Category: Flash fiction

Puddled

In this puddle there is a beginning, a middle, and some steam. Not just any old steam but a thin volatile funnel of pearly mist that twirls up and eastwards towards the burnt out monastery on Blackheath Hill.

Abigail, aged eleven and a half, stands in the centre of the puddle, the water so deep it’s just an inch from the top of her blue wellington boots. She cups her hands around the vent of steam, the cool damp tickling the chill of her fingers.

‘What says you?’ she coos to the drizzle. ‘What says you, Steam?’

Up the hill in the burnt down monastery the breeze bumps cascades of plump brambles against blackened granite walls and the berries sigh and simmer, their gossip hushed as they wait for the little girl to come up from the valley below.

Abigail, in her black velvet frock, white ribbons in her red pigtails, is on her own. She doesn’t have a basket for the brambles, but she does have pockets and two large navy cotton handkerchiefs. When she was ten she tried collecting the brambles in her wellington boots. On seeing Abigail’s purple and pulpy bare feet when she’d come in from the scullery that day, her Aunt Lydia swooned in a dead faint, hit her head on the squat wooden bear that kept the kitchen door propped open and never fully recovered.

Something crackles in the undergrowth in the conifer forest between Abigail and the burnt out monastery. A branch breaking or a stone tumbling. Might it be a wolf? Alas, we are in Scotland and wolves are yet to be reintroduced. The last wolf in Scotland probably died alone in a cave, tired and fed up, in around 1700. This was well before the invention of blue wellington boots and long before anyone had the audacity to name their daughter Abigail.

Nevertheless, Abigail stops messing about in the puddle and pulls her hands back from the steam. Her cheeks tighten and her hands clench to fists. Eyes are upon her, animal eyes. She knows this with a certainty unusual for a little girl that has spent most of her short life living in a pleasant suburb with a cathedral and a swing park and only comes to the country for an annual two week holiday to give her melancholic mother a break.

Should she turn her head to look to the forest with its regiment of trees and desolate carpet of decaying needles? No, that would be too obvious. She looks up at the sky. The steam has disappeared, afraid of the animal eyes or afraid of Abigail’s clenching fists or, perhaps more humdrum, it’s just burnt off in the sun that’s now blazing down behind the scorched monastery.

So now in the puddle we’ve lost the steam but we still have the beginning, the middle, and Abigail. Abigail pulls herself together. As there is no end, there are no animal eyes. Nothing to see here. She wades out of the puddle, shakes her wellington boots and skips up the path into the wood towards the fat berries waiting to be plucked.

The wolf, when he tears and rips and bloodies, is so silent even the brambles don’t notice the kill.

Image taken from Wikipedia Commons.

exercise Flash fiction

Santa’s Lipogram

It’s Christmas and I can’t contain it, I’m so happy so manic so wildly lit up! I want Santa and I want him now.

Santa is a famous fat man who understands snow and stars and birds and Bambi and visits kids at night, gifting all sorts of stuff.

Watching, waiting, glowing kids prick up nostrils, smooth back curly hair (dark or fair) looking for gifts, for surprising animals (a fox, a chimp, a fish, a rhino), putting out Dad’s gin and Mum’s cola.

Christmas wasn’t always fun. In old days, Christmas was, for many folk, dark and morbid. Christmas had Satan.

Satan was a bad man. Satan had a chariot and took infants from cots at night. Singing songs of damnation, Satan slung sorry bairns into sacks and took his loot into his Christmas shop, a shop dimly lit with dragons and mouldy sprouts.

Anyway, you don’t want to know about Satan. It’s Christmas! I’m planning a carnival for fun with biscuits, rum, trout, scallops, custard and vodka – all of it in bright glass, pans and pots – all of it for folk in our church.

I’ll put this pillar of gifts by our arbor of oak and holly and folk will sing hymns, sing loudly for Santa and Mary (although sadly, many may sing for that awful man Satan).

