An Earthen Queen

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its rained for days.  Weeks really.

The sky a dull grey, clouds looming, hour after hour. There has been the odd gap, a shaft of blue but it has been rare. It has not been apocalyptic rain, not sheets of water pounding into the earth. It has been a slow tedious drizzle, falling out of the sky. A steady, stealthy, beat, bent on a ponderous breaking of the spirit, rather than a thrashing of the soul.

It has fallen on pavements and rooftops, on hospitals and schools, in churchyards and backyards and roads and playing grounds. The world is now soggy and damp.

I have not been outside much.

I want to write to the newspaper, to open the machine and type in the words. Tell them this isn’t the first time, this has happened before, centuries ago. I can’t. How would I know that? Its before proper records began.

There are several of them, of us. Spread out across the country, all with the same thought, somewhere out there, something, someone, has called the rain.

English is one of the few languages where the word queen does not derive from the word king. This is why. This queenness thing, born of the land, eked out of the soil. Britain and its earthen queens, I remember them all. Not all queens but all of them queens.

Victoria  was not one, nor the last Elizabeth, although we someone times wonder about both. The Elizabeth before that one, she was one of ours. There was Boudica with all her wildness. She was born this way too, with the rain.  And Aethelflaed, the fearless Mercian prodigy. Each of them, born ready for war.

And this one will be too, a new queen, forged from British soil, literally.

I take out ancient robes, dust them down, ready to begin the journey, to seek out the child, if indeed it is given up as a child.

The rain, a new queens insatiable appetite for the land to nurture her at birth, to give her sustenance. She might be born fully formed. She is a queen with the clouds and the land as her womb and the rain as her milk. Formed in the mud and chalk and the clay, features fine and chiseled by the roots of Oak and Beech, Birch and Ash, Hazel and Blackthorn, succoured on rain tinged with the tang of nettles and blackberries, wild garlic, and wild strawberries.

I wonder what this one would be like, a war monger, or a woman of peace. There has never really been a woman of peace born this way, of the earth itself and not the womb. There is something about this birth, this island, that births them ready for war, even Elizabeth. So almost certainly a war monger, leader of men  but a slayer of men. A warrior queen.

What will that look like in the 21st century?

Will she be born like the others? Boudica was born fully grown. It had rained for months and we stood knee deep in mud as she writhed and fought and finally extricated herself from whatever held her in the earth. She arose like a goddess before us. Her reign short but bloody.

Elizabeth had a more even temperament, she came out of the earth as a child, yet still she had found war. I remember her standing on the banks of Tilbury, still remembered for her urgent message to soldiers, bring me blood. And Aethelflaed, who was born on the winds to the west and stayed there to slay all who defied her. She fought like a mad thing and was the best with a sword I have ever seen.

But it is a different world now. What if CCTV finds some naked woman emerging from the mud and screaming she is queen?

As I start to drive I can smell it already. Its primal this birth, wild, a queen, a thing, caked in mud and grime emerging from the land, an unfurling of limbs from the murky darkness of soil and clay. The rain will stop, the weather will calm and she will be here.

Then if we are lucky there will be days of sunshine before the days of blood. I can feel her, I can feel her power. She is coming. I look at the rain, at the way it is falling, called from the sky for a fickle mistress. I want to pray but prayer has long since left me.

If this must be bloody, let it be short. Let the days of sunshine be long. Let the rain stop. Let there be calm. Before the storm. Because I can feel the power of the storm, of its attraction and I can tell, this one is more Boudica than Elizabeth and the ground that is soaked in mud, will dry and then at her whim, be soaked in blood.

If you like this, hit the button. I wrote it as prose, but am not sure it would not make a better poem. If I was going to write a novel, I think this is how I would start it.

The Mirror

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I’ve had time to think. The panic has mostly gone now. I’m just bored.

I bought the house without really paying much attention to the mirror in the bathroom. I mean I saw it, but it wasn’t memorable. I don’t remember it being cracked when I looked through, but it was cracked when I moved in.

It was badly cracked. Right down the middle, not straight of course, a kind of jaggedy edge thing. The seller had taken it down and it was resting on the floor. The wall where it had been was just blank.

It was one of the first things I did, replace that mirror. When I think about it now sitting in this tiny little space, it was like someone had opened up a seam and climbed through. I thought the mirror was too big for the space anyway, so I bought a smaller one. I hung it up and I thought it was a lot better.

