One
Short Stories
Sollai Rhys
Copyright © Sollai Rhys 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All characters in this publication are fictional and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
front cover by Shona Nunan
photography by Kevan Halson
Copyright © Sollai Rhys
Stories
My name is not Fat-man
Mona
A Trip through space
John - a portrai
Man
wwwiii
The One
Murky tradings
Hey
Front liner
My name is not Fat Man
Dedicated to the Great Britain Pub
The wind gave way to a cold calmness in the night. His skin, hot from playing baby foot in the warm confines of the pub, rejoiced in the wide fresh air. He was in the beer garden, a brickwork ground giving way to short courtyard walls about nature strips; tall trees reaching, lumping some of the brick work with its roots, veins into the soil below.
He sipped at the pub’s brew, rightfully named “Piss”, then took a longer draft to get it over with.
The night looked infinite in its beauty, he described the stars in his head uncreatively, like diamonds, so finely cut….
He was drunk. His head floated dumbly around his thoughts. He congratulated himself on every sober act he made, like a step without a fall, a sentence with an ending and clear precise wording. Then he would strive for more limitations on his brain and less he’d care for. A drug for the now. It took him no special places, time wasn’t infinite, he was just dumber and he cared less. He loved more openly and laughed too loudly. He was a man, a shark, his Mohawk aiming him to his delights like a bow's arrow.
“Bang!” He’d say when he went again inside to commune with his friends. “Bang!” and he’d be there like a magician reappearing like the best of them from some clever trick. “Bet you didn’t even know I was gone!”
“Bet you I did”
“Oh?”
“Indeed, I missed you.”
He went on a wander about the pub and met a man who’s 21st it was. He was incredibly fat, bearded and hairy in an orange sort of way. His hands were like fat children's hands and to our most prominent, fit, strong, handsome hero, he was a waste of humanity. Fat boy talked like a nerd and was embarrassing to be about. This smart arse thought he was wonderful.
"Oh look, its my 21st!"
Yeah just look at you fatty, you’re a waste…. When it all comes down, when society runs out of mod cons, and you're left with a fucking spent battery, where will you be? What’ll keep you alive? Why not die now? You’re a waste! A fuck! A waste of a fuck!
“Happy birthday to you.”
Our prominent character looked down to his hands and glimpsed a half felt image of a spear in his grip. Some clever, simple device created to end life for food, feed him so that he might live another day to kill and kill again.
~~~
Mona
Dedicated to Aidan
Sunday drove by on the wheels of a hot pink Ford car belonging to some old-school value. The sunset was like long red cuts in the darkening sky. Wind hit her hair.
The fair and attractive Mona sat in the driver's seat alone, wishing she wasn’t, while every man wished they had a woman like Mona until they actually had a woman like Mona.
The trees were uniform and attractively paced along the quick moving road.
Sea breeze had dried her whipping hair. She certainly had nice hair, though. Blond like an 80’s rock star. Did I mention she was beautiful?
The car sounded meanly treated. It had an air of unkempt freedom but it suited her bizarre unchecked character.
Tom’s house was about five minutes away and she hoped her tape would finish before she got there as stopping it mid song was not fun. Some upbeat guitar music played that made her wanna dance. Well, soon she could. She’d see Tom and grab him around his slightly sweaty, flannel collared neck, hang from him sultrily and dance like the sex goddess she was. She’d make him forget about his brow heavy wife and not complain about the seat being left up after him in the dunny. Why that annoyed people was beyond her. The world was a filthy place… She wasn’t sure whether the seat being left up made a cleanliness difference or whether it was just inconvenience… Well, the world was often inconvenient too. Whatever. Mona liked happy things. She looked at positives as a rule and frowned upon rules. She liked Tom too. He had the ‘Mona smile’ though. They often made jokes about it. Mostly because he claimed that he smiled more when Mona was around. It was true too. Mona had convinced herself.
Tom made Mona forget things. He also made her remember things. She forgot that she had never loved anyone seriously enough to attempt a life with them and she remembered that perhaps a dedicated love was a possibility.
The car turned into the driveway, a long one. It didn’t have a gate and the surface was stony hard dirt, flanked on either side by empty long dead grass fields. Summer heat.
She was make-believe and the man waiting for her, Tom, wasn’t. He had quite a rough appeal. She liked it. He wasn’t rich and liked beer too much to be. She felt like a slutty 80’s chick with holey stockings, lustfully intruding in on his space and his life and his wife! She wasn’t.
It was messed up. Tom’s wife had been dead three years now, but the two of them, too afraid to commit to each other, sought the way around. They had a secret affair like they’d had before Tom’s wife had died. It suited them. It was wrong and evil, but so was their mentality. They listened to rock at clubs and she wore hoop earrings and baggy men’s motor bike jackets of the cheapest leather. She wore too much makeup like she’d done when they were young, and he got tattoos and fought when blokes talked to her. He also drank too much beer and had to do exercise to keep off a beer tummy.
He’d been working on his motorbike, a real hog. It was rough as guts, dusty and muddy under the guards, but it was his stallion and she was his woman and he was her man. And Tom was all man. His heavy arms, tattooed like a tribal warrior pulled her out of the open top of her modified machine; modified by himself with his old grinder to take off the roof. She clung to his neck, hovered there easily off the ground with one leg bent horizontal in her joyful surrender.
He said “Hey babe.”
And she said “Tommy!”
Acadaca was going berzerker and a little too loud in the back, but its sound spread out in the openness of his property and couldn’t wreck the communication which had ceased now anyway as they kissed grossly, slobbery. Monster passion.
