Break From Reality. Daily.
Pamela stormed into the living room, where George was lying on the sofa reading a science magazine.
“You’re an idiot!” Pamela stood over her husband, hands on hips, red in the face.
George dropped the magazine.
“What?!”
“A blithering idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You vill be lying on a beach. Zere vill be … a breeze zat vill—how you say—tinkle? And a … bird, I sink … I can see a bird. Viz a green head and a … beak? Is zat ze vord?”
“A mallard?”
“I do not know vot zat is. A bird, or somesink like a bird, is vot I see.”
O’Rourke left the tent a little unsteadily. He’d had a few pints of Guinness beforehand and it was going to his legs. But he was also shaken by the fortune he’d been told. He was a superstitious person at the best of times—he kept a shamrock on him always—and the cryptic image that the old lady had described was already getting under his skin.
Brian crouches down, nervously lifts the edge of the bedspread and peers under the bed. Turning on the flashlight of his phone, he sees that the space is clear. He straightens and breathes a sigh of relief.
~~~~~
Vera slams the door of the shop and stomps to the loaded van. Who does old man Beasley think he is? He may be her boss, but that doesn’t excuse the way he talks to her. “Do this! Do that!” And never a please or thank you. Ooh, if only she had a bit more nerve . . .
Once upon a time there lived a young couple who were very much in love.
Maggie was magnificent: flowing golden locks, the face of an angel, a perfect bosom. Her top half checked out as an 11 in Harry’s book.
“What a rack!” he exclaimed to himself the first time he saw her, when she bobbed out of the sea near his homemade paddleboard.
I had an hour to wait for my connection. I came out of the station, wandered around a little and found a small pub. It was sunny outside so it took me a few moments to get used to the gloom.
The pub was empty except for me, the barman, and another man.
I settled at the bar and ordered a bourbon. While the barman was getting my drink, I had a look round the room. The other man, who could have been forty or sixty, was sitting two or three stools away, hunched over what looked like a large whisky.
I paid him no mind initially and took a sip of my bourbon. The variety of bottles on the shelves behind the bar provided some interest until the man mumbled something. Because I hadn’t been expecting him to speak, I didn’t quite catch what he said. Then he repeated it.
“Yep, ten inches. At least.”
It was boring, but at least Colin was out of the house. He picked up yet another silver spoon, turning it over in his hand without giving it much attention.
“A fiver,” said the stall-holder.
“You’d have to pay me a fiver,” thought Colin before replacing the spoon on the table, smiling at the stall-holder and moving off.
He could manage another half hour here before he would have to head home. He calculated that if he returned to the car by way of the line of stalls at the far end of the field, that would be just about perfect timing—a half-hour’s drive home, in time to help Barbara prepare lunch.
At the front door, a uniformed officer is throwing up violently into a rose bush. Detective Inspector Bennet turns to his sergeant, Cole, and raises an eyebrow.
“Bloody beginners,” he mutters as they enter, past another officer guarding the door.
“We’ve all been there though, haven’t we sir?” Cole observes.
Bennet shakes his head.
“Nah.”
This story is about a couple who haven’t met yet, a cat, and a truck. Oh, and two books. That’s very important.
The first Book first, perhaps. This is not just any old book, though, hence the capital ‘B’. It’s the Book that contains all things. All details of the world and the vast universe beyond. All knowledge that man has amassed throughout history. And a record of every second that every person that ever existed lived, has lived, is living … and will live. That’s some Book, I can tell you. Though I can’t tell you where it’s kept. That information – and the identity of whoever writes in the Book – is strictly on a need-to-know basis. For the purposes of this story, we don’t really need to know.
The café is bustling and as Jeffrey enters his heart sinks: his Saturday morning habit is to come here and spend an hour or so at a table, taking a coffee, reading his newspaper, and observing people. But today there isn’t a seat to be had.
He’s about to leave to find another place when he spots a couple getting up from a table next to the window and a woman approaching it from the other side of the room. He doesn’t exactly run but he doesn’t stroll either and gets to the table just before she does, plonking himself down heavily and pretending not to notice her. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her hesitate before sloping away.
“We had a hard life in them days, we did.”
My brother and I rolled our eyes as Uncle Alf cranked open the floodgates of his memory. Again.
It was the same every Christmas. My mother felt it her responsibility to invite the old boy to ours; we were the only family he had left, at least living locally. He was the husband of her long-gone sister, Philomena. He lived on his own now, retired and constantly sick, trundling towards the closing credits.
I kicked Billy under the table and giggled when he yelped. Mother shot us an I’ll-be-talking-to-you-later kind of look and smiled at Uncle Alf, encouraging him to carry on.
