The Company of Birds, excerpt #FridayFlash #fantasy

I recently started work on my next "serious" novel (well, one that I pin big hopes on). So here, for your reading pleasure, and because I haven't done it in ages, is a spot of Friday Flash. The novel is entitled The Company of Birds and no, I have absolutely no fucking clue when it will be done. It's going to be a bit on the GrimDark side, since I'm totally blaming GRRM and Mark Lawrence for showing me the way. 

YES. I drew the bird.

* * * *

A dull thud shuddered through through my study and the pigeons that had been sunning themselves on the window ledge took to wing in an explosion of feathers. I paused, pen in hand. What in all the gods’ names could cause such a disturbance? There’d been the time when one of the first-years in the Department of Alchemical Engineering had mixed dragon’s breath with salt-of-Byr, “just to see what would happen,” as he’d put it, but the resultant detonation had been mild compared to this.

I’d felt this deep in my collarbone. Not quite alarmed just yet, I rose and approached my window. Not that I’d be able to see much, because I looked directly into the roofs of the Greater Library. Theoretically, my window faced in a northwesterly direction, toward the harbour. All I saw were terracotta tiles with most of the green glazing worn off by the decades.

A thick pillar of black smoke rose into the clear, late-summer sky.

I stared stupidly for a moment until it registered that whatever burned must be large, possibly one of the warehouses by the docks. The positioning was about right. This time of year there’d still be large quantities of marine oil in stock, not to mention the first harvests.

Damn.

A tap sounded at my door.

“Come in,” I called.

Big blond Isha shouldered in. “You might want to come take a look at this.”

“What”?

“C’mon.” She gestured once then ducked out again.

Whatever it was must relate to the explosion and I was torn between returning to the translation with which I’d been busy and following my colleague. After all, it wasn’t as if Uitenbach was immune to its troubles. Nowadays there always was some sort of trouble.

I sighed and hurried after Isha. I’d been sitting at my desk for the past three hours. I needed a break and my stomach growled in a way that told me I’d probably skipped lunch.

Isha waited for me on the corner, and I fell in at her side.

“You walk too fast,” I muttered.

“You spend too much time at your desk.” She flashed me one of her irresistible grins.

I liked Isha. The Ouertian woman was everything I was not—tall, commanding and well-muscled. Then again, a woman needed confidence and brawn by the cartload if she wished to claim the title of maga in the Faculty of Alchemical Engineering.

We made an odd couple, but then again magas were in short supply here at the academy. We stuck together when and where we could. And the gods knew, these days I needed all the support I could.

The Greater Library had a terrace with an actual sea view, and that’s where we headed, and we were not the only ones with the same idea. An assortment of faculty members and students trailed along, fish caught in a current.

“It’s a container of grain that spontaneously combusted,” someone muttered. “Safety regulations have been slipping.”

“Arson,” Head Librarian Matthias, said under his breath as we passed his desk.

He shot us all filthy looks as we traipsed into the hallowed grounds of his domain, as we were no more than lowly first years without the correct documentation.

I blinked in the sunlight and the dry heat of late afternoon. I’d definitely missed lunch. About a dozen or so staff leant over the railings and shaded their eyes against the glare, and Isha and I elbowed our way into a space of our own. The bay was redolent in its usual azure dropping off into cobalt farther out in the ocean, but where the big warehouses of the Fadari family stood was an inferno. We could see the bright orange tongues in great detail and thick black smoke roiled into the sky like some living thing..

Isha gave a low whistle. “Those flames must be at least eighty feet.”

“Not much work going to get done today,” I said, and pointed to the people crowding the rooftops below us.

My companion gave a low grunt.

Alarm bells added their bronzed voices to the muted roar of the blaze, and we watched as some of the engineering magisters rallied their students in the Ruby Square below. This was bad enough that the academy was sending in support. They wouldn’t expect academic staff to pitch in, but the first-years would definitely be expected to “volunteer”.

“Glad that’s not us,” I said to Isha.

“We should go help,” she mused.

“You maybe. What can I do?”

She laughed. “You’d get caught in an updraft and turned into a cinder.”

Our colleagues muttered among themselves. By all rights we should be more alarmed, but after the riots these three winters past, I was certain none of us could dig deep enough to worry more than we already did. This was yet another symptom that all was not well in Uitenland.

