Lost but not Forgotten
Hello. Remember me? It’s Ok if you don’t. It’s been a while. And I’m not just talking about new injections of short fiction. It has been a while, full stop, since I sat down to write a blog post – just for the sake of writing a blog post.
It’s Mercury Retrograde at the moment (through until 13th September – depending on where you are in the world). It’s time to look backwards, or as Mystic Medusa calls is “productive nostalgia.”
To honour Mercury Rx I always set aside my reading time to enjoy favourites I might not otherwise pick up as part of my normal reading (you know, when there is so little time to read it is hard to justify going back to something you have already read.)
This cycle I’m re-reading The Red Tent and Jasper Jones. It will be my third read of The Red Tent and second of Jasper Jones. They’re both books I’ve read in the past few years so I know I’m not going to get caught out with a book I just loved fifteen years ago, only to discover I find it tripe now. That’s what happened with me and the Mists of Avalon last Mercury Rx.
As well as reading, I’m investing what spare time I’ve got to edit and re-write some old stories in preparation for a submissions binge once Mercury goes direct. Mercury is travelling though Virgo so it is an ultra auspicious time for editing (not to mention the Sun is also in Virgo.) I’m bereft of the ability to put words down at the moment, something I’m putting down to the intensive editing load as the writing stage of Chinese Whisperings draws to a close, so I’m hoping going back to old stories and working on them is a good stop gap measure while I wait for my creative mojo to recharge… or to find its way back to me.
On my list to attack, an unfinished (and still un-named) novella, my Parasites story, ‘She-Hero’, ‘The Queen of Hearts’, a short I wrote a long time ago about a possessed roll of film (the ending never really lit me up, but now I have such a better idea of how to end it), ‘Mixed Messages’ and I’m certain to add a few more in if I think hard enough and search deep into the archives. That means I’ll be doing some shout outs in the near future from some beta readers.
And… I might even do a spot of cataloguing. Shock horror!
I can’t help but think, this is the best possible timing for the end of Chinese Whisperings, as attention to detail is key to ensure all twenty stories, plus the prologue and epilogue all hang together in an authentic, accurate and believeable way. Working with the energy is always a luxury, when so much of modern life goes against the incumbent energy.
So while it’s hello, its definitely not good-bye as I attempt to maintain some type of web presence, even if its just for three weeks during Mercury Rx. Just don’t expect any new fiction.
For some other ideas on how you might like to utilise the Mercury Retrograde energy, see here.
[Fiction] Friday: The Lichtenberg Trust
Via ABC27 news
I’ve read the odds of being struck by lightning twice are about one in nine million. I wonder, as I come to, blinking this new world into focus, if there is a calculation big enough to account for me. Last night I was hit for the 10th time.
This is the first time I’ve woken in the city though. I’m lying in bags of rubbish in a narrow alleyway. I shake the haze from my head. Thankfully it is warm and one of the bags is full of old clothes. This is the sort of bounty The Good Lord, as my mother called such providence, makes available to me when I transition.
Once I’m dressed I hit the street, ignoring the too-big shirt, too-short trousers and the fact I don’t recognise the fashion – but I’d be disturbed if I did. There’s never any shoes at the start and I don’t mind. Growing there was no money for shoes even if in winter. It meant you played Russian roulette with frost bite and grew up feeling at home in bare feet.
I was 23 when I was first hit, sobbing and coughing black bile from my lungs in the middle of a deserted patch of the Ballarat goldfields. Monday, 3rd December1855 to be exact. The one year anniversary of the Eureka uprising, and the day Jeremiah Hutchinson, eldest son of George Hutchinson coffin maker and entrepreneur, stole the emerald engagement ring I had purchased for Eliza Gauge and asked her to marry him. He’d had me clobbered from behind and left for dead as my workshop burnt around me.
That first lightning transition only moved me several years through time, to 1858 and a hundred or so kilometres north east to Bendigo. At the time I thought I’d eaten or drunk something bad because it was the only way I could make sense of what had happened. But still the memory of the smoke and Eliza… and the ring. In April 1860 I took the Cobb and Co back to Ballarat posing as my younger brother… asked after myself. I’d died when my workshop caught fire. Eliza had died of consumption two years after she married Jeremiah. She had left behind a daughter.
I spied Eliza’s daughter with Jeremiah six months later, gazing through the window of Brown’s Confectionary in the High Street of Bendigo. I stepped closer and saw Jeremiah’s face blanch when he saw my reflection in the window. He was gone, trailing the curious young girl behind her before I could say anything to him. And no matter how I searched, and oh did I search, he was gone. So I tempted fate and walked out in the next electrical storm.
Over the centuries it’s become an intricate game of cat and mouse. The Hutchinsons never know where or when I will show up, but they know I will… like the proverbial bad penny. My image is burnt into their memories from an early age.