Tags lipogram

Flash fiction

A mule called Dave

The priest hadn’t looked them in the eye. He sips his drink alone at the wake, the wine staining his lips a maudlin puce. Afterwards, Beth doesn’t talk to him for two years. Or more. Not one word. On good days she makes a sound. A cough. An intake of breath. A tut. These days are so rare that he takes a note of them, pressing a pencil mark on the calendar he got from the local garage on the kitchen wall. Mostly they live in their separate rooms in their separate beds in a dark trembling silence. A silence not broken until the circus comes to town. He’s handed a leaflet in the post office queue, queuing to pay the television licence for the TV they never watch, the radio they never listen to. He goes twice for the tarot card readings in the caravan behind the big tent. The third time he returns home with her twins. Later, when he tries to return the twins, the circus has gone. Only a mule remains, tethered to the sign that says no ball games here. He returns home with the mule and the twins. He names the mule Dave. The twins he never names, can never decide, so opts instead for One and Two. Does Beth name them? Eventually. Perhaps. He doesn’t know. He can no longer hear. He’s lost the ability to make out words. You could ask Beth. That is, if you could find her. If anyone knew where to find her and him and a mule called Dave and the stolen twins.

Tags bereavement, grief

Flash fiction

Brink

He says, nothing sinister, just wiping that jam from your cheek.

Dense, alabaster white, the silence between us. His finger tracing my right cheek, hovering around the hairs above my upper lip.

Did you get it? I’m careless, thank you. In the mornings especially. Is that all of it? I say.

My forefinger drifts over the skin shuffle he’s left behind. Doesn’t land. Doesn’t disturb the precious.

Yes, he says.

Navy suit jacket. Black trousers too shiny about his knees. Dark hair middle-parted gathered rough behind his ears. Younger than me. Where’s his other thumb?

How much? I say.

Palm tight around my cotton purse. Curtailed fingers. Threading.

He says, how much jam?

Wiping his finger on his sleeve. Taller than me, off-cut eyes. Not from around here. Voice too nasal, trill.

How much should I pay? I say.

Soft clatter from Mrs Campbell’s letterbox across the hall. Wheezing cough. Silence.

He says, a fiver.

Palm tight around my cotton purse. Curtailed fingers. Kneading.

Can you come again? I didn’t know there were people who did this, what would you call it? I didn’t catch your name, I say.

Dip my knees. Floral orange nightie curtsey. Hem working loose about my calves. Cheek sticky tingle. Unravelling.

He says, yes.

Purple scar spilling from his left ear, breath curdle sour.

It’s so long, since, you know. I struggle, there’s something about someone else. Dead. He died, I say.

Pull at the belt around my towelling gown, tucking my thumb in. Shouldn’t have said that.

He says, when?

When was anything all of it everything so much time when was the lamenting all that separating?

I have jam on weekdays. Sundays if Helen brings bread. She uses a machine. I smell it at night, patisserie dreams, Paris choux. Sorry, talking too much, it’s been so long, I say.

He shifts from one foot to another. Eyes about me. Black abraded boots. The shining.

I’m at church, he says, on Sundays.

Blue daypack slung over his right shoulder, grubby union jack stitched to the outer pocket.

The church with the minister in the red shoes? Comforting, the way his robes whisper when he walks. Secrets, I say, and riddles.

Stepping towards me, boot in my doorway, boot in my hall, hand reaching for mine.

He says, yes.

Shuffling back from him. He’s too close. Where to put my hands?

Before church? You don’t need to come in, I say.

Skin flake on his lip. Psoriasis-raw knuckles.

He says, I can come in.

Soft clatter from Mrs Campbell’s letterbox across the hall. Wheezing cough. Silence.

Really, it’s okay like this. Or maybe don’t come. You’re busy, I say.

He’s crossing my brink, my liminal.

He says, I’ll come. Raspberry, isn’t it?

His missing thumb on mine, belly heaving flush. Helen picks the raspberries in the gulley behind the hospital. Too brave, Helen, shouldn’t go there.

The light in the hall flickers. Church bells chime in the distance. Chime and chime and chime.

Again.

