Hi dear readers!
Now, I did promise that I’d be putting up monthly fiction, and a promise is a promise. I’ve actually found writing very productive this month, and I’ve come up with three stories that I’m frankly, dangerously proud of.
Unfortunately, that means that I’ve sent them all off to magazines to see if I might get them published or, more likely, suffer one of my semi-regular ego bruisings.
But I did make a promise, and so, in lieu of a proper story, please enjoy this very very silly few paragraphs about a man who loses his glasses. He is a man that I empathise with on a deep level for I too, regularly lose my glasses and the piece was written in just one such semi-sighted rage which may well just, and I mean, just, come through.
So, an apology. Sorry for not sending out a quality story. I promise that once every single one of the fiction magazines that I’ve sent them off too send me curt and eviscerating rejections, they’ll appear, hopefully illustrated too on this little newsletter. In the meantime, please enjoy some blind fury.
Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, just as he hurtled down the stairs towards the front door, with a half buttoned shirt and stray flecks of hastily applied toothpaste cris-crossing his collar, Scott Bride realised that he had lost his glasses.
“Of course I haven’t taken them,” Scott’s partner, Ellie said over the phone. “Where did you last leave them?”
“If I knew that I’d know where to find them,” said Scott.
“Okay well,” Ellie’s mouth was full of pastry, “Well try retracing your steps.”
This was no help either. Scott knew that Ellie’s memory was a well ordered daisychain of linear events. His own was more like a rogue audio wave, bouncing and reverberating all over the place, complete with flashes of emotion and scenario that he could never be entirely certain that he hadn’t just imagined.
“Listen, darling,” Ellie said, “I really do have a lot of work to do.”
Scott couldn’t see her over the phone of course, but he could picture her exactly. All prim and proper and ready for the day ahead. He’d seen her inbox once when she’d worked from home, all files and colour codes and order. Scott had two modes of responding to emails, immediately in blind panic and after months of irritable chasing and nothing in between.
“Of course,” he said, “Don’t worry I’ll find them.”
“Don’t you have your appraisal today?” Ellie asked. “Don’t be late.”
“Oh shit.” He sighed.
In order to arrive on time, Scott calculated that he would have needed to have left roughly seven minutes ago.
“I swear to God, somebody is taking them,” he muttered. “It’s a conspiracy I tell ya. It’s them. The lizard people that rule it all. They take my glasses and I have to spend half my day riddled with anxiety and fury as I tear the house apart trying to look for them even though I’m short sighted and they are see through.”
“Of course it is darling,” said Ellie patiently, “That’s the reason you’re such a mess.”
“Hey!”
“Love yoouuu. Message me if you find them.”
By the time he had hung up, Scott was already out the front door, rushing towards the train station.
He wiggled down the wiggly road. Short driveways and windowpanes smudged together in a glorious homely blur. The wretched detritus of Barnstool Avenue, the traces of unbagged dog mess mouldering just feet from the bin, the flecks from bird and the cracks left by treacherous weeds were all invisible to Scott. Instead, the jaunty quality of the morning light left the whole place smoothed into a serenely cubist smudge. It would have almost been relaxing were it not for Scott’s throat which was already parching from dehydration and the early pounds of an oncoming stress headache. He tripped on a paving slab and swore. Just out of the field of his uncorrected vision, a curtain twitched disapprovingly.
“Every. Fucking. Day.” He muttered, “Every fucking day.”
From Barnstool Avenue he skittered through the small mish-mash of lanes that made up the Gladstone Estate with its austere grey concrete. His vision swam and he thought just for a second about how he was planning to deliver his appraisal without speaking notes. That second was just long enough for Scott to remember that he had left his speaking notes on the table.
“They have done it,” he snarled. Though who they were was not something that he chose to give any thought to. They were the person or persons whether temporal or spiritual that resulted in everything, from Scott never having two of the same sock even after he could swear that he had washed the lot, to whoever caused “adverse wind” or “leaves on the line” or whatever caused him to be late just at the moment he knew he was most under observation, that caused him and everybody else stress and anger and resentment, that meant he and other men, good, proud men slouched and tumbled from soggy cheerios to microwave meal crumbling their joints into carpal tunnel syndrome and attunng their eyes to the endless buzz and whistle of the idiot box. The alternative was that, when it came down to it, Scott was rather useless and that was not the sort of negativity he needed that morning.