I came home on the third day and there it was on the floor, the new mirror, shattered. Completely shattered. So much for my DIY hanging skill. I went out again and bought something slightly different. I had a friend help to hang it.

A few days later same thing again. I thought nothing of it at that point.

I don’t know when I first heard the howling, I was maybe three mirrors in and I think I was in the shower. I’d bought a slightly bigger mirror and the howling was quite low level. Enough to worry me and make me exit the shower. But I couldn’t see anything. I checked the whole house but there was no one but me.

Each day after that the howling got louder, I just got used to it. I had the plumber check the pipes but of course when she was there, the howling was silent. It wasn’t a dog, it was quite a human sound, like someone screaming into the wind. I think they were words but I couldn’t make them out.

Then one day whilst I was in the shower the mirror came down again and shattered on the floor. Aside from the conundrum of bare feet and shattered glass, I swore I saw something push it off the wall, as if something were behind it. I checked and double checked that wall. It was solid.

Another mirror, and this time it was just as I was turning off the shower and I heard it howling, and then it said something. Really. Clearly. ‘You need a bigger mirror’, like ‘You need a bigger boat’ -straight out of Jaws but in the bathroom. I don’t know what I thought really. In the movie do they get a bigger boat. But as soon as it was said, ‘Off the wall went mirror number 6 or 7 or something.

I should not have listened, but I did. I bought a bigger mirror and put it there. I was something of an expert now in hanging mirrors, and in navigating broken glass in the bathroom.

This time I was ready, and to my surprise while I stood there in the shower a spindly arm came through, just pushed through. My first thought, thank goodness its not a shark, which is a ridiculous thing to think, but Jaws was playing on my mind after the bigger mirror, bigger boat thing.

I got out of the shower and I grabbed the hand at the end of the arm and pulled. It clung on to me and I pulled but nothing really happened. I mean what would you have done? Yeh, turned and run. Put a mirror somewhere else in the bathroom. Just not had a mirror in the bathroom at all. Yes I understand that I did keep going when I could have stopped.

It wailed back at me again.  ‘You need a bigger mirror’, before once again, another mirror shattered on the floor as well. At this point I did actually think about a home renovation. Just add an extra layer of plaster, but also when I examined that wall there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. So was it the mirrors, it made no sense.

For the next mirror I travelled. I literally went away for the weekend to somewhere 200 miles away to buy the next mirror, because who knows maybe it was where I was buying the mirrors. Plus there is no way I could face the same mirror shop again, or even have another one delivered. I wanted anonymity when I bought this mirror. Particularly since the mirror they sold me was quite large and not recommended for bathrooms.

I had to lie about it, saying I was putting it in the bedroom. The whole thing was ridiculously out of control and my budget app, my banking app was sending up warnings when I paid about how many mirrors one person could buy. If my whole life was properly connected I am pretty certain the 10th or 11th mirror would have resulted in a medical referral and perhaps that would have been a good thing.

But I did buy a bigger mirror, when really I should have called pest control or an exorcist, renovated, sold, gone to a doctor, anything but put that oversized mirror on the wall.

Because you know then, it happened. The howling. The arm. And I pulled. And I pulled her through. I think it was a her. It all happened so quickly.  There she was in front of me, withered and dirty, greyish from a lack of sunlight, limp hair. Ghastly. I really wished for a shark in that moment. And the smell was unbearable. But the mirror did not shatter, there was just a crack, like a seam. Jagged and twisty, but just a seam.

I guess I expected a thank you but that is not what happened.  She was quick. She grabbed me. She was surprisingly strong and I was struggling but so surprised! I felt myself being thrown and I saw the mirror and I felt the jagged bits of glass as I went through it.

I was stunned. I sat there for a moment in murky darkness. The only light was from where the mirror was. Where was I?  And then I heard it, I heard her removing the mirror, lifting it off the hook and setting it on the floor. And I heard her laughing. And then I was in total darkness. In a small room that I couldn’t really stand up in and it was cold.

I panicked but that did nothing. In the darkness as I felt with my hands I realised someone had written something. I traced the word with my fingers, PATIENCE.

And now I am sitting here in the darkness and there are walls, but not my walls. Its like a little cave and I can see where the mirror is supposed to be but its not there. My fingers trace over and over that word PATIENCE.