Each hit and each jump in time extends further into the future, moving me far away from my original life. I don’t even know now how old I am. I was born in 1834, but I don’t look much older than I did the last morning I shaved in 1855, buzzing with anticipation of kneeling and asking Eliza to be my wife.
But I’m getting closer to the ring each time, even if it takes more time and effort than the early days. The Lichtenberg Trust means I’m not hung up by having to earn a living while I’m searching. And a good thing. Jeremiah’s descendents have changed professions and location… and even their name to keep that ring safe from me over the years. It took me almost fifty years to work out The Trust was the one way to have a jump on the Hutchinsons. And the interest accumulating is icing on the cake.
I shake away the pain clinging to the inside of my skull. Maybe I’m focusing on the wrong thing… the ring. Maybe I need to spill some Hutchinson blood. It’s crossed my mind more than once, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m a coffin maker by trade and I’ve seen enough death to know not to beckon it into my corner. Besides if I got caught… what would be my defense? A crime of passion from two centuries ago, against a guy whose long dead.
I need to find a phone and call Mr Jarrett to get some money. Without it I can’t begin my search for the Hutchinson family and the ring. A fifty dollar note blows against my leg as I stop to get my bearings. I pick it up and wait for someone to realise it is missing but after five minutes no one does. Mother always said the Lord provides… and yet again he does!
It takes time to discover I need a phone card because no one gives change for the phone any more, then time to find a telephone booth which is working. In all of this I discover I’ve jumped well ahead in time, 30 years in fact, but I’m still in Melbourne.
The number I have for Jarrett, Jarrett and Tyson is disconnected and when I walk by the offices in Collins street the building is gone, replaced with a office tower of sparkling glass. It takes a few more hours of fruitless searching for a phone book and finally an introduction to the internet to find their new phone number.
“I’m sorry, but Mr Jarrett died three years ago. Who did you say you were calling on behalf of again.”
“The Lichtenberg Trust.”
“Just one moment and I will put you through to Mr Wilson. He’s the partner in charge of Trusts.”
I press my back against the cold glass of the telephone booth trying to ignore the overwhelming stench of urine and the beady eyes of the homeless man sitting against the wall across from the booth. I watch the traffic lights change, once then twice. They’ve changed 21 times, a green light for each year of my old life in Scotland, before someone picks up the other end.
“Evan Wilson.”
“Good afternoon, Mr Wilson. Ryan Anderson. Your firm administrates my trust fund.”
“Yes, err, Mr Anderson.” I can hear him flipping through the file.
“I need urgent access to some money, Mr Wilson. I’ve just arrived back in town.”
The voice on the other end sighs.
“I’m afraid there have been problems with your Trust Fund, Mr Anderson. You were contacted in 1997 about changes and you made no reply at that time.”
“Mr Wilson. You’ve read my file. I was unaware there were changes. Mr Jarrett always took care of things for me, as did his father before him and grandfather before that.”
“Mr Jarrett retired in 1996.” More flicking of paper. “Clearly there were correspondences sent to you at the time, which you failed to follow up on as requested.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I can’t see how so, I’m looking at copies of the letters sent to you, sir.”
“I don’t think you understand… you have read the file. All the file”
“Mr Anderson – I’m a busy man. I had to get my personal assistant to pull this from the archives.”
“I need access to my money. It is imperative I have access to funds in the next 24 hours. Mr Jarrett assured me my money would always be safe there. Indeed it has been safe with his firm for almost a hundred years. This is a very old trust Mr Wilson. You do understand?”
“In short Mr Anderson, old trust fund or not, your money was lost during the banking collapse last year. It seems Mr Jarrett Junior decided to park it in a bank in Iceland which collapsed in 2008… indeed – it was a year ago today.”
“What the hell was my money doing in Iceland? I want to speak to Mr Jarrett Junior.”
“I’m afraid Mr Jarrett no longer works for us.”
“Then tell me who does? Miss Juniper, or Mr Low. Surely someone must still be there from-”
Mr Wilson laughed on the other end.
“From when? 1978 perhaps which is your last billed visit to our offices? There’s none of that gold watch fifty year service any more, Mr Anderson. Times have changed.”
I wanted to tell Mr Wilson all about times changing.
“So you’re telling me I have no money.”
There was more flipping of papers.
“It would seem so, Mr Anderson.”
I slammed the phone down. After a hundred years of a safety net I was no better off than I was alone and naked in 1858 in the Bendigo diggings after my first transition. Was this the dead end which warranted a walk in a wheat field, summonsing a thunder storm? Or for me to just give up? Or forget the ring. Just get on living my life. Would Eliza have wanted this for me? All over a bloody ring? Did it really matter if the Hutchinson’s had it? I was alive wasn’t I… hit by lightning ten times. It should have been me in the Guiness Book of records for the most lightning strikes survived. Not some Roy Sullivan whose only been hit seven times and never time travelled from what I was reading on Wikipedia.
