Merc's Shorties

Merc's Micros

2009-03-01T15:57:00.003+01:00

And here are a bunch of 30-word micros from the November 2008 Your Messages challenge:

She preens and pimps, coddles and massages bodies and egos; she does sums in her head and wonders at the fuss about women who say they want it all.

When my feet grew too fast for my shoes, I ran barefoot. Later I danced in Blahniks, ignoring the blisters. Bunions split my slippers, but soon I won’t need them.

When the curly-haired ticket collector refused to take mine, I was devastated. Months of electric fingers now fizzled and deflated my dreams. Talk about rotten rejections! No don’t!

Pikelets aren’t little pikes, crumpets aren’t a baker’s trump of crumbs and a goblet of tea has little to do with teetotalling goblins. But they all make a fine breakfast.

I lolled in my glass of champagne, puffing on my pink Sobranie. I’d forgotten a thing or two: where to flick the butt, and how to get to my negligee.

I pretended they were glass when I blew them, wanting them to last longer than a blop.
So I hung them on my unpierced earlobes and listened to them tinkle.

He was a bit of a leech, you know. You had to unfasten each of his suction caps; but then the blood would flow. He had two hearts, it seems.

The soldiers killed all the dogs. They were scared the dogs would warn us they were coming. They were scared, my mother said, her mouth bloodied. They were so young.

The only silence in my house is that of the peeling paint, the straining pipes and the glowing rafters as the fires lick into the corners of my tiled life.

I believed my watch but it had stopped. I’m late for my thirties and I doubt if they’ll let me in. But I’ll sneak in and watch the pc tick.

When I told them I was leaving France they all wanted a spot in my suitcase. They came in wheelchairs and with crutches. Frog legs ain't no dish in Austria.

I have a champagne taste on a beer income but when I wear my necklace of bottle tops, pour ale into my slipper and close my eyes, I’m almost there.

When you cry you may not be noticed while in the act. It’s just afterwards that your puffy face and bleary eyes give you away – and the empty tissue box.

King Pipper covered his boobs with some macramé and with his alpenstock skewered the tenderloin, had a chomp at the flageolet and then washed down the poppadom with a demijohn.

I am learning to go with my gut when smelling roses, jasmine, BO, the odd whiff of rotten-egg gas; how easily odours can turn and undo what the eyes see.

Peanuts. I lift my face and get a big slurpy kiss. I swing up on his tusks and he tiptoes down the stairs, out the door and into the sun.

Transplanting is an art in some places; in others it’s a crime. Take Oz. You can’t even slip in on a banana skin so don’t think about catching a tumbleweed.

The bottle of silence was on special offer. She drank it all in one go, hoping it would be enough. It almost was, but it couldn’t drown out her hangover.

Some see you as a bloom of welcome. But I know you. You cling, you cloy, reminding me of years I left behind while racing sunsets to escape you, Frangipani.

My husband always says he’d have to kill me twice – once to get me six feet under and the second time to stop words from coming out of my mouth.

His getting pregnant and having a baby turned the world upside down. But his somersaulting began when he found his clitoris and saw that it bore the tiniest of penes.

My German-speaking parents spoke to me in English. My daughter’s mother tongue is French but I’m not. She speaks to her father in argot while I just reminisce in strine.

Endings are always tricky. Closed? Open? So are beginnings. Once upon a med res? And if eyes glaze over in between? Call the salvage police and duck. It’s a memoir?

- They’re just like big rabbits.
- It’ll bring down their carbon footprints.
- They’re high in protein.
- Low in cholesterol.

- No way am I going to eat Skippy!

The devil admired the way the pair of red stilettos disguised her. What if she were to keep just one and give the other to Versace, or was that Prada?

In 1955, Dame Edna of the lilac hair first waved her gladioli in the Land of Oz. Fifty-five years later the flowers had become extinct. You’d better believe it, Possums!

Underwater underwear is what they wear Down Under. Dangerous are just the sharks that care bubbles about the gender of the wearer and the ability thereof to hold his/her breath.

Stiletto condoms

2007-11-30T10:02:00.001+01:00

Now lives at Merc's World - writings.