Freeze Frame Reality, excerpt #FridayFlash

This is an excerpt from a work in progress entitled Freeze Frame Reality. It's not done yet, and it's [shock, gasp, horror] contemporary fiction with not one whiff of supernatural elements. I thought I'd share this today, as it's still a project I'll finish at some point. 

* * * *

I don’t want to be here. I’ve parked beneath the willows outside the house where I grew up and the attrition is glaring—the way the once-cheerful blue paint on the shutters now sloughs off in uneven strips; how the banksia threatens to completely engulf the veranda; and the choking Paterson’s curse with its purple blooms and prickly grey-green foliage has swarmed what should have been my aunt’s rose bed. The place looks as if no one has lived here for ages, the inhabitants fled. In a sense they have. First my brother—off to college and now building houses he can’t afford to live in himself. And me, the prodigal niece, the failed photo-journalist, who’s spent the past ten years of her life photographing bereaved parents, old people evicted from homes and angry residents dissatisfied with substandard government housing. Always wading thigh deep through others’ grief. This is not how I imagined to come full circle.

If I tabulate what my life has amounted to up until this point, I have not achieved the things I set out to do and, like a kicked dog, I’ve whimpered back to the kennel. Only now I must be the strong one. And I don’t want this. The truth remains that there is no one for me, to enfold me in a motherly embrace and whisper that it’s all going to be okay. It’s not going to be okay. What’s worse is the knowledge that if I stop kicking, I’ll sink beneath the surface and the waves will cover me. I’ll be forgotten. No one will speak my name.

I don’t have anyone else to blame but myself.

The bleakness of my situation makes my eyes prickle and I suck in a deep breath. I can do this thing. Tim and I knew it was coming; knew one of us would end up returning. I just didn’t think it would be me. Aunt Emma’s old. There’s nothing for it. For almost six years I haven’t visited the woman who raised us. That particular brand of guilt bites hard but my limbs are leaden. Instead of getting out of the car to knock on the door, I breathe in and out. Deep, steadying breaths. I should have a cigarette but my mouth tastes grungy and my lungs have a disturbing gurgle when I cough. I smoke too much.

It’s only ten in the morning but it’s hot, and the cicadas scream in the stand of gum trees at end of the street. The sound is a shimmering curtain reminding me of long summer afternoons wanting to go play outside. It’s not the wisest of ideas to be out of doors here mid-summer but it’s early October now and already the morning sun has a nasty sting once I summon the courage to get out of the car.

The aluminium gate slams shut behind me—yet another memory, of the times I came home from school, happy to be here. Only now the clash of metal on metal has a ring of finality to it. There’s no turning back.

The black wrought-iron knocker is heavy in my grasp and the hollow thuds ring deep into the house. I try to imagine the place as it once was: cool dark passages with quarry tiles worn smooth after the passage of many feet; sepia portraits of long-deceased relatives keeping watch beneath hooded eyes. The old people in those photos used to fascinate and scare me to death by equal measure. Aunt Emma used to pick me up so I could see them better. She knew all their names and who was related to whom; what they did, where they lived and when they died. Their stories are mostly forgotten now, as faded as their prints. Their names are reduced to carved granite markers in cemeteries.

I’m ready to knock again when the door opens and I look down into the face of a middle-aged coloured woman almost two heads shorter than me, but at least four times as broad. Her powder blue tunic is embroidered with the Williams Trust logo.

“Hi, you must be Sara Veldman.” I hold out my hand.

She squints up at me then smiles, revealing teeth that are far too white or even to be anything but falsies. “Miss Owens! You look nothing like in the photos. Come in! Come in!” The photos...that no doubt depict me in various awkward adolescent poses. The only ones of me as an adult are scattered around assorted social networking sites. Thank God I look nothing like in those childhood photos. I used to have a penchant for cut-off denim shorts cut off a little too high. The horror.

Sara ushers me into the sitting room where I sink into the couch. The floral print upholstery looks far more frayed than the last time I was here. The scent of mothballs makes me wrinkle my nose.

The woman remains standing. “Can I get you anything, some lemonade, perhaps? We’ve got ice.”

“That would be lovely, thanks.”

I shouldn’t delay the inevitable but now that I’m down, I have no desire to go through to the master bedroom to greet Aunt Emma. I want to remember her as she was the last time I saw her—a somewhat dotty yet bubbly old lady. My dear brother hasn’t failed to rub my absence in my face.

“She’s deteriorating fast,” he likes to tell me. “You’d better go see her before she dies. She’s not going to be around forever, you know.”

