Our name is the first secret we tell a stranger. I know from Sunday school that Father Abraham had many sons and God changed his name from Abram to Father of Many Nations as part of the promise. It was like smack talk—same as Deion Sanders, showing up to play ball. Here you call him Prime Time. Even before the pro contracts and Super Bowl rings—he is he that he says he is and woe to the Gators and Tigers who do not believe. “Danny Rand” won’t pack the punch of “Iron Fist.” Don Diego de la Vega is a cowardly fop. No one’s afraid of Bruce Banner. After the name change, Big Abe could roll up to Canaan, or wherever, with his flock and barren wife—a walking talking billboard, calling things that be not as though they be. His introductions functioned as prophecy: Hello, I’m the Father of Sand & Stars & Sons. Seems the name mattered. Even for God, the promise was not enough.

My father promised my mother they’d name all their kids with the letter “M.” My brother Michael’s babysitter was called Larissa—such a pretty name, my parents agreed. So I was born Marissa and some websites say the name’s from Mara, meaning bitter, or Mary, of the sea. It’s hard to tell, really—what secrets we keep locked in the chest. After the divorce, my dad broke his promise, naming his third and final child Joshua—the brother who watched Inspector Gadget and G.I. Joe; who played cowboy, loaded cap guns blazing through palmettos; a boy who was and is God’s way of saving us all.

MARISSA GLOVER teaches and writes in Florida, where she is co-editor of Orange Blossom Review. Marissa’s work has been published in journals such as Helen: A Literary Magazine, The Furious Gazelle, Ghost City Review, The Coil, and New Verse News. Follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

Image via Pixabay

The boat is in great trouble. Its lopsided position isn’t the most ideal for survival and the fact that the captain lies face down in the water doesn’t bode well for the future.

Beautiful Sandra is also drowning; the power of the waves having propelled her off, and the water is now slowly swallowing her, the tips of her fingers and the mess of her blond hair still just caressing the surface.

The large shark, strangely blue, has spotted her long legs and is slowly edging towards her, its mouth gaping in anticipation.

Still aboard, Dora, Jasper and Mrs Fairhell clutching her ginger cat, are being swung around while the boat heads towards the large iceberg ahead. Dora stares wordlessly at the white mount, her arms outstretched in front of her in a futile attempt at pushing back the ice. Next to her, Jasper, equally silent, has raised his golden sword. Mrs Fairhell, with complete disregard for the situation, is lying down next to faithful Whiskers.

But the collision isn’t the pain of broken bones they expected, for the boat miraculously travels through the iceberg, coming out on the other side somewhat foamy.

It however transpires that Whiskers is no longer aboard and, while Jasper consoles Mrs Fairhell, Dora takes charge of the vessel.

Mustering the little strength she has left, she unfolds her rigid legs and stands up, placing her arms, still outstretched, on each side of the wheel. The boat gently steers and backs away from the ice, passing the captain’s listing body and the last tuft of Sandra’s hair. The strangely blue shark is nowhere to be seen and Dora wonders how much of Sandra’s body has remained.

“Ellie!”

No matter how much stirring Dora does, it seems the boat is dragged towards a large whirlpool.

“El-lie!”

They brutally bob up and down, causing Jasper to lose his sword and flinging Mrs Fairhell to rejoin her cat. Soon they will all be swallowed by the slurping mouth and…

“Ellie, for the last time, get out of the bath!”

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Some said that Alwyn Wyckham-Smith M.P. had suffered ‘a mid-life crisis.’ Some said it was ‘a secret sorrow.’ Some said it was Brexit. But no-one really knew what happened…

The M.P. held two constituency ‘surgeries’ in his West Barsetshire constituency every month, one in Barchester and one twenty miles away in Blister. He would have preferred to have held them all in Barchester, where his constituency office was, along with the constituency secretary. But at the selection meeting, six years ago, the officers of the constituency party had enquired closely whether Wyckham-Smith would keep on the Blister surgery, if he was selected. Naturally, he’d laid great stress, in his reply, on the importance of ensuring that the elderly and infirm of Blister should continue to have easy access to their elected representative. So, as he told himself, looking in vain for a parking space and cruising wearily round Blister market square for the third time, he’d once more succeeded in being the agent of his own suffering.