Flash fiction

Perseverance

She is an old woman who sits in a high back chair beside a window ten storeys up. Although she lives alone, she is not lonely. Dressed in black, her stockings concertina around her ankles. The concertinas gather dust. The day she gets up from the chair, walks to the window, opens it, climbs out and stands on the lintel is the day the Perseverance rover lands on Mars. ‘It was the best so far’, Matt Wallace says of the landing. Matt previously worked on five other missions to Mars. The woman, her name long forgotten by those who live beside her and around her, puts one leg out into space and then another to shake the dust off her stockings. She is not wearing shoes. Perseverance travelled for 203 days, a journey of 293 million miles. The woman travels for forty seconds to the lintel, a journey of two metres. Standing on tip toes, she hesitates, turns to look at her reflection in the window, smiles at what she sees. Holding onto the wall she smoothes her hair with her right hand, adjusts her dress over her breasts, and steps off the tower block. The woman goes up and up, turning from woman, to blob to dot to nothing. Only the child in the next door apartment observes the woman disappearing into space. Nobody believes the child when she tells the story the next day at school. Then again, there are those that think Perseverance landing on Mars is also just a story.

exercise Flash fiction

Both of Him

We are going to see Jesus. Both of Him.

Before we go, I sit and wait on the brown leather sofa. The sofa fits three small people or two big people. I am alone on the sofa and I don’t take up the space of three people or even two. Nobody sits beside me, they never do.

I sit on the brown leather looking across the coffee table, and across the grey sofa on the other side of the coffee table to the white bookcase backed up against the wall. Mam says the bookcase is a mess. The mess a strumpet makes, she says.

Mam can’t read because she’s blind but she knows a mess when she touches it. The bookcase has seven shelves. Each one is split in two by a central vertical partition.

Jesus, both of Him, says there’s only one book. This proves both of Him have never been to this apartment.

This bookcase has 119 books, four cards with slogans on them, a painting the size of a large box of chocolates, and a game of Jaws. That’s Jaws with the upper case. Jaws is on the top shelf. I can’t reach the Jaws game, even standing on tiptoes on the highest bit of the grey sofa.

Mam has jaws with the lower case. Jesus, both of Him, might have jaws but I don’t know for sure as I haven’t met them yet.

There’s a book on the fourth shelf from the top. It lies flat on its side and it’s called Ducks Newburyport. It’s a blue and white book. The fact that the book is lying on its side is an important mystery.

Jesus lay on his side with Him beside him but there’s no more facts about that because the disciples didn’t write about it.

I sit staring at all the books. Why did a strumpet take the time to disorder them? There are blue books and red books and white books and green books and a wooden angel the size of my palm with blond wooden hair and a red wooden dress but no jaws, not even a painted mouth.

A tall bald man in yellow socks serves us chamomile tea in a transparent glass teapot. Dead yellow flower heads float about inside the pot. The man forgets the cups. There are no yellow books on the shelves, not even one. Nobody tells the man to bring cups.

My bare knees quiver and shake because I am still on the sofa and I want to get going to see Jesus, both of Him.

Beneath my feet, the carpet is grey. It is covered in legs of chairs and tables. Some of the legs are short and some are long. All of them are wooden. None of them have feet. If they had feet they’d walk straight out of this apartment. Down seven floors in the lift. Straight out into the street to the bus terminus. The carpet would be left behind, with the bookcase and the books and the strumpet’s disorder.

I could say there’s a forest of chair legs and table legs but that would be a metaphor and Auntie Lorna says metaphors are showing off and she slaps the faces of show-offs leaving their cheeks crimson and their eyes bloodshot and watery.

The painting the size of a large chocolate box is on the second shelf from the top on the right. It leans against disordered books. The painting, without a frame, is pale blue and pale violet and pale pink and pale mauve. Auntie Lorna calls this type of painting a bloody mess. I don’t let my eyes rest on the painting but I see it all the same.

I twist my head to look behind me. I look out of the small dirty window. Beyond the window is a street with apartments the same as this one. The apartments are close but I can’t see into them. The snow is silent, grimy. Snow flakes stick to the dirty window and slide down the glass. I want to wipe them away but the window doesn’t open.

