Time slip

Ben Elton is perhaps best known as a comedian, but there are not many laughs in his novel Time and Time Again. It does raise a few wry smiles, but it's far more thoughtful than mirthful. It starts with an interesting premise: suppose you could go back in time to change one thing - what would it be?  I have no idea whether Ben Elton's version of Newtonian physics that explains the time shift is even vaguely possible, but it's a challenging idea. Before you start working your way through all of history to pick your moment, let me warn you - for purposes of the storyline, you're limited to arriving in 1914. Does that give you a clue?

The tale centres on Hugh Stanton, a former soldier who has no personal ties since the loss of his wife and children in a motor accident. A bunch of  Cambridge university professors persuade him to travel back to the months before World War One and charge him with a mission. He has to prevent the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo - the event generally accepted as the cause of the war - and so save millions of lives that would otherwise be lost in the conflict. But it soon becomes obvious that the academics' theory fails to take account of history's power.

Stanton arrives in the early twentieth century with good intentions, but quickly paves a path to hell as it becomes obvious that he must take several innocent lives in order to carry out his instructions. In fact the bodies fall fast at Stanton's hands and the butterfly effect of his killing begins to change history much earlier than the Cambridge Dons had planned.

Stanton spends much of the book trying to put right the wrongs he has caused, with much soul searching over the moral questions raised by his meddling. It makes for fascinating reading as an adventure story unfolds, but makes the reader agonise along with Stanton over the justification for his actions. I'd recommend it.

Crisis of confidence

Crisis of confidence. I am not sure how to rescue my self worth. Time was when I would sail through life knowing I could do anything if I put my mind to it, but nowadays I am never sure. Job adverts call but I block my own chances with doubt and never even apply. Ideas flood at work but I fear the negative response of my employers and carry on, plodding, without achieving anything remarkable. I have hit mediocrity on my way down and will probably soon be beyond repair. The skills I have, the ones I have practised and polished for decades, are no longer valued. Who cares that I can craft a sentence well or even spell? They have machines that do it now, although they cannot tell the difference between wood, would, wooed and wowed. They even think that color is correct, and ax, center, sympathize and split infinitives, but no-one cares. My knowledge is dismissed as irrelevant today. I am a dinosaur, a dodo, and my skill set is redundant because my mindset (apparently) is wrong.
****************

May 2011

Stones

Tumbled stones glitter in small baskets on the market stall; quartz, citrine, fluorspar, opalite. Alongside each small cairn is a sign that promises good health and fortune. The rainbow of colours is linked to something called chakras. There is no explanation and I am forced to assume that those who believe in the power of stones will understand the strange word. Small, pink cards offer good luck and balance from agate; relief from loneliness through dolomite; power over depression from smoky quartz. Hard to choose: do I need jade’s promise of longevity, energy from obsidian, or peridot’s ability to attract wealth? In the end I pick a small, pointed, purple one, because I think it is pretty.

****************
July 2011

Scapegoat

Can you hear me?
I’m here.
I know you hear. No?
I need the truth
You knead the truth
So I am nowhere
Know where.
Not here but where?
I wear myself out
Trying to be heard
By the herd.
I wear your guilt.
You take the gilt
And the gingerbread.
Ill bred. Your head
Held high. Your soul -
Sole-less,
So less than clean.
A fact of which
You’re conscious.
Your conscience.
Out in force
Shouting:
Can you hear me?
I’m still here.


******************
January 2012

Shadowman

You know how sometimes you catch sight of something out of the corner of your eye and it scares you because it looks like a person in the shadows? You glimpse it, you turn to take another look, and then it morphs into your coat hanging on the door back, or a table lamp and a pile of books or something. Well it’s constant in my life, happens every day, but I never get used to it because once, many years back, it really was somebody, and I know one day he’ll be coming back.  

I had just got home from work, not that I worked too hard in those days. To be honest I was a bit of a waster and was the first to bleat if conditions weren’t exactly how I wanted them. I was drinking hard, ate too much of the wrong stuff, smoked worse than a kipper and was probably heading for an early grave. So I walked in the house and threw my coat and a load of other stuff onto an armchair as I passed it, went straight to the cabinet and poured myself a large whisky. Just as I looked back into the room, there he was; large as life and way more ugly, sitting in the chair where I’d just deposited my gear.

I did a double-take and checked again but he was still there. He looked like he’d been dragged out of a grave, all grey and dusty. His suit seemed like it had once been well cut, maybe Italian styling, but old fashioned. I could see the skull through the skin on his face and he just stared at me. He had no eyes in his sockets but I knew he was staring.

“Listen,” he said, lifting a bony hand and pointing at me, “I’m here to give you some advice.  Unless you want to end up like me you have to lay off the booze, cut out the smokes and watch your cholesterol. You’ve heard about all that karma stuff? Well it’s real, and you already have a debt to pay. We have a job for you to do and you’d best be fit for it when we come to call.”

“What job? What do you mean? Who are you? Who’s we?” I tried to ask, but it was no good. I was talking to my coat.  