Eventually, he found a space by the device of motorised shadowing: driving slowly behind (and alarming) an old lady, tottering over to her battered Nissan Micra with her shopping. Running late, he jogged across the square to the Mason’s Arms Hotel, where the surgery was to be held in a rented back room. He handed the list of appointments to the hotel receptionist, apologised to the first appointee (a local builder), opened up the room, and got down to work.

It was dispiriting stuff. The builder was complaining about the local council turning down his planning application to build next to a famed beauty spot. A Sikh constituent was complaining about his brother-in-law’s niece being held in an immigration detention centre. The chair of the local civic society wanted to know why there was still no start-date for the anticipated Blister By-Pass. One local activist demanded to know why the government were shilly-shallying over Brexit. Another local activist demanded action to prevent the post-Brexit sale of Britain’s wonderful National Health Service to the Americans…

Two-and-a-half hours of hopeless cases and of impossible demands, and Wyckham-Smith’s polite smile was wearing thin. The last name on the appointments list was vaguely familiar, Mr A. Burton. In response to the knock on the door, Wyckham-Smith suppressed a yawn and gave out a faux-hearty ‘Come In!’ A thin, pale, hesitant person entered, smoothing down what little was left of his thin, pale hair.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Burton. Won’t you take a seat? What can I do for you?’

‘Actually, it’s Reverend Burton. Not an appellation I insist upon, but in this case it’s really rather reverend, I mean relevant…’ (spoken in a sibilant whisper).

‘Good grief, it’s “Gone” isn’t it? Old Gone-for-a-Burton?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Sorry. I’m being disrespectful: I’m afraid you took me by surprise. Er… Do you remember me perhaps?’

‘Indeed yes, you were Head of School. Although then, you were just “Alwyn Smith”.’

‘Ah, yes. Under the terms of grandfather’s will, I was required to add the “Wyckham” bit… Families, eh? So, you’re a churchman – jolly good. You know, although you took me by surprise just now, I’m not actually surprised that you joined the clergy. Haha.’

The Reverend Burton smiled and looked down at his hands. ‘Odd you should mention occupational choices Mr Wyckham-Smith. I was remembering…’

‘Call me Alwyn please, old chap. May I still call you “Gone”?’

‘If you wish, er, Alwyn. I was remembering a conversation we once had, waiting to go into the Chemistry Lab. You turned to me and said, rather out of the blue, “My father’s a Weights and Measures Inspector. He says that’s a good job. I don’t think that’s a good job, do you?’

‘Crickey. Did I really say that? And you remembered it after all these years, eh Gone? Well, well.’

‘Mmm. I suppose I remembered it because it was a rather odd conversation. And because you were confiding in me. After the incident in the school play, I’m afraid I was rather shunned by my fellow classmates.’

‘The school play?’

‘Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. You played Caesar and I played The Soothsayer. It was when I had to repeat my warning about the Ides of March…’

‘Ah yeeesss, I remember! You were The Soothsayer… I’m sitting on my dais-thingy and Tank Thompson, the Roman Soldier, throws you at my feet. I say, “Well Soothsayer, the Ides of March are come.” And you’re supposed to answer…’

‘Yes, I was supposed to answer, ‘Aye Caesar, but not gone.’

‘Mmm. And we were all looking forward to it: to Gone saying “not gone.” Schoolboy humour eh?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t answer.’

‘That’s right, you didn’t.’

‘I didn’t answer because Tank Thompson threw me too hard. I tripped on my robe and cracked my head on the corner of your dais.’

‘Mmm. You were out cold, old chap. The English teacher kept whispering your line from the wings. But there wasn’t a cheep from you. Eventually, the English teacher and The Roman Soldier (aka Tank Thompson) carried you off into the wings. An unexpected humorous episode like that could’ve made you a school hero. What rather spoilt it for you was…’

‘What rather spoilt it for me was my mother erupting from the third row, and shouting “Let me through. That’s my son.”’

‘Well. Yes, it did rather. Schoolboys can be very cruel, eh?’

Both parties reflected for a moment or two on the terrifying mob-rule of schoolboy societies. Wyckham-Smith, weary as he was, made an effort to lift the mood. ‘Y’know Gone, it could’ve been worse. My cousin, Roderick Colin Stevens, had the initials “R.C.” So he was known throughout his schooldays as Arsie Stevens.’ The Reverend Burton merely nodded.