“Have a banana!” said the owl, handing one to the monkey.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said the monkey, peeling it expertly and stuffing it into his mouth in one go.
“Lucky the wind’s dropped, eh?” said the owl.
“Mmhhrrwwffmm,” said the monkey, chewing then swallowing hard.
They were sitting in the shade of the tallest coconut tree in the district, in fact the only one for several miles around.
“Brought my tree down, it did,” said the owl, a tear coming to his eye.
“Remember our first time here?” Louise asks, lifting the glass of wine to her dark red lips.
Timothy looks around the dim, practically deserted pub.
“How could I forget? Same old furniture, I see.”
“Good memory.” Louise licks her lips and places the glass back on the table. She looks around the pub too, and when she returns her eyes to meet Timothy’s, she sees that he’s been staring at her. She drops her gaze to the table and begins to play with a little patch of wine that spilled from her glass when Timothy brought it from the bar.
“So … Dorothy. I understand my uncle’s doing okay.”
“Yes,” she said, leading me down a corridor. “He seems to have taken … it … surprisingly well.”
Once upon a time there was a house—no, darling, not a haunted house, at least it didn’t have any ghosts in it. But it was a horrid house. It actually ate people! Just imagine that! A house where you walk in the front door and the entrance hall—much bigger than ours—is the mouth, and the house just swallows you up. I know, right? That must have been awful. Walking in the entrance and being gulped down, and never coming out because you’re in the house’s tummy and it’s digesting you, just like you digested that doughnut this afternoon. All white and doughy, and when you bite on it—SQUELCH! A load of red … jam squirts out. Eurgh indeed! No, I wouldn’t want to be a human doughnut either!
The Crow King watches on unseen as the couple shuffle through the darkening woods. The woman is carrying a bundle; the Crow King knows what it contains.
The couple stop several times to rest, the woman finding a tree stump or flopping to the ground, laying the bundle down gently beside her. During the rest, they pray. After a while, the man takes hold of her hand and helps her up, and they shuffle on.
William Painton stood near the hoopla stall, scratching a circle in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. What if he could dig down in the dirt quickly, he thought, so quickly that he could jump in the hole he’d dug, cover himself with dirt and hide … and no one would know where he was … and Benny would go away and leave him alone.
“What d’you say, Painton? Hey! I’m talkin’ to you!”
William continued to draw the circle. Okay, the idea of the hole was far-fetched. But maybe Benny would get bored if he just ignored him. Yes, that was a good plan. Keep scratching the circle.
“Me? I don’t know. Let me think.”
Taylor leans back against the wall, raising the stool on two legs. He stares at the ceiling and the fan whirring slowly, silently around.
“I suppose you’ve got to go with pleasure first.”
Five minutes. After 190 long years, just five minutes to go. I think I’m going to scream, I’m so excited.
There’s Thomas up ahead. In charge as always. Thank Madiba for him. We’ve needed someone strong like Thomas, and his father, and his grandmother, and his great-grandfather. To see us through this.
Purity’s at 98% out there, apparently — flat over the last ten years. Will never get any better, the scientists and statisticians tell us. So there’s going to be a risk, but if the Council says it’s okay…
Once upon a time there was a pirate — Pirate Pete he was called. Actually, his surname was Potter, so that would be Pirate Pete Potter, but he never used his full name because … well, pirates don’t.
Pirate Pete was an awfully nice chap and would have given pirates a good name if he hadn’t been the exception that proved the rule. What his gentle nature did do was make the running of his vessel — the Perilous Pinnace, which is a type of ship (you can look it up) — a tricky task. The crew took advantage of him something rotten, you see, so that when it came to duties on board — like splicing the main-brace, hoisting the yardarm and swabbing the deck, boaty stuff like that — the crew would just scoff at his orders.
Throughout his life, Martin had been desperately disappointed in matters of the heart; he’d had a number of serious relationships and had been chewed up and spat out of all of them. In self-defence he’d chosen a solitude that had lasted years, a blissful time of total independence.
But as he reached middle age, the spectre of a lonely end-of-life reared its head and he came to realise that perhaps he needed someone. Because he worked from home and had no social life to speak of, it was difficult for him to meet women in the conventional way, so he did the fashionable thing and dipped his toe into the on-line dating scene. In recent weeks he’d had a number of quite … unusual experiences.
For three consecutive nights, Seth woke with a start. That in itself might have worried him because he was generally a sound sleeper, but the thing that scared him on the second night, and terrified him on the third, was the time that it happened: 1:11.