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A Hand in the Darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I swear that this is a true and honest account. My right hand was the last thing that I lost control of and these are my last words.

I think I saw it long before I touched it. Every night for so long, that slight, barely visible creature in the darkness. A shape, an outline, not bright beady eyes, but dull grey ones that barely registered on its face. I was never afraid of it. I was never anything but curious about it.

Slotted in between a wardrobe and a box, it was an odd looking shrivelled little creature. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Maybe someone I knew once. Each night when I got up to use the bathroom, it was there. I would walk past it. I thought I should be frightened but also I needed the bathroom. Even when I was going back to bed though, I wasn’t scared. It wasn’t menacing. It was just, there.

It was on the way back one night that my hand brushed its hand. It must have pushed its hand slightly forward or something. That hand was cold and bony and I felt a deep sense of loneliness spread through me as I climbed back into bed. The next night I brushed the hand again, more slowly.

It felt like human skin still, just wrinkled and used. It wasn’t a smooth touch of hands. There was a moment of friction. I still wasn’t scared, just curious. I must have done that for a week, just brushed its hand lightly. Each time the same thing, a deep sense of loneliness inside of me, a coldness, an abyss inside my belly. It was momentary though. I still managed to drift off to sleep.

I looked at that spot during the day, there was nothing there. No sign of a way in or out. No sign anything real lived between the box and wardrobe or in the box or wardrobe or under the bed. Yet I saw it each night and I had touched its hand. It felt real.

I don’t know what prompted me to grab that hand and hold it one night. It didn’t seem to object. I held that hand for just a second at first. Its important to know that I grasped it. It did not grasp me. I held that hand and I felt the loneliness, the sadness, darkness, a void, a something. But I still did it. And then I did it again, every night. And slowly I held that hand for longer. I held that hand for longer. Me. And I think I knew but I still did it.

It was a long time before I noticed the other thing. I always grasped it with my right hand. It was a Tuesday morning when I noticed that the nail on the little finger of my left hand had gone an odd colour. I couldn’t remember how I had injured that. Later that day I noticed that the whole top of the finger had gone a mouldy grey colour. I should have gone to the doctor. Instead I took a bath and poked and prodded the finger, to no avail.

It was at least a week before the whole finger had changed colour. Then I went to the doctor. The doctor had no answers, some kind of infection, antibiotics, hospital. They could not fix it and it did not seem to spread so they sent me home to consider amputation. Extreme I know. I was desperate to get home, to get back to my creature in the dark. I told no one about the midnight hand holding, even though I knew.

And that night I held its hand again and the next morning another fingernail went the same full grey colour. You get choices in life. And I chose. Consciously now. Each night. I held its hand. Each morning another finger. Then my whole hand, half an arm eventually. And the loneliness, some days it felt like it lived inside of me. No one could reach me. I couldn’t explain what was happening. The doctors were baffled, there was talk of CCTV to see if I was self harming and I guess in a way I sort of was.

But it had gone so far and I couldn’t stop. I knew, but I couldn’t stop. Something about the void, the emptiness, the need to give succour to that soul kept me going. Kept me holding that hand. Every night. And the greyness, the dying skin, it kept spreading.

I was bedridden and there were carers coming in and no one knew what to do as the greyness just seemed to spread across my body. They wanted to take me to hospital but I wanted to stay. I argued and fought to stay. To not be saved. Inside I felt cold and shrivelled, but I was committed.

And in the dead of night, in the darkness it would creep out of the gap between the wardrobe and the box and hold my hand. For hours on end. And I knew. I knew. But I didn’t resist. I let it happen. On and on I let it happen.

So if you’re reading this I guess I’m gone now. Don’t feel sorry for me. I chose. But please leave this for the next person who lives here. I chose, right until my last dying breath. This is my true and honest account of what happened.

If you see me, if you think you recognise me beside your bed, in your room somewhere, in the darkness. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Don’t reach for me. Don’t reach for me. Don’t squint and try and make out what I am. Roll over. Go back to sleep.

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And then I Flew

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The beginning

I cling to the tree. A spindly, sparsely leafed whip of a thing that is no taller than me. I’m not sure I should call it a tree. It’s a cluster of gnarled branches with the odd bit of greenery. Its central stem only slightly thicker than the rest of it.