There was another pause and Wyckham-Smith asked what it was that had decided Gone to make an appointment for the constituency surgery.

‘It’s about my mother. She’s 92 and she’s being evicted from her flat by her new landlord.’

The story came out in dribs and drabs. His mother retired to Blister when Gone Burton was appointed the vicar of St Alkmund’s on Blister’s shambolic Summerleys Estate. She had a comfortable ground-floor flat in one of Blister’s last remaining Georgian terraces. But the whole block had been sold to a hotel chain for conversion to a boutique hotel. Planning permission had already been granted.

Wyckham-Smith knew about the hotel development. The exasperated owner of the Mason’s Arms (where they were currently seated) had been bending his ear about it for the last eighteen months. Sadly for Mrs Burton, it was a done deal.

‘Couldn’t your mother stay with you in the vicarage, Gone?’

‘On the Summerleys Estate?? I’ve had three break-ins in the last nine months. There was a stabbing in the bus queue last week. The only shop that’s not boarded up is the betting shop. My mother’s terrified of the place.’ Gone paused and muttered, ‘So am I.’

‘Well, technically, if the eviction was served, your mother would be classed as homeless and eligible for rented accommodation from the council…’

‘Yes, she’d be offered one of the hard-to-let flats on the Summerleys Estate.’

Wyckham-Smith had canvassed on the Estate during his first election campaign. He had experienced first-hand the discomfort of the genteel, forced by circumstances into proximity with the poor. How had it happened to his country, this apartheid of the poor? He wondered how the Reverend Burton coped on a daily basis – the empty church, the stares of the children, and the sniggers of the teenagers – each morning’s fragile hopes shattered in the dirt and the spittle of each evening.

His constituent seemed to intuit the M.P.s unspoken thought. ‘I have had two great consolations in my life: the power of prayer and the love of my mother. Cleaning the mess in the church porch last week, I found the local paper with your picture on the cover… So I thought, perhaps…’ His voice was cracking. ‘I fear I’m losing my soul-mate. And I fear I’m losing my soul. You’re my last hope… Alwyn?’

* * *

Trudging through the rain to his BMW, afterwards, Wyckham-Smith, reflected back on his schooldays alongside Gone Burton and the others. He remembered the morning school assemblies when he’d thought the words of the hymns they sang were meant for him. ‘Onward Christian soldiers,’ and the rest of them. What was left of the idealism he’d felt when he was elected to Parliament? He paused, squinted up at the louring sky and muttered, ‘I fear I’m losing my soul too.’

The electronic car-lock clicked.

MICHAEL BLOOR is a retired sociologist living in Dunblane, Scotland, who has discovered the exhilarations of short creative writing, with more than fifty pieces published in The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Firewords, Litro Online and elsewhere.

Image via Pixabay

‘The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion
is that the caprice lasts a little longer.’
– Oscar Wilde

I am playing hooky on a Friday, you know F-r-i + d-a-y! 3 + 3 head to butt swing on the nose regular kind of Friday that places the cone of silence of deep sleep in juxtaposition with quaffing stinky cheese, crackers and other bite-sized breakfast-in-bed morsels so I can be off to a routine start. My only thought is to laze around and flip my handful of coins. This week’s collection, jangling in my pockets, ready to capriole. Not a disease. The camelids, a caravan system of dromedary ruminants traversed the Atacama Desert for millennia simply because man and beast played hooky.

The door bell rings. Damn! My doorbell doesn’t just ring, it hacks, like Gabby having a scarf-and-barf, when she wants to spit out a hairball, only none comes. I am meaning to fix it, only the flathead screwdriver and wrench once stored in my tool-box is laying in a puzzled assortment on my work bench in the basement below. Like everybody I open one eyelid. Salesmen I think, blinking my watering eyes first at the front door, then at my vaulting coins, all bouncing like adrenaline junkies having their trampoline moment. Let them ring!