I kick the book door open with my bare foot and the homeless man watching me jumps. I have a twenty dollar note and some loose change in my pocket. That’s it.
I’ll eat and get a different set of clothes. Then I’ll consider what happens next.
There’s a tiny alley called DeGraves across from Flinders Street station, which is gratefully unchanged for more than a hundred years, and I wandered there looking for something to eat. The drop-down cinema chairs in one catches my attention and I sink into the worn burgundy vinyl and pick up the menu. Looking down the list of prices I realise what would have been a veritable fortune in 1978 is going to be quickly gone in 2009.
“You look like you’ve had a rough day.”.
“I just got in from 1978 and discovered some lawyer arsehole lost my trust fund in Iceland.”
“Sounds like as much fun as being struck by lightning.” She placed her hand on the table and the afternoon light hit one of the facets and for a moment, like the night in 1855 when the lightning pierced the sky, I am blinded.
“Eliza?” I ask, the word escaping as I drink in the emerald set in rose gold, just as I’d commissioned.
The waitress laughs. “I don’t think I’ve ever been mistaken for my Gramma. Eliza Gauge Hutchinson.”
“Eliza Gauge Hutchinson,” I can barely say the words. Hutchinson comes out as a hiss.
“Named after her Gramma so I’m told. She was a vaudeville star or something like that before she got married.”
I can’t look up into her face. I can’t bare it if it were not her.
“She was very beautiful. A star in her own right.” I put the menu down and point to the ring. “Where did you get her ring?”
“I got it during my parent’s divorce settlement. My father said my mother stole it, my mother said that was rich given they all knew it was stolen in the first place. So I took it. It’s a bit garish, but I like it. And it fits. Don’t think it’s a real emerald though.”
“Oh its real,” I say.
She lifts her hand to stare at the ring in the shafts of the afternoon sun and I look up into Eliza’s face for the first time in more than 170 years.
Friday Flash: She-Hero
via ABC27 news
Dafyd looked down and saw his well-worn brown shoes dangling above the storm clouds. Feeling a rush of vertigo hit him, he closed his eyes. He focused on the strong arms around him and the breasts pressing into his face as they descended through the damp. Landing as the first crack of thunder tore across the sky made the landfall more dramatic than it was. All in all, it wasn’t how Dafyd imagined he’d end his 40th birthday.
His track record suggested the end would come today – shot in the head in the bank waiting to cash his birthday cheque from him mother, who believed Satan himself controlled the electronic banking and clung for dear-life to her cheque-book. The end would come when he embarrassed his wife for the last time, showing off his low-command of French, mortifying the waitress and finding a steak knife protruding from his chest. The end would come choking on a piece of birthday cake at his surprise birthday party, discovering too late he had recently developed a nut allergy. Or at the hands of a mugger down a dark alley way after he’d stop to ask for direction when his NavMan failed.
As the crack-head had shoved the gun in his face, Dafy closed his eyes and surrendered. After all – every birthday he could remember had been a disaster. To die on on his 40th seemed a fitting end.
But he’d been he’d been plucked from danger by this gorgeous she-hero, clad from head to toe-in red. It was his 15 year old self’s fantasty.
She had her back to him, standing on the edge of the building, looking, what Dafyd assumed, was pensively over the sinful city. Or perhaps protectively. It was hard to tell since she had her back to him and Dayfd’s eyes were glued to her round, luscious backside straining against the vinyl beneath the ruffle of the short skirt. The gentle curve of her hips, long legs… Dafyd licked his dry lips.
“Thank you,” he said, though the words caught in his throat as he struggled to coordinate his breathing. Adrenalin and desire crash tackling each other. One minute about to die and the next minute about to get everything he’d ever wanted.
She nodded but didn’t turn around.
Dafyd got it – she took her job as guardian of the city seriously. But first, she’d turn and they’d lock in a passionate kiss before she swan-dived from the roof top, flying out into the fractured night to save the next hapless soul from an untimely ending.
Lightning opened a schism in the sky, followed by shattering thunder. Dafyd remembered his English teaching talking about Skakespearean weather and knew something profound was about to happen.
She turned and Dafyd closed his eyes, waiting for her lips to caress his.
“You don’t want to do that dude,” a voice said, and for a moment Dafyd thought it was his conscience warning him against breaking his marriage vows. Hell – just one kiss. What harm could one kiss do after you’d cheated death, again? “Seriously dude, you don’t want to do that.”
Dafyd opened one eye and then the other to find the she-hero with her hands on her hips. Dafyd devoured her from her ethereal face, down her graceful neck, strong shoulders, sensible breasts, hard stomach ending in a bulge.
Dafyd stumbled backwards away from her.
“You’re a bloke.”
“And you’re alive dude – so we’ll call it quits.”
“What the hell…” Dafyd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His stomach felt as though he’d eaten a reheated kebab that had already given him food poisoning once. “You’re a bloke.”
