stories from alfiedog.com

‘Killing Senior Officer Stewart was murder, plain and simple. And we both know, Brogan, that you should have been given Life.’ Brogan glared his defiance at the Governor and sensed the unease of the younger of the two prison officers who had brought him from his cell. He almost spat his reply. ‘The point is that they chose to call it Manslaughter and six years is what I got.’

I’d had enough. My life was crumbling around me. At my peak, I was worth something in excess of a million dollars. That was before ‘the incident’; the incident that ruined my existence. The murders took place in 1946. Sam Clarkson came home from the war and found his wife living with Simon Christie, a man who had evaded war service and made a fortune dealing in rubber and petrol. Sam strangled Christie, caught his fleeing wife, strangled her and then committed suicide. I was an orphan from that moment. No one has cared for me since that day.

At breakfast my mother handed me The Herald Sun folded to expose the story of a man killed by the person he had rescued from the Yarra. The rescuer’s name was Michael Dodge. “Think that’s your friend, Gene Simmons didn’t he change his name to Michael Dodge?” she asked. “He was a troubled lad.” “Could be. Do you have a number for him?” “I think so. Somewhere. I heard neither hide nor hair of them since you joined up.”

It began with the toilet seat. It was down. Roger never left the toilet seat down- it had been one of the sore points with Joyce before she divorced him. He squinted early morning eyes and propped the seat back up. His cell phone beeped as he slid a razor down his cheeks. Roger glanced at the heading -a message from Joyce’s sister. He finished shaving, wiped his face, and looked at the text, a broadcast to about twenty people. Joyce was dead. He called the sister without putting the phone back down. “Sarah, Roger. What happened?”

She watches the droplets of rain dribble down the window. The evening shadows conceal me as I watch her, sitting, holding The Record Book. I know what’s about to happen and I swallow the rising bile. Maybe she survived? After the rain is the time for waiting, a time for those left to remember and to nurture those caught in the rain. I wonder how the others are coping. How many were caught this time?

Jesse Livermore stared at his tormentors, slowly eyeing each one of them as his gaze moved around the poker table. He held the best hand, he knew it . . . but why would Bart Blackwell raise him only to have “One eyed” Jimmy raise again? Jesse smelled a rat. Looking down at his cards Jesse still held four kings. Nothing had changed except that if he called these two men and lost, he would lose his horse, “Cactus Jack” and it was a long walk to Reno from Virginia City.

It was a shock when a thin shaft of light suddenly shone out of a hole in my bedroom wall. How long had the hole been there? Given the busy wallpaper, it could have been a while. What had the previous tenants watched me do? My mind raced back through bedroom time, searching for potential embarrassments. There were a couple but, considering the watchers had gone, I didn’t need to put my head in the oven. I arched my back, bent my knees and looked through the hole. The room was bare. I kept looking, believing that because the room was illuminated, something must happen. My thighs started to ache and I knew I had to re-arrange the furniture.

“Jeremy, please hurry! I can see the bus coming. Come along, quickly now,” Victoria Rayder shouted to the dawdling boy. “Aw, Mom, do I have to go to school? It’s too nice out. Come on, Mom. Please, let me stay home.” Jeremy Rayder dashed up the narrow lane, skidding to a stop in the loose gravel alongside his mother. “Look what I found,” he said excitedly, waving a grasshopper in her face. The bug’s legs clung to his index finger; antennae twitching and eyes bulging out from a blue-green face. “Yes, I see it quite clearly, Jeremy. You don’t have to stick it up my nose.” Jeremy giggled, a playful spark lit up his eyes. “Yeah, and it’s green, too. Just like snot. See!”

Have you ever been frightened? I don’t mean nervous I mean that cold, empty dread that you feel when they tell you that you might have cancer. Wendy is being sick again but, so far, I feel normal. I have done my best to make the cottage airtight by using anything that comes to hand to seal the windows and doors. We are in what is known technically, I believe, as a Hot Zone.

To the south of the city on the edge of the Great Forest, where the roots of the trees are kissed by the waves of the sea, stand the ruins of a once imperial palace. Directly in front and either side of the crumbling entrance gate, are two weatherworn statues. Once bedecked with gold and jewels, the now naked stone is a reminder of the fickleness of fate. Some of the old ones still worship these statues, for in their hearts’, the tragedy of King Gerrain and Queen Sukor still lingers. The young ones however, regard these symbols of the past with undisguised resentment, for it was the strange, untimely, and simultaneous deaths of the royal couple that instigated the war.

A horrific screech echoed through the crypt as the massive door was forced open, not an easy feat even for someone with preternatural strength. An all too familiar voice called out a quick greeting. “Hello Jeffrey? Are you risen, Love? Sun’s down and I fancy a bite to eat. Want to join me?” A loud groan answered the cheery call. Jeffrey Bellington-Kemp managed to pull himself up in his coffin and snarl at his ex-wife. “I’m really not feeling up to it tonight, Velda. Go away!” He fell back into the dark satin folds and closed his eyes.

