place to go drink and vomit and they would regularly when not attending their affluent lodge's rooftop terrace bar.

Some of the more tribally minded students attempted to cultivate a rivalry between the two towers – writing offensive songs, slapping juvenile flyers on the opposing tower and occasionally erecting banners inviting confrontation, but this partisanship existed mostly at the base and petered out the higher you went. Those on the upper levels tended to become jaded. On days when the lifts wouldn't work, they would have to march up twenty or so flights of stairs through the degradation of the lower, tribal floors, beginning to believe that somewhere, across the plaza, in the other vast monolith, something better existed. The upper-halfers found their discontent at its greatest during the innumerable fire alarms that plagued the towers.

*

Monday Faraday looked out his twentieth-floor cage window. There was a deep, deep blackness outside. At its centre Monday found the candle of Block Two – lit at its tip by the lights of the upper-half insomniacs and darkening down the wick as those able to sleep did so. Monday was engaging in his regular ritual of scanning the illuminated rooms for a presumably like-minded girl with whom he could have a tortuous, unconsummated relationship of distant glances.

It was only the third week and, whilst this had not had any effect on the speed with which the traditional behavioural patterns of the inmates of the towers were established, it had meant that Monday still had a number of rooms to study. One in particular interested him. It was the fourth from the left on the 19^th floor. Its light had not yet been lit during any of his observations – a late arrival, Monday assumed – and thus he had been forced to skip it and continue his gazing rightwards. He allowed himself a little uncharacteristic superstition – this was the empty room, this would be the room in which his would-be lover would lodge. He convinced himself that he was sure of it – and sure enough as the light came on in his third week (the second of observations), the figure at the window was a girl. A girl who he considered himself obliged to believe was beautiful. And it wasn't hard – she was beautiful (probably – Monday became aware at this point that the distance between the towers was greater than the optimum distance for assessing the attractiveness of a girl). Monday could at least tell that she wore comfortable shorts, ready for the tiredness that seemed to elude the upper-halfers and a baggy, white t-shirt, bearing what Monday suspected was the legend of a favoured band. Monday was struck by the incredible pallor of her skin - it was difficult to identify where her t-shirt ended and her skin began, Monday, not unreasonably, presumed there to be such a point. She appeared to be smoking and Monday briefly wrestled with his mother's contagious disdain for the habit and the intangible New Wave charm it brought. It was a brief tussle though, as it soon became clear that she was peeling and eating her cigarettes – three in a row.

'Chocolate...' Monday breathed. Then looked around the room nervously, embarrassed to have disturbed the silence.

He decided this habit was one deserving of admiration. Common sense had led chocolate cigarettes, intended for kids, to be almost impossible to obtain – and so The Girl In 19D, as Monday briefly toyed with calling her – must have gone to some lengths to get them. Further to this they were made of the most repellent chocolate outside of that intended for dogs – whose poor canine stomachs refused to process the normal stuff meaning it was imperative to find an alternative. For The Girl Who Was Ready For Bed to still insist on buying and consuming them, in Monday's mind, marked her out as stubborn and petty in the most endearing way.

As Monday tried to imagine what her breasts would look like as they ignored him in the window of a tower one hundred feet away, a chain of events was unfolding sixteen floors below him which would soon result in both Monday, and The Girl Whose T-Shirt Probably Belonged To An Ex's relocation to the central plaza below.

Garrett Bourbon on floor four had returned from his communal kitchen, where he had set in motion the oven cooking of a pizza for himself and the inebriated girl he had exercised his minimal charm upon. Reaching his room he discovered his intended to have already disrobed and to be fairly intent upon his following suit. Soon engaged in the carnal act, Garrett began to find the amount of vodka he had imbibed to keep pace with his partner's drinking was having a negative effect on his prowess. As something of an athlete, Garrett was able to continue feeding rope for some time but with little effect on his ability to climax. All the while his pepperoni burned.

The fire alarms tended to assume a curious symmetry between the blocks – if one was burning the other likely was as well. It was as if Garrett's smouldering charcoal disc had a spirit brother in the corresponding oven in Block Two. And soon, sure enough, the dreaded sirens were calling all the occupants of both towers to their doom in the plaza below.

Before decamping, Monday gave one last meaningful glance towards The Girl With Questionable Tastebuds. As he did so she petulantly tossed the butt of her chocarette into the yawning chasm between them and then chanced to cast her gaze up to Monday's window. Both of their faces moved in some way, but the distance made it impossible to tell whether they made shapes of lust, fear or disapproval.