“You’ve got a good grasp of the obvious, Dafyd.”
“How do you know my name.”
“I read minds.”
“You just stay the fuck away from me.” Dafyd turned to run off but stopped. He couldn’t help himself.“Why the hell would you want to dress up as a woman and save people? You got some drag queen fetish?”
The she-hero pulled off the latex mask, a handsome chiseled face, shadowed with a heavy stubble illuminated as lightning flashed above.
“Even this isn’t enough to cut it in the superhero stakes these days.” He dropped the mask to his feet. “I fly. I read minds, I’m hot – but you know what… you gotta be a vampire, a vampire,” the words were spat out his mouth. “If you want to make it in the hero games these days. Female super heroes on the other hand… there’s plenty of openings. Dude, I got desperate. You understand… dude?”
Dayfd ran for the stairs, coming to the conclusion as he hurtled through the barely lit stairwell, the mugger should have just shot him or if he was lucky before he got to the bottom he’d trip and break his neck.
You can also listen to “She-Hero” on audioBoo.
Author’s Note
This story was booted out onto the page compliments of the [Fiction] Friday prompt: #162: “Write about a man with an impossibly bad streak of luck on his birthdays, who, as his 40th birthday approaches, is scared of what might happen.”
Queen of Hearts – Revised
As soon as I posted up part one of The Queen of Hearts I had a crisis of confidence about the POV and the tense in which is was written. Tonight I used my hour of writing races to rework the tense and the POV. For those who read the original over the weekend, I’d love some feed back and some idea of which one works better.
- – -
via http://www.daddypapersurfer.com/
The wolf whistles and the applause reach a crescendo and the heavy velvet curtain falls, the golden tassles brushing the boards. I wait a moment, take a few steps back from the curtain and walk off into the wings.
“Do you want to take another curtain call?” Louis is new and all the stage hands eye him with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.
Every fiber of my being screams to be back out there soaking up the adoration, but I shake my head as best I can in the elaborate headdress. Sergio, the old stage manager knew the score. Stars take three curtain calls. Divas more. I’ve never forgotten which side of vanity I want to reside on.
A diminutive woman walks into the wings, hands lost in enthusiastic clapping which segues into excited signing.
You were so beautiful Miss Varla. Bravo! Bravo!
My hands easily form the signs I need to assure Luisa, my dresser and friend, it is all thanks to her. Luisa doesn’t just sew incredible costumes and ensure I look stunning every night, she keeps me grounded. Every night when I look at her fussing over me I know it could easily have been me. One pedestrian and one car. Two lapses of concentration. A career destroyed in the split-second screech of tyres.
Is Vin here? I sign
Luisa shakes her head. My joie-de-vive drains out through my diamante-encrusted dancing shoes and into the ancient boards.
Come! Come! Luisa motions. There is much celebrating to be done. No mooning over Vin Tefnel.
Luisa doesn’t wait for a response, walking behind me, detaching the elaborate feathered train from the sequined bodysuit, giving me a very gentle push towards the back stage entrance.
The scent of evening jasmine hits me the moment the wonky door of my dressing-room opens.
“Oh Luisa.” The words gush out and are lost to Luisa as I rush to admire the huge bunch of tigerlillies dramatically framed by the light-studded mirror. “He remembered.” I recklessly plung my face deep into the large genetically-engineered petals, remember Vin’s excitement the first time his friend successfully bound the perfume of jasmine to the large orange flowers.
He always remembers, why do you doubt him so? Luisa signs the same retort each opening night, always caught out the corner of my eye, before she berates me
You will stain your face with the pollen. Luisa’s hand fly emphatically through the air infront of her.
I flick my fingers off opposite shoulders: I don’t care.
As I do so I catch sight of the creamy envelope attached to the flowers and pull the note out.
We did it babe. One million hits. The server held this time.
~Vin
I squeal and thrust the card at Luisa, clapping my hands in delight. It had been a long hard road but we’ve done it. Years it’s taken us to find a niche for our brand of uncompromising, political burlesque, moving men from wanting just tits and long legs, to appreciating political satire and fine art. And now we’re no longer contained to one packed theatre a night, with a matinee on Saturday and Sunday. I twirl around once and then twice. The freedom!
Minsky will love it, knowing he could charge more for the privilege of attending a live show. He’ll recoup a thousand times over the cost of installing the shower in my dressing-room. And for the first time Vin and I will have an independent income. The theatre owners will grovelling to us. Finally!
Luisa puts her right hand in her left and gives the two a hearty shake: Congratulations. I smile and before I can to drink in the perfume of Vin’s flowers Luisa’s maneuvers me into a chair and is stripping away my burlesque regalia–tiny fingers moving with speed and precision to remove the red and green feathered diamante headdress, the wig beneath and the thick layer of stage make up from my face. Before the tiredness has time to settle in my muscles, I’m out of the chair and Luisa is carefully removing the skin-tight lycra and passing me a silk robe.
Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? Luisa signs
I shake my head, needing to be alone between the show and the party. And tonight I want to take special care to look good for Vin.
Enjy the after party.
Please come but she shakes her head. I pinch my chin between my first three fingers and pull them back: Thanks.
Luisa takes the same three fingers snaps them together, mirrors my sign and then points to me: No! Thank You.
I nod and disappear around the corner of the shower cubicle, before my emotions catch up with me. Tonight belongs to the ring of champagne flutes saluting success, not tears.
After a moment of rustling, the sound of the dressing-room door closing echoes around the room and I’m alone. I sigh, shrug my tired body from the robe and turn the taps on, waiting for the hot water to come through. Above the whine of the water and the thumping of the pipes I hear the dressing-room door close again. Knowing it is pointless to yell out to Luisa, who is always leaving something behind at the end of the night, I step around the cubicle wall to find the dressing room empty.
A large iron bird cage sits has replaced Vin’s flowers.
“Vin?” I call out.
He always jokes it is only a matter of time, given my penchant for feathers and the passionate devotion of my followers that someone would gift me with a real, live bird. After all, within days of our adaptation of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes every man seemed to be learning the ancient art of origami.
The cage has no card or any other form of identifying keep-sake.
I trhow my robe on and run barefoot out into the chaos of the post-show backstage area, bustling with stage hands and other technicians, rather than performers of hanger-ons. The reverie from the theatre and the bar beyond is audible. Minsky’s cash register will be ringing for hours yet.
“Did you see someone come back stage with a parrot?” I ask everyone who passes, but they all shake their heads and hurry on. Opening night is the only night they’re invited to the after party and they’re keen to get in as many free drinks as they can.
“A parrot you say Miss Varla,” Louis chuckles when I find him fussing over paperwork in his tiny office. “Can’t say I’ve seen anyone wandering around with a parrot. Mr Minsky was pretty darn clear on barring jerks from backstage. He hired a couple of thugs to man the door tonight. Sorry.”
Stream rolls out of my dressing room door when I open it.
“Shit!” Luisa would have a fit if she knew I’d doused the entire room, including all the costumes, like this.
I wave clear a path through white eddies and turn the taps off, throwing open the tiny window which is the only form of ventilation in the room.
When I walk out of the cubicle, the bird cage is still there - a red and green parrot staring at me.
“What the hell am I going to do with you?” I remember only too well all the potted plants I’ve killed.
The bird tilts its head.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
She get in closer.
“Did you say something?”
It swaps sides, and looks at me from its right shoulder, never releasing me from the stare.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
I step back, certain the bird said something. But heard is the wrong word. The words seem to just formm with astonishing clarity, in my head.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
“OK, this is not funny.” I spin around, my mind battling against the logic of it and rip aside the costumes neatly hanging on the rack, looking for Vin. This is another of his practical jokes. But I’m alone.
The tigerlily is still drinking as I poke it through the bars of the cage and into the parrot. It ruffled its feathers.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
“You can turn the damn remote control bird off, Vin. You’re freakin’ me out.”
Vin doesn’t appear so I open the cage and seize the bird. Outside the cage I turn it over once and then twice, pulling the wings out, looking for the on/off switch as it lashes out at me with claws and beak, drawing blood but I refuse to submit. Finally it shits on me, molten crap splashing onto my cheek. My fingers release. Colourful wings open and cut through the steam, carrying the damn bird to the top of the cubicle wall. I look up through the swirls, using my forearm to wipe away the shit.
The Queen of Hearts is coming. You have been warned.
Friday Flash: Queen of Hearts – Part One
The wolf whistles and the applause reached a crescendo and the heavy velvet curtain fell, the golden tassles at the bottom brushing the boards. Varla waited a moment and then walked off into the wings.
“Do you want to take another curtain call?” Louis was new and all the stage hands eyed him with curiosity.
She shook her head as best she could in the elaborate headdress. Sergio, the old stage manager knew never to ask her. Every fibre of her being screamed to be back out there soaking up the adoration, but stars took three curtain calls. Divas took more. Varla never forgot which side of vanity she resided on.
A diminutive woman walked into the wings, hands lost in enthusiastic clapping segueing into excited signing.
You were so beautiful Miss Varla. Bravo! Bravo!
Varla’s hands easily formed the signs she needed to assure Luisa, her deaf dresser, it was all thanks to her. Then asked: Is Vin here?
Luisa shook her head. Varla felt her joie-de-vive drain out her diamante-encrusted dancing shoes and into the ancient boards.
Come! Come! Luisa motioned. There is much celebrating to be done. No mooning over Mr Tefnel.
Luisa didn’t wait for any type of response, walking behind the burlesque star, detaching the elaborate feathered train from the sequined bodysuit then giving Varla a very gentle push to propel her back stage.