He lay her half across the hot bonnet of her car. It was getting dark and she wondered whether they’d do it there. He kissed and groped and, before I write too much, this middle aged couple living an old dream found themselves exhausted in a twisted mess of linens in the stinking ruin of his room.
She was falling asleep upon his broad hairy chest, spent.
“You have to go love. Soon.” He whispered.
“What time is it?”
“She’ll be back soon.”
“I wish your wife worked all night.”
“Me too.”
“Run away with me!”
“I owe her more than that Mona”
“I know… I understand.” She crawled back, sliding off the bed, landing in her clothes… Maybe her clothes. What if they were his wife’s? She felt a pang of guilt as she thought of his wife. She’d be coming up that drive soon. She’d make him dinner, wonder what he was hiding. Would she blame the Ford's tracks on her imagination or just bottle it up. What would she say to bike and tools not put away as Tom was usually so careful to do.
“I’m sorry Milly.” Mona whispered. Was that her name? It was. Mona had never met Milly. She only knew her as the absent presence that kept the house clean in a way Tom couldn’t possibly achieve. She’d seen the coffin lowered into the earth from afar. Watched Tom cry his heart out in the company of a loose string of friends and family who she’d never meet. Mona had also carefully forgotten that memory to keep the guilt, for Milly’s respects. For Milly’s respects, Tom could go on pretending Milly would come home and that he could continue disrespecting her with the Mona affair. His disrespecting affair was his love for her. The only time Milly was ever alive.
The pink Ford backed up, turned and drove quietly down the driveway, seeking the long voyage home. Taking the back roads Milly would never see Mona’s car upon.
~~~
A trip through space
Dedicated to Nic Masman
The Mary Instant hummed within, its warp engine like a giant bee’s nest. The Instant's interior was practical before comfortable. Passenger cells, numbering eight in total, were mostly used for storage despite the ship's huge cargo space, the predominance of the ship. The design was square corners, heavy manual doors, padded walls for turbulence. All fine enough for Nebular Harris’s profession.
The exterior was a fat bunch of steely boxy bits, all vaguely trying to go the same direction, riddled with turrets and self-proclaiming bragging graffiti, mostly applied during the messy peaks of drunken parties. “The glory of NEBULAR’S ship surpasses even the fame of his cock!”
Nebular lounged lazily upon his golden throne of a captain’s chair within the ship's small command deck. He waved his scepter, a long golden rod that flashed different colours when aimed at a computer or machine. He’d click and the computer would respond, displaying its function on the main console for him to analyze.
Currently, he watched the process of the warp that played in bright colours and patterns about the exterior of his ship. To this display, he sucked the rear end of the Spat Slug, the otherworldliness of the creature's hallucinogenic slime fully enveloping him within the hungry jaws of existence or “isness.”
“Whatever!” He mumbled, intensely serene.
Point, click.
The announcement speaker console visuals fuzzed into focus before him. “Oooh!”
“Crew of the Mary Instant, this is your captain speaking! I want all of you in the mess hall in… immediately… whenever that is.”
He watched “immediately” materialise into the now.
“I have a very important announcement.” He pulled forth some sheets he’d written. He took a deep breath, giggled, then laughed like a nutter before reading.
“Inken gold like ruby rum fin,
Roll across the seas on winds borne by angel wing.
To fetch us a bounty full with gold like corn,
That may grow in our hands like a year's good spring.”
He broke down into a giggling fit.
The crew had assembled in the mess. The crew of one confused The Body, who’d half expected to meet new recruits or someone he might have forgotten about. Stranger things had happened aboard this ship. He had been trying to pay attention to his captain, who had now altered his voice, if The Body wasn’t mistaken, to sound like a parrot over the announcement speakers.
“Come along pirates, come along! CAW, CAW!”
Slightly confused, yet afraid to interrupt the captain’s valuable concentration, The Body listened with a forcefulness that stilled his mind from its usual wandering.
What parrot when? The Body asked himself, then pushed the thoughts away again, thinking on not thinking. He was, in fact, interacting with the strangeness of the captain's mood, a deeper, more subconscious intelligence seeing the captain's rambling for exactly what it was and sympathizing with it.
It seemed as though the parrot was somehow making fun of The Body’s simplistic mind. “CAW, the story, the story!”
Story? The captain's going to tell a story. The Body did not find the prospect at all hard to believe and he wondered vaguely whether the stir in his stomach was excitement at the idea or whether in fact being in the food hall, as usual, gave him an appetite.
“Heart and word
Letter off thon name”
I wonder what he could mean?
“Sack an tear
The lungs of the sighing wind”
Ahhhh…..
“Who is of and off
And who is thank you for yon beer
And bread of sat yin behavior
And stale aroma”
No, maybe not…
“That waft so through the fair
Lake thy mind and drown thon think”
Oh dear, If I were but smarter.
“Wit is thy candy
As swift is my laugh
But hark a deer”
And see not trotter on the sweet leafy air.
The Body added, surprising himself by thinking, quick as usual to suppress it before he started confusing himself with unanswerable questions.
~~~
John - a portrait
Dedicated to Bottle Beach
Looking hard at a sea of blue, we notice taxi boats driving in loads of feminines!
We wait on shore loose as jazz. What’ll we meet? Who will be ours on this sandy shore? Who, feather light, will grace our rooms, to halve our bills?
What evil will be done?
John waits alone on that sand's stretch of earth that greets wave after brushing and peaceful wave.