Those at the base of the towers naturally had more time to prepare themselves for the cold plaza at night and this, coupled with their fervour for cross-plaza feuds, meant that by the time Monday had stumbled through numerous corridors and stairwells of pizza boxes, empty cans and strange civilizations of mould, the fire marshalls had already lost control. The basers, eager to use this alarm as an opportunity to inflict a meaningful defeat upon the opposing tower, had armed themselves with guns of varying sizes, equipped to shoot foam darts and were now involved in a tense stand-off either side of the plaza's central tree.

During his interminable progress through the fourth to ground floors, Monday had formed the notion that he would attempt to find The Girl Whose Dismissal Of Her Chocolate Cigarette Perhaps Meant That Her Tastebuds Weren't So Bad After All and attempt to strike up a conversation with her, perhaps based around disdain for fire alarms. Or whoever the band loosely covering her (he dreamed ample) chest were.

As he shuffled through the double doors out into the plaza the interchange of offensive chanting was coming to a head and it started to become clear that any hopes of this night ending without a dart fired were optimistic at best. Nonetheless, Monday awkwardly manoeuvred his way through the crowd towards the frontline. The traditional ill-will that the frontliners may have felt towards an upper-halfer like Monday was dispelled by the presence of the greater enemy – Block Two, and Monday found himself able to slot right in the line of fire.

A few metres from Monday stood Garrett Bourbon, feeling a not just a little insecure. In his hurry to disengage from his partner – with whom it had become clear he was going to be unable to climax – and exit his room, he had managed only to grab his boxer shorts, which he had applied to his naked behind back-to-front, and his dart pistol. He now stood at on the battle line, weapon outstretched, trembling.

Soon all there was to be shouted had been and a deathly hush descended on the plaza. The fire marshalls knew better than attempt to solve the situation with diplomacy and sloped off towards The Union to contact security. Garrett felt his outstretched, armed arm throb with an urgency he hadn't felt in his loins that night and began to feel beads of sweat collecting on his forehead. He imagined taunts from muscular males and instinctively tightened his finger on the trigger.

Monday spotted The Girl across no-man's land, in the midst of the crowd.

The slim, blue, foam dart, capped with a little plastic for extra menace, flew straight and true into the chest of a Block Two rugby player who had raised his significantly larger, automatic dart weapon before the shot even hit home.

Chaos broke loose. Darts fired in all directions, combatants and bystanders began running for cover and Garrett's mark, the angular rugby hulk charged towards him firing round after round into his naked torso. The shock of this onslaught caused Garrett to drop his pistol and turn tail into the crowd. Monday had darted to the cover of the benches around the oak and saw as Garrett dropped his weapon.

Peering over the bench into the fire fight, Monday scanned the scattering masses desperately for Her. In between a group of bandana clad Block Twoers, he caught sight of Her running to crouch behind a bin. He waited for the right moment. As the more intense fighting moved towards one of the more unreasonably priced coffee outlets, Monday made a rush for Garrett's weapon and struck out across the plaza. Ten feet from the bin Garrett's rugby assailant, retreating from a mano-a-mano assault on a Block One rower, barrelled into Monday and knocked him into the ground. The startled rugby player fired two rounds into prone Monday before turning tail and running to the doorway of his block.

As Monday regained his senses the ghost came. He saw him approach from some distance away, from around one of the dark corners of Block Two, near the recycling, he was clad in black, hooded and stumbling. Monday had heard tell of the ghosts from snatched conversations around the base, but had taken such talk to be anti-Block Two propaganda. The ghost was making a b-line towards Her bin. Scrambling across the ground, Monday loosed off a couple of rounds at the ghost but he was no marksman, and the shots came to rest gently a few metres either side of the shambling menace. Monday could now see round the bin and was horrified to see that She was cowering with her back to the assailant and was gratified to see that her hair was a deep auburn, falling in loose curls over her t-shirt which he now identified to be promoting a band whose first few albums were vastly superior to their recent efforts.

'Look out!' He shouted, with an urgency he was unsure whether or not was misplaced.

She turned in time to see the stumbling figure bearing down on her and scrambled to her feet, running through a hail of darts, across the shop front of an inflated price academic bookshop, and round the corner of Block Two towards the vast, dark expanse of the sports fields. Her ghost picked up his pace into what was almost a gallop.

Monday raised himself up and loosed another couple of rounds at the attacker. One caught the man in his back but seemed only to spur him on. As he rounded the bookshop, Monday caught a stray round in his leg, causing him to stumble to the ground and graze his knee. When he finally made it round the corner of the block, the noise of the battle died to a distant hum and the darkness seemed a lot deeper. His breath became steam in front of his face and he slowed to a cautious walk. Looking down the hill towards the sports fields, he became aware of an eerie mist clinging low to the ground. The mist was illuminated by the light of the moon. Monday was dismayed to find that nowhere in that mist, all the way to the expansive pitches could he see the telltale eddy of his fleeing love.