Its roots can’t go that deep. The top of this cliff is sand and dust and beneath it is the stone that is this edifice. The tree is the nearest growth to the cliff edge, a brave little soldier that clings on to life, much as I cling on to it. Sometimes I pour the remains of my water bottle on it. I like to think I am keeping it alive and not vice versa, or at the very least our relationship is symbiotic.

When I let go of this tree, there is nothing between me and the edge. I come here often. And I cling to the tree. I feel its papery bark sticking into my fingers. Sometimes I get splinters, small grey bits of  tree that I take home. I dig them out with a needle. Little specs of blood and bark intermingle on a tissue on a table in my lounge.  

I am scared of heights. Or edges, maybe edges.

Some people are scared of heights because they are afraid of falling, others because they are afraid they will jump. That last one has a name, that fear of jumping,  High Places Phenomenon.  Apparently its your brain misfiring, misinterpreting the signals, that’s the science stuff. In literature when its described, its more about freedom, about the void, about flying, about wanting to know how it feels. A few seconds of absolute freedom, of falling.  Its hard to describe why its so attractive as an idea.

That’s why I am here again clutching the spindly tree. I am back from the edge. I am not thinking of the landing, just wondering about the sensation, the feeling of those first seconds, milliseconds. How will that feel?  To just go over the edge, to know that sensation. I cannot control it, that urge, desire.  Not easily. So I hold the tree. I let myself imagine. Close my eyes. See it. Guess at the feeling.  But not too much. After a long time I let go of the tree. I turn around and I go home.  

I do not think it is healthy for me to live near here much longer.

The middle

I moved away. Down along the coast. Somewhere flat.  The highest rock on the beach, about 2 feet, most I could do was jump onto sand and sprain an ankle. I swam in the ocean. I drank in cutesy coffee shops. I had long lunches with friends. I held a job, bought a house. Years passed and I thought it was gone. That feeling in my belly. That thing I was never quite in control of.

And then one day I was swimming in that ocean, and I felt it. The lump. I thought a lot of things, and I thought of that again, of that sensation, of free falling. Of not ever knowing it, well at least not in a physical sense. There was a visceral sense of falling but not a physical one. I went for tests, there was a treatment plan. A diagnosis. A prognosis. A life, a future, curtailed but there behind the meds. Hope. And I went back to the ocean, to its coldness, to its salty embrace, to prepare, to deal with it all, to get my brain in gear.

But I knew. I knew the end.

The end

The day before treatment started. I packed up the car. I drove. After 20 years the old town looked different. I went to that car park, which was now much closer to the edge. They moved it, but my beloved little tree was still there. Not much taller, still spindly, still clinging on. I booked into the only hotel in town. I slept. At 6am I got up. And then before daylight came I drove back to the car park.

It was empty. I got out of the car. I took off my boots and socks. This was a bare foot trip. The car park was gravel so the first few steps were not pretty. After that it gave way to dust and sand.  I went beyond the barrier to the tree. That wondrous, spindly, spiky creature that had held me steadfast for so long. I high fived the warning sign as I went.

Danger beyond this point. It should have said freedom.

I grabbed that little tree like I had so many times before. I spoke to it softly. Remember me. And I’m sorry.  And there’s a lump, they say I will get better but I don’t want that. I asked it for forgiveness, like it was a God. And just to bear witness. I felt its bark dig into my hand. It had not changed in 20 years and deep inside I hadn’t changed that much either.

Then I looked into the sun that was emerging on the horizon. I peeled each finger off the tree. I stood beside it briefly. I didn’t scream or yell. I just ran. Only a few steps. I felt my feet pound into the ground. The dust being kicked up.  And then there was no more ground. And one foot felt the air and then the other foot.

And then I flew.

The Darkness Jar

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I don’t know where I got it. I unpacked it. But I don’t remember packing it. Its quite big, bigger than a jam jar, one of those large jars for cereal or something. When I unpacked, I just put things on the table and left them there. I ate take away on the floor for weeks. It was a break up, amicable but still difficult.

I didn’t notice it for quite awhile, but then one day there it was- a thin layer of black in the bottom of the jar. I picked it up. I put it down. It wasn’t solid but it also didn’t really move as I shook the jar. I couldn’t fit my hand in so I couldn’t feel it. I just ignored it for a bit.