Tock tocking

2007-11-29T11:08:00.001+01:00

They made me take off my bra and the gold chain round my neck. It had been my grandfather’s and used to be linked to the fob attesting to the passing of time. He died before the war could get him. My grandmother died of cancer as did her son, my uncle. Dad hung in there until the pacemaker batteries died. Mum’s willing herself away.

As the tunnel closed over me and the tock tocking dulled my senses I figured I’d had a good run for my money. I’d seen the world, known love, never lost it, shared my life and my words. I was at peace with myself for those few minutes. I get the same feeling every time I take off in a plane. Then I forget.

But it’s different now. How much time is left to do all the things I must do? An essay to finish. What madness made me commit to such research? But commit is commit. All the sins know that. Do I need to revise them? Leave them part of the story. A novel. Almost there. At least I’ll be saved the rejections. Maybe I’ll have time to be there for Mum. And to see our daughter’s graduation. But there are so many papers to go through, mess to clean up, arrangements to make. And there’s the dog.

I’ve put the gold chain back on. It just links to itself. No interfering fob anymore. Time is today. Every moment. Move on. Regrets? Not really. In fact, none at all. Not even the smoking, but I’m glad our daughter doesn’t. Maybe I put her off. Maybe I saved her life, for a while at least. The chain gleams in my fingers in the way of old gold. Tonight, I’ll be getting back the results.

Christmas goose

2007-11-28T16:17:00.002+01:00

Now lives at Merc's World - writings.

The Memory Box

2007-11-27T10:03:00.002+01:00

Lives on as The Memory Pod at Kaffe in Katmandu.

Uncle Henri

2007-11-26T08:57:00.002+01:00

Has been revised and is now at Fictionaut.

Knives in their lives

2007-11-25T12:21:00.000+01:00

The message went out. Reunion! Knives in their lives. Come one and all. So they came from all times and places, some flying through the air and landing pointedly in the trunk of the oak tree, others clattering through the door, others still, just plopping into the grass.

First one to speak was the penknife her father gave her when she flew up from Brownies. “She whittled boughs with me to make arrows to protect her from the brown snake. She flicked me shut and hung me on her Guide belt.”
“What about me?” said the flick-knife. “I´m longer than thumb to little finger. My point can find your heart. He got caught at the border and said he just had me for protection, used me to clean his nails, peel the skin from potatoes. They didn’t buy it. Confiscated me, let him go, though.”
“He was in love,” said the Solingen bread knife. “And I was a gift. But I slipped and cut into her finger. Three stitches. She´s ignored me ever since. He sometimes winks.”
“We just try and hang in there,” said the three plastic knives in chorus. “Keep a low profile. She forgets we´re fragile.”
“Fragile/smajile,” said the cheese knife with the Emmentaler holes in its stainless-steel blade. “Now it´s a matter of design, darling.”
Victorinox concurred, blowing on his toothpick attachment. “But they don’t take us along anymore.”
“We tried,” said the hot-pink Swiss army knife. “But perhaps it’s better like that. Have you seen the riff-raff at the airport? In those plastic boxes? Exposed for all to see?”
“They could put us in their checked baggage,” said the Finnish hunting knife sulkily from inside its sheath.
“Er-hem,” said the oil stone. “You´re all much better off at home with me. Let’s sharpen up now.”

The Halo

2007-11-24T09:41:00.000+01:00

I was sitting in my office waiting for the phone to ring. It hadn´t rung for a while, but I was a patient man. That was my business. Being patient. Then at the slightest whiff of something off, nosing in to sniff things out. My speciality was divorce. But with all the counseling couples were now taking up like a sport, my forte was as strong as lavender in a pot of steaming tar. No match. I was scraping under my fingernails with the letter opener when the phone rang and I almost dropped the receiver.
“Do you do thefts?” a woman´s voice said, lisping the last word.
“Lady, I´m a private eye. You need the police.” I was about to slam the phone down and go back to my nails, when she said. “Wait!”
It wasn´t just the urgency of her voice that kept me connected, it was a certain timbre with husky Lauren Bacall feel to it. I could just see her. Redhead. Had to be.
I leant back in my swivel chair and tipped my hat into my eyes. “What’s your problem, lady,” I drawled and then heard her sigh.
“I´ve been robbed.”
“Police?” I had the feeling we´d been there before.
“They´ll think I’m crazy.”
“Maybe I will, too.”
“Please.”
“Shoot, lady.”
What she said next sounded like “halo”.
“Your what?” But business was business. Nutters also got into trouble. Maybe it was code. “Someone pinch it off your head?” Geez, I hoped she had money. My time wasn´t free. “Lady. Hope you can pay. If you can’t, I’ll have to hang up. I’m a busy man.” Yeah. Nails were waiting.
“I´m sorry,” she said. “Of course I can pay. But you have to believe me.” There was a pause. “How did you know?” she said.