We don’t talk about our mother, Aunt Emma’s sister, who left us on her doorstep when we were very small. We don’t discuss the father we can barely remember. Aunt Emma, as far as we know, is our only blood relative. The rest are either dead or live overseas—cousins we’ve never met and, in all likelihood never will.

#fridayflash The Blackfeather Chronicles, extract from chapter 1

Picture: Wiki Commons/Jastrow

Like most of the strays the missus brought home, I was one of the many she rescued from the market. And I’ll remember that day for the rest of my life, better than I do the events surrounding my initial capture. For certainly, as one belonging to the proud race of griffins—and Ravenkin no less—I should have some remembrance of a nest, of siblings and a mother. But, alas, those memories remain locked away.

The basket was small enough that I couldn’t turn, and the scraps of linen lining it soiled by my own waste. Terrible hunger blinded me to all reason—not that a griffin cub was wont to expressing any rational thought—but when I looked into Her eyes, the ravenous fires died back and, I’m later told, I stopped the incessant squawking and yammering with which I’d apparently been painting the very air blue.

Petite Anwyn had eyes like lapis lazuli, and her skin was bronzed—not from the sun but partially, as I later discovered, due to her foreign mother. And her hair. I always loved her hair—the palest gold, like corn silk. Eventually I would understand that her complexion was far too unusual to be considered attractive, but at that moment I gazed upon her face and I was lost. Some dim griffinish race memory stirred a resonance within me and I craned my neck so that I might be closer to her.

Her gaze was filled with compassion and I knew at that moment, even as I do now, that I belonged to her. Forever.

She didn’t have to haggle long to liberate me from the beast-seller. In hindsight I reckon the man felt, at that point, that he was well rid of me—a noisy, messy nuisance. Had he known my sheer magnificence once I’d fledged, he might have driven a harder bargain.

An unfledged griffin cub, I can guarantee, is nothing much to look at. Anwyn made many sketches of me when I first came into her care. A wide gape, almost bulbous eyes. Kittenish hindquarters unbalanced with the forequarters of a bird. Stumpy wings. Instead of glossy black feathers, I boasted a mess of vaguely charcoal-hued fluff. At this early age no one could really tell whether these would turn out to be pelt or plumage.

Griffins were almost unknown back then—and still remain rare—but when I was a mere cub no one knew enough about my race to know what to do with me. If Anwyn hadn’t come along I might’ve been pecked to death by the brace of basilisk hatchlings in the cage next to me or ended up in one of the labourers’ cookpots.

Instead I was given a name, a very fine name I might add—Silas Blackfeather—and took up residence in a small villa on the outskirts of the great city of Anfi, in the foothills of the Makarra mountains.

Anwyn had a way with strays, and in her care I flourished, and it was very soon apparent to her that the latest addition to her already considerable menagerie was more than just a beast, or indeed one of the magical sports. Neither she nor her father had expected that I numbered among those gifted with reason.
I will admit that at that stage of my life I did not possess a whole lot of reason, but when I called her “mama”, it brought her up short. The rest, as they say, was history. Once I started talking, no one could really shut me up.

Now Anwyn lived with her father, Carolo, who was a slave master. Not one of these big awful sods who dealt in gladiators or bed servants, but a peaceable, average middle-of-the-road master, who specialised in the kinds of slaves who would cook in kitchens, or create and maintain garments or teach children their letters. Most of these luckless folks were often in debt, and one way for them to alleviate the problem would be to sell themselves into servitude so their younglings were better off.

Or Carolo would visit the market and he’d examine the wares. He had an eye for quality. Just like his daughter. They could both see past a rough exterior. One slave master’s runaway became Carolo’s next prized carpenter.

Before you get all uppity with me about the slave trade being bad and all, please take a moment to consider what society was like back in the days of the Old Empire. Yes, there were rich folks who treated their slaves badly but, often, in many cases, slaves were prized possessions, especially if they were skilled, and were treated better than many free men who often went to sleep with empty bellies. A good master cared for his household. He would not want to see his horse lame, nor would he mistreat the slave who raised his children.

Carolo was a good master.

#Friday Flash: How Does Your Garden Grow?

It’s an open-casket funeral. I only notice once I’ve clutched at D’s suit and left creases and tear stains in the silk after I hug him.

Don’t look, says the crow.