Scott was just enjoying imagining exactly what he would do to “them”, when he rounded the corner into Station Approach and ploughed straight into a large, bequilted protrusion. The protrusion yelped and stumbled.
“Shit,” it yelled, and swung to face him.
Scott’s vision might have been bleary from lack of spectacles, but he immediately recognised the collage of features, from boxy, thick jaw, heavy brow and rancid cigarette breath that the protrusion that he had bumped into was a man, and worse, the type that radiated threat. The rest of the protrusion turned, forming itself into puffa jacketed arms with thick, pink meaty hands, the left one of which was (Scott could only just about make out the shape, but knowing his luck there was absolutely no chance of it being a stapler, or something similar), contained the cold nub of a pistol.
“What the fuck are you doing?” snarled the man, “Get out of here.”
Scott did not need to be told this twice. He tried drumming his feet into what he hoped would result into an athletic explosion of movement that would both launch him away from if not life-ending, at least life altering danger, but would also allow him to reach Crawley station with enough time to board the 843, the last train that would allow him to reach London Bridge in time for his appraisal.
It’s not that Scott wasn’t scared. The second this pugilistic lump of meat had brandished a gun, Scott’s whole nervous system had sparked as if stung by a jellyfish and the singularity of it all, that within moments his whole being could be cold and empty on his morning commute’s tarmac were not lost on him. But, and Scott had experienced this before, the terrifyingly narrow spectrum of human experience that could at times, assign the same reaction to say, the fear that he might not fully live up to his potential in the data management world, to the natural reaction to imminent death, meant that this morning he was as flooded with emotional energy as it was possible to be. And so, this time, when he finally was confronted with death, it was not that Scott was not scared, it’s just that what with everything else going on he simply didn’t have the range. Instead, like a beaten up laptop with a broken fan he simply stalled. The electric feed that connected his nervous system and brain, for just a few seconds, simply failed and instead of running as fast as his legs could carry him, Scott just stood gawping. All he would remember thinking is “None of this would have happened if I hadn’t lost my glasses.” Then the lump raised the pistol.
An ear-splitting blast snapped at Scott like a bea sting and set off whining alarms deep within his eardrums. Something warm and wet trickled down his cheek. The lump staggered forward like it was closing time and he’d just stepped in for a larger-y hug. Then he tripped and crashed into the asphalt.
In the spot where the lump had been standing, the person he had been holding up waved his own pistol. He was grey and mousy and small, with a shabby art teacher sort of suit, paired with an uninteresting tie.
“Thanks” he said, “Well, better go.”
He paused, “You have blood on your cheek by the way.”
He reached into his jacket, first with his pistol hand which he quickly withdrew again with a nervous “Whoopsy”, then his free hand with which he withdrew a small handkerchief.
“Better take that old chap, are you OK?”
“I think I’ve missed my train” said Scott. It was the only thing he could think of saying.
“Now, don’t be negative,” said the mousy man. “You might be in luck. Well, toodles, and as I say, thanks very much. Thought I might have been a goner.”
Scott’s nervous system sprang into life very suddenly and he realised just then that he really was just a few hundred metres from the station. He could still make it. Never mind the near death experience. That was for Ellie later and wine and most likely therapy. His legs moved independently like a marionette and Scott found himself walking, then striding, then jogging and running through the alley and round the bend onto Station Approach. The houses and driveways whipped past with a blur and there it was! Overhead, on the bridge, his train, a blocky Pacer of eight or so carriages stood still outside the platform, waiting to be allowed on. He was going to make it, he was going to make it to work! The day was saved! Then the car door of the sleek long Sedane swung open and slammed directly into his chest.
