Cysters - Friday Flash

In the timeless way, a divine coveted what he supposedly could not have. Thus was a beautiful mortal woman ravished by him.

Soon life was growing in her belly. Groping blindly in their watery pellicle, the hands of two girls discovered one another and each fastened a tiny bud to her twin. From that moment, they never sundered the seal .

They started dancing and pirouetting one other, which set off a great delight in their mother. Now all three of them were melded in joy.

Through such a fusion the girls' senses passed and quickened one to another. They shared and swapped thoughts, for they could read each other without barrier nor impediment. Lacking eyes that could yet see, the sisters touched one another in order to report the beauty of the other. Outside the womb, their mother described her own features of pulchritude and the dazzling beauty of their divine father as she bent forward to whisper to her daughters.

Nearing full growth, the two started plotting for their life outside in the world. They had already sworn an oath that they would never be separated. Yet in offering up their perceptions, they descried the first difference between them. One sister knew herself to be immortal. While the other had no such sense radiating throughout her frangible body. When they occasionally collided one into the other in the swing of their convolutions, the immortal felt no pain. Whereas her sister suffered the full sting.

They abandoned sleep as they feverishly pondered this alarming discovery. Their dances too were cut short as they intently tried to resolve the riddle. Their mother fretted at the cessation of activity within. That they may have curled up and died. Her only faith, that her immortal seducer was still pledging his troth to her and his daughters, so that he must divine them to be healthy.

'Clearly the founding fund of fecundity provided by our father didn't stretch to two bodies. I'm so sorry to have claimed all the sap for myself oh sister of mine, inadvertent as it was'.

'No need for apology dearest sister heart'.

'Perhaps if I can make myself bleed some of my own vital essences on to your own flesh-'

'We both know that is not possible. Nor should you even contemplate such an act. You have to preserve yourself intact'.

'So do you sister love. For I can't bear to live without you for even a minute'.

'But you won't have to. Not for many a year yet. We shall live a full and long life together'.

'But you will leave me. In the end. I shall be bereft of your loving company. Though of course it will be infinitely worse for you once life and spirit has departed your handsome frame'.

'I believe it will be worse for you dear sister, for I will not know any different. All the shared beauty I will have, will end for me sharply and forever'.

'But not me. I credit immortality to be a worse disposition. Think of an eternity musing on what I no longer have to cherish. It is a merciless punishment to be sure'.

'You are not to think like that sister heart. Cherish the gifts we are to share while together, for that's all I have to feast on. They will be taken away from me, but you have the opportunity to preserve the memory of what we once had'.

'Day after day after day with no end. No escape from myself. No means of sharing it with you once you are gone No escape from never having you back in my arms, holding my hands as now. I simply cannot live with that knowledge'.

'But you have to. This is our respective fates. Both condemned to solitude'.

'Perhaps not. The immortal can cheat never dying, much as the mortal may cheat death'.

'How so?'

'Even immortals have to go through the process of being born of woman. There is no difference between us there'.

'Yes I suppose so. But I cannot see-'

- 'By never being born. Cling on to me, hold me like we are never going to be prised apart, even by Ajax's spear. Tighter. So much tighter. We must squeeze the breath from one another, for we are never going to leave our mother's cave'.

So the sisters clung to each other for grim non-life. They were guilty at what they might be causing their mother to feel, but their sisterly love was yet stronger. For her part, the mother could not help but notice that this time there was something amiss. Further reinforced when her consort accused her of withholding his offspring, not wanting to release them into the light of the world fearing they might repudiate her as a mere mortal. Her body had grown ugly in his eyes and if she was not going to release her infant hostages, then no part of her was any longer ravishing to him.

Scorned by her lover, rejected by her children who steadfastly refused to emerge and greet her, she began to waste away. She truly did surrender her pulchritude as she railed day and night against her own body that had betrayed her. Her skin washed away by lamentations, her heart fatally wounded by desertion.