He writes in his book and reads his reading book. He lets the sun slowly burn his back, and if he regrets not buying sunscreen he’ll only remind himself that he’s young and that when he is old he’ll change his philosophy to: “You only live once.”
One day John will fall out of a window from the third floor and be revived in the ambulance truck. He’ll change his philosophy of many changing philosophies and correct people with “You live a few times if your lucky…” It will never leave much of an impression upon anyone but that’s in some future of his yet unexplored life… So yeah, it may be that that won't happen.
John watches legs. They are beautiful and golden in tan. He is deciding on whether he should risk looking higher… those legs are likely the most pristine and beautiful things he’d ever looked upon. They are tall and softly muscular… he can't describe them. They are beautiful and he’s… He’s blown away! To John, those legs are legs. Just legs, priceless and treasure chests in riches, ultimate value. They are beautiful because his values dictated they are so… Not because they are (though most people would say so) but just because.
John thinks like this. He accepts that he has values and without those values his truths would be a blank canvass of is-ness. However he is afraid of what his values would dictate when his view rises to take in her whole (hopefully) “pristine” figure.
But he is also a man of risk. “What a man.” People would say at his funeral in many years to come, when he has more friends than the few acquaintances he now owes his insanity to.
“What a man!” So, this man of such emboldening words as “what” and such individualizing letter words as “a”, makes the quantum leap and looks higher.
He isn’t disappointed he realizes, when the foggy heat of what he could only later guess to be called lust has washed away enough to think clearly. Not that he is thinking clearly. He, in fact, has made a right fool out of himself. Mouth open in awe, he’s got half way up off the sand and fallen straight back down. A little paralyzed.
She hasn’t noticed of course. She has a man following her lead who has obviously stolen all her interest and replaced it with godly haughty awareness of the infinite men looking at her along the beach. A big lad with both their packs on him. He has the muscle to make it look easy. Obviously this man is her man, she’s the boss. But she, she’s John's woman. She doesn't know it yet, but she would know as and when she would be.
The legs owned a lean blond with a smile like confidence and loveliness and secret little jokes all mouthified. She’s headed to the bar up the beach, trudging ungracefully through the soft white sand. It’s a different lodging place to his! He has to move quick, change her course. He might not see her again if he left her to go now on her fool’s course without him. He has to make an impression at the very least of leasts!
“No!” He yells.
Lazy young beachanites swivel heads to look at him, this man who had suddenly lost his cool in the heat, perhaps the only thing that keeps a man alive from this foreign land and its hot, hot sun.
“What no?” She asks. As in, “what do you mean by no?” He likes her use of English, like she’d smithed it slightly off-track for a bit of a laugh.
“Not that one. You must know that that’s the family place? The family people go there!”
“The family people?”
“Come to the dark side!” he blurts out.
“What do you mean?” She looks worried by his apparent lunacy. How uncool he must seem, despite his lean, cared for body and fifties sunglasses, reminders (usually), of his rock star confidence.
“As the sun goes down, it is darkest here. You can see the stars and people come to light fires and dance about them nearly every night.” A distant look, like a religiously impassioned man, half in the spirit world, crosses his face. He’s forgotten that the term “dark side” actually comes from Star Wars. He’d put meaning to the phrase some joker had named that lightless hippy traveller's half of the beach. “We live by the moon and the calmness of the receding tide at night and shun away from the light where families go. We wait at day to recruit more likely souls to join our side. The side of darkness. The generator goes off by midnight and not only darkness surrounds us, but all silence as well, save shifting sands and whispering friends and lightly receding waters against the coral. We whisper because only a fool would disrespect the dark and the dark side.”
She looks genuinely startled. The hulk of a man steps forward and opens his mouth. John interrupts him with an upraised finger. “Only woman’s word is law. A man's can be disrespected without me having to kill the disrespectful, so respect this moment that I get to hear this woman’s voice again!”
The hulk shifts his bags, bounces them higher up his back. “We are going to the next place. Stay away from us arse-hole.”
The girl's head is tilted and John can see she wants the dark side secretly. And the dark side in all senses is the realm of John. For he rules the world of the unseen on this lonely little beach, the world of the mind. He’s respected and unwanted as a friend, but needed among the other travellers as the figure of sureness. Like a lone pinnacle of pure light and pure shadow, he is half insurance that you can’t get more insane and half insurance that you can always have more confidence. For that’s John: Insanity and confidence all wrapped up in one body.
“I’ll kill you man.” John whispers as the couple walk away up the beach.
It's come to dusk and John can see her form up the beach emerging from the water. She’s happy with her hulk man who plays predictable couple games with her. Teasing, poking, generally being annoying. We hope he sleeps light because he’s a good man, not a great man, and John will only let great men offend him and get away with it alive. John thinks himself a great man. In truth, he’s a horrid man who murders on a whim. John's cold blooded. There’s a reptilian look to him. Not as though he's blocking off emotions, that’s too obvious. He has none beyond his tunneled vision of false love for sexy bods. He’s a blank canvas, wrapped in plastic, he’s painted values upon the plastic, detached from his true empty self.
There’s no one at dinner yet and he’s reminded by the bizarre people of the world. Most people he’s met about the beach will shower before dinner and get changed before their meal into something casual. Casual is a lie. They call pre-faded, ripped and paint splotched jeans casual, but John’d just call it pretentious and above all, expensive crap.
He had every wash out of the sea and had never changed so much as his undies, though he’d often go about without them.