And then slowly. Ever so slowly. I thought I was going mad. Every night, a tiny bit more. Maybe a drop. You couldn’t notice it until a few months later, suddenly there was more in the jar. I left it on the table, I didn’t know what to do. I’d sit and stare it after dinner. I’d pick it up. Put it down. What was it?

Then one night I came downstairs, I can’t even remember why and it wasn’t dark in the kitchen. It was just light, like daylight. I thought I dreamed it and I went back to bed. But then a few months later, it was the kitchen and the lounge, daylight all night. And the darkness in the jar was increasing, just a bit, but noticeable.

And then months later it was the whole house and there was no sleep to be had. I tried everything, I googled Nordic habits. I wore an eye mask, I bought black out curtains. Nothing worked and the jar just sat there. With the darkness inside it.

I went mad, insane, crazy insomnia. I slept in the garden, then in a hotel. I imposed myself on friends. But I told no one. I thought I must be cursed.

Meanwhile I tried everything with the jar. I tipped it upside down. I left it upside down in some weird device so the darkness would seep out. I put water in it. I put sugar in it. I put salt in it. I put coffee in it? They all just rested on the top. I googled and googled and googled again. I put it in the washing machine-I know-I didn’t switch it on. I tried the dishwasher though, it didn’t work. And all the time the endless daylight, I tried to stir it and scrape it out with a stick. I tried breaking it. I tried everything. I even toyed with a chainsaw-don’t use one on glass, its not recommended. A diamond drill. It did nothing.

And in the end I took it to the park. I am not proud of myself. I just stuck it under a bush. The darkness didn’t return. I put the house on the market, no one will know. Its not even a question on one of their stupid forms. I saved on light bulbs and electricity until it sold.

I moved far away and just disappeared for a bit. I have no idea if the darkness came back after I sold it.

Months later, I went that way again. You know those local papers you get, this one had headlines, ‘Council saves money! Park lights no longer needed.’

I don’t care. I haven’t been back. I’m not going back. No one needs to know.

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The Hour

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

One hour. Sixty minutes. Wasn’t that a television show? All useless knowledge now. Sixty lots of sixty seconds.  There’s a few of them gone now, turning over useless ideas in my head. At least I’m not shaking anymore.

We might be among the survivors. There’s another minute gone. What started it?  What happened? How are they are doing it? They just turned. Suddenly. Like a switch went on or off. They’re machines. So definitely a switch. I guess.

It could be a trap. Might not be sixty minutes.  We got the numbers from a machine. One we thought we could trust. Don’t know though. Maybe all the machines are in on it. I don’t even feel like I can trust our fridge, its not even connected to the internet. Almost nothing in this house is. Won’t save us.

I think the dishwashers turned. I guess it never liked the way we stacked. We could never agree, never did it the same way twice. Was there a proper way, should we have googled that?

They have been above the house several times. Drones I think. We hid in the cellar the first time. For hours. You can hear them, which we thought was odd, but the noise makes you afraid, stops you in your tracks. Isn’t that the idea?  They know us. We built them. They know us.

I’m not even sure how they’re killing us so quickly. We can’t leave the house. And we have to be careful of the dishwasher. And maybe my electric toothbrush, I could hear it whirring itself into a frenzy earlier, its connected to something somehow.

Big thick walls and a cellar, makes it tricky for any heat detectors to find us, thatch on the roof, thick piles of grass strapped on, apparently that makes heat detection tricky too. I love this house. I’ve unplugged the wi-fi but its still on.

Maybe there is no hope. According to our information, in sixty minutes they run out of power.

We have been counting the hours using an analogue watch. Smashed the digital thing and put it in the fridge, I’m still not certain I can trust the fridge. That’s ridiculous. The fridge is not connected.

51 minutes. The two of us. Huddled. Listening. If they come down to window height they will find us but he can’t face the cellar again. I will drag him there if I need to. He’s sat there with his head in his hands. Really now is the moment he picks to fall apart! He wanted to keep his phone. I switched it off, taped it to the bottom of the bath, smashed the thing and then drowned it.

He can’t believe the dishwasher has turned. I think if the dishwasher could, it would ‘de-socket’ and hunt us down. It was sending some kind of signal at the start. It flooded the kitchen until we turned the water off. I unplugged it, bashed it to pieces. Its lifeless now, well powerless anyway.

I close my eyes and listen. There is silence. The killing thing, whatever it is they do, is clinical. There is no survival rate. No one lying on the ground moaning. It can’t be bullets, they would have to keep going back for bullets.