Mam says it’s time. The bald man says, no really, no rush. Auntie Lorna stands up, ties her headscarf beneath her chin. Mam says, yes, it’s time. Time to get up and put your shoes on and your coat on to go and see Jesus, both of Him. Mam doesn’t actually say ‘both of Him’. Mam doesn’t know yet that Jesus has a twin.

I don’t tell Mam I don’t have shoes. Or a coat.

exercise Flash fiction

Mandarin Dream

On tiptoes on the second to top rung of the wooden ladder pushed up against the tree trunk with the twist of wire in a sweating palm reaching stretching reaching checking every piece of fruit, rejecting those too small, plucking those that fit neat through the hooped wire, dropping them into the canvas basket clung around my neck. Flies all over my mouth. Burn all over my bare flesh. Am I allowed to pick the hard half green ones if they fit? Forgot to ask. Look at the other pickers, can’t see through the prism of mean. Size, twist, pick, drop, size, reject, size, reject, size, reject, size, twist, pick, drop, size, reject reject reject reject. Earn what you pick. Pick what you ken. Someone singing Waltzing Matilda in a German accent nine feet up. Canvas strap too tight chaffing around my neck. Basket not even a quarter full already. Baby blue seersucker shorts gapping at my behind. Ruined. Picker’s crack. Someone yelling shut up shut up bloody oath mate, you’re murdering it! nine feet up. German Matilda waltzing a stutter. Swabbing the sweat off my cheeks with my red cotton bandana looped around my wrist. Flies in amongst my teeth.Turn to watch the others skipping up and down their ladders with their full baskets and their grubby cricket hats and their long sleeves and their long pants marching to the central crates emptying their baskets trotting back, how are they doing that, so fast, what’s wrong with me? Inhale the leaves with their sweet oily citrus scent. Red tractor gulping down diesel, farting out reek. Twenty of us, maybe. Fifteen on the ladders, two overseeing the crates in the centre of the row, two in the tractor, foreman smoking a roll-up under his squalid Akubra hat. Young Israeli on the next tree but one given up, spreadeagled on his back in the dirt, laughing and pointing at the boiled sun, shirt rolled up to his armpits, livid purple scar trekking between nipples burnt. They’re all too small my mandarins, they’ve given me the weakest tree. Bastards. Earth head earth spinning, trees turning to sky turning to dust turning to orange to not enough money.

Foreman shouting something about lunch. Climbing down, steady now steady. Leant up against the trunk in the jumbled shade eating peanut butter and jam on curled up bread. And flying ants. Gulping sweet lemon squash from a glass milk bottle.

Later, he soothes me, the German man, lie still little cat, he whispers, fingers pressing in on my blushing shoulders, his head tucked low beneath the upper bunk. $25 for 12 hours work. Not a tenth of what the Vietnam vets earn. I don’t even know his name. Aloe vera bubbling and spitting as he smears it over my my brazed neck and calves. Blood rushing to my face hanging off the bed staring at the squeezed out Aloe leaves scattered about the wooden floor with pull twists and metal bottle tops and two silver empty condom wrappers. Nobody said you don’t use the sizer to actually size the mandarins, it’s just a guide, now I know.

The fastest pickers are the Vietnam vets, his mate on the stool across from the bunks says. Take a leaf out of their book.

On my belly and his hand stretching into where it shouldn’t and I want to say no, no but no words come and and his bare left toes toy with an empty Aloe leaf lift release lift release.

You’d be better off in the packing shed, sweetheart, the mate on the stool says. Orchard’s for the big girls.

His heavy hand reaching, sizing, twisting, picking.

Their body hair grows through their jeans, what with them never taking them off, not even in the sea, them Vietnam vets, the mate on the stool says.

How do I get in the packing shed, I ask the floor, pushing my belly down through the mattress, pushing me away from him.

Girl on the upper bunk leans over, dangles her arm, strokes his hair, chipped blue nail varnish, tattoo of a tiger on her palm.

Gotta prove yourself, she says.

He sits up, bangs his head on the upper bunk, rubs his scalp.

Fuck this, he says, climbing the ladder up to her. Stuck to his sole the Aloe leaf, a prism of clean.