Scott’s vision, already hazy enough collapsed into black and sparkles. But he could hear well enough and, just feet away from the station the announcement blared, “The train at Platform 2 is the 847 to London Bridge, the 847 to London Bri-” He raised his hand uselessly and tried to push himself to his feet, but his airless lungs screeched with fury and instead, he flopped straight back onto the pavement. Several other rushing commuters strode straight past him. Nobody stopped. Of course nobody would. Station Approach was the home stretch. Had their positions been swapped, Scott would likely have been one them, head raised, laser focussed on thing and one thing only, and that was standing in the perfect position to usurp the door rush and squeeze into one of the final remaining seats in teh fourth carriage whilst backpacks and bothered bodies pushed in around him.
He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to prise them open again.
“Who are you?”
There was a petite woman stood above him. She was wearing a pencil skirt and small kitten heels.
“What?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m sorry,” Scott paused, “Did you just - did you just knock me over?”
The woman carried on as if he hadn’t even spoken. “We know that you were the one who disrupted the Confluence. Who do you represent? The Abolitionists? The Insurmountialists?”
“I represent,” said Scott, “Somebody who would like to be taken to work.”
“And where is that?”
Scott winced as he pushed himself into a seated position.
“Get in,” said the woman.
The seats of the vehicle were cream leather and comfortable, and laid out in face-to-face like a party limousine that ferried Sisyphus-like, its daily cargo of wine-toting young women to nowhere in particular. But instead of short-dresses and ice-bedded bottles of Bollinger, the passengers were a bleeding, winded Scott, in his scuffed work clothes, the prim lady who was now clutching a clipboard and an extraordinarily grumpy and extraordinarily short man.
“I have lost,” said Scott, “My glasses.”
“Who you work for,” announced the short man in what he clearly thought was a menacing tone.
“Nobody, well, a data management company,” said Scott, “Look. I’m freezing, you have I think, cracked my rib, and my glasses are gone.”
Scott’s two new companions, saviours or captors, he wasn’t sure yet were muttering together. The green suited man eventually spoke and when he did, it was with a softer voice.
“Tell me what happened today.”
So Scott began. He couldn’t help himself but talk, even with the fact that he was, as far as he knew, kidnapped. It had, after all been, a very strange day.
“And I can’t believe,” finished Scott, “That it is not yet 9am and none of this, none of this would have happened if they had not taken my glasses.”
“Who is they Mr Bride,” said the woman, “You’re bleeding, by the way.” She handed over a small handkerchief and Scott dabbed at his head. He tried to work out if she was pretty or not, but his unfocussed vision swam and he couldn’t fully make out her features.
“It is just something I say,” said Scott.
“Mr Bride,” she said, “My colleague and I, we represent an organisation that has been working for some time to bring certain events around. The assassination that you interrupted this morning was just one of the moments that the people that we are fighting against were attempting to make take place. It was an operation that they had planned for years, decades even, longer than you can imagine, yet you blundered straight into it.”
“I just couldn’t see,” said Scott.
“Exactly,” said the short man, “You couldn’t see because they had taken your glasses. Perhaps it was planned. Mr Bride, you seem like a careful man.”
Scott paused. He was a careful man. Wouldn’t he have placed his glasses where they always were, on his bedside table? Wouldn’t he have been extra careful, knowing that he had an appraisal this morning? He would never have been so foolish with his own things. He knew that he sometimes blamed himself, self-flagellated like an Opus Dei member again and again over it all. But he was a competent man. He had a job, a life, everything he needed.
“So maybe they did,” he said.
“Mr Brides, do you have any enemies?” said the woman.
Come to think of it, Scott thought, he did, and before he could stop himself he was off. Every manager that had ever wronged him. Every woman that had ever blown him off with some half-thought excuse. Every friend that didn’t value him or flaked for drinks. Every one of THEM that interrupted him and cajoled him and irritated him and blocked him from achieving what he knew to be his by right. All the borrowers, the goblins, the gremlins that got in his way, who stopped him having a pair of matching socks, that took his damn glasses!