With my belly rumbling, the same as always, several coins flip, bound, leap, some unwillingly, defying laws of nature, expelled without incident on a starving stomach and roll away into crevices and cracks here and there in the floorboards and under the bed. As I lazily watch them airborne, the singular happens. And the plural of singular?Singularity. It’s not like my life is not miserable enough for some superpower moments to happen. It’s not Gabby, although at times she flips the rest, swallows others, not today. If her innards are ever documented shining round nickel-sized objects will be spotted. She’s grown old. Age makes her anti-social. She doesn’t chase my hopping coins as much.

Truth to tell, I am not good with loose change, except for flipping. It’s not as if you have hundreds of dollars in spare change laying around that you can afford to lose, as my mother would say, but her not being around any more I can flip all I want, so here I am flipping like crazy, silver showers in plume, fifty coins or more, when lo and behold I see what any disbelieving adult will not normally see. I swear on my mother’s grave, and her more than six feet below, bless her discerning soul. Jay, you’ve done it!

The metal coin jumps in the air in a way I’m never going to see it jump and makes a three-point landfall on its edge, you know standing up, tin soldier like. And there it stands, dead stop, after wobbling a bit, without further quavers. Given my state of mind I accept the arrival of my sun and moon, sea and land, Narcissus und Goldmund epiphany moment of life’s meaning and destiny. “Gabby,” I yelp mouse-like for fear the magic will disintegrate. Gabby is having one of her own Eureka! moments looks like, hookier than mine. She opens her lazy eye, the silver-ghost one, gives a pig’s grunt and rolls over, playing dead. I stare at my hands. I recognize one but not the other. They look larger than last night, the one I recognize. My smaller hand gives me delicious shivers. How else could I have flipped?

“What do you think, Gabby?” No answer. Later the door-buzzers leave. I quickly tune to Dr. Math in my laptop to gain some algebra knowledge. I am not willing to touch my shining quarter for I cannot help thinking it will subvert the truth hitting me in the left side of my face, the side that resembles my mother’s, down to the long distance nose-line. I feel the bee sting of the moment’s life-bite. I’ve been stung before. A fresh wave of delicious trembles descend to my toes. The angle of accuracy on this day means my chances at redirected caprice are astronomical. They have improved by ninety to one. I discover from Dr. Math a coin landing on its edge is a one in a trillion stand-off. Holy Guacamole! Caprice has hit enterprising good luck. Imagine sailing to Paris, walks in the Tuileries. Ibiza. Stay away from that coin unless you want to be imprisoned in your own delusional dreams. They be fool’s gold in the empty air! The cascade of my mother’s crackles descend in a fountain from Rishikesh to ensure my eternal salvation to Nirvana. But, the fundamental facts of kinship dictates that in a matter of wills caprice is by invention.

Satisfied my hooky caper is going slam dunk ad infinitum I make wordless noises at Gabby and take off to my regular joint, a diner few blocks down the road, to replenish my vitals. First things first is an irreplaceable matter of accumulated experiences. It’s not as if you are starving that you cannot afford to stand any more hunger, as my mother would say, but her not being around and all I can eat all I want, so there I am salivating like crazy that F-r-i + d-a-y! 3 + 3 morning for falafels and black coffee, when Gina who serves me whoppers at my usual table gets a surprise at my earlier than usual arrival.

I tell her I am celebrating my coin flip. Gina, of course bursts into loud laughter. She ought to get a manicure. “Oh, that!” she says disinterested-like, studying her nails, painted bright blue. “It’s landed on the nose,” I bubble, excitement flying spittle off my mouth, I miss all distribution points. She asks to see the wonder-coin. I peel it out of my inner coat pocket, undo the gauze covered in tin foil. Concealed inside is a small pewter case afraid to lose its star-sprinkled sparkling coin. I had won the case in a raffle at a new year’s party. “Chedi,” she says dismissively, to be irritable. I glower at her. Chedi to her means mere metallic, I suspect. She has gained some views of stupas and stuff from touring the east. Her hope is to one day be the curator of the Met in New York. Once she told a group of us university delinquents a lively but likely story of an empress in brass which ended in her, the empress, being turned into a chedi. I want to know more.

I turn my magic coin this way and that, too eager to mind Gina’s haughtiness or dispute her chedi claims. I am not convinced. I would hate to know She disappears into the kitchen. The place is filling up and I lose another opportunity to chat with her, the way we are used to, over cups of steaming black coffee.

I hail a yellow cab to head downtown.