He clutched his stolen weapon tighter and proceeded slowly down the misty slope. The battle could no longer be heard. Monday was alone with the moonlight – and that didn't make a sound, so was of little comfort. He looked back towards Block Two, leering uncomfortably into the sky. A rustling metres ahead of him brought his attention back to his path and he stopped stock still. Eddies in the mist alerted him to a black shape swimming towards him. He fired at the blur, but Garrett's gun merely dropped the darts harmlessly at his feet.

Monday steeled himself for a fight, but as the shape got closer he found his nerves failing and everything started to fade to black.

Blacker than it already was.

POEM: The Last Bee out in Winter

'This last flower is really important.'
He thought to himself.
Little did he know,
The others had already closed the hive.

POEM: Behind Glass

As advertised, I am watching behind glass screen,
As I crush that which I had intended to love.
Whilst it took a lot to watch that first flower wilt,
It takes less and less to observe each new rot.

***

My peculiar product is in no high demand,
And I make half-hearted, half-cocked,
Attempts to dissuade potential investors,
But we come all the same.

I imagine some better practitioner,
Perhaps in love, forced to watch as I,
Diligently detached, ply my methodical trade,
Caring only for the whims of the plague.

Perhaps I, the listless driver, will break his spirit,
Using only my shuddering backbone.
And what of her? She is an equal,
In equal contempt.

POEM: The Moment at Which I Declare Myself ‘Cosmically Neutral’

At around 6:40 I reach a sort of peace:
It is true that somewhere – several somewheres – there is a war,
And that deaths march by along with the swiftest hand,
And as they wipe the face, they wipe the memories.
But still each calculated and precise movement,
Also heralds a something new – lover, brother, sister, mother,
A new atom, a new land,
Or just a molecule docking with receptor,
And it is impossible for me to say which outweighs the other,
And I do not have to live in the dark.

(Accidentally went semi-serious: normal service to resume soon)

'A Wolfman Living Without Water' or Needlessly Self-Indulgent Meta-Fiction

'A Wolfman Living Without Water', Red read, then read on.

'He gnashes his parched muzzle, with his tongue, like sandpaper, languishing stiff inside. Were you to run a hand across his back his fur would be bristly and dry – easily removed from his flesh by a mere brush. His cabin is covered by the product of his moulting as he shuffles from one side to another, waiting for something.

He's unsure why he began this experiment in the first place, but senses that it is coming to its inevitable conclusion. He imagines a wind across the scorched earth outside. As it picks up, fiercely gusting, it takes, one by one, the panels of his cabin and scatters them like a vapour trail across the desert. When this wind comes and strips his cabin bare, it will reveal his bare and powdered bones lying in the centre.

Perhaps, upon discovering his bones they will consider his actions a metaphor. He wheezes. Of course they aren't. They are the product of the purest pain one can feel. Simultaneously well defined and inexact. He feels as though he could cut himself open and remove the lump if it did not spread across his entire form. How do you amputate yourself? The Wolfman had found a way. He felt the last drops of life drying up and slowly curled upon the ground to await the close.'

'She's dumped you again, then?' Asked Red.

Francis nodded almost imperceptibly.

'Why are you a wolf-man in this one?' Asks Red eventually, sighing.

A Flurry of School-Based Flash Fiction

Marking

Mr Barnes saw the title of Matthew Hall's essay: 'Black History Month'. Recalling the disquieting racial bent present in Matthew's previous work he decided enough was enough and shot himself in the store cupboard.

Penne Passion

Mr Wilkes found it difficult to justify his fondness for Angela as he helped her glue pasta to some brightly coloured card. Later he shot himself in the store cupboard.

The Unbearable Tragedy of a Man Reduced to a Grade

Ofsted said Mark Geddes was 'shit' and gave him 2/10. Clutching the report in his quivering hand he shot himself in the store cupboard.

Trajectory

One break time, whilst he was supervising, John Gwlx took, simultaneously, a frisbee to the back of the head and some sort of fluorescent foam shape in the eye. Months later, unable to cope with his blindness and the permanent dull ache in his neck, John shot himself in the store cupboard.

'Fetch me the Geography folders...'

Timothy found an upsetting number of bodies in the store cupboard. His eyes chanced upon the pile of discarded pistols. Distraught, he shot himself.

Ace of Spades (Black as) - by...