There was no one to mourn her. For inside her belly the twins had been delighted by the cessation of nourishment passing along to them from their hostess. As the mother's hungering body turned in on itself, the girls' too started to undergo a metamorphosis. They started calcifying, as the callow membranous skin was reabsorbed into their bones. The capillaries forming the veins of the stone. Soon all movement was stopped up behind a petrous wall and they stood, hand to hand as fully-fledged statues. Once the cowling body of their dead mother fell away, their mineral cast was exposed for all to see.

Never born, yet never dying. As old as the rocks themselves.

I started doing #fridayflash when I put all other writing aside in order to promote and market my self-published novel. But as you probably all know, the ideas don't stop throwing themselves at you like wanton strumpets and flash writing in small bites seemed the perfect solution to feeding the piranha fish nipping at my synapses. Well it's been a year now with just one week missed and the art of flash has taught me a lot about writing. But I yearn to return to the longer novel form. I've got 3 other novels all in finished drafts, but can't decide how to proceed with them. Then there is the labyrinthine WIP I set aside at 40,000 words in, the time the published novel came out. But the twin prompts of NANO (which I'm only shadowing, not doing formally) and approaching my life-long nemesis of genre fiction have combined to give me the solution - a wholly new book and yes, a whole new direction for me as it's genre-based! Having started it on Sunday last, here's the opening 1000 words serving for my #fridayflash this week.

Thanks.

The two outriders slew their front wheels across the gravel, each throwing up a little cloud of brown dust. There was no other motion as the particles forged their sedate, wispy descent back to earth. Only once this tiny portion of the landscape had been allowed to resettle itself, did the two men faceless behind their mirror visors permit themselves to stir. They flicked their kick stands and adjusted their body weight to let their bikes sag from under them as the levers bore the burden of steel and chrome. Still in perfect unison like synchronsied swimmers, the men dismount and remove their leather gloves. One stares ahead of him, while the other surveyed where they had just come from. He spies the outline of a sleek saloon slowly growing larger as it gobbles up his own bike tracks, like Theseus retracing his route through the labyrinth marked by string. He briefly looks over his shoulder at his partner, the statuary symmetry between the pair finally sundered. The other curls his index finger tip to tip with his thumb and jags the 'aok' gesture back at him. They await the arrival of the car.

The car's tyres throw up a quartet of dust nebulae, out-muscling and out-trumping that of the outriders. But these brumes dissipate and disperse as if the car had wanted to spite their reunification with the ground. Behind the dark tint of its windows, the car sits utterly still, like a cat ready to pounce in the long grass. Not even the slowing revolutions and cooling of the extinguished engine dared broach the bated breath of the moment. Finally the tension is broken by the passenger window being cracked with the apologetic whine of low voltage electricity. The nearest outrider marches stiffly up to the car, ducks down to fill the purview of the voided glass. His voice little more inflected than the dull drone of the lowered window. He rights himself erect, steps a couple of paces back, then opens the door as if trying to die stamp himself. From within the interior, one trousered leg swivels, flexes and braces itself against the ground. Followed by a second. The further outrider can only see a pair of black leather shoes beneath the plimsoll line of the open car door. Virtually every day they play out this same scene in different settings, but never with any variation in the actions, the angularity and the algebra. A natural choreography evinced between men of rank.

The leather shoes pivot and the plimsoll line sinks as the mass extrudes itself from the upholstery. The outrider muses his habitual bafflement as to how so huge a bulk can be squeezed into such a confined space. The start of the old joke about how you get a family of elephants inside a Mini plays through his mind, but as usual he can never reclaim the punchline since the man mountain is barking queries at him that demand his attention. His partner is pointing beyond and the gelatinous mass of the superior's head makes an elliptical motion that could be either nod or shake, such are its indeterminate boundaries. Damn, it's happened again. The rear seat passenger has slipped out unnoticed and unremarked. Certainly the car's chassis never even dipped half an inch. For a big cheese, the luminary was awfully small in stature. Mousy. Bird-like. As gauzy as the dust cloud pressed out under his bike wheel. The superior is clearly exasperated that yet again the VIP has emerged on his own cognizance and not at that of himself who is supposed to be running the show. His bear of an arm extends, virtually eclipsing the whole of the cock sparrow. "We haven't established the security of the area yet". The VIP passenger approaches the superior officer and limbos under the outstretched arm without having to crook his body at all. "We've got a forensics team working at the site haven't we?" The larger man's redundant blockading arm drops with an audible displacement of air. "Nobody is trying to wipe out a forensics team. There's nothing to be gained from it". The large man moved swiftly in defiance of his girth, in order to interpose himself in front of Tiny Tim who had started to walk further into the gravel.