He’d wear one pair of shorts or a sarong. He liked to go topless everywhere but owned a yellow Hawaiian shirt that was of very soft cotton. Tonight he wears this. He leaves it open so that his fit front shows between his flanking gold cotton. He wears his shorts and keeps his square fifties glasses in his front pocket. He drinks one beer and has a daydream of horses in a distant paddock. He thinks of dogs then and decides he likes them a lot. He takes a snack at the bar. He has pitta bread and badly wrought home made dips. They’re a tad watery.
He sits out the front so that he can spy on the next bar along the beach and wait for the hulky bastard and the gorgeous woman.
A girl he’d met two nights earlier, one he’d also taken back to his bungalow, comes to make conversation. She’s a good conversationalist and they disagreed on many things, like war, the jungle and trees, politics, love, the afterlife. John knows they don’t disagree on any of those subjects. He knows it’s just their characters that disagreed with each other. But both their characters are strong and stubborn in an argument or “conversation” as she likes to call them, and this is attractive to the both of them.
She plonks a cheap beer in front of him and he says his thanks, not to mention his hellos.
They drink for a while not talking. Pretending they are comfortable in the silence as they gaze off into a darkening horizon, the orange flaming ball of sun sinking into a grey blueness.
“Anything planned for tonight?” She asks. Her name’s Sarine and she’s French. Her accent's incredibly sexy, much like her olive tanned body. These things had also attracted John. But not any more. Lusting for her had ended soon after one night. She was annoying in the way that she was so anti-opinionated about the sunsets. Most people made gestures about them because they were beautiful. Well they believed that was what beautiful was… Once again, John’s emotions were a cheap display, yet ones he thought necessary in human behavior, so he often made remarks about them to his fellow acquaintances. She, however did not follow this rule. She never had anything to say about them. Nor did she have anything to say when the tides receded and left rippling effects in the wet sand which reflected the sky oddly in the afternoon. This rule-breaking had lost John’s love for her. Forever.
“The sun is beautiful today, is it not?” John asks her.
“Yes.” Is all she says.
“But, what I really meant to ask you was, how beautiful?”
“Most.” She replies.
“Ok. But that’s not very descriptive.”
“Oh? What should I say John?”
“The sunset is most gorgeous. I could live here forever. I wish time stopped at this hour. You don’t get this back at home… The list goes on Sarine.”
“Yes. I guess I could say that. But I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because you said it all and therefore already know it.”
“Yeah. But what else are we sposed to talk about?”
“How do you say…?” She stumbles through a few words in French and English. “Ah… we could talk about health!”
“Health?”
“Yes. Like, how are you today?”
“Oh… I see. I guess I am fine. You?”
“Yes, fine.” She finishes her drink. “Thank you John, now I must be off. Good luck with the blond and mind that man.” She points off down the beach at the other bar. The blond and the hulk are ordering.
“Thanks.”
He watches a while. Notes that they are talking like a healthy pair of human beings. A much better conversation than what he had just experienced. Bloody Sarine! Bloody rude Europeans. He had come overseas seeing all other nations equal to his own. He now disliked the French for their arrogance, the English for their terrible drinking. He did like the Irish. He thought little of Americans. Oh yes, Germans he considered to be a bunch of cry babies while most other northern countries were very good company. But he liked the company of the locals best.
“Where are you from woman?” John asks from where he sits, looking coldly down the beach at the blond.
He gets to his feet, the sand's still warm in the now full darkness of night. He can hear the lapping waves. They sound repetitive, constant, only just inconstant in beat. They’re soothing, meditative.
The restaurant's mostly outdoors, lit by flaming torches kept upright in the sand. There are no chairs and the tables are low. These are surrounded by pillows. People spread out like self-made Greek gods sipping at drinks and dipping into their food like they have all night to do so.
John tries to imagine these people back in their own countries. Likely sitting around their plain dining rooms or living rooms eating their overcooked two veg and steaks. “We are meant for better things,” they think, like a background buzz in their minds. Altogether thinking that mankind was meant to live by a beach with cheap beer and fine food. They forget that they are slaved over by the local populace. John sees himself as no exception, save that he doesn’t really see a difference between slaving and holidaying. He somewhere makes the decision that the beach is better according to modern values.
The Hulk of a man sees him first. He puts down his fork and makes a stoney face of his features. The girl turns, beautiful eyes of startling blue.
“My name’s John.” John says. “I made a fool of myself before. I’d like to apologize.” He turns to the girl. “Your beauty had me thinking like a mad man.”
The Hulk huffs once.
“I am Anna and this is Eric.” She says. He certainly deserved a Viking name.
John shakes both their hands. John’s the type of guy who does one of those handshakes where the web between thumb and forefinger doesn’t meet the other person’s. Eric is not one of those types of people, but John closes quick and wins his way.
Stupid Eric sees this as a weakness of character and smiles slightly, a secret smile that John’s reptilian character grasps the meaning of.
The music of the family place plays annoyingly around them. Bob bloody Marley. John guesses it’s their only CD.
“It’s nice to meet you Eric and Anna.” He begins formulating his plan. His plan to kill Eric the Viking.
“Likewise.”
“Now I insist on buying you drinks enough to convince you into the darkness.” He can't handle her eyes on him and realizes he has to move fast.
“Star Wars fan?” Eric asks.
“Aren’t you? No, no wait, I bet you anything you are!” John falsifies a laugh.
“I guess I am, yes.” Eric mutters.
“How did you guess that?” The girl.