“It is all connected,” said the woman, “Whether it is your glasses being taken, you think they can’t do that? They can put nanobots in vaccines that control minds, they can make you lose your glasses.”
That was a push too far for Scott, “I don’t know,” he said, “I’m not anti-vax or anything like that, I could just swear that sometimes, my glasses - hang on…” He squinted at the short man in front of him, trying to bring his features into focus. He caught a thickly ridged brow and a greyish, dull skin tone.
“You’re not human.”
“Now that is rude,” chuckled the man, “And no, no I am not. So if that is true, is it such a leap that what has happened today has happened as a result of some grand, overarching conspiracy that has followed this planet from the Mayans to the modern, from armies and conquering emperors, to creatures from stars far away landing undetected on this planet, to a murder taking place on in London, New York and here, in Crawley? Is it all so impossible to you that all of these things are linked and so, those that wanted you here on this precise spot with us they wanted you to stop that murder and for that they took your glasses?”
“Tell me,” said the woman, “What month were you born in.”
“October,” said Scott. The woman gasped.
“A Pisces,” she whispered, “We knew it.”
The grey creature leaned closer, “And on you, a certain birthmark?”
Scott frowned, “Well, my belly button, it’s an innie, but its got a pretty weird shape in there.”
“May we see?”
Scott lifted his shirt. The two of them shivered.
“Look,” said Scott, “What exactly is going on here?”
“Mr Brides,” said the woman, “You do not know this, but our organisation has been dedicated to tracking a certain person down, for hundreds of years. Their coming has been foretold. Would it shock you to learn, Mr Brides, that you are the most important person on this planet?”
Now that, thought Scott, would be good on the appraisal.
“I think I could accept that,” he said.
“We have been waiting,” the man said, “For you Omnisa for many years. Come, I must explain the extraordinary nature of your birth.”
As he spoke, the woman began intoning a strange chant. She rocked slightly against the leather of the chair, burbling and whistling.
“Command us,” she said, “command us leader.”
“Well,” said Scott, “you could always take me to work, and also maybe pay for some new specs. Those things are expensive.”
“But of course,” said the man, “Though first, we must prevent, the event.”
“Sure,” smiled Scott.
The car rolled away from Station Approach and, short sighted as he now was and, in any case, far too caught up in everything that was happening, Scott missed entirely the young man tearing after the car, shirt ripped down to his waste baring a curious mark on his chest.
“Wait,” shrieked the man, “Wait!”
But the car did not wait, and as it rolled towards the chaos of the M25, the rolling clouds blackened and begun to acquire a distinctive red hue. Thunder clapped and there, amongst the gaps in the clouds the first licks of flame began to scar the earth.
Five hours later after a day of appalling violence and both the setting up and ultimate dethroning of a messiah, Scott reached home. The golden hour sunset drenched his road, with its housefires, brawls and shrieking hoodlums in soft light. Ellie was home already.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” he said, “But-“ he indicated his bleeding shirt, scorch marks and open wounds.
“No need to be,” she said in a business-like wake. Somehow she still looked completely put together, even with the collapse of civilisation. She gave him a quick peck, smiled and then handed over a shotgun. “
The deep boom of an explosion rattled Scott’s bruised hip and he, with Ellie’s help clambered over her home barricade. Even that was organised. He saw that she had used some of their record boxes to build struts for a few heavier items.
“I bet those records are still in alphabetical order,” he said.
“Of course,” said Ellie, “That’s why you love me.” She adjusted the rest on her rifle.
“Where did you get these?” asked Scott.
“Planning,” shrugged Ellie.
“Fair enough.”
The sky boiled a deep red, and through the asphalt clouds long metallic shapes descended. Beams of light and bursts of fire descended from them, tearing the ground below them apart.
“We’ll be alright though eh”, said Scott
“I will be,” said Ellie. “And you will be if you’re with me. I found your glasses by the way.”
“Oh,” said Scott. He aimed his shotgun and fired. He missed of course. He could barely see. Ellie handed over his glasses and he slipped them on.
“Where you left them,” admonished Ellie “Bedside table. Honestly, you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on.”