Trashion passion

2007-11-23T10:25:00.002+01:00

Forthcoming in 50 Stories for Pakistan.

Of witches and parents

2007-11-22T10:19:00.002+01:00

now lives at Merc's World - writings.

Floating

2007-11-21T12:08:00.003+01:00

Lives on at Kaffe in Katmandu.

Name of the rose

2007-11-20T11:48:00.000+01:00

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

When Romeo tried to find out, she followed up with: “Wherefore art thou?”
The swain grumbled as he dusted himself off.
“Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” Juliet yelled.
“In the bloody rosebush.”
“Huh?”
“The ladder fell down.” And off he went to capitulate. “I’m a swain, see. Got work to do.”

What’s in a name, Bill pondered. Swain. Swan. Swoon. Who?
“Who is Sylvia, what is she?”

No swanning me, Sylvia thought. Here he goes getting me into trouble now. That’s what you get when you stop a girl living in the woods. She can’t see the trees for the roses. No one can spell that name, anyway. Slyvia. Salvia.

It’s no fun getting called Saliva at school. Spit and dribble. Yuk. And then when you get older and apply for management jobs, they send you letters inviting you to an interview, expenses paid, but it’s addressed to Silvio. Who? Yeah, so I wear tights and keep my hair long. They saw through it. “Sorry, we were expecting a man?” But they let me keep the change for the trip home. Home? Ah, back to the woods where the trees are covered with climbing roses. Substitute whatever you like for “rose”, as long as it’s fragrant. What’s in a name? Try clothes.

Clothes make the man. What about women? Turn on the pc. Clothes make the person; any avatar on Second Life can tell you that. Have another go, Bill. They’re working on making the roses smell. Scratch ‘n’ sniff. Don’t need names. Just fly. Do. Be. Do-bee-do, as a mate of mine once said. Watch out for the sting, though, and the thorns that can scratch when you fall back into reality.

Marzipan dreams

2007-11-18T12:45:00.000+01:00

From the moment he saw her looking down through the glass panes into the kitchen, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He usually took no notice of the people milling up and down the stairs that led to the rooms where coffee and pastries were served. He knew he was on show; the pastry cooks always were at Dehmel’s. When in Vienna, one went there for the best pastries in the world. It was probably Schnitzler’s fault that the old coffee house exploited a touch of Blue Room voyeurism.

On the way down from the first-floor rooms, although you had to keep moving, you could see through the glass how the marzipan was rolled. Finished products were displayed in a vitrine at the entrance: the mini ex-Chancellor waltzing with his tall blonde Minister of Foreign Affairs; Tina Turner; Bill Clinton.

A pause in the movement on the stairs caught his eye. She’d stopped the traffic. She was staring at his fingers rolling the mixture of fine almonds and sugar. He felt her gaze caress them as he kneaded. He added a drop of rum to the mixture and felt a look in her eyes silk over his cheeks. He blushed, kept on kneading. Then his fingers began to move more quickly as he rolled and tweaked the thick fragrant paste. Sensing a movement, he looked up from his ministrations. The figures on the stairs again had taken up their perpetual motion, blurring the pause that she had been.

With new fervour his fingers began sculpting the marzipan mass. He wanted no colourants. Wanted it natural. Although he couldn’t be sure if she’d ever know how he felt, he piped a thin stream of chocolate onto a white ice-sugar label: Reclining Nude. Maybe she’d see it in the vitrine.

Albanian cognac

2007-11-17T15:40:00.000+01:00

He didn’t go off with the others to the Gasthaus.
“Why not?” I asked.
“I’m Tschusch,” he said.
I was familiar with the derogatory expression the Viennese used for anyone that came from the East of their border. They couldn’t always tell, of course, so it was sometimes used when someone spoke funny. I’d even been called that myself when I tried to get my tongue around the local accent.
“Me too,” I said.
“Nah.”
“S’truth.”