Where to, Sir? asks the friendly cab driver in turban and a beard.

I’m celebrating my coin flip, I reply.

Jolly good, he says, I know top class celebration spot for coins.

That’s the place I want to go, nowhere and everywhere, is my expansive reply.

This side is up . . . that side is down.

Down, then up, then up and down, FLIP! I yell deliriously at the cabbie, and there’s an extra for you.

The traffic flows briskly We are headed downtown. To Chinatown. .Anyone who attempts to reach downtown from uptown at the height of mid-morning rush will know it takes over a couple of hours give or take a few minutes. And never on a Friday! I have all the time in the world. Flip!

Like a kid mesmerized by Pachinko at that moment if I can fly to the moon I will. The Big Bang occurred when the right chemicals in the universe all fused together after the initial burst. It is true I tell the cabbie. While it took a few hundred billion years, in reality it lasted less than a second, for life to form. He doesn’t mind me, humming ‘Stairway to Heaven’ under his breath. I grin, eschewing all airy matter leading to unexpected weird and my cluster of cascading silver coins. Two sides of the same, fault lines and all. A passing caprice? Perhaps. Chased by my dreams. Could be. A handful. Flipping?! The very reason I like to play hooky. Especially, on a Friday.

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His train was crawling in to Waterloo, but Luke was flying. He’d woken with one of those mad inspirational hangovers, and it was clear to him this morning that he was a creative genius, maddeningly fertile, insanely receptive to the faintest ripples in the pool of consciousness… and also incredibly horny.

He was in a state of grace; the universe held him in its karmic spotlight. Thoughts and images flung themselves at his mental whiteboard. He looked and he saw; and above all, he felt.

Even his movement this morning had been a triumph: thick and moist, with a pleasing tint of rich tomato red. A bolognaise movement.

From his window, Luke watched as one bus driver waved to another with easy, understated familiarity, and he wanted to weep for their quiet, brave humanity. He smiled to himself at the unspoken agreement between morning commuters that the carriage is an extension of the bathroom, where we are technically all still alone; this made possible all sorts of plucking and powdering and shaving and applying of makeup in a way that was so charmingly unselfconscious he wanted to weep all over again.

He thought of Jaynee. Though they would doubtless have killed each other had they carried on living together, the image of her metallic blue nails on his boxers that first night would haunt his fantasies for ever. ‘You always taste of alcohol,’ she had said to him once. ‘It’s such a turn-on.’ He thought of Penny on Reception. Those bangles. That tattoo.

He thought of tie-breaks in tennis matches, and how oddly often they mirror the scoring of the set they conclude. He wondered at the sensation of profound impotence that always follows the cutting of one’s fingernails, and at that disconcerting tripped-up feeling you get when you step on an escalator that’s not moving.

Behind him, a man said into his mobile: ‘How dare she say that? I’m the most spiritual person I know!’ A woman cupped her iPhone with exquisite care, eyeing the screen with the secret smug smile of a millionaire Buddhist.

Now Luke composed a brief but powerful poem about an intimidating character called Big Red, who had been found splayed all over the sidewalk. This was the devastating conclusion:

Nasty way to go
— Especially for a beef tomato

One-liners flooded his system. ‘Brenda’s idea of daring is doing a photocopy with the lid up.’ ‘It was the sort of evening that put the de into joie de vivre’. ‘One was caught and one got away… / So the question remains: Does crime pay??’

He began work on a musical, provisionally entitled Holborn Viaduct. This bold new updating of Romeo and Juliet would centre on the struggle of two families vying for control of the area’s sandwich bars. The production promised some unforgettable songs, including the heart-breaking Don’t Treat My Feelings Like No Sandwich Fillin’, and the show-stopper Do you Want Butter with That (or Are You Still on That Diet)?

More lines. ‘Obviously I was too lugubrious to take public transport.’ ‘Of course I wrestle with form, but only on a part-time basis.’ ‘Phaedra thinks the world owes her a loving.’

Ah Phaedra. Luke thought of the drama of her looks and he ached. He thought of her parchment-pale Victorian skin, offset by her bold red lipstick and black, black hair. All bold tones and stark contrasts and solid outlines, she was beautiful like a saint in a stained-glass window. Or a packet of Marlboro Red.