Eleanor, a toff, wrote a trite, unnecessary and blithely offensive novel about love overcoming racism in 40's Alabama. She congratulated herself and returned to the Bridge table, glowing with a self-satisfaction which would distract her from the next couple of hands.

Eddie Stobart kills a Carjacker and Two Babies Ten Miles out of Birmingham (Part 1)

I am twisting my body in an unpleasant manner so as to look at the back seat of the car, having just noticed in the rear view mirror that a couple of babies are strapped snugly behind me. I holster my weapon, apparently out of fear of offending them. But given that I have been driving for ten straight miles, pistol in full view, without so much as a peep out of them this action seems a little unnecessary.

As I regard them, they are doing the same to me, but with doubled intensity. Their massive googly eyes lapsing in and out of focus. This focussing process seems to alternate between them – the one on the right spends thirty seconds with his ridiculous goggles boring deep into me, then seems to drift into consideration of something thirty metres behind my head, as he does this, his sister refocuses and is, as her brother was, now judging me and every action I have ever taken in my life. Then repeat.

The brother lets out a little gurgle as if to warn me that in the time I have spent contemplating my unintended travelling companions, I have veered a little into oncoming traffic and am about to have my life, and by accidental association theirs, cut short - especially short in their case - by an articulated lorry.

Which I am.

POEM: Dead Behind the Eyes

People said my friend Douglas,
Was dead behind the eyes.
Not much of a surprise really,
As he was dead everywhere else as well.

POEM: Mountain View

A musician made all of his money through YouTube,
But now Google own him,
And he is contractually obliged to spend all of his hours,
Playing kooky songs on his ukelele,
In the lobby of their headquarters in Mountain View, California.

A Flurry of Flash Fiction

Waiting for Don-ot

She shuffled in her petticoats – perhaps Donald was on the next tram?

He wasn’t.

R and Wr

A writer wrote relentlessly. Repeatedly rephrasing and wrewriting his writings until all that was written was unwreadable. After a rapid wrethink the wrevolutionaries wrejected his writings and offered the pamphlet writing contract to Robert Roland Rivers instead.

Too Good to be True

John sat, dumbfounded, as the reverend, his mule, his friend from the synagogue and all of his celtic cousins strode, cocky as anything, into the alehouse. He looked sadly at his sixth pint of Budvar and shook his head theatrically, as one might in a film – no one would ever believe this onstage.

This is a much shorter/totally different version of a story that failed to win me money in 2010 which can be read here: http://hcatswell.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/walks-into-bar.html

The Editor

‘Fwriends, Wromans Countwrymen?’ Sneered the Editor, tossing the folio aside.

The writer looked at his shoes, now fairly certain that he had lost the proofreading job.

Prolepsis/Analepsis

Fragrant Arthur Bodkin imagined himself in the future thinking about the past. A waitress clinking a spoon disturbed his daydream and he looked sadly at his coffee and sighed.

Across the Quad (Flash Fiction)

Red watched her from across the quad. Her ruby lips kissed a cigarette.
He made his move.

'Why are you kissing that cigarette?' He asked.

'I suffered some memory loss in a car accident. I cannot remember how to smoke.' She blushed a little.

Red arched his eyebrow.

'Perhaps you could teach me?'

And there began a beautiful romance.

An Extract (from something I'll probably never write any more of...)

‘I find the Sycamore to be the most melancholic of the trees…’ philosophised Francis, as sycamore keys fluttered to the ground near where he and Red were perched.

‘Why’s that?’ Questioned Red, on auto-pilot.

‘Because it sounds like the French “sick of l’amour”, “sick of love” – picture a tree so weary of the world that it is sick of love, we are sat beneath it.’ Expounded Francis, extending a Wildean arm.

Red sighed inwardly and escaped his friend's offensively poor wordplay by picturing the sycamore as a callous sexual conquistador, traversing the riverbank and fucking its way through the foliage. He saw as it tore its great roots from the soil and, trailing clods of earth over the ground, sidled casually towards a willow, stroking her canopy with one of his more tender branches.

She shudders, tenses and backs away a little. He persists, brushing one of her intimate boughs. Red sees her long, slender shoots shiver. She acquiesces and he slides a strong limb inside a tight knot on her trunk, and with another grasps a branchful of her soft leaves and pulls it taught. She gasps –

‘What’s going on?’ Asked Francis, as Red sat, glaze-eyed against the trunk of the sycamore.

‘I was imagining the trees fucking.’ Murmured Red.

Francis looked, in a way that he imagined was both quizzical and judgmental, at Red for a few moments before a wayward Frisbee caught him in the forehead, at which point he suspected they were probably on an even footing in the dignity stakes.