The smaller man could not help but be impressed with the man's dedication. If there was a sniper out there and he discharged a round into his covering minder, he fancied the man might deflate like letting the air out of a blow-up balloon. Presumably that's why he had been given the detail. But this whole rigmarole, outriders, bullet-proof saloon, tinted windows, minder, it just made him so uncomfortable. Giving the misleading impression that he himself was some kind of dignitary. When there was never any way to dignify these scenes he was charged with attending. Death scenes.

Fortunately, in the most miserable of circumstances that is, the present circumstance appeared to be in so blighted a spot, there was no crowd of bystanders. No members of his personal fan club to cheerlead him in his work, when all that was called for was a respectful quiet for the deceased. His presence usually engendered a delirious crowd which soon managed to turn every murder scene into a red carpet vigil. When the red carpet was usually woven of blood. But then there were flibbertigibbets at hangings of old, so maybe he shouldn't be so condemnatory. No Press today either, which was a blessed relief. Sometimes they deigned to turn their cameras on the scene of crime, but mostly they didn't even bother. They tended to be the celebrity pap smearers, rather than from the crime desk. Always their telephoto lens were pointed at him, Simon Moralee. Queasy superstar of the criminal investigation world. Maybe that's also why "Jellyneck" Morton had been selected as his minder, to block the clear shots of camera lenses as much as rifles, though the department was never averse to the unfailingly good publicity Simon raked in on their behalf.

Simon Moralee, the man who always got his man (or woman). The man possessed of a unique ability, which made him god's gift to the profession. Which every day made him want to turn his back on it all. If he ever took that fatal step, then indeed he would require a protection squad. For the populace would tear him limb from limb in such circumstance. And in passing over into death, he would be able to finger every one of his killers as his last act on earth. Providing a neat circularity to his life. Back to that moment his gift-curse first announced itself to him. When at seven years old he cupped his mother's lifeless head in his arms. And had a searingly clear image of her killer revealed to him.

Human Chromatography

Terry Pratchett's Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Last night on the BBC, Sir Terry Pratchett was the first novelist to deliver the august Richard Dimbleby Lecture. I say deliver, but due to his condition of early onset Alzheimer's disease, after a short introduction, he passed his written speech over to be delivered by actor and friend Tony Robinson (of Black Adder fame). This had the curious affect not dissimilar to when the IRA could not be shown saying their own words on British TV, but had to have them spoken in voiceover by an actor. Straight away it distances you from the affect of the words, (as was intended with the IRA), you are taken away from the inflection and the expression of the speaker himself, because he is not actually saying them. While the camera lingered on Pratchett at length for his reactions and clearly his face revealed all sorts of emotional responsiveness, it still confers the unfortunate feel of someone laughing at their own jokes and welling up at their own sadness, all the while seeming strangely removed from their own words. I fully appreciate the reason for this decision, that the disease itself makes protracted speaking a titanic feat to pull off. Some people will feel this method underlines such a fact. Others may feel it to have been more powerful if he had tried to deliver the words himself, slurred or tripping up and with the actor coming in as prompt or periodic reliever.

I was also reminded of that other great TV interview on the eve of a fully anticipated death, that of the TV playwright Dennis Potter. He sat there, fingers curled over clawlike by psoriasis, quaffing from liquid morphine such was the pain he was in for the duration of the interview. To me, this remains the most trenchant argument in and of itself. Two fine minds, still evidencing their clarity of thought, all the while their body is failing around them. There could be no clearer representation of mortality, the fate that is due to come to us all. They can speak of the onrush of death with supreme eloquence, but to me the clearest statement is the physical manifestation before our very eyes.