The scent of evening jasmine hit Varla the moment the wonky door of her dressing-room opened.
“Oh Luisa,” Varla gushed, her words lost as she rushed to admire the huge bunch of tigerlillies framed by the light studded mirror. “He remembered.”
He always remembers, why do you doubt him so? Luisa knew she was safe to sign her mind – Varla couldn’t see her, she’d recklessly plunged her face deep into the large genetically-engineered petals.
Luisa grabbed Varla’s arm and emphatically signed: You will stain your face with the pollen, Miss Varla.
Varla flicked her fingers off opposite shoulders: I don’t care.
With her face out of the massive petals Varla saw the envelope attached, plucking the card from within.
We did it babe. One million hits. The server held this time.
~Vin
Varla squealed and thrust the card at Luisa, clapping her hands in delight. It had been a long hard road but they’d done it. It had taken years to find a niche for their brand of uncompromising, political burlesque, moving men from wanting just tits and long legs, to appreciating political satire and fine art. And now they were no longer contained to one packed theatre a night. Minsky would love it, knowing he could charge more for the privilege of attending a live show. Via the internet she and Vin had a lucrative means of income for the first time.
Luisa put her right hand in her left and gave the two a hearty shake: Congratulations. Varla smiled, but before she could immerse her face in the flowers to drink in their perfume, Luisa had manoeuvred her into a chair and begun to strip away the burlesque regalia–tiny fingers moving with speed and precision to remove the red and green feathered diamante headdress, the wig beneath and then the thick layer of stage make up from Varla’s face. Before the tiredness had time to settle in Varla’s muscles, Luisa was pulling the star out of the chair, carefully removing the skin-tight lycra and passing a silk robe.
Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? Varla shook her head. She liked to be alone between the show and the party. And tonight she wanted to take special care to look good for Vin. See you at the after party.
Varla pinched her chin between three fingers and pulled them back: Thanks.
Luisa took the same three fingers pulled them together empathically so the finger tips touched, mimicked Varla’s sign and then pointed to her: No! Thank You.
Varla nodded and disappeared around the corner of the shower cubicle. After a moment of rustling, the sound of the dressing-room door closing echoed around the room. Varla sighed and shrugged her tired body from the robe. She turned the taps on and waited for the hot water to come through. Above the whine of the water and the thumping of the pipes she heard the dressing-room door close again. Knowing it was pointless to yell out to Luisa, Varla stepped around the cubicle wall to find dressing room empty.
A large iron bird cage sat where the flowers had minutes earlier.
“Vin?” Varla called out. He’d always joked it was only a matter of time, given her penchant for feathers and the passion of her followers that one would gift her with a real, live bird. After their adaptation of Sadako and the thousand Paper Cranes every man it seemed, was learning the ancient Japanese art of origami to woo her.
She looked at the cage for a card or some type of identifying keep-sake but there was nothing.
Varla threw her robe on and ran barefoot out into the corridor. It was bustling with stage hands and other technicians, with the reverie from the theatre and the bar beyond still audible.
“Did you see someone come back stage with a parrot?” Varla asked everyone she passed. They all shook their head.
“A parrot you say Miss Varla,” Louis chuckled when she found him in his tiny office. “Can’t say I’ve seen anyone wandering around with a parrot. Mr Minsky was pretty darn clear on barring jerks from backstage. He hired a couple of thugs to man the door tonight.”
Varla returned to find her dressing-room cloaked in steam from the shower she’d left running.
“Shit!” Luisa would have a fit if she knew.
She waved a path through white eddies to turn the taps off. Back at the birdcage she stared at the large red and green feathered creature. It stared back.
“What the hell am I going to do with you?” She remembered all the potted plants she’d neglected.
The bird tilted its head.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
She stuck her head closer to the bird cage.
“Did you say something?”
It tilted its head to the other side, all the time holding her gaze.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
Varla stepped back from the bird. She’d definitely heard it say something. Heard was the wrong word for it though. The words formed with astonishing clarity in her head.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
“OK, this is not funny.” She spun around and ripped aside the costumes neatly hung on the rack, looking for Vin. Accepting she was alone Varla grabbed a tigerlily and poked the bird with the wet stem. It ruffled its feathers.
The Queen of Hearts is coming.
“You can turn the damn remote control bird off, Vin. You’re freakin’ me out.”
When Vin didn’t appear Varla opened the door to the cage and dragged the bird out. As she turned it over, pulling at its wings, looking for the on/off switch long talons lashed out, its beak drawing blood. Finally a hot squirt of bird shit hit Varla in the face and her fingers released. Its wings opened and cut through the steam, carrying the bird to the top of the cubicle wall. Varla looked up through the swirls, wiping the shit from her cheek with her forearm.
The Queen of Hearts is coming. You have been warned.