On all three occasions, he found himself staring at the digital alarm clock, the three red 1s glowing diabolically in the dark. On the third night he was so shaken that he got up, went to the study and switched on the computer.
Lawrence pressed the “prepare meal” switch and the processor whirred into action, mashing protein cubes into the paste that would be breakfast.
He left the machine working while he checked the meteorological forecast: minus 20 max, blizzards, improving over the next 24 hours. The snow had been falling on and off for two weeks now. The airstrip was covered, and tall drifts had formed on the north side of the main building.
He returned to the kitchen, adjoining the operations room, and switched off the processor. He pressed “deliver x3” and three plates rolled out of the base of the machine and onto the stainless steel bars that served as a shelf.
“Mary? MARY!”
Mary gripped the side of the kitchen table. She’d been feeling so very tired recently, and now there were the pains in her chest.
“Coming, mother!” she called weakly.
You sit here, pumpkin, is that okay? So you can look round the restaurant. Comfy? Good girl. Now, let’s have a look at this here menu. Hmmm. Hasn’t changed. Let me guess what you’re going to have. Chicken nuggets, right? Yes, I know you like them! Mummy did, too. So nuggets and what else? Chips? They’re not very good for you, you know. But as it’s a special occasion … why not?
There were four playing.
The host, Adam, had made sure to sit with his back to the window, giving him a conveniently flattering glow around his head as the sun began to set behind the neighbouring rooftops. He had also placed an extra cushion on his chair, raising him slightly above the other three players.
To his right sat Alice. She was a secretary in the law firm where Adam was a partner. He called her “Wonderful Alice” at the office, attempting a play on “Alice in Wonderland” that didn’t quite work. But he did indeed think her quite wonderful and was hoping that this visit to his apartment would not be the last. Alice in turn felt a little uncomfortable — she’d thought it unwise to turn down Adam’s invitation, but was regretting that she hadn’t.
For a moment, Aasfa is at peace. Holding her face up to the sun and the cooling salty breeze, she shuts out the ugly sights, sounds and smells that surround her.
She is back in her village. Her mother calls from the kitchen and Aasfa skips across the dusty yard, sidestepping the family hen pecking away at the scorched earth. “Help me with dinner,” her mother says. Aasfa fetches some grey water from the well and puts a pot on the stove to boil.
Later, after finishing the thin soup, Aasfa, her mother and young brother Ali remain at the table drinking tea. Not for the first time, Aasfa brings up the subject of the boat, and as always, her mother resists the idea. She tells her mother again that her uncles will help raise the fare. Her mother takes her hand and searches her face for uncertainty. Finding only steely resolve, she reluctantly nods her agreement, eyes closed tightly against the pain of being without her daughter.
Once upon a time there was a farm on which lived a widow and her son, Jack (no, not that Jack, another one — although their stories are quite similar).
It was a poor farm, producing each year a meagre crop of beans. The widow did her best to work the land and eke out a living for the two of them, but a summer came when there was a bad drought and things got especially difficult.
One day, the widow found a flyer in the mail-box at the gate of the farm.
“Magic Beans!” it trumpeted (told you). Planting the beans would apparently produce a prime crop, whatever the soil, whatever the weather.
Alice sank down into the deep-red, velvety, cotton-wool-comfy sofa. On a small table to her side were all the necessary provisions for an evening’s TV viewing: a bottle of Pinot Noir, some nuts, some chocolate, and a large box of popcorn.
Bernard was away at a conference for the weekend; he had his work to do and his hoped-for promotion to cultivate. He was a stickler for being active and ‘doing’ stuff, so this was Alice’s chance to be self-indulgent for once.
She sighed with pleasure at the prospect of doing nothing much at all and felt the stress ease out of her body, a stress caused by their recent move and a certain tension that had built up between her and Bernard. She shook her head now as she remembered the petty source of the tension: the sofa itself.
I would like it to be sunny there. Sun gives you vitamin … some-letter-or-other. But not too much, hey! Some sun — good; too much — bad! Wear a hat. Sunglasses. Factor some-high-number sun block. But yes, sun. Apart from the vitamin intake, there’s the sense of wellbeing. Apparently, the further north you are, like here, where skies are grey, days shorter, rain aplenty, the suicide rate is appalling. I’m not ready to go yet. Give me sunshine.
How did I come to be here? Well, let me prepare some tea and food while I tell you my story. You get settled by the fire; you must be frozen.
It was some years ago, I am not sure how many — it could be five or fifteen; time seems not to move here. Like you, I climbed that rocky path on the north side. Did they tell you down below not to take it? Yes, they told me, too. But my sense of adventure — and my pride, it must be said — got the better of me.