So sweet a girl. He’d have to get her drunk. Very drunk. Lead him away! “Every western list of ten top movies includes at least one of the original trilogy films… if not all.” John says “if not all” like its kind of scary and this makes Anna laugh.
There is an air of untrusting about Eric. Secretly he knows Anna isn’t in love with him, for there was never very much passion outside of the bedroom. She’s being too friendly with John. Eric feels slightly embarrassed.
“Really? That’s odd. There are so many better movies.” She comments.
“Perhaps. Yet I think Star Wars leaves good memories in every childhood.” John had heard a guy say that exact thing whilst talking about the dark side of the beach not two nights back.
“True. But that doesn’t make those films great movies. Though, I do love those films.” Eric interrupts.
“Well, what would make a great movie Eric? Something serious, black and white and just for adults?” John turns to Anna now. “You see I think as a child, movies are least wasted. We forget in our older age the things we do or watch. I’m sure you’d probably forget the majority of the films you’d watch in a week. Whereas, who forgets great flicks like The Dark Crystal, Willow, and yes, Star Wars.”
“I agree.” Anna says. “We shouldn’t get caught up in what society thinks acceptable because, as you say John, they’re filtered in red and big named actors play drug addicts and child molesters.”
“That's not what I mean!” Eric says thumping the table. “I think a good movie is a movie with a good plot, good photography, something we can relate to and that!”
“Well I don’t know what “and that” entails, but I’d say Star Wars does all that firmly. Not to mention that they’ve made a Wikipedia site purely for Star Wars! Its called wookiepedia.” He’ll take Eric some where into the jungle… butcher him. “I can’t think of another film that’s achieved such a culture.”
“Is it really that big?” Anna asks.
“Huge.” John assures her with the accompaniment of a wink.
But how? John asks himself. Dreaming away from the table to an act of split skulls, cut brains and pissing blood. A machete flashing under the silvery moonlight, then smooth womanly forms, writhing in a film of sweat beneath his murderous, powerful self. Fucking someplace public, like on the table, here and now. He ignores a stirring beneath his garments, wondering at the paint that may have slipped through the plastic coating onto the canvas of his soul. Thank you woman.
“I have to show you something Eric. Later if you’d like.
~~~
MAN
Dedicated to Bowen Lyndal
I wake up after a shield rim that I think’s cracked my cheek. It hurts a great deal. I guess I can forgive the bastard though, I did have a good poke about his guts.
I'm a knight, one who's earned his title on the field. I’m good at being a knight. Now that I think on it, I'm good at court and I HAD thought I was good on the battlefield, yet somehow I managed to let this one go by around me, oblivious to it all. We'd lost the fight, I'd had a good rest, and hopefully I'd make it home now without dying from one infliction or another.
So now, recovered and thinking I'd had enough at looking at a rain heavy sky, I roll over and begin to drag my aching body across the dank, bloody ground, trying to keep out of sight. It’s cold, and sweat and blood chills me. My hands come into contact with a body, drenched with blood, next to him are more bodies so I pull my way up and over it, pausing momentarily to look into a face stilled with pain deep in his expression. His innards have spilt all about him and I slip on them as I roll over his body. His sword lies nearby, chipped to hell. I imagine he had done some damage before he’d met his end. I pat him on the shoulder, there’s a good soldier.
My beard is caked with dried blood, my hair, unbound, is in knots and lank hanging clusters, dried with more blood, more sweat, freezing in the winter air. This is why I usually cut it, I remember. Court had brought out my vanity, curse it for its love of locks.
A wounded lad screams in the distance. He's woken to his wounds and knows that soon he'll die. He is calling the names of people he knows, probably from his squad. He wants help. I'd help, but I have the feeling we just lost, that’s why I’m crawling in the mud, not running around shouting my victory or poking about the ruined men for coppers or a better hauberg. I need my horse. I have to get out of here.
I can see Farfetch not so far from the battlefield, nibbling at some scrub, waiting for me to get to my feet and come to her.
There’s someone coming toward ME though. I can hear his feet squelching in the mud. I lie still, play dead. A sturdy sword lies not so far away, long, straight and simple. I visualize my plan: if I roll at the right time, I could grab it, swing it up and cop who ever it is that comes, square in the face. I'd wedge it so far into the fucker, his scalp would split right in half. I could do that, I reckon.
He comes, but I can hear he has sped to a jog, his chain mail jingling to his movement. "Play dead will ya!" He grunts between breaths. I perform my roll, take up the sword, thanking the earth mother I am still unhit, swing at thin air and see him plunge his spear into another man who screams loudly.
Shit.
The bastard looks startled to see me rise up from the dead. He hauls on the spear to free it, but the dying man screams anew at that and holds tight to the shaft still buried in him. One, two steps and on the third I bring the sword down on my helpless opponent, cleaving open his face and chest. A very satisfying sound, that parting of muscle and bone.
"Finish me." I can only agree with my dying saviour. I'd ask the same thing if a spear pinned me to the cold earth like that. My new blade falls with a heavy clump as it pierces his heart. This is a good sword. It has a good weight and balance. I'd think up a name for it soon. Not like a baby who'd grow into a name, a sword is an instrument that needs to earn its namesake. It’s certainly coming close to doing so already today, we'd see what characteristic it truly favored soon, I am sure. I feel lucky, it is lucky, and maybe I'll put lucky in the name. Hmmmm.