Tags fruit picking, summer jobs

fiction Flash fiction

Mind that child

Even Tony is heading for the beach. On Giles Street, mothers haul kids out of oversized cars, men brush dog hairs off khaki cotton jackets, taxi drivers push sun-drunk women out of cabs. On Giles Street, Tony limps, side-stepping the dog shite, stepping over cracks. Careful now, careful. The bear, his mother had said, step on a crack and that dirty great bear’ll get you. He pushes past the Maxwell’s overgrown hedge, gives it a shove with his elbow. Thorns tear pink at the loose scoop of his skin. A momentary bloom of pain. The air smells of chip fat, Chinese takeaways and candy floss. Not the sea. Council tractors put paid to that. Ploughing and hoovering the seaweed off the butter-white sand every morning before the mobs arrive. The dirty great bear, his mother had said. He’d reached for her hand. For pity’s sake, Tony! And then the shove. His wee mouth popping in shock. He’d tumbled, legs scrabbling away from the bear. Did he scream?

A rabble of students pushes past him, forcing him further into the prickle of the hedge. All fake tans and canned laughter, blackcurrant aftershave and plastic bags of cheap booze, shorts right up their arses. Rude wee shites. Feels in his pocket for his folding knife. Strokes the wooden handle. Can’t beat a cheese piece cut from a polished blade. Remembering that knife grinder in the leather apron, shouting his wares as they got home from school. Flustered mothers sending running sons out with blunt steels. All the sons but Tony.

A blackbird lands on a garage roof on the other side of the street, bursts too much beauty too much tune over the whole damn lot of them. His father running his thumb along the freshened steel, the oozing blood an obedient pulsing track. Tony pauses, leans hard on the iron gate at No.5, catches his breath. A woman squeezes past him, her fat hip soft on his. A hot rush of human touch. His free hand slips to his groin. She’s sour sweat and Persil Automatic, belly cut off at the midriff with a purple t-shirt proclaiming GOD. GOD? No, DOG damnit. His mother swore it was the devil that summoned his father every weekend to the dog races. He wouldn’t have gone there on his own, she whispered. But it was God that sent his father home with an empty wallet and sick-sweet vodka sighs. Also fists.

He pulls his hand up from his groin. That sound, Greensleeves? He frowns, looks around. An ice-cream van pulls in, turns and parks by the promenade. That summer of the bear there’d been an accordion player bashing out Greensleeves. With a three-toed monkey and a red felt hat and a moustache that curled twice around each ear. His sister sucking on the stick of blue rock with black lettering down the centre that he couldn’t yet read.

And now, look at that. A wee girl running towards the tinkling van on the other side of the street, a pink balloon tied to her gold plait, a note clutched tight in a pale hand. She is, perhaps, five. She jumps every crack. She knows. She knows about the bear. She beams for ice-cream. His father had held him low above the slam of the beer-froth waves. Swinging him hard side to side. Lower and lower until the sea was grasping at his back, yanking down his shorts, soaking his bare bum. ‘Heh Grandad,’ a bloke says to him, ‘going to hang onto that all day?’

Tony lets go of the gate. Shuffles aside. He hauls up his dodgy leg. Steps over the first crack, drags his leg, steps over the second. His father shouting and laughing. His sister calling from the safety of the sand, her hand tight in their mother’s. ‘Me, Daddy, now me!’ Tony praying away sharks. Tony dribbling fear spittle on his father’s wet denim sleeve. If he doesn’t step on a crack, the blackbird will survive the winter. If he doesn’t step on a crack. The wee girl stumbles, twists to look at Tony, smiles, regains her step, runs again. His father scolding his mother. He’s got to learn, Agnes. Stand on his own two feet. Don’t molly coddle him. His mother replying, her voice stuck on tremble. Show him some love, Arthur. He’s only five. Tony crouched in the cupboard under the stair with the reeking mop and the scum-rimmed bucket, covering his ears. His sister sat on the kitchen table sweeping a finger round the cake mix, her face a muddy chocolate blur.