A dozen nightmares of animated corpses eyeballing me flood to the surface but I hunch on the pew—not quite in the middle of the church but not at the back. I’m not family. I was the daughter of the next-door neighbours. No one important. Today my funerary attire is not out of place.

The people I remember from a decade ago are older, balder and fatter. The kids are all grown up, like me. I struggle to marry faces to names. The projector displays its slide show and the dearly departed is broadcast for all present and I can’t stop the tears. I’m not crying for the departed. She is gone. I cry for myself, for the fact that I’m the one who hurts. Selfish.

A nasty little voice suggests I could have gone to visit more often and reminds me of others who will shuffle off this mortal coil next, each taking another fragment of my past; my childhood cremated to ash and scattered to the four winds. But I know the truth of it. We grow up, we grow apart. We can only mourn that which has passed. We cannot force branches together that have grown perpendicular to each other.

The sermon is bland, staid words repeated a million times before by parish priests in dry whispers that wash over those gathered like a river of sand. Vague notions of guilt remind me of the faith I’ve cast aside.

It’s all lies, it’s all lies, my atheist grandfather says from his death bed while my mother prays for his salvation.

I can’t go back. I’m the acorn that’s germinated and grown into an oak with twisted boughs warped by the wind. It’s impossible for me to fold myself back into that easily contained package that will match the dozens stacked away into neatly regimented rows.

People wonder where the soul goes upon death. They would like to believe that a new body is prepared for an afterlife. It lets them feel better about the fact that we all bear the black mark on our foreheads. It’s wishful thinking. Tooth Fairies in which big people can believe.

They play Don’t Cry for me Argentina, but the music fails to move me the way it did when I was a kid. I used to dig Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now the tune seems hackneyed, worn out from overplay. It was the deceased’s husband’s favourite song. They played it at his funeral too, though he was an atheist and they held his funeral in this very same church more than a decade ago.

We get a last chance to view the deceased once the service is over. I can’t help but think she looks pinched, a dried-out husk and the placeholder of the woman who taught me to love my garden. Why is she so small? I could lift her in my arms. The coffin is heavy lacquered wood with shiny brass handles. It seems incongruous when compared to the features of the woman who taught me to plant avocado pips and steal cuttings from botanical gardens.

I want to yell at them that this is wrong. I want to scoop her up and run with her and plant her beneath a spreading ficus so that its roots can tangle with her hair and worms can dance beneath her skin. The white satin is sterile. It is death.

Afterward, I sit on a bench beneath a cypress and watch as the family carries the coffin to the waiting hearse. The funeral director is a thin, upright man with precise movements. He shakes hands mechanically after the family have slid the casket into the back of the vehicle. Faces are expressionless, thoughts blown away with the Southeaster that shakes the plantains and rips the clouds into tattered shrouds. This isn’t really happening, is it?

The leaves are turning and summer draws to a close. I wonder about the deceased’s garden, about the plants growing there that hail from Singapore, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Mauritius. They planted her husband beneath an Iceberg rose, but so far as I can remember, the plant died within months. Will she return to the earth or will her family keep her locked away in an urn so that they can keep her near? Does she even care now that she’s gone, her essence flown to star stuff?

All that matters is here and now. My husband comes to fetch me after I’ve had too-sweet mango juice and endured people telling me the last time they saw me I was a wee sprog that was so high. My husband and I talk about normal things, like what we’re going to do later, about fabric that needs to be bought for a photo shoot and pictures he needs to print out. I lose myself in his words and dream about my garden. I need to plant more trees.

A Pearl for Anel

The collection of mudbrick homes encircled by their wattle-and-daub palisade looked dirtier; smaller somehow than when I’d departed. The thorn trees I remembered climbing as a child were but stunted stumps with no sign of the spreading green canopies where laughing doves nested. It seemed like only last season but one glance at the numerous scars standing out in pale streaks on my sun-browned forearms was all reminder I needed that I’d been away for years.

“I’ll be back and I’ll bring you a pearl,” I’d told Anel as we kissed one last time before I followed the recruiter. “The mercenary forces are rich. Wait for me. I’ll return and we can leave this place and buy ourselves a farm in the highlands. We can keep a few cows and raise a family.”

My dreams had been simple then, and had been all that sustained me when one year had become two, then three. A dozen had passed since the callow youth I’d been first gained blisters from wielding a sword.