I turn about at the cry of others in the distance, I feel an arrow glance off my helmet. I run to the horse, leap into the saddle and turn her about quick smart, aiming her in a charge right down the sights of my attackers, all four of them. A second arrow slices the edge of my neck and catches in my chain hood. There is a brief cheer from my opponents until they realize it is only a skin deep wounding, no major arteries cut or wind pipes severed. Bastards, I'd teach ‘em what it meant to loose an arrow at Sir Roy Broken Spears!
The first one gains no luck as he swings his sword into my parry. In turn, I swing hard at his head, splitting and cutting deep his unhelmed skull. I leap from my horse, my battle rage renewed. I charge into the next man, catching his first strike on my arm. I’m mailed, but I know he'd cracked my bone. With agony in my lungs I scream and ram, the crossguard of my sword burying deep into his eye socket, a sickening sound, like pulling your leg from deep mud. I run my blade along his neck, down and back up to parry a spear thrust, I punch hard with my broken arm, crying with pain and the next pulsing bolt of rage. The blade rings off this man’s helmet as he goes down. He is merely stunned. I leave him and take on the last fucker, trusting in my reflexes that check his first swipe at the hilt, ruining his fingers. I kick him to the ground. He grabs, with what he can still use, at my sword as I push it into his chest with my own body weight. His screams come like hell. I spin and leap, swordless to the stunned one, by this time recovering. I take to his throat, pulling him to the ground, wrestling till I am atop, pushing back a screaming face and bending down, I spread my mouth wide to bare my teeth over his jugular, to clamp down on it, till fresh hot blood oozes around my tongue, wetting my parched lips. Then I pull at it swift and sudden, tearing it wide, blood pissing up to repaint my painted face.
Time seems to slow down, there is a nice quiet suddenly about. The crows peck and squawk already, and men still groan and complain about their deaths to come, but I find a grey peace. I push myself off him. His children and wife would not see him again, nor the wives of any of the men who sprawled about me, or their children. But my wife would see me and for that it was worth it. That’s four less we'd have to face somewhere else. I am a soldier, this is my job, killing and dying for King and Country. Knowing this brings me my peace, the only kind of peace that can be found in a place like this.
I can hear horses this time. I'd show them what a real horse was made of. I slip back into Farfetch's saddle, ignoring the pain in my arm. It is just cracked, no bone setter is needed, just a bit of grin and bearing till I get home. My horse is fresher than theirs. She'd rested an hour or so now, maybe more. I never tended to use her much in combat anyway. I am new to the saddle compared to born knights. I often fell off. In reality I am just a lucky rank and file man, my horse is more of a companion and a quick retreat, as she would be used for now. I spring away from the battlefield and their pursuit only lasts a minute or two. I guess I'd made up for my sleeping. I'd killed enough today. How many? Who cared?
The way home starts as nothing unusual. I patch up my neck wound and make a sling for my arm. I get some water into me and eat some dried fruits from my saddlebag. That night, I make camp in a barn away from a householder’s family, a good idea as they have a mighty pretty young daughter and my adrenaline is taking its time to lax. The householder presents me with a half-loaf of bread and some ale. His name is Tod, a good farmers name. He makes an honest living, too. He is never shy about paying his taxes, I am informed. One day, he hopes to see his son marry Tom Thomson’s daughter, but that is a year or two yet and he is happy to have his son as his own a bit longer. His son wants to march for his king. I said it was a good idea, nothing could make a man prouder than giving blood for king and country and the good men like Tod who worked it. Yes, I'd fight again. Not for a week or two I hoped, my arm needed SOME healing, but I'd certainly be sent back out. I'd be wasted talent otherwise. Tod nods sagely as I explain these facts.
By morning, I am feverish and my wounds, infected. Tod has slapped some healing herbs behind fresh new bandages, but I doubt they will do all that much, save for having me smell like a salad. I laugh at that as I get a whiff of it, climbing wearily into the saddle.
The road ponders on through the countryside of scrappy bush and farmland, cattle mostly. I am boiling hot with fever and sweating like hell, though it is windy and cold. I have to get back home, to real healers. I find myself slumping in my saddle and feel ashamed to be seen so weak. But I can’t help it. I really have become quite tired.
It occurs to me I am dying. Many soldiers die this way, it is honorable. You die from your wounds but you still win the fight! I can’t ask for anything more... Save to see my wife again. I am only twenty or something. I have no children to carry on my name. I haven’t carried out my duties as a man yet! Who among my blood would replace Roy to fight for his king in future generations? No one! I’m gonna die here, on the road, a sack of potatoes on horseback. Sonless and daughterless. Bugger.
Lucky for me, or not, I don’t die. I fell from my horse at some point and now she's likely pulling a plow in a field someplace. I lie on the road. My arm hurts a lot and my neck throbs, infected. It is really annoying. The pain is unforgiving. I want to get up, but I know it won’t let me. I want to report to my Lady! I want a good meal. I want to see my woman, sit at the ale house with the lads and drink till I drop...
"He's handsome!" The female says, lying on my left flank. She affectionately pats my head. "A warrior. Would you look at his strength." Her thigh climbs up the side of my body, slightly lifting my unbelted tunic to expose some flesh.
"He hasn't got a very full beard yet, I think he is young." The man thing on the other side of me points out as he runs one long finger along my mustache. His other hand also dabbles in my hair.
"Such beautiful long hair he has." The female says, her voice a pondering stream of silk, her touch, suddenly on my hand, has my breath so instantly caught in my throat it hurts. I feel so intimately intimidated, yet cannot fight it for the pure undeniable love of these touches.