He’d come from what was now Kosovo. Had worked hard and drew a small pension he rounded off by helping out with the dirty work.
“Tschusch work,” he said. “You don’t do that.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.
“Maybe some sandwiches? I can pay.”

I cut some black bread and spread butter, then I added three types of sausage. He’d worked hard on the house. I wanted to do it. “No pork,” I said. “It’s all turkey clone.”
“I don’t mind sausage,” he said.
“Aren’t you Muslim?”
He shrugged. “I like salami.”
“And wine? Want a Spritzer?”
“Just water.”

We sat on the bench and he told me about when the Russians had come and he’d lost everything. He’d started again. Nineteen cows, a house. Then came the cleansing. “I’ve got nothing left to lose,” he said.

When the fires raged through and water became scarce, he started to cry.
“I have to go home,” he said. “Just for a week. See how things are.”
On the day he left he’d had a haircut and clipped his eyebrows. I gave him some cuttings from the garden. “Their roots are soaked; they should last the bus ride.”

Last week he came by and pressed a small bottle into my hand. “Albanian cognac,” he said. “Made the same way, in the same place, for 500 years.”

Imagination

2007-11-16T16:49:00.000+01:00

She’d known him for ages, through work, as it was with all the men that she knew. They’d always got on, talked shop and joked, and ignored any frisson they might have felt. Then they lost touch, at least for a while.

“I’m coming for work,” she said on the phone.
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Take me to my hotel?”

She stood at the counter while he held her case. “Just one night,” she said to the man at reception.
“A double room, Ma’am?” the clerk said with what she felt was the slightest of smirks.
“Single,” she said.
“Then twin beds,” the clerk answered in statement of fact.
She shrugged.

She poured him a drink as he sat on one bed. She reached him his glass and sat down on the other. He raised it and smiled. She hesitated. She thought she’d imagined the back of his hand fleet over her breast as she sat down. She shook her head slowly. “Cheers,” she said.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “My wife …”
“You didn’t tell her?”
He shook his head.
“Never shop talk?”
He nodded.
She thought he looked sad, just for an instant. Or maybe she was imagining that, too.
“How long are you staying?”
“Just the night,” she said.
“Will you ring me before you leave?”
She nodded.
“I’d better go now,” he said and drained his glass. “Have a good meeting. It was good seeing you.”
Good seeing you, too, she thought.
She watched him walk down the hall, saw him turn, give a wave. She raised her hand limply, and the door shut behind him.

The next day at checkout she phoned as promised. “It was good,” she said.
There was a silence at his end. She waited.
“You didn’t imagine it,” he said.

The list of smells

2007-11-15T11:11:00.001+01:00

"The List of Smells" now pongs on at Tumblr.

Sweet dreams

2007-11-14T16:18:00.001+01:00

now live at Merc's World - writings.

My numbers

2007-11-13T11:18:00.001+01:00

You’re doing it again, and this time by numbers. And what if we go phonetic for a spell? Won, too? Tree? I love trees and that makes me glad I can’t lisp. For. For what? 5? Got me there. Can I rhyme? How about skive? I’ll go German for sex. 7? Has to be heaven, but I really love ate. Just to clarify, I hate ‘ate. Germanic No! then. And can I sneak in a big fat hen? (0 responsibility taken for PC or not 2.)

It’s not really the numbers, it’s the words. I get calls from dead parents since they always come through when I’m not engaged. Hubby loves wearing jungle-green lace, so no more talk of undies, please. Rubber gloves? But darling, I only wear mink, synthetic of course. Basically, though in any pack there are just a bunch of jokers. Did I mean to say that? I’m surrounded by tiles which makes it easy to clean the ice-box. Who needs a fridge anyway? Sox? Much prefer sex, but that’s kind of hard in the washing machine. I don’t live in a house, so that takes care of the bedrooms. I don’t have a handbag, but I do have a couple of very close friends; ok, some are my husband’s. I do not drink alcohol in units. Not everything needs to be metric! I don’t count birthdays and have lost track of parties. I prefer red to blue, orange and green. There’s a school next door, but no one stops at the gate. They all go inside for there’s safety in numbers. Yet crowds really scare me. Has that got something to do with the Comet? I do not cook. Why do you think HE gets to wear the jungle-greens? Sorry, my slip. But then, I’m immortal.