I’d known other women over the years that I’d been gone; sloe-eyed courtesans in Ashdiri ports and garrulous Delrochian tavern wenches had all shared the pleasures of their flesh, but one woman drew me here. In my mind’s eye Anel was still the dusk-skinned beauty with a fall of mahogany hair she kept in a single braid. I still recall the feel of her small hand in mine and the way she used to twine the wild loves-me-not into flower crowns for us. We’d be the summer king and queen, and the whole world was ours for the taking.

A fierce yammering of hounds started as we began down the ridge and my grey gelding snorted and pricked his ears but held steady. The beast was possibly one of the most phlegmatic I’d owned—a seasoned destrier I’d purchased off a knight who no longer sold his sword to the mercenary captains. Such were the times. A dozen years of warfare and I too was considered an old man, though I was one season shy of thirty summers.

Children’s screams of excitement sounded with the dogs, and a ragged band both four-legged and two burst from the palisade gates to greet me halfway across the hard-baked ground. They were covered in the same ochre dust that rose in puffs with each footfall, so much so that their clothes carried the same yellowish hue as their skin.

Then the youngsters crowded my mount, the tallest among them daring to lay his hand on the stirrup. “Milord! Do you bring coin?”

I laughed and reached into a pocket for a handful of copper bits. This small change would hardly buy a decent meal with a drink at most respectable inns but to these children I must hold a considerable fortune. “Share it with your friends.” I tipped the coins into the lad’s grubby hands. He couldn’t be older than eleven summers and it was sobering to see someone who’d been born and had grown so much in the time I’d been gone.

Momentarily distracted by my generosity, the children fell behind as I continued riding. The gelding quickened his pace, no doubt under the assumption that this outpost promised a meal of soft hay. “You’ll be lucky if you get muddy water, old man,” I muttered beneath my breath.

What had I expected? The sheer poverty of my home struck me with an almost physical blow as I reined the horse in before the well. The thatched roofs were badly in need of repair and numerous walls sagged dangerously. While the palisade had been whole at the entrance, an entire section had been burned down at the back, with three of the homes no more than tumbled ruins--fire-blackened mudbrick and beams that stood up like ribs. I knew the signs well and my heart contracted. Raiders had passed through here too.

A few scrawny chickens clucked about but the place appeared deserted.

“Is there anyone here?” I called. “I mean no ill.”

The children boiled into the compound behind me and I made eye contact with the eldest. “Where’s your mother?”

“Inside, milord.”

“Call her, please.”

Movement at the doorways of several of the huts snagged my attention. Women. They hung back, raggedy shawls pulled tightly around their shoulders. Where were all the men? Uncle Shem with his bushy beard and booming laughter? Dorrick, who could carve horses out of wood that were so lifelike one could almost see them prance about? Experience informed me coldly I should be the last to wonder about their fate.

One by one the womenfolk approached, faces pinched with fear and hunger so that I could see the skull beneath the skin. I thought one was Aunt Shel, but I wasn’t sure. She had lost a lot of weight and favored her right leg. Her hair stuck out in wild white wisps on either side of her face. For some reason my tongue cleaved to my palate and no words formed on my lips.

My gaze darted from one to the other. Seven women remained, and not one of them was Anel. That was until I caught sight of one who hung back. Her belly was distended in the advanced stages of pregnancy. I think I only recognized her because of the way her hair was braided. But those sunken cheeks... Her tremulous toothless smile greeted me and I gripped the reins tighter.

“No,” I whispered then dragged the gelding’s head around. I didn’t care that the horse thirsted. I dug my knees in so that he spun with a squeal of outrage. There had been a small watering hole an hour’s ride back. Once this had been a deep pool shaded by willows. Now there’d be enough water to sustain us on the ride back to Ysul. If I rode hard, I’d meet up with my old mercenary company before they departed for the war in Abdur.

#FridayFlash: Class Outing

Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance and the air was already syrup thick. We stood at the giant wrought iron gates of Lord Innsworth’s private arboretum and botanical garden, and waited for the stragglers to arrive.

“Indemnity forms in?” Professor Spiggs asked those of us who were already present.

“I don’t see why we need bloody indemnity forms for a botany excursion,” Derren muttered to me.

I shrugged. “I’m just glad we’re not sitting in the laboratory this morning. It’s a good day to be out.”

Derren glanced up at the overcast sky. “It’s going to rain at noon.”

“Better ’n tagging bulbs in the greenhouse.”