"He IS muscular!" The man thing says proudly, running an elegant hand over my chest then down, down, down to my lower stomach where he gently pushes against my muscles.
"Open your mouth." She demands huskily, "I want to see whether I might find your soul in there." I'd not known these creatures till I'd woken up only a minute or two ago, yet I obey.
"Big canines." The man thing exclaims, and moves closer against me to peer at them, while his hand pulls away the skin of my cheek. He looks at them so intently, his eyelids folding back from startling blue, blue eyes like two bright pools of inquisitive ocean. "A warrior’s teeth."
"Sharp." She states as she runs her fingers along them. "I'm impressed." And she sounds genuine. I feel so admired and loved.
I stretch my arms out past them, and to no surprise at all, they burrow into my embrace. He lays his head on my shoulder to lightly rub the tip of his nose across my earlobe, back and forth, back and forth. I lay my hand on his hip, so lean.
She lets me wrap a hand around and underneath her. She weaves into my embrace and rests herself on an elbow so femininely it shocks me not at all to feel a stirring in my loins. She looks down into my eyes and holds them in her depths so entirely I feel nothing else but her isness and her want. A want she reveals so readily and truthfully it frightens me.
He brushes his nose up over my face so lightly it only tickles the downy hairs like a breeze. But his mouth does otherwise, it catches, his teeth snagged onto my beard, a light tug of a bite.
Her hand startles me away from the man thing’s attention as she lays it across the flesh of my stomach. I am hers again. She leans down and kisses so silently the man, ever looking at me. My eyes are caught on the soft meeting between them. I see a beautiful light that glimmers upon the edge of the dry and wet of their lips, meeting like the sea and the land. Her hand trickles and skips up to my chest where it rests firmly again. The man thing’s hand does likewise and lands on top of hers, my shirt is in rolls up under my arms.
He leans down to kiss my hair, while she exposes her body from beneath a simple gown that slips off her with the same slow, graceful speed that she spurs her flesh to meet with mine.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"You have a rugged voice!" The woman exclaims, more than a hint of admiration there. Her body is golden, like no artwork could describe. Its shape so lovely in the world around me. Her wings catch the light in a whirl of black and orange as they shiver with sexual tension dying to be released. "What animal is he?" She asks the man thing on a breath. Her breasts are like ripe fruit, her hips round and her waist small. She is woman as no woman could ever be. And her flesh is so soft!
"Something powerful." He observes and his top has disappeared. His body is beautiful too. I can appreciate that. I am not queer! But I cannot deny his beauty. It is as if stating water is sand to think otherwise. His own stomach is long and bell shaped, his chest small but strong, his wings longer and leaner than hers, like leaves ,and are coloured as though. I am not queer.
"Like a lion?" she asked.
"Or a wolf?"
"A bear?"
"A buck?"
"A boar?"
"A falcon or an eagle?"
"A kangaroo!"
"A horse."
"An elephant."
"Tiger?"
"Dingo."
They were gone. Walked away as if into a fog, consumed by my awakening. The bush is about me. Cold and grey. The thumping of some animal, probably a roo, womping away somewhere in the scrub. I am thirsty and my arm aches. My neck feels infected, but not as if I'll die. Well there is no relief then. HA.
I climb to my feet, aching. My sword is not missing, nor my mail. But I am naked and all my clothes are gone. Fucking fairies. I will walk away under steel alone and chafe and blister and be pinched to hell beneath it, right down to my cock!
SO? What am I? What animal is mine? I guess they talked about spirit animals. Most men carried their animal tattooed onto their back. I'd never been given one or found my characteristics in any.
Who cares. I want home.
And that’s what I find in the waning morning of the third or fourth day. A cold shell of a home. Its grey stone walls hold the funeral pyre, no doubt to my woman, whose legs emerge from the door, roasted and half eaten by the carrion beasts. Amon, the death god, hops about the village, honoured with yet another feast!
Time is in a whirl. A whirl that spins faster and faster, like I am standing still but the world drags against me. A boulder in a stream. I can’t feel much and know I should be worried and sad. I can’t even feel my wounds with much emotional content. My wife lies dead. She'd have been raped. She was beautiful. She likely would have put up a fight, but against soldiers with a likely practice for the savaging of innocence? She wasn't a big girl. She was lean like a willow. Beautiful, I guess. I was satisfied with her. What man could ask for more than that. She was ever afraid I'd not return from my work, however. But I had always thought that that was what kept her rapists and murderers from knocking on the door. She had been so beautiful...
It is cold suddenly. I find my self where I'd left it. But where was that? Tears fall and fall again. I can’t stop my bellows of echoing woe through the emptiness of the town. Or the graveyard it now was. I'm too young for the cruelties of war. I should have been a farmer. Maybe in the fields I would have seen them coming and had time to run to Sherly wood with the woman. But for king and country I...
A true warrior is a man aware of his own presence. He draws a circle about himself and calls it his world. He expands his circle about his enemies and in it those he calls enemies die. In his world, his enemy is all and all that must not be. The warrior is a time bomb, for his own world he must destroy.
First, my body will heal. Then I’ll make a great many stakes on which I will skewer and let rot the severed heads of my enemy. I'll wear the skin of their leaders like fine silk when I go to make more of my revenge. I'll butcher with my fine new sword. I’ve named it Lucky. Plain and simple, for it is as lucky as any sword could be for its purpose. It will face all the enemies of the world and come through to win the day with me behind it. Its edge may be little better than a bludgeoning stick by the end, but it will be a happy bludgeon still. Oh my Lucky, my lucky sword. This truly is your day. I give you my arm in return for your edge.