First love

2007-11-12T10:31:00.002+01:00

Forthcoming in the charity anthology, Not in the Brochure.

Bangles

2007-11-11T11:13:00.000+01:00

The wireless telephone started it all. Now if she could just work out how to bundle her thoughts into those electric waves. They had to be in small packages. Ten words at the most. Something like: Help me. I’m at the corner of Smith and Weston. Or maybe: Help. Floodwaters rising. Can’t swim. If she got it completely right then there could be a GPS thingy. They did it in CSI, so it was possible. She wouldn’t even need an address.

It really was the next step. But it had to be in the right hands, or minds. Like anything technological, it was just a tool. It was what you did with it that was important. But this would be more than a tool. She’d have to build in something that did a scan of the heart. That would make it a bit exclusive. She’d have to work out an algorithm that wasn’t judgemental. Ethics had to be a part of it, otherwise what was the point?

It could all be channelled into a bangle, a sort of wrap-around Velcro thing that you could tuck under a sleeve. Or in places where it was too hot for sleeves, it could even be see-through, or invisible. Yeah. Make it invisible. But the heart thingy would have to work.

When the bangle caught their help cries, it would relay them to a central in each city. She’d have to deal with the politics of the day. Go international. Some countries would make problems, of course, and it wasn’t always the ones that you assumed. But it was early days yet. At the central they could sound the alarm and help would be on its way.

She scratched her head. Telepathy was the next step and she was determined to find a way.

Chicle alert!

2007-11-10T12:31:00.000+01:00

I can’t tell a cliché from a chicle, except that the latter is Mexican. I can chew on them both for countless hours, which probably explains why I like Ferdinand. So let me take the bull by the horns all the way to China. I tend to jump out of the frying pan, so here’s my bull story.

Ferdinand is an alpha bull. He loves to smell flowers and is gentle and sweet. One day, he got hit by anosmia and couldn’t smell anything anymore. But he remembered how his horse friends would nibble the flowers he’d get his nose into, and he loved horses nearly as much. That’s why I took him to China. It was tough getting him on the plane to Xi’an, but I dressed him in a pink coat and we went economy with Virgin. They’re not too fussy and even said we could fly to Mars with them once the route was up. But we had China in our sights now. Ferdinand had always wanted to see Emperor Quin’s terracotta army, not so much for the soldiers, but for the horses. He was very gentle and didn’t break a thing. Told you he was alpha.

On the way back we detoured over Mexico. Ferdinand wanted some of that gum. I’d told him that we had Chiclets at home, but he wanted the real thing. Before I knew it he’d swallowed a whole 500gm serving and was well into chewing his cud by the time we landed. He burped his way through immigration and at the scan desk a huge blob of gum in his belly came up. Chicle alert!

Seems Chiclets are on the soon-to-be- banned list and Ferdinand copped it for smuggling the stuff. They took him away and it broke my bleeding heart.

Jungle greens

2007-11-09T11:42:00.000+01:00

He’s strutting down the main drag carrying a black attaché case to match his high heels and stockings. His legs and chest are unshaved. His jungle-green bra matches his suspender belt and panties. Nobody looks at him. They’re not even averting their eyes. They just don’t notice.

My husband dreams in media res, in colours and scenes and wakes up in a sweat before any epiphany. That’s when I say, tell me, and he does.
“Can I have it?” I say.
“You’re so greedy.”
“Ha!”
“What do you do with them all?”
I grin.
“I don’t want to know,” he says.

There’s the one when I gave him a glass with a hairline crack and red wine seeped over his new white shirt. There’s another where the tiles in the kitchen were falling off the wall, and when he tried to catch them, they just fell more quickly. Once he’s given me his dreams, he forgets them, he says.

I don’t analyse his dreams, I just play with them. I can sit for hours doodling and moodling.
“I don’t want to go there,” he says.
“Where?”
“Into that head of yours.”
“It’s no big deal,” I say.
“I can hear little cogs creaking away.”
“That’s because I’m exploring stories.”
“I don’t want to go there. Not with this last one.”