Do I need to tell you how terrified I was? Some beast from beyond had paid me a visit with a personal message from…who? Heaven or hell or some place I never heard of.  Next morning I joined a gym and I’ve been living the clean life ever since to keep myself in trim. I daren’t do anything else because I know he will be back some day. I’ve seen his eyeless face every single day to remind me: in dark corners by coat stands; in the way the curtains hang in my living room; in my rear view mirror. So far he’s always been a shadow man but one day will be for real. When he does come I want to be ready for him. Though whether I’ll use my new fitness to help him or fight him off I’m not so sure. 

****************

Originally written for three word Wednesday. The three words are highlighted in bold.. 

Earwig

Prison life really suited Jimmy the Wig because of his habit. Jimmy’s nickname didn’t come from any lack of hair; he had such a thick thatch of black locks that many people thought it was a rug, but no. He got his name from being a natural earwig. He couldn’t stop himself eavesdropping conversations. He was compelled to do it, just like that disease, that obsessive compulsive thing, you know.  So being in prison was just right for him, surrounded by people with nothing better to do than discuss old exploits and plan new jobs for when they got out, and Jimmy became what they call institutionalised. He was happiest behind bars.

His only troubles came from the other side of his compulsion: he felt driven to pass on whatever he overheard. If he thought he was imparting a particularly exciting piece of news he would gesticulate a lot, so it left no-one in any doubt what he was doing.  At first it ruffled a few feathers when he chose to reveal something to the hotter heads in clink, but an understanding Governor solved that by putting him in a cell with Clothears Jones: deaf in one ear and didn’t listen with the other. Wig could say anything he liked and Clothears would nod and hum and har occasionally to make Wig think he was paying attention. That went on for years and life looked settled.

Wig had a number of jobs around the prison. They’d tried him on library duty but it made him edgy because no-one was allowed to talk in there, so they swapped him to cleaning the chapel. He loved that because he often overheard juicy confessions about dirty thoughts. So one day when he was polishing the brasswork and Phil Skillett came in to talk to the Padre he thought he was in for a treat. He was; just not the kind of treat he was expecting.  Phil’s nickname was ‘Fillet’ and it wasn’t just a play on his name; he was renowned for his knife skills and I don’t mean he was a good cook! Anyhow, him and the Reverend disappeared behind the curtain and Wig could hear the prayer bit as he dusted his way closer to the booth. He was comfortably in place when he heard Fillet admit he was the one who had shanked one of the screws two weeks ago.

Well that was too much for Wig. He dropped his cloth and dashed out to find someone to listen. Give the boy his due, he went looking for Clothears, but as bad luck would have it the cell was empty. Wig turned back just in time to come face to face with a chatty screw and he couldn’t stop himself from telling. He was still talking and waving his arms around when Fillet came back from chapel and saw him. Of course he realised straight away what was going on and Wig’s days were numbered.

They found Jimmy dead in his cell two days later and everyone assumed that Fillet had got to him somehow, even though he had been questioned almost non-stop since the secret was revealed. At the inquest, though, the sawbones reckoned there wasn’t a mark on him and there was no hint of poison. The coroner had no option but to call it natural causes, though I know he was wrong. I know what it should have said on the death certificate. To protect him from Fillet’s attentions the screws had Wig put in solitary confinement. I reckon he died of boredom.

(596 words)

Originally written for Three Word Wednesday, but I can't remember what the three required words were now. 

Taxidermy

Just finished reading The Taxidermist's Daughter, by Kate Mosse and it's had quite an effect on me. I've read other Mosse titles (Labyrinth & Sepulchre spring to mind) so I knew she doesn't fight shy of a bit of unpleasantness, but this still had a few shock points to deliver. I won't spoil the story for you (I don't put spoilers in reviews) so it's hard to give you a detailed summary of what it's about. It's set in 1912, though for some reason the pictures in my mind were set much earlier than that. I don't think the actual date is important really. The story would have worked over a couple of centuries, I think.

Connie Gifford lives with her father in an isolated house on the edge of a marsh in the Sussex village of Fishbourne.  He's a taxidermist, though he prefers the title "stuffer of birds". He's also a drunk. Connie can't remember her childhood, owing to an accident that her father refuses to discuss. It left her with amnesia and occasional petit mal seizures. It's clear from the start that something is odd in the village. A weird ritual goes awry when strangers turn up to watch it, and hundreds of songbirds fly out of the church when someone opens the door. Lots of the birds die, setting the tone for the remainder of the book.

A few days later a woman's body is found near Connie's house, apparently drowned, but actually having been strangled by a length of taxidermy wire. Connie is concerned for her father's state of mind, because since the ritual he has been drinking more heavily than usual. Could he be responsible for the murder? And just who can Connie trust from the village and elsewhere?

I'd like to say that I didn't work it all out before the reveal, but that's not true. About a couple of hundred pages before the end I knew 'whodunnit' and I was pretty certain why. Let's face it, writing that kind of background makes it fairly obvious that the climax of the story must be connected to Connie's accident, though the actual details were grislier than I dreamed in my mind's eye. As a writer of sorts I am perturbed when I create truly cruel or gory scenes. Let's just say I'd be really worried if I'd described what Ms Mosse delivers in this book.

Having said that, I would recommend it as a creepy mystery book. There's a bit of history included, and an awful lot of technical detail about what's involved in the craft of taxidermy. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to carve a chicken again without qualms.