“Happy work”, I call it as I take to the collecting of my stakes. They are long, a man and a half tall. I sharpen them with a hand axe. They are pine.
My arm is healed enough now. It’s been a week. The labour is putting body strength back together. I think I will let it take a shield or an axe to accompany my sword. My cheek is taking longer to heal and a few teeth have fallen out. My neck has healed up finely though, I think it may scar. I have so many. I've heard it’s character building. I personally think they’re just good to show off to lassies when you’re drunk. I am drunk a lot, I find, and yesterday I took the day off to nurse my head. The faeries came back that day to see how I was and to return my clothes. They still had no animal for me to call my own. Again, the female vanished into the fogs of time before I was truly granted her body. Game-playing bitch.
I went to an apocathary in a town to buy some quick poisons. I mixed them with oil thickly, and poured it into the scabbard of my sword. I had had to buy a new scabbard for my new sword, as the old one was an inch too short and tapered to a point quicker than the new sword required. I had it tailor-made with a row of heads on spikes fashioned into the leather.
I spent a night in a tavern where I met Robert the Insane.
"Hail, you lord of war." He sat by me. "Is it blood you call for?" He looked me deep in the eye, one, then the next. "Or is it something more?"
"Rhyme away crazy man."
"Door whore."
"Yes?"
"Gore tore."
"They rhyme."
"Come, all ye lords of war and taste bitter Luck. Bitter sweet with a poison’s treat. A nail driven deep into thy chest, pushed and pressed by the war gods best."
"I'll wear blood like a second skin."
"You'll be a cracked smelly thing. A sun-dried turd, but with the smell of rot!"
"Like a dried rose, pissed on... I care not."
"So revenge is your game? In whose name? For who and for what? The fallen door, of the house to the torn at whore, the carrion’s store. For the souls, small and big, I can see the running of great herds of hearts skewered that follow your footsteps. Blood-red, the rosy things, sprouting from within like a growth, your sword protrudes."
"Well put." I admit. "You mean my wife? Don’t call her a whore. She wasn't and is not."
"I rhymed." He confessed his nature and made no excuse for it. I admired that.
"True, but the memory of it insults me ever more as we think on it. I'm not going to kill you, but should there be anything in between? Should I crack your nose flat? Would that do me any justice? No, you speak words and I kill... We cannot confront, for you don’t mean to insult me and I don’t mean to kill you."
"But If I accidently insult you, does that not mean you may accidently kill me."
"My skill at killing is better than yours at speaking."
"What have these men done that deserves your killing if all they did was their job."
"They have done their job and for that I will kill them as my job dictates."
"There are many."
"That doesn't matter."
"You'll win what you can, but not all."
"I will win over all."
"And I will record all and tell it."
"This is a good thing. I would be remembered for my deeds."
"Then that is my work. Let us do it and never fail."
The next day, we went to work on the first chapter of my story or the first verse to whatever Robert the Insane would write or sing about me.
I know the keep well. I approach it at night. It’s a dark, old stocky structure. It’s squat but sturdy. There seems nothing strange about it from this side, but along the road to it there are the bodies of its previous owners, my friends, impaled on tall pikes.
I squat in a muddy paddock, slowly sinking into it up to my ankles, just a short-wall away. I watch silently and keep still to note the movements of the guards. They’re posted and hardly talk. I have decided that these men on the walls are the first I must be rid of. They are yeomen.
I hop the wall and the sheep bleet and begin to run. Picking up my ladder, I use it to herd them towards the fort. I myself look like a sheep in their skins. In the dark, they must not see me or they'll riddle my shield with their arrows.
So I go at the walls like a frightened sheep.
"Must be a wolf, or something, out there." A guard says as he leans out over the wall to spot a target for his bow.
The end of my ladder rises quickly and belts him in the face. He falls back over the other side.
"We're under attack!"
I never knew I could climb a ladder so fast. All the same, a rock glances off my helm. I can not help but laugh.
There’s a sword point waiting for me at the top, but I hurl my hand axe at him and he backs off.
I'm on the walls now and an arrow rams its head straight through my shield and stops there. Another hits it and another. I'm in hysterics. The lad with the sword, and a lad he certainly is, comes at me. I cut off his leg and let him die by my poison. Another arrow. My sword flies spinning when I throw it at an archer, the hilt cops him in the face. I re-hurl my hand axe and take another.
A man comes at me with a sword and I let him hit my helm that rings and dents, but my shield rim finds his face. I then rush another archer and put my dagger into his fleeing back. I throw this as well and leave it in a man.
I'm fighting a swordsman now with shield and arrow. My arrow darts about his sword and scratches his face now and then, not doing much until I puncture his eye and boot him from the wall.
I've found my own sword again. I re-poison it and fight some more. More and more. I don’t feel quite fit enough, but I'm so lucky with my sword. I don’t even feel like I have to do much. I just laugh and sometimes cry. I even get mad sometimes, like the men I kill have done me a great wrong... But I can’t remember what that was. Am I not a soldier? I have no better cause to kill an enemy than that.
The fairies fly about watching. They cheer my name. "Roy Broken Spears fights like a demon!"
I'm removing a head. Men are trying to fence me into a corner with long pikes. My shield is a ruined thing, so I let my left carry the head for a weapon. I spin it by the hair, round and round. The head’s bleeding gets in the eyes of an opponent, and I break his knee with my blade.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-35 show above.)