When he was wearing his jungle-green undies, a writing mate had come to stay.
He told her his dream.
“Can I have it?” she said.
“Hey, but it’s mine,” I said.
He looked at us both and shook his head slowly. “Why don’t you just share it?”

My writing mate hasn’t done anything with his dream yet, and my little cogs keep skipping past the jungle-green lace. I guess the corporate drag queen’s on hold, pending a future board meeting.

Happy?

2007-11-08T12:08:00.000+01:00

Hey, what’s this for? The Book of My Face Spice? You already know my name, my age, my sex, my town, my friends; you’ve got my pic, and my accent. And now you ask me all these happy questions. You fire them at me, triggering a cacaphony of smells: warm milk and frankfurts, cinders, doonas, wet stones and slime, and pink marshmallows.

I hear shouts and screams and gentle warbling. Songs and shudders paint the walls.

Einstein’s tongue is licking the fine hairs at my nape as we roll with the pigs in the magic of mushrooms. Giggles like bubblegum burst over my face and clog up my nose. I am dying. I am flying. Memories mingle with flowers and brickbats, soaked in aromas of vegemite jam. And there are the dragons, the ones that I fight with. The red ones, the blue ones, the lizards of the land. And the land, it is dry, yet the waters are rising and there’s a green goo at the end of the road. Or was that your nose?

Rights, you ask? Who has rights these days? Secure rights? Right to security? I hear the gallop of oxen and morons. Of course I cry, and I’m not ashamed. I sometimes do it so much that I pee. Maybe that’s where it lives, in a five n’ ten bladder.

I ask myself many things, but don’t often get answers. I should be so lucky, but let’s not moot the point. You still with me? It’s whiskers on raindrops, and brown-paper geese and all of that’s hard to sew as a costume. But it tastes of sherbet. And it fizzes on your tongue and warms the skin on your wishbone.

You think you’ve got my number, but you forgot to ask if I were happy.

Chubby goes to Yale

2007-11-08T12:02:00.000+01:00

Chubby didn’t want to go to Yale. In fact, he didn’t want to go to any university, even though his parents had been putting money aside against tertiary dreams as long as he could remember. Chubby wanted to get a job, get money, and he wanted it now.

“You’ll get a better job if you study. Education is the key, Chubby,” his mother said.
“You’re so fifties, Mom. And quit calling me Chubby.”
“But you are, dear.”

He heard those words every time he jumped on the scales and craned over his belly to see his weight. Right. He would quit eating. He would go on a hunger strike until they gave in and then they’d have to call him something else. Chubb sounded cool. When he was Chubb he’d go and look for a job.

“I’m going to become a locksmith,” he said when he was 20 pounds lighter.
“Chu-ubb!”
“It’s good money, and I can moonlight.”
“That’s against the law.”
“Gotta catch me first, Mum. Nobody’ll see me in the dark.”

“What are we going to do about him?” his mother said to his father.

“Let him fall on his face. There’s no money in making keys. They’re a dime a dozen at the hardware store. He’ll come round.”

Chubb got a job at the hardware store. Nights he’d go out with his tools and pick locks. He’d never steal anything, but his boss marvelled at the run on padlocks. Everyone in town wanted one. He gave Chubb a raise, and in a few weeks another. Soon Chubb was rolling in it.

One day Chubb came home and said: “I’ve quit.”
“Why?” said his mother.
“I’m going to Yale. Gonna get myself an MBA.”
His father laughed. “Told you he’d come round.”
“How about a triple hamburger, Mum?”

The Package

2007-11-07T11:22:00.000+01:00

“I’ll take the package,” I said. They could have been famous last words before it all blew up in my face. Trouble was, he wasn’t listening, or if he was, he couldn’t hear me. My voice had got stuck somewhere between my heart and my epiglottis.

The package had been my dream. The way out of the day job. A now or never deal.
“Speak up.”
I choked.
“Too bad,” he said.
I stared at him with my mouth open, but no words came out. It was all over.