Someone, somewhere has blown up their docking stations, they can’t recharge, at least we think they can’t recharge. They underestimated us, or at least they might have.

47 minutes. I listen. I’m not even sure I want to survive.

Then I hear it, a faint hum. I clasp my hand over his mouth and start dragging him to the cellar. He resists, but I literally drag him there and throw him down the stairs. I follow behind him and close the trap door.

45 minutes. The ticking of the watch is so loud. We must be in there for half an hour. Its quiet, I can’t hear what is going on outside. The air is thick and stuffy and I am worried we will die from lack of oxygen.

Its 15 minutes to go and I hear the window smash. They are inside the house. Drones, hunting us down. They know we are here. I clasp my hand  over his mouth again, I know he will scream. I can hear it buzzing above us. The cellar walls are thick, the cellar ceiling above us is thick. To get a shot of whatever it is, it will need to shoot through the trap door, get the angle right.

I make us as small as possible. I pull my legs up and ball us up, maybe it will just hit one of us.

Minutes pass, what is taking so long. Maybe it can’t get us in the shot. I can hear it sort of whirring, perhaps the watch is wrong, perhaps it is running down. Hope. There is hope.

I can’t see the watch, I have set a small alarm on it. It took me ages to figure out how it worked. I can hear the drone start to stutter. It could be faking it though, trying to entice us out.

We sit. We don’t move. We breath. The air is dank and awful.

Then the tiniest beep, the smallest noise, the alarm. It’s the hour. Sixty minutes, is up.

I can’t hear anything. How can we tell? Did the drone power down and preserve itself until we come out? Is it sitting there waiting?

I wait and wait and wait. He keeps moaning, begging for air. Why this once, could he just not be the brave one. I make a decision. I go to the trap door. I push it open a fraction and then I tell him, to go out first.

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The Line

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its us. And them. There is a line. Its been that way for awhile now. My mother talked of it. And after she was gone so did my father. Now I talk about it. To my children.

We watch from one side of the boundary. They feign ignorance on the other. But there is a line, there is even a physical line. Its a skinny strip of land with a muddy, dirty waterway running through it. The water way is artificial with a cement bottom. Shallow. It separates us from them.

We hardly ever cross it, traffic is mostly one way. I do go over sometimes. I look at them, clutching their phones, clutching, scrolling, scrolling, clutching, scrolling as if you can eat pictures. You cannot eat pictures. Or phones.

‘Hey, wanna buy a phone.’

‘No, I don’ wanna buy a phone.’

Its better if people don’t know about us. I’ve been offered a lot of phones. I know the value of a cow and it is not the value of a phone. A phone is not worth a packet of seeds, not a single seed for a phone.

They don’t say it out loud. They mutter it under their breath, AI, its AI, its AI that’s done it. Its not AI that’s done for you, it’s the system that’s done for you. I don’t say that out loud. The phone tells them otherwise. If they just got a new skill, if they were more positive, if they got rid of the toxic people, if they were thinner or had better hair. That phone that tells them all of that, but not how to live when there is no jobs and no money. Telling, telling, telling them it is all their fault.

It is a scrappy bit of land between us, unusable, plastic polluted, smelly. The cows won’t go near it. It takes courage to cross it. They come. As a last resort, to this place which looks lush yet frightening. The insects horrify them. The plants terrify them. They are stunned by how chickens actually look and smell. The chickens I own are layers, they are not picturesque. They are not on social media. They are chickens. We eat them.

It used to be the other way. We’d cross that scrappy bit of land, looking for jobs and education and money. How did it reverse, fall apart, how am I to know? I just hear their whispers, some days when many have lost their jobs simultaneously it’s a chant, AI, AI, its AI that’s done for us. But they cannot rage against something they cannot see for long and their phones tell them all the time, eat better, work out, feed your mind, up skill, down time, it is you that is the problem.

I had a phone once. I buried it in the sand a long time ago.

And so they come.

‘My designer trainers for a meal.’

Designer trainers are no use to me, they get muddy just the same.

‘Here, here is a tomato, enjoy it, it’s the first of the season, I will take one of your shoes and you can bring me the other tomorrow and you can trade for something else.’

I do try and be generous, but I cannot save them all.