He’s tempted by the path that turns into the Samaritans, swept clear and wiped of sin. His dodgy leg aches. He checks his feet. Both feet on the crack. No, no. Oh Jesus, no. His feet together all neat over the crack. His full weight through the buttercup in the crack. The blast of a horn. A shriek from the blackbird. Every window from every Victorian house leaning in, aghast. The wee girl on the road. Red skirt and white socks. A pink balloon, a golden plait. Tony wobbling on the crack, reaching for the Samaritans sign, fists punching off the bear. The wee girl on the centre white line of the road. The driver’s eyes rolling white. Two white eyes slingshot black through the tinted windscreen of the black truck. Crying. Not his crying. Greensleeves trilling and jivvying. Didn’t cry over his mother’s missing hand even as his feet jerked and thrust away from the bear. People screaming police ambulance police! A herring gull swooping down beside him, stabbing a red crisp wrapper from the gutter, lifting off, giving up the bag in flight. All about him coconut sun cream and laughter, stalled. Taking off in the wind, the red crisp bag, so high, higher, spiralling down over the wee girl on the road, the wee girl spreadeagled face down on the road, so much noise in so much hush. Tony’s shoes glued to the crack. A Velcro strap come undone, over the canvas fade a loose tongue.

Image by John Purvis.

Flash fiction

Heart Burn

It gives me heartburn, she says. He doesn’t hear. Isn’t supposed to hear. She is speaking to the raw inside of the cupboard door. Crouched in the dark, she’s unhinged unzipped undone. Bare toes in mouse droppings and gunged Baby Bio and up hard against her spine the mop that dips, crestfallen from the missing remains of dear Aunt Hilda.

He locks her in the cupboard after breakfast. Just for an hour or so. After his buttering out to each edge, neat larded nurses’ corners, spooning on her homemade marmalade (made every autumn with Mrs Frank’s copper-bottomed pan). He eats, she watches. She chews, he stands behind her, heavy hands on rearing angular shoulders, dull fingers ready for any crumb.

Janet doesn’t do crumbs. Crumbs come with stockings knotted around her ankles or a sharp open-handed slap across her left ear.

Of course the cupboard was her idea. A provocative pout as she’d eaten her slab of square Spam at his feet. In those days he’d let her use a knife and fork, even her hands. From down there, crouched around the slut of his black boots, trailing laces, socks trenchant in their oily scent, she’d met eyes with the cupboard door under the stairs. The door’s eyes rolled, winked, offered a slipper of pity as the wind buckled through the kitchen, through her thinning fringe, slamming the cupboard door shut, toppling dear Aunt Hilda’s empty scouring bucket, tinkling the sea-glass chimes still hanging above the oyster catcher skull in the hall window.

She mouthed to the cupboard something indistinct, a thank you maybe, her lips a soft shell of surprise, her knees numb from the hunkering. Lock me up, she said to Graham. It’s the least I deserve.

So here she is, Janet S Franklin, squatting fetid, a ball of white Scottish roll stuck tepid half way down her gullet, Graham in the kitchen whistling along to a Bach concerto on Radio 3.

It gives me heartburn, she says. Out loud this time. Emphasising the burn. The heart. Rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. She doesn’t scream when the soft scuttle tracks over her right toes, doesn’t even flinch. Scooters and scampers are her friends. Even with the acid reflux. Even with the fetid stench of putrid dear Aunt Hilda still hung about her calves.

Dear Aunt Hilda, bless her. He didn’t meant to kill her, Graham says at least three times a week. Janet doesn’t argue. Not over that. You pick your battles with a brother built like a concrete mixer with LOVE HATE tattooed across the sclerotic skin of his knuckles giving the words an odd marine-like italic effect.

It happened so fast, he said, and I was only trying to help. Janet had come in from work, pouring herself a glass of chocolate milk and lighting a cigarette. She was coming at me with a spade, he said, out by the chicken coup. My hands went to defend myself, he said, and I dunno, she just kind of collapsed.

They skirmished over the flowers. Sibling bickering over a spray of mixed lupins or a bunch of Gerbera daisies. They squabbled as he dug the hole behind the greenhouse, shovelling the soft clay soil into a perfect coffin shaped mound. They’d blame me, he said, smearing his LOVE HATE across his brown corduroys, what with my record and all. And anyway, she was nearly seventy. She’d had her life.