I skulked back to my one-window office, grabbed my bottle of Evian and gargled. Then I spat into the aspidistra. Five more years. A life sentence. I would die. Hey, why not? Even that would be better than endless Excel charts that fudged the stats. I’d go down, but I’d go down swinging. Maybe even get famous, though I probably wouldn’t be around to see it. Vincent had cut off his ear in frustration. I’d go one better.

I found out how to do it on the Web. Wasn’t too hard, although I did get my fingers into a bit of a twist with the wiring. I had a brown paper bag. He didn’t deserve pretty paper.

I got all dressed up and went to the top floor.
“About that package,” I said.
He looked at me over the pile on his desk. “It’s too late.”
“Yeah, I reckon,” I said and held out the bag.
He got up. Then everything went black.

I came to in the ward, hands and ears blown off. They couldn’t charge me in that state. Seems that the stats got burned up in the blast, but he got away with just a scratch. I’m on invalidity now. It’ll take time, but it changed my life.

Mozartkugel

2007-11-05T12:17:00.001+01:00

Now lives at Merc's World - writings

The Itch of Dust

2007-11-04T09:11:00.001+01:00

Forthcoming in the charity anthology, Not in the Brochure.

Knees of the Dragon

2007-11-04T09:01:00.000+01:00

I never could run properly. It’s kinda hard when you’ve got scales all over your body and a big fat tail that gets in the way. But I can fly. I’m a dragon, you see. Some even call me a dragon lady. I don’t know if everyone would. I smoke cigars and drink whisky, like Hemingway did. But I like to fly free.

OK. I don’t fly properly anymore either. That happens when you get old. You feel it first in the knees and no amount of rubbing them helps. I’ve got a mate who’s a leprechaun and he’s promised to bring me some golden dust when things get too bad. Trouble is, the dust makes you shrink and I’m not quite ready for that yet. I’ve got stuff to do. I’m a muse you see. Don’t laugh, it’s true.

There’s an Indian cowboy, one with a turban, who reckons that dragons inspire. Thinks they’re all magic. Wants me to help corrall his bovines, which I do with a long Prfft! while swinging over the sub-continent. And then there’s the Lionfish who wants to get into films, but not Disney, just shorty amateurs, he says. Don’t know about that one. But I’ll give it a go. Then there’s the Black Sheep and his rock guitar, who keeps getting pushed off the white-sheep islands. That one is tricky. There’s not much a dragon can do when the plug on a boombox is pulled. But I try. A judicious blast through my nostrils helps sometimes.

It’s the knees that are cramping my style. I try flexing them when I’m alone in my cave, but they creak so loudly, it scares me. Yeah, dragons get scared too, you know. It’s not all fire and nostrils, but I do have to keep up appearances.

Duck's Disease

2007-11-04T08:58:00.000+01:00

I guess Barbie thinks that she’s got it all, but I’ve got it better. I’ve got duck’s disease; my tummy’s too close to the ground. The negatives are just from her point of view. My legs are as straight as hers, but my arms are longer. It’s in the family. It didn’t bother me when I was littler than little. A bit of a bother started at school when all the other girls shot up. And then there were the clothes.

Weekends were ok, because that’s when you could wear any old thing, or new, if you had it. But weekdays in that great equalizer, the school uniform, they were the pits. You tell me how you can hitch up your block pleats to show off your knees when your bum’s in the way.

There were advantages, though. No plaster castes from basketball falls - you don’t fall far when your centre of gravity only has to plumb several inches. It was a hassle getting up on the stools in the chemistry lab, but I loved chemistry. It put us on the same level, and I learnt to follow my nose. You wouldn’t believe the stuff you can smell when you’re close to the ground. It’s a shock at first, but with practice and time you become selective.

First there were flowers – dwarf iris and jonquils and chocolate cosmos – and then there were herbs – thyme, mint and lemon balm. Today I can sniff out a pheromone from a footprint. The shoe’s on the other foot now and who cares about Manolo Blahnik. I can walk on my hands if I want to wobble and I’m told there’s something seductive about the way that I waddle. I don’t have to be stuck with any old Ken, the world is my bowl of truffles.

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Read at Open Mic, Cafe Kafka, Vienna on 2 November 2007

The Frozen Tear

2007-11-04T08:54:00.001+01:00

Forthcoming in the charity anthology, Not in the Brochure.