Professor Spiggs cleared his throat and gestured for the rest of the students to gather round. “Listen up, please. This is a great privilege. Lord Innsworth the Twelfth Earl of Curriemore hasn’t opened these gates to the university in more than five years. Not after the last, rather unfortunate incident...” The professor mumbled something only he could hear before he brightened and looked about. “Please stay on the demarcated paths. At all costs.”

Derren nudged me in the ribs. “Oi, what’s he talking about?”

“Be buggered if I knew.” I’d only lived in the city of Wynnton for the past two years, and everything was a bit of a novelty to me.

“I see Marcus isn’t here,” Derren said.

“Too bad for him then.” Secretly I was glad the fool hadn’t joined us. I still hadn’t lived down his last practical joke. Funny for him, yes, but intense mortification for me when the stink of fertiliser refused to wash out of my clothing for more than two weeks.

The gates squeaked open and we bunched together as we entered the hallowed grounds, clipboards in hand. There were plenty of oohs and ahs as we meandered down the gravel pathways. Our excursion was well worth chipping in the extra coin, though I wasn’t entirely certain what I’d do for meals the rest of the week.

Lush palms stood cheek by jowl with giant ficus and wild banana. Trembling spider lilies filled entire banks beneath iron woods of great girth, and I noted fifteen cycad species I’d never before had the pleasure of seeing or, indeed touching.

Even Derren, who’d gone on several field excursions to a number of exotic destinations, was impressed. “Good lord, this man’s sitting on more wealth here than the king himself,” he said while scratching at an insect bite.

“And now for the gem of the collection,” Professor Spiggs said once we’d finished goggling at a very rare violet-flowering squamous tree orchid.

Dutifully we trooped after the man, who trotted ahead in a state of agitation. We might find this excursion a highlight of our rather mundane botany degrees, but he frothed with childlike excitement. He led us to a wide expanse of lawn where a portion at its centre had been fenced off. No one could miss the multitude of “Danger” signs that had been posted. These ruined the organic flow of the garden’s layout, and immediately had me wondering what could possibly be so threatening about the bulbous mass of gnarled trunks in the middle of the enclosure. The tree—if it was that—had no leaves. Only short bare branches crowned its top.

“And here we have,” said Professors Spiggs, who was quite out of breath, “The most dangerous caudiciform plant in the world. Behold the balon tree from the Arceneedian Isles. This is a very small specimen. In nature they are at least three times this size.”

We all stared, slack-jawed. This was the botanical equivalent of the unicorn—rare and almost impossible to lay hands on. Lethal too, if it was the flowering season, though few botanists had gone close enough and lived to tell the tale.

“Now we will approach, but with caution,” the professor said. “And keep well away from the tentacles.”

“What tentacles?” Derren asked loudly.

I didn’t have an answer for him because even a bit closer, the tree looked dead. The only sign that it was alive was a white frill with a shocking pink edge at the seams, where some of the branches met. It fluttered slightly in the breeze that stirred and the scent of honey was strong.

“Sorry I’m late,” someone shouted. That someone was Marcus, who managed to turn his scruffy clothing into a fashion statement. He jogged up and wasn’t even out of breath. Bastard.

I sighed and shuffled slightly behind Derren.

Spiggs beamed. “So good of you to join us, old chap.” Then to the rest of us, he said, “There, do make a space for Marcus so he can get a clear view.”

We shuffled so that Marcus got a prime position. Several boots came down on my feet, and I wasn’t certain how many of these were unintentional. The professor then continued to extol the virtues of this plant, his voice dwindling to a nasal drone in my ears while I stared at the balon tree.

Tentacles? What tentacles? Apart from the way the damn tree’s fringe moved in the wind, it was perfectly motionless, its olive-flecked bark shiny in the sun. Because I was at the back, there was no one to see me pick up a pebble from the ground. I bit my lip and debated on the wisdom of what I was about to do. Then I thought, ah fuck it, and threw the pebble, hard.

It hit the trunk with a resounding clop and the damn tree moved—so fast none of us could react in time. A snakelike thing expelled viciously from its crown, coiled around a hapless student’s middle and dragged him screaming into the slimy maw which opened to receive him. We stood staring as the tree writhed while Marcus struggled gamely. Then, with an audible snap, he was gone.

“He didn’t sign his indemnity form, did he?” Trust Derren to be the first to speak up.

Friday Flash: Kissing the Dawn

“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” I told Sam. “You honestly think she cares that you fry yourself at sunrise?”