Janet leans back in the cupboard under the stairs and rests her head on the damp wall. Feels around in her pocket for the last chunk of buttered Scottish white roll. Pops it into her mouth and rolls the soft bread around her gums until its a soothing gummy glop.

It gives me heart burn, she says.

fiction Flash fiction

Coiled Snake Inn

It hangs there, the sign, you know, like in the movies. A bullet hole through the centre of the o. Peeling green paint and its corking curls. The left hand chain rusted through, swinging loose, free. The sign cockahoop and clanking.

She digs wax out of her ear and rolls the soft orange yellow into a ball between her thumb and forefinger. Flicks it to the ground with a spit and a whistle. Squeezes her thighs into the horse’s flanks. She hadn’t meant to bring the gun, not this time. Christ, she barely knows how to hold the thing never mind load it but she’d said, her mother had said, ‘Laura he’s dangerous, that husband of yours,’ and so she’d saddled up, grabbed the gun from her father’s safe, and ridden into town cloppety clop, clippety clip.

Grit blows up into her eyes, she rubs, rubs again, the sun is a pink scald on the back of her neck, and she is across the road from Coiled Snake Inn with its o shot out and its S bleached out and the dot above the i lost in a crack or a flake or a gun blast or maybe all three.

Picture the scene. An empty dirt street lined with wooden shacks and their wildly-painted jaunty lean-tos, a dark-haired woman with thin lips and a smooth moustache in a blue check shirt astride a palomino or a bay or a fleet-bitten grey, take your pick, her gunpowder eyes fixed on the batwing doors of the only saloon in town, a bunch of tumbleweed rolling on past (that perfect gif), the rifle loose in her lap, the horse dancing, up on its toes, cloppety clop, clippety clip.

The tumbleweed is in amongst the horse’s hooves and the horse rears and Laura drops the rifle, metal on metal as the gun and horseshoes spark and clash, there’s a shout and a scream, the audience grabbing at each other in the dark, sucking salt sweet popcorn into gloating cheeks, a middle-aged woman choking on a Malteser, actually properly choking, CALL AN AMBULANCE someone’s shouting in the velvet pitch of the old town cinema, the one with the horses tethered outside, even someone’s pig, I mean Jesus H Christ who brings their pig to the movies?

The truth is Pete Crab Feet wanted to bring the sow in, even offered to pay her ticket, ‘Come on, love,’ he’d drawled to the usher ‘she’ll sit on my lap Daisy she’s as good as old gold,’ and the usher saw red and banned them both and now there’s Daisy and Pete Crab Feet both haltered up on the railings outside the One Tree Dominion in amongst the horses, and inside the woman who chokes on the Malteser has heaved it out with venom-spiked phlegm.

Laura’s horse is rearing up and bashing its pure white head on the Coiled Snake Inn sign with the o shot out and the sign falls with an alrighty clatter and the audience roars and Laura’s man staggers out through the batwing doors, out of the saloon, out into the platinum scald of the afternoon, bow-legged and randy-eyed and he trips over the unloaded gun and falls under the flashing hooves of the rearing wall-eyed horse and takes a fatal blow to the head and the cinema audience roars and cheers and the usher shouts LIGHTS UP FOR ICE-CREAM SALES.

Wrapper rustles fade out, the light dims, the audience shifts and shuffles, eyes blink and pupils adjust, the usher heaves open the plum velvet curtains and there’s Laura on the dirt eye to eye with the dead man who raises an arm, raises a fist, a flash of steel, and Laura’s horse drops to its knees, down on the road, puts itself between the dagger and sweet Laura and the audience sucks in an audience-size breath and there’s a pig-shaped squeal and in bursts Daisy, Daisy the sow, Daisy settling herself in the front row in the best seat, directly in front of Malteser woman right at the critical point and someone’s calling the manager, the usher, anyone, and on-screen there’s blood all over the horse’s white head, and Daisy the sow has found the choked out Malteser and has sucked it straight up her left nostril, all attention’s on the pig, what do you know, what do you know?

Credits roll.

Tags movies, Westerns