Author’s Note: you can hear the first two thirds of this story narrated by moi here at audioboo. This story was spawned from the [Friday] Fiction prompt to include a telepathic parrot and comes compliments of my partner who first suggested such a thing two years ago. This ones for you darling!
Audioboo
I’ve taken the plunge!
Since befriending Greg McQueen he’s been gently hassling me to take up AudioBoo-ing (is that an actual word… well it is now) and since suggesting it, the idea has been kicking around in my head. When it’s not pushed aside easily by other concerns, you know you need to sit up and take notice.
Podcasting has always intrigued me but I know it requires (to sound great) a lot of effort and some special equipment. So I had put it into the too hard basket (AKA the ‘when-I-have-time’ basket and I never do have the time). Recording a boo is easy. All it requires is an iPhone (though there are desk top apps for recording), the free app and around five minutes of your time… oh and something to say!
Audioboo. Because sound is social.
That’s the catch cry of Audioboo and it is. Being social used to involve talking to people – the nuances of voice and body language and all of that is lost in status updates, tweets and IMing. While gratefully you don’t have to put up with a visual of my hands going a million miles an hour as a I talk, you get the characterisation and modulation of voice… which I love.
This gets me over one of those fears – the sound of my voice recorded (which maybe another reason to have put off podcasting) When I was a teenage I did lots of public speaking and gratefully many of the techniques I was taught have become standard parts of my voice pattern over time (my debating teacher Miss Crooks would be thrilled I’m certain) In Year 12 I was one of several local students invited to have a speech recorded at the local radio station, 3BA. While I had no problems getting up and speaking in front of people – I seemed to freeze up at the sight of a microphone. It took three takes to get a decent recording of my speech and I seemed forever scarred by the experience.
When it came time for my speech to be broadcast I was horrified at the sound of my voice. It was horrendously nasally as a child and a teenager. The worst bits of my voice seemed to be amplified over the radiowaves and left me forever with a tic about the sound of my voice (you wouldn’t tell if you’ve ever been caught in person by me in the mood for a chat.)
My voice has either matured over time or my health is much better and I’m without much of the horrible nasal sound I had (think talking through your nose – it was really bad.) I was amazed tis morning at the sound quality of my ‘ just nattering away to my iPhone’ and the fact I didn’t spend three and a half minues umming and ahhing, or clearing my throat. A much better job than my little impromptu speech at the State Library for the launch of Gnarly Planning back in April.
There are so manythings to like about audioboo (other than the ease of actually recording and uploading one!)
- they are soundbites – a maximum of five minutes. You can listen as you are reading through and catching up on facebook
- You can autolink through to facebook and twitter (though I bungled mine this morning because I hadn’t actually signed into my account on the iPhone before I recorded) so you literally can listen as you’re trawling through facebook.
- They are personal.
- You can literally do it anywhere (but hmmm – talking into your phone in a cafe might be just a little too pretentious)
- You can record and upload in the time it takes to boil the jug and steep a teabag.
- You can follow your favourite people and it is all there on your iPhone to listen to (hello new addiction!)
I could go on but I won’t. Greg you sold me on it and I can’t wait now to apply it to a number of other projects we’ve got happening. The poor man’s podcast? I don’t think so.
For those that didn’t catch it on Facebook, here’s my maiden boo (sorry I couldn’t get a funky box to open)…
Maiden Boo
Mixed Messages
I’m not sure why aliens would choose Reservoir to land. There have to be better places in Australia to visit than the suburbs of Melbourne. But the message was clear. They are coming. Here. And I’m to wait.
The sky is on fire, the bits I can see through the curtain of pink blossoms. A column of smoke raises from old man Salvatore’s incinerator, the stink blowing across the fence into our yard, competing with the perfume of the plum blossoms I’m hiding in. I should have set up the roof, but Mother would have heard me no matter how quiet I was. The old crystal set radio is strung up with some twine on a small branch I’ve snapped off to make a hook. It isn’t the best set up, the aerial stuck to the tree trunk, but you make do. That’s what Dad always told me. Making do, whatever the situation is what marks a dedicated communications officer. That’s why the Germans killed him. He was too good.
Samuel says Dad was a code breaker – it was his job to decipher the secret messages the Germans sent. He says Dad showed him some of the secret codes, but I don’t believe him. He says Dad was real smart and that’s why the Germans killed him.
I pat Dad’s cast-off notebook. It fits perfectly in the pocket of Samuel’s old overalls. They’re patched at the knees and soft with wear. I stole them, months ago, from a bag of clothes Mother was giving to Mrs Thomas at Number 18. They’ve been hidden under my mattress waiting for a special occasion like this.
Dresses are useless for climbing trees and while I thought long and hard on what I should wear if I was going to be meet an alien for the first time, I was certain they’d appreciate practicality over pretty. That’s what Dad said when we set off on our last adventure together, hand in hand, with Mother saying everyone in the street would talk. “Let them talk,” he said and smiled at me. I guess he doesn’t have to worry too much now about what people say. Mother says he is a Hero and no one should say a bad word against him. But they still stare at us at Church. When I go to Heaven they can say what they want about me. Sticks and stones and names can’t hurt you there.