Sam sniffed loudly and rubbed at his eyes. His tears stained his cheeks red—a serious downside for a vampire showing strong emotions in a public place. Luckily we were on the roof of Senator Park and no sensible mortal would think to hang out up here an hour before dawn.

“I don’t see any point to this existence,” he wailed. “Everyone I love’s gonna grow old and die, and I’ll be all on my own.”

“I’ve got news for you, old chap. You’ve been all on your own since the day you were born. Being a vampire ain’t gonna change that. You just think you’ve got friends but they’re all back-stabbing little shits in the end.” I glanced toward the east, where the night faded a little lighter on the ridges of the mountains. Not enough to give warning tingles on my exposed flesh but I’d run from enough sunrises to know when it became dangerous for our kind to be out and about. Below us the city still slumbered but the first delivery trucks were already on the road. I could sense the world stirring.

Sam hissed at me then; showed a flash of fang. “Easy for you to say. You’ve got years on me. You’ve had plenty of practice.”

I almost felt sorry for the poor bastard. He sat on the edge, legs dangling into the void, dreadlocks half obscuring his face. Sam was just some tranced-out hippie kid who had turned up undead in my stomping ground a year ago. He had no idea who his sire was and no one laid claim to him, so I had sort of took him under my wing. Not that the ungrateful little wretch showed me any gratitude.

I merely stared at him then lit a cigarette. I had time for a smoke before I vanished back inside. He glared back at me and, to give him some credit, lasted almost two minutes before he looked away first. Sure, I had years on him. A whole five years. Like that made a difference when we were both way beneath the vampire elders’ notice.

“I went home a year after I got turned,” I told him. “My sire told me not to. Told me it was stupid.”

Sam’s head shot up, though he didn’t look at me.

“I went to see if my cherry was still okay. I missed her, you know. She never did find out what happened to me. My supposed ‘death’ was a missing person’s report in the False Bay Echo. I’d gone out for a pint with my mates at The Vic and I’d never come home. They found my car parked by the beach. No sign of my body.

“So, I caught the train out one evening. It was winter so the sun was long down. Figured I could hole up somewhere then catch the train out the following night, or something. I’d make a plan. I just needed to see her. Maybe go on to see if my parents were still around but I really, really wanted to see Marissa...” I had to stop then. I didn’t want to remember.

“What then?” Sam mumbled.

“Oh, she still stayed in the backflat on Seventh Avenue.” I laughed, the sound bitter. “My luck was in. She was home too. I even went so far as to press my nose against the glass and peer in like a regular Peeping Tom. She was there on the couch. A new boyfriend all cuddled with her. They were eating popcorn and watching TV. He had his hand on her breast.” I didn’t add that she looked about eight months pregnant.

“And?”

“And nothing,” I said while I ground the cigarette butt under my boot. “I’m still here. She’s there. We get on with life. We make new connections. Some of us live for three score and ten years like they say in the Bible. Some of us live until we’re stupid dumb-ass little shits who sit outside and wait for the sunrise.” With that I left him.

Yeah, I reckoned it would bother me if he self-immolated. Kissing the dawn—as we called it—was not uncommon but it sure as hell was a painful way to ensure final death. And, though I’d never admit it to him, I kinda liked the kid’s company. His naïveté perked up my nights. But it wasn’t like I was his boss or anything. Free will.

I shut the door to the roof firmly behind me and trotted down the fire escape stairs until I got to the sixth floor. Senator Park never really slept. Even now my Tanzanian neighbors argued loudly in the apartment next to mine. The ganja smoke hung heavy in the hallway and I slunk into the one-bedroom unit I shared with Sam.

My muscles ached—my body still recovering from me accidentally having partaken of hepatitis-infected blood. Chilling out seemed like a very good idea. I threw myself down on my mattress, checked that the black-out curtains were drawn to firmly and picked up the dog-eared copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein I was trying to read for the nth time.

A key grated in the lock shortly before sunrise proper, and Sam slunk in. He didn’t say much but threw himself down on his mattress, an arm slung over his face.

“Chicken,” I said with a smirk then made a few squawking noises.

“Fuck you.” The tossed copy of Penthouse that came my way fluttered like a dying bird. I was pretty sure Sam and I would be dodging quite a few more dawns in each other’s company.