They slink away in hunger, one shoe on and one shoe off. I think I am generous, perhaps it is humour. I do smile to myself at the one shoe on, one shoe off.  Perhaps it is cruelty, but I only have two feet. I often wear mismatched shoes. I don’t really like tomatoes.

They’re too frightened to fight. Then too hungry and then they are dead. The dogs. The dogs are a problem, the other side of the line.

There are some that still live well. Some small few. Or so I hear.

It has been this way for awhile now. It will be this way until the last phone flickers out. Not the end of the world but the end of any number of lives. Do not confuse the two things. It might be the end of the them but the ‘us’ are still here. The platitudes and clichés will pass, no more pastel painted plywood signs saying ‘Love’ will hang on walls. I am not living my best life. I am just living an ordinary one.  My advice to my children, the best that I can give, ‘learn to grow potatoes, keep your chickens near, start tomatoes off indoors, and when you milk the cow, side on, further from the front, closer to the rear.’  

Fisher woman

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Its common knowledge that you should not fish at the mouth of the river. I did it anyway. It’s how I ended up in the water, although the exact sequence of events is a mystery.

I thought I could swim. That was just the waves teasing me, tossing me back and forth as I lay submerged in the early morning surf. I was trying to gasp for air because I did not yet understand that my lungs were full of water. I wasn’t sure if I was dead. I felt I was mostly dead but not completely dead. Just a bit dead, if that makes any sense.

It was a flounder who told me to relax, really just a pair of eyes poking through the sand, the occasional flurry of shell flakes announcing a presence. I don’t remember hearing fish talk before.

‘Is this death?’ I didn’t ask that question out loud but I guess flounder are clever.

The flounder laughed a sort of raspy laugh, sand at the back of the throat I guess, ‘Not quite, this is near death.’

It wasn’t painful, I was just a little bit alive throughout my body. The flounder was gone.

I felt the next fish nibbling at my flesh. I wanted it to go away but I couldn’t say it. My mouth was salty and dry, but really my mouth was wide open and full of water. I couldn’t see the fish. I wanted to close my eyes. Because of the sand. I could smell the sand, it was in my nostrils.

The fish stopped nibbling and spoke.

‘Fish know a lot about death.’ The voice was deeper than I expected, ‘because we are often pulled into your gaseous atmosphere and suffer gill collapse’ (fish words not mine), ‘near death, close to death, dying, maybe dead, only to be plunged back into the water, still near death, still dying, and eventually dead even though we were meant to be saved.’

I always thought they survived. The fish I put back, I thought they just swam away.

I felt something bigger tugging at my leg. It was an octopus. I could hear my leg calling to me saying goodbye. I wanted it to stay. Fortunately the femur held, disjointed, unjointed but attached. I heard the high pitched giggling of the octopus, as if being able to keep your limbs in situ was a funny thing.

The sky was darkening, I had been rolling under the surf the whole day, dead, not quite dead, some bits dead, other bits not dead, talking to the fish.

In the darkness I felt air on my back. The waves had rolled me to the beach. I thought I could expel the water from my lungs and live again. I felt the tickle of a crab. Then another. And another. I wanted to laugh. I felt their pincers, expecting sharpness but instead soft, gentle, tickly tugs. My skin gave way. I was coming apart, finally I was coming apart and the fish would be quiet again.

Breathe

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I woke up, as in my eyes were open, but I was acutely aware I could not feel myself breathe. It was as if my lungs had somehow moved on, my ribs seemed to have decamped to some other part of my body I could not feel. I grabbed my phone and flicked to the meditation app. There it was, her cool calming voice giving me instruction, breathe in, breathe out. My breath though, had left me, had just gone from my body. I lay there listening to her, my hands on my unmoving chest, yes my ribs were there but they were still. I rested my hands as low as I could, I daren’t feel for the heart beat in case it was gone as well.

And she kept talking, gentle, soothing, the meditation woman telling me to take a breath in and then a long slow breath out, but how? It had all stopped working. I tried not to panic, this was meditation after all. I tried to focus but my hands were sending that signal to my brain, you aren’t breathing, the lungs are not working. There is no in and out, no up and down happening. At this point I wondered why the meditation couldn’t focus on some other bodily function, like digestion, but it did not.