From the tree I can Mrs Thomas unpeg sheets folding them into a wicker basket before the night air settles. The smell of Widow Grenville’s apple pie wafting out her back door is torture. And then Mother appears and the real torment begins.
“Lucy, come down out of that tree.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t.”
“The aliens – they’re waiting for me.”
“LUCY, enough of this nonsense. Come down now. Dinner is getting cold.”
I stick my head out of the barricade of blossoms. The motion knocks some free and they drift like winter drizzle around Mother who has her hands riveted to her hips. A few land in her hair and for a moment I can imagine her as the beautiful, young smiling bride in the silver frame on the lounge room mantle piece.
“The aliens sent a special message. Just to me. They said, Lucy Malone, aliens are coming. Stand by.”
“No they didn’t,” says Samuel, coming into sight. “I sent you a message saying Lucy Malone, dinner is ready.”
I refer to my notepad. I write down everything. Samuel transmissions are always full of mistakes, so I’d know the difference between one of his and an important one from aliens.
“You still get ‘d’ and ‘b’ mixed up, Samuel. Why would I get out of the tree for a message about ‘binner’ being ready. You really should do yourself a favour and just tap ‘tea’ instead.”
I’m angry with Samuel because he was given Dad’s collection of straight keys and antique telegram machines. Mother says Samuel will follow in Dad’s footsteps, even though there is talk telephones will soon be more popular and cheaper than telegrams. Next year Samuel’s allowed to leave school and become an apprentice at the Telegraph Office. Mother says Mr Hardy has promised Samuel won’t have to start off delivering telegrams like the other boys. I tell Mother I’m going to get an apprenticeship at the Telegraph Office too just like Dad and Samuel. She says no I won’t and turns her back on me when remind her I’m better at sending code than Samuel.
Dad wrote to me and told me I could do anything I wanted to. Told me he was proud of the progress I was making at learning Morse Code. I’m not going to make sandwiches in Coles and wait to get married, even if Mother says that’s all I can rightly expect as a girl. I don’t want to have her “realistic expectations.”
She comes closer to the tree to hiss her commands through her teeth, that way Widow Grenville wont pop her head over the fence to ask if Mother’s having a bad day with me again. Widow Grenville is my greatest ally. Mother thinks Widow Grenville is a busybody, but Widow Grenville says someone’s got to be my champion now Dad’s gone. She gives me chunks of Edinburgh Rock and tells me my Mother wasn’t always so mean. Widow Grenville says all the goodness and light in Mother went to the grave with my Dad. She shakes her head every time she says that and for a moment I want to ask her all the questions welling up inside me. But never do.
I thrust the note book out of the tree and shake it. “I chose to ignore your message. According to my watch you sent the message about dinner at 18:27 a good hour after the message from the aliens arrived at 17:13. I could not have made the mistake of thinking one was the other.”
“Lucy Louise Malone, you will come down out of that tree or I will tan your backside so hard you won’t sit for a week.”
“But the aliens, Mother. If I’m not here to greet them, it could be a diplomatic disaster of intergalactic proportions. Do you want that sitting on your conscience?”
“Have you been lending her your comic books again?”
“No, Mother. I learn from my mistakes, Mother.”
“This has nothing to do with his comic books.” I hang myself a little further out the tree. “How about you send my dinner up and I’ll have it in the tree. Then you will be happy because I’m eating dinner and I won’t offend the aliens.”
“Get out of the tree NOW!”
The words hit me as hard as if she’d actually slapped me. I fall back into the tree, into the safety of the world behind the pink curtain. The fire is fading in the sky. My stomach growls loudly. A shank of hair falls in my eyes and smells of old man Salvatore’s smoke.
But I’m not going down. A dedicated communication officer remains at his post until the last. The aliens will send me another message. I know they will. They told me to stand by.
When they land they’ll invite me to come on board and live on their planet. And I’ll say yes in a heart beat, knowing the only person who’ll miss me is Widow Grenville. But she’ll understand.
“I’m counting to ten. If you are not down by the time I get to ten, you are going to wish you’d never been born Lucy Malone. One… two.”
I stare at the radio willing to squeak to life.
“Three… four.”
There’s a squeal and the tones tumble out. Dots and dashes fly from my pencil onto the page.
L-U-C-Y M-A-L-O-N-E (stop)
“…six.”
A-L-I-E-N-S T-H-I-N-K (stop)
“…eight.”
S-U-C-K-S T-O B-E Y-O-U (stop)
Authors Note: This story was inspired by [Fiction] Friday Prompt #160: A signal is misinterpreted. Photo by Becx5 via Photobucket.