Leaving the platform and walking again the familiar route to the office – along the Avenue of Drunken Remorse, down the Steps of Failed Resolution and left into the Alleyway of Regret – it suddenly seemed to Luke as if he was in a room, some sort of tatty municipal hall lit only by a weak milky light source, and that the whole of the outside world was in there with him too.

A man giving out free papers pointed to a headline about a local council objecting to tenants flying the flag of St George from their balconies. ‘Our knights carried that into battle,’ he said.

At Reception, Penny’s usual spot had been taken by a temp called Rachel. (Luke knew Rachel because they’d been out drinking a few times. She had that knowing hedonistic under-smile that all druggy clubbers have.)

‘Penny won’t be in today – her Dad’s been hurt in a car crash. Her boyfriend rang in earlier.’

Shit, thought Luke. I didn’t know Penny had a boyfriend.

Every face has a default position, he thought, as he stared in the toilet mirror. Mine is: disappointed languor.

How actually had he got home? He had indeed surely been too… lugubrious to take public transport. Oh fuck: the mini cab. He remembered asking the driver where he was from – Kazakhstan, was it? Albania? Iraq? – and then, after grilling the poor man on his background and prospects, Luke had decided to turn career adviser.

For the rest of the journey, the driver sat in sainted silence as Luke bombarded him with spurious insights about evening classes, training courses and internships, and repeatedly promised him access to a network of industry contacts he didn’t really have.

‘I just feel you could be doing more with your life,’ slurred Luke earnestly, as he threw up all over the back seat.

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My morning? Total fucking nightmare, since you asked:

prehistoric alarm clock + insane leave-phone-and-tablet-downstairs-overnight rule = oversleeping before ridiculously important exam

Nice one, Mum, mad props. In my ‘best interests’, yer?

No slow-release breakfast for yours truly. Quick release a shit, neck a protein bar and Usain it out the door.

Check my phone… still nothing from Ellie. She says I’m getting weird in bed. I tell her to loosen up – everyone’s doing that stuff now. And even if they’re not, it’s waaaaaay hot and she knows it. At least Ells shaved for me though. Sasha told Del to fuck off and dumped him.

Higher maths is rock and I need to pass, so, yer, been bricking it a bit. Skimming through these questions, though, I reckon I’m covered. Been cramming craaazeee hard – head like f‘kin Hogwarts library.

There is an issue though. It’s the invigilator. I know her. Like fully recognise her. Bugging me something chronic. Saw her just after I found my mad little desk: cute face, curly bed-hair, sexy granny dress and a fine beee-hind.

She’s just started lap two. My leg’s jigging like I’m working a pump. If I place her on the next pass I can still ace this stupid paper.

Focus.

Invigilator girl’s pacing down my aisle; eyes ping-ponging all about the place. A room full of whirring brains and all I hear is me breathing innnnnn annnnnnd ouuuuuut.

As she draws level, I angle my face satellite-dish style. Our eyes meet – but her face is as blank as my answer booklet.

‘You okay?’ she mouths, stretching the words like a chewy bar. Her lips are really fleshy – salmon pink.

I nod, squeeze out a smile. Invigilator girl glides on.

Focus again.

Then it’s like I glimpse her in my rear view mirror: the girl from the messed up porn. Went round most of Year 11 that clip. Nobody admitted to liking it. Invigilator girl’s not her, but it’s more than what you’d call a passing resemblance. Seriously, they could be sisters. Reckon Del and Nathan will’ve noticed it too.

Pornography’s how boys unwind, yer? Pure. Fantasy. After two hours revising you gots to change the music, man; you shut down some tabs, you open some others. So why did Mum look like her insides were all twisted up after she hacked my tablet and found my shit. She’s had a face like cold pizza ever since. Been talking bollocks about sex addiction. Says I’m going to spoil the ‘true joy of intimacy’ for myself. What the hell, Mum? Seriously cringe.

Refocus.

Forty-eight minutes left on that stupidly massive ticking clock. I’ve got this fully covered. The mind is a machine – you just need to master the buttons and levers. Proper learning equals repetition times reinforcement, yer? There’s a shit tonne of web resources. And retrieval is just slick mnemonics plus con-cen-tra-tion. I can block out thoughts of invigilator-porno-girl, no sweat. That stuff I’m trying on Ells later? Not even going there.