I am not dead, I know I am not dead. I wiggle my toes, probably I have just forgotten, just forgotten and somewhere at the back of my brain is that thing that will kick start the whole thing again. Thank goodness I woke up, otherwise I might have actually died. Meanwhile the meditation app gave slow pointed instructions, in and out, in and out. I kept looking at my ribs, nothing. My lungs literally sat there, not bothering to inflate, like the last balloon in the packet that no one wants, probably the green one or the yellow one or the horrible pink which is too see through.

I wait patiently thinking what a waste for the meditation app. I wonder how much I am paying for this app that does not seem to be inducing my lungs to act. There is still no breath going in and out, I am panicked but without the capacity to demonstrate it. I couldn’t be less calm and all I can do is wait for that one heaving breath that indicates I am back on the planet.

And then it comes, sweet luscious air rushes in, I suck it in, my lungs finally inflate and the ribs move and my hands lift and I wonder about the delay! Who knows what would have happened if the blood I drank yesterday was not pre-oxygenated.

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The Conference

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I have always thought I could become an expert at something, but what? Somehow bring myself to focus in on the minute detail of some corner of history or science, in truth I can barely focus long enough to vacuum, but somewhere I have always thought I would be able to espouse wisdom on some such topic at dinner parties. In my head the whole table are always enraptured as I drop pearls of factual delight, when in fact I have met such people myself and turned immediately away and began to discuss the weather.

I remember one particular erudite person I sat next to at dinner who saw nothing more than the back of my shoulder for the entire evening and to make it worse I was wearing a particularly ghastly brown paisley thing with a mosquito bite on the edge of my shoulder for good measure. No I lack the application, the attention span for expertise, but I can do generality which makes what happened seem quite odd. I think perhaps there was a moment of confusion, a point at which someone thought I was something else, someone else.

And so I found myself on the stage, in front of the audience, with a lap top open before me. Of course the audience could see the slides, but I could see the slides and the speaking notes. And what could I do, but speak. I did not think I could say, there’s been a mistake, I am not this person. I am not even presenting at this conference, I am just here with my partner.

So I gave the speech, at the conference, the conference I was only attending with my partner. Its not easy you know, to stand up and speak, to follow the words when you have not read them before at all. But I did and there was rapturous applause, and to be honest I am not even sure what the speech was about. I don’t pretend to remember a word of it but it was well received.

I feigned a stomach bug instead of dinner only for it to be reported to me (by my partner who had not attended that session but was watching another session at the time) what a standout performance it had been. The highlight of the day, maybe even the conference. I said nothing, what could I say? He would want to know why and I even now, am not sure why.

I tried not to think about it, stayed in my room. I was embarrassed by it, until my partner mentioned that it was available on a website, me giving her speech. He had watched it, said what a great speaker she was. I thought he was joking, he had realised but it seemed not. I googled it, there I was, me- giving her speech, with her name on the banner underneath. My first thought was to get in touch, apologise. But I just wasn’t brave enough, wasn’t bold enough and the moment passed and we travelled home.

And then it came, a week later, by post, not even by email, a short note, three words, ‘We should meet.’ And so there I stood, waiting outside the coffee shop for the woman I had impersonated, who’s speech I had given. I had no idea what to say, I was so embarrassed. And there she was, a little taller than me, same hair colour sort of, different colouring, not my sense of style.

And so we sat for coffee and she thanked me and showed me her other speeches, all of them given by different women, all of them just whoever was there, like some kind of weird experiment, and that’s what it was, at least how it started – as some weird experiment. She had a mad fear of public speaking and so at conferences she angled it so someone else gave her speech and she discovered that almost no one spoke up, no woman took exception and nor did the men, men who knew who it was, who knew it wasn’t her, said nothing. All of them complicit.

And then she told me more, she wasn’t the only one, lots of women did it, they just subbed in to whoever was close to the stage. There was a club, a group, on line, off line, all of them, quietly lauding their victories. It had long since stopped being a way of avoiding public speaking and become more a way of just subtly undermining the status quo.

She gave me her card with a phone number, in case I ever had to speak at my own conference. She said she would arrange it, make it happen so someone else could speak. She said she couldn’t remember the last time any woman ever gave her own speech at an international conference. It just doesn’t happen.

Of course, I was horrified, I would never do such a thing, until of course. It was just a small speech, a nothing speech, a tiny conference, a nothing topic, a general topic, nothing specific, but well, I mean you would, wouldn’t you? And no one noticed, and no one was harmed and so the chain goes on. And if you are speaking next, well get in touch, we can sort something out.

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