It was early dawn when they set out. Frost crackled under the shoes the cobbler had stitched for them in the clear light of their mother – the Moon – full and pregnant, burnished by star shine on the night of the equinox. The eastern sky glowed faintly salmon, the day promising to be bright and fair. As they strode along the cliff top way the first rays of the sun reached out to them across the water, blessing them with a golden promise. They turned to it, hands raised in gratitude, and watched the glittering pathway widen towards them. ‘Our Father blesses us,’ whispered Moonambel, awestruck.

When Gavin woke up at the usual time of 1pm he was pleasantly surprised to see an oblique band of golden sunshine creeping in over the bedroom windowsill. It beckoned him out into the so-called garden – a minuscule pit of a plot next to the steps that led down from street level to the door of their basement flat. It was paved with uneven flagstones, and a few straggly weeds struggled up between them. In the far corner, however, there was a leggy buddleia, and as this was late June the sun was high enough to touch it for a few hours around midday.

I’ll leave my notes and universal translator here so you can read why I jacked in my job to explore different worlds for my enjoyment, rather than my bosses’ profit margins. I’m not going into how those profit margins were shared but I’ll be the year’s top earner at the end of this trip if all goes well. It’s why I’ve stuck it out for so long. The penalty for disobedience is an electric shock applied to one’s intimate areas. Not fun I can tell you. I’m still the best worker, despite having the treatment five times, which is why I’m here and not dead.

Being orphaned at an early age, I was left in the care of a bachelor Uncle who was a retired Admiral. Considering his former vocation, the family surname of Broadside, was often the subject of many regrettable jokes. He was a rather lively old man, with deep-set brown eyes and shaggy, over-hanging black eyebrows. His weather-beaten face and rubicund nose, were more the result of his years at sea than indulgent living, as was his hobbling gait, for he had lost his lower right leg in a battle.

The blonde woman over the road was painting her front door in British racing green. ‘And about time,’ Emily Shanton told herself, finally letting her brilliant white net curtains drop into their usual position. ‘Given she has visitors at all hours all week her house needs a decent spruce up. Mother said women who always had visitors could never be up to any good. Mother was so right and on so many things.’ Emily paused. I shouldn’t have thought that. Mother would’ve thought it. She relished thinking nastily. Mother was difficult. Will I ever forget about her? I won’t be like her. I won’t. She was a tyrant. I must make myself think nice thoughts.

At mid-day the sun casts no shadow, so why should I have even suspected? The shadows puddled beneath everyone, as if hiding from the fierceness of the sun. Behind the shelter of my sunglasses and hat brim, everything was two dimensional, stripped and faded of colour, black and glaring white. The street was crowded. We had bumped against each other. He apologised. We exchanged casual words about the crowd and the unseasonable heat. Inside the building my companion still appeared two dimensional, black hair and black eyes in a white face.

From the deck of his houseboat, Michael Delaray shielded his eyes as he looked across a stretch of muddy water, towards the sandstone cliffs towering above the Murray River. The morning sunlight and squawking cockatoos weren’t helping the liquor related thrashing going on behind his eyes. He needed headache pills to dull the pain. He turned from the view to go back inside when a voice stopped him. ‘Hello! Oi you, Ciao.’ Michael turned toward the riverbank where he’d moored the houseboat the previous day. He saw nothing but dry vegetation. And now I’m hearing voices. How much did I drink last night? He turned back to the door.

I stand at the window and look out towards the harbour. Eric, carrying Bryony, is standing where the May Princess is berthed, the boat that takes the tourists out to the May Isle. He’s talking to someone, probably a local, but it’s too far for me to make out who it is. He moves on, coming towards me, doing another circuit of the harbour. “Don’t go too near the wall,” I murmur, as the waves break over it. It’s a strange child we have, Eric and I. She loves the sea and every evening, no matter the weather, Eric has to put her in a sling on his front and walk round the harbour. There, she will dance her chubby legs against his body and gurgle her delight. It’s a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep.

The demon which made Jack The Ripper is roused from its enforced dormancy. Something disturbed the spirit which had burrowed deep into the bedrock beneath the Old Ford Lock after The Vessel had been dumped off Lea Bridge. It knew it had been dormant for a time. It had just forgotten how humans measured that most nebulous of concepts. Separation from the host did that. The ruckus continued.

One hundred thirty faces canted upward, staring at Stephen. Such smugness, he thought, such presumed entitlement while waiting for this odd little man to speak. An old woman topped with an obvious wig sat in the front row and stared raptly up at him. How much she looks like my mother, who never really listened to me. “There’s no point in taping this, my recorded voice won’t convey what you’ll hear. I speak without a microphone to small groups because electronic amplification strips out the psychic flesh and leaves a shell of words.