Seriously though, check it out online: repetition and reinforcement. Reckon if you look at stuff ‘nuff times, you can lock that shit in forever. Anything worth learning is basically a finger-tap away. You want to pass at maths? You want to pass at sex? Fully. Covered.

LUCY GOLDRING is based in Bristol and writes short and shorter fiction (along with developing her comedy writing). She has been shortlisted for Flash 500 and the National Flash Fiction Day micro competition (twice in both cases). Lucy has a story in this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology and online publications with Ellipsis Zine, Reflex Fiction, 100 Word Story, The Cabinet of Heed and Funny Pearls. You can follow her on Twitter at @livingallover

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It isn’t easy, sitting by this fire, listening. Once I was a nymph bathing by a cool spring, the air fragrant with wild mint. Now they call me hag, witch, half-oracle, but never woman, wise one, kind one. Listening requires knowledge of the soul, a politic face, a few fairground tricks, and, crucially, being at ease with the void.

I keep a place at my hearth for dearest Cupid. Now and again, he appears at the sunlit jamb, withered, throws the bow in the corner, lays down his quiver – that’s the deal. Then, I reach into the cubby, open the old Chinese tea caddy, and hand him his cigarettes: twenty Carrolls and a cricket lighter. A small ashtray with a map of Majorca.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Farmer’s fag. It’s not widely known, but if Cupid could retire, hang up the wings and the ballistic equipment, he says he’d gladly lean over a gate of an evening, count cattle, curse the midges, muse on mart prices. Fewer still see that Cupid, forever seventeen, still refuses to accept it: that he’s stuck.

Where I’m from, seventeen is quite late to start smoking. “Those things will kill you,” I said, the first day he came, the pack of cigarettes in his fist, the seal unbroken. He pouted at the irony, shuffled about, made to leave. So, we made a deal, out of respect for my finite life: one cigarette per visit. And, as the cigarette burns, he can talk about anything. Loneliness is the bespoke curse of the gods.

Today, he draws long on the cigarette, sits back and spreads his knees like he has just finished the second cut of silage. The feathers of his wings extend, he exhales slowly through his nostrils, a rebel devil. Then he fixes me with those nut-brown eyes. From now on, he says, I will be called Eros.

Bless the young for their notions. We are what we are. Especially gods. At this point, he hocks and spits into the hearth, so that it sizzles, then, resting his head on his free hand, says: I’m going back to my roots. I want to start over. Love is a serious business, with heady outcomes. Now, I know they call me rogue (they call me hag, witch, half-oracle), but I want to be more responsible, and therefore, more respected. I want, he says, tapping some ash, to progress. And he raises an eyebrow. What is wrong with that?

And there it is: the void. I stand to re-arrange my shawl, flap at a fly. When a fickle god asks a suffering mortal for an opinion, it is dangerous, for both. But the god has eternity to repair.

“Be the best version of yourself,” I say, staring at his forehead, my smile a reflex.

Yes, he says, and seems sated. He stubs out the cigarette, the filter red with lipstick. He stands, picks up bow and quiver, stops at the jamb, fingers an arrow. You know, he says, with a wink of his eye, I could –

He’ll break my heart someday, I swear it. And then he is gone, in a flutter, the sun on the jamb fading to evening ochre. I make mint tea with fresh mint from the well, and honey. Its aroma mixes with the thinning smoke. What was the best version of me? Nymph, half-oracle? I can’t tell. And where did I get that from, anyway? Was it Reader’s Digest, or Ireland’s Own?

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“Alan, help me,” Jeremy panicked, pleading with his eyes, beseeching. “I’m scared.”

I reached for my lover and held him before turning to Janet our hospice caregiver, “Could you please give us a moment.”

She, like me, knew the end was near. She nodded and quietly left the room, the bedroom Jeremy and I had shared for over thirty years. Even though he couldn’t hear me, I whispered in his ear, “I’ve got you, my love. You’re not alone.”

He squeezed me tightly, kissed my cheek and then closed his eyes, body relaxing. I could barely feel his faint heart beat, but it was there. He was still with me.

Jeremy used to be, in his words, “Super sensitive to sound.” When I first met him, he was wearing headphones and my immediate thought was that he was just some weirdo living in his own world, listening to baroque music or something. I was wrong.