Friday Flash: The Fool

As a rule, I don’t generally do tarot readings for myself but I’m always willing to make an exception after a glass or three of wine. It’s a Friday night. The wind outside shakes the trees and rattles the windows in their frames. I should be out. I’ve gone as far as opening my cupboard to stare at my black threads, but not one garment has caught my fancy.

Why go out and get pissed in the company of people who annoy the living shit out of me when I can get blind drunk at home without all the predictable aggravation? Of course this sudden reticence on my part is out of character, but for fuck’s sake, I’m allowed to indulge in the occasional fit of pique.

The others will still be there next week. They’re always there at The Event Horizon, their fat-rolls stuffed into too-tight corsets or PVC pants as they blink drunkenly into the narcotic strobe light when the DJ spins Marilyn Manson, VNV Nation or Rob Zombie.

Tonight is different. This sense of the sacred aches in my bones like nicotine withdrawal. Or perhaps not the sense of the sacred, but rather the realization of the futility of routine, of breathing, of waking each day and going through the motions, a mechanical animal that sweats, eats, shits and pisses its way through its miserable existence.

My chest is tight and my breath wheezes past my lips. I reach for my packet of smokes but my fingers twitch away. The ember of the last cigarette still smolders in the heavy glass ashtray to my left. Instead my fingers tap a complex rhythm on the dark wood of the table top. They have a life of their own tonight, the most animated parts of my body, which is frozen, hunched over the deck of cards resting on a square of midnight velvet.

The red wine has gone bitter on my tongue, my throat thick from smoking too much. Nevertheless, I gulp more Pinot Noir and grimace at the taste. I’m almost ready for that second bottle and the wine hasn’t touched sides. The world is still in too-sharp focus while the liquid churns in my belly.

The cards are cool to the touch and I shuffle them thoroughly while I concentrate on my breathing, on clearing my mind of all the dross that’s been nagging me this past week and, especially expunging the clutching nightmares that have shaken me from sleep almost every night.

Slap, slap, slap.

Three cards in a row lie face down on the fabric. I clear my throat, the sound resonant in the echoing domain of my lounge. I flip the one in the center over to reveal The Fool, resplendent in his green jacket with a tiger gnawing at his leg. It’s too early to tell exactly how he’s dignified. I hate the way he grins at me, like he beholds some secret of the universe; knowing I’m still going to discover it.

The next card, on the left, reveals the Nine of Swords. Cruelty. Blood drips from the blades. I’ve never liked this card. I try figure out how The Fool relates to Cruelty and growing unease stabs at me. Perhaps I’m rushing off into a direction I don’t want to take. I might face the cruelty of those around me. I’m taking a definite plunge. It could be inspired. It could be folly. But there are people sharpening their knives, slanderous tongues and wicked thoughts twisted against me.

Yet I don’t know. It’s always easier to read the cards for someone else, where I can cut loose and babble incoherently, and take cues from my client. Then I can play with words in such a way that makes it appear that the cards impart wisdom, advice for the future, when all I’m doing is giving them the meaning someone else wants to hear.

My fingers tremble when I turn over the last card. The Tower. Destruction of all illusions, of the entire world burned up by the wrath of Shiva’s eye, of the earth opening to belch forth flame to devour saint and sinner alike.

With a growl I sweep the cards together then shuffle them. They hiss against each other for what feels like forever but this time, once I clasp a neat deck, I fan the cards out across the velvet.

Eyes closed, I trail a finger across them, from left to right and back again until one seems like a better option than the others.

I flip the card over and my pulse stutters. The Tower’s dirty orange-and-black tones scream at me. A hiss escapes my lips as I repeat the process. Shuffle, cut the deck this time, shuffle some more. Make three piles of cards which I randomly stack together. Shuffle. Pick another card. Look at it.

The Tower. A strangled sound wrenches itself from me. This would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that The Tower’s showed up in five of the readings I’ve done for paying clients this past week.

The shatter of breaking glass from the kitchen has me lurch to my feet accompanied by a tortured rasp from my chair’s legs. The black-painted walls close in on me and I catch a glimpse of my pallid features in the gilt-framed mirror hanging over the fireplace. My mouth opens and shuts without sound for a heartbeat or two before my legs obey my need to investigate the nature of the disaster that awaits.

Wine pools among shards on the slate of my kitchen floor. Pyewacket washes her white mittens on the counter, her eyes cold emeralds as she briefly pauses in her ablutions so she can cast a glance in my direction.