“Here’s your package,” I said, handing him the large envelope, ready to run off to my next delivery. He removed the headphones and said, “What?”

I repeated myself, starting to get irritated. The courier service paid me to make deliveries, not waste my time trying to explain the obvious. “Your package?” I stated.

“Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you very much,” he said, politely. “I really appreciate it.” He smiled at me with bright white teeth. He had a thin build, close cropped beard and hair, piercing blue eyes. Physically, I was attracted to him right away. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

I was suddenly curious. “What is it?” It felt like a manuscript of some sort.

“It’s a rough draft of a novel.” He smiled shyly. “I’m an editor.”

I was intrigued. I loved books and reading. I was still in college, working on my PhD in literature and writing my thesis. We got to talking (courier quota be damned) and immediately hit it off. Six months later I moved in and we’ve been together ever since, nearly thirty years.

Now this.

I must have held him for an hour. Janet stopped in often to check on us. “Just stay with him, Alan. He needs you.” She didn’t have to ask twice.

The room was peaceful and quiet, far different from the world Jeremy was accustomed to living in. He heard everything exponentially; noises I took for granted drove him up the wall. He heard the refrigerator running at night even though it was in the kitchen and we were in bed upstairs. He heard normal sounds like traffic in the street or an airplane flying overhead ten times louder than normal people, and the noise gave him headaches. Bad ones. Nowadays he might have been called autistic. I don’t know about that, but I’ve always felt he was unique and quirky and I loved him all the more for it.

He wore the headphones to dampen noise and they worked well, but a few years ago we went on a picnic in the park near our home and I convinced him to take them off. “Just try it, Jeremy,” I said, “Give yourself a break. Listen to the world the way it really is.”

He cautiously removed them and listened. Birds were singing and children playing on a swing set were laughing. A boisterous pickup game of basketball was going on nearby. Even though I knew the noise was painful for him, I could tell he was entranced, mesmerized. After a few moments he grinned and spread his arms wide. “It all sounds beautiful.”

He started wearing his headphone less and less after that. Even though he still got headaches, he was determined to live life to the fullest. “To listen to the sounds of life,” was how he put it. By the time the tumor had riddled his brain he’d ditched them completely and was learning to live with his painful headaches. He never complained. He was incredibly brave. Now the tumor had robbed him of the ability to hear anything. The irony was almost too much to bear.

I felt him stir in my arms. I sat up and looked. His eyes were open so I massaged his shoulders, “How are you doing?”

He smiled. Now completely deaf, I could tell he was reading my lips. “I can’t hear you, but I’m doing all right. Hold me some more.”

I did.

Maybe we both drifted, lost in old memories, but suddenly he was gripping me tight. “Alan. Alan!” he called out. He had tears in his eyes.

I held on. Tight. “I love you,” I told him.

“What?” he asked, holding me close.

I yelled in his ear, “I. Love. You.”

“I love you, too,” he whispered.

We embraced with all the passion of our lifelong love for each other. In a little while his breathing slowed and his heart beat faded. Then, with one final exhale, he passed on.

When I felt him slip away I screamed, “No!” Then, again, “No!”

Thankfully, Janet gave me a few minutes before she came in and together we took care of what needed to be taken care of.

An hour later she left me alone one last time and I sat on the bed with Jeremy. Outside, in spite of my sorrow, I could hear the laughter of children playing and the melodic songs of birds singing, sounds in the last few years Jeremy had been listen to and learning appreciate for their own beauty.

Those sounds suddenly gave me an idea, one last joy we could share together. I went to the window, opened it wide and let the noisy world drift in, filling the room to overflowing. I went to the bed, sat down and took Jeremy’s hand, leaned in close and whispered, “How about if we listen to those sounds of life one more time? Just like we used to?”

And together we did. They sounded beautiful.

JIM BATES lives in a small town twenty miles west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His stories have appeared in CafeLit, The Writers’ Cafe Magazine, A Million Ways, Cabinet of Heed, Paragraph Planet, Mused – The BellaOnline Literary Review, Nailpolish Stories, Ariel Chart, Potato Soup Journal, Literary Yard and The Drabble. You can also check out his blog to see more: http://www.theviewfromlonglake.wordpress.com.

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