Why might this be important? I believe it is so because we are a society that still won't talk about death in the open. En masse we are no longer able to underpin it reassuring religious credos promising an afterlife. (Some still do possess such facility, but they are in the minority within our society). But instead of turning this void round into a consideration of both what death means and therefore stemming from it an inquiry into the purpose and meaning of life, we just keep both remote from our everyday functioning selves. If for example we truly apprehended the physical pain of unravelling as demonstrated by Potter and Pratchett, then we might not so casually inflict it on others through wars abroad or even drunken fights outside bars. But no, we will continue to shuffle such dark dreads under the carper and slay one another in desultory fashion.

I confess I am terrified of death. Not as Sir Terry mentioned yesterday the moment of dying which according to polls cited by him is the greater fear of the overwhelming majority of us, for me it is the eternal extinction thereafter. Of course the moment of dying can be drawn out, lingering with terrible pain. But for me that can only be increased exponentially by the certain knowledge of what lies beyond, ie nothing. (Sorry, but I just cannot console/delude myself that there is anything other). I was present when my Grandmother died, surrounded by all her family. And she struggled and clung on and could not get comfortable and moved around as he body betrayed her for the last time. And when she finally did settle in the final rest, all the pinched lines of struggle and tension vanished from her face as the muscles relaxed and let go. She had pretty much the 'best' death imaginable given that it was in the bosom of those she loved and supported by reasonably sensitive medical management. And superficially witnesses would remark how serene she looked and offer the nostrum 'she's at peace now' after a long, debilitating illness. I simply don't buy that, for her or for me.

Mortality and its corollary the purpose of life (what some refer to as the human condition) informs every piece of work I write. All the themes beloved of literature, such as redemption (in life), enlightenment, revenge, betrayal et al, are mere fripperies in relation the the puppet master that cuts all their strings at the finale, that being Death. Death is a far greater taboo than incest or pedophilia to my mind, because it affects each and every one of us (not to say of course you can't explore the others, just a polite inquiry why death seems so under-investigated by comparison).

As to the meat of Pratchett's interview and where the media vultures will inevitably gather, his plea for euthanasia to be legalised. Intellectually and morally I agree with him, (though my cynicism runs such that some will exploit any law to 'off' unwanted elderly burdens or gain access to inheritances and be able to get around the checks and balances the law may provide). Personally, with my terror of non-being I could never fly myself headlong towards my death any sooner than was ordained for me. But Pratchett was at pains to try and change the terminology from "Assisted Suicide" to "Assisted Death." Having cleared the blood up after a family member's serious unassisted suicide attempt, I'd just like to suggest that the consent of a terminally ill person to their own foreshortening by human agency, IS a suicide, even if delivered at the hand of another. Now there is nothing wrong with the notion of suicide to my mind. In fact, in a rational society it should form a central part of the debate about life itself. For if we strive to develop a consciousness from the moment of birth, if we labour to establish ourselves within a material existence whereby we can feed and clothe ourselves and form relationships and sire children, only to have it taken away randomly and permanently- the only question might then be why wouldn't we commit suicide? How can you make informed decisions about the right to die, if we don't even know what we mean by the value of human life in the first place?

Death Notices...

nothing. When you're dead you're dead. That's why I don't quite buy the writing for posterity argument. Yes you may still be minting royalties for your heirs, but other than that what benefit redounds to you decomposing away there in your clod and loam? (decomposing, is there a more apt word to describe the status of an ex-writer?) Mind you, the same could be said of why bother to have offspring at all, now that our species is no longer tied to seasonal reproduction? Might brighten up your life while you're compos mentis, but when your compost lettuce, just what are the benefits?

Okay, so writing can't preserve more than your name and the words you bequeath. Even then you've got to be a damn good writer; John Le Carre and Ian Fleming (to name two from outside my genre) are more likely to be read and remembered down the line, than say Hammond Innes and Alistair McLean. In the same way that eventually every living relative who knew you in the flesh, themselves go the way of all things mortal, so that there is no one left to place fresh flowers on your grave; there will be no readers left to place bouquets on Innes and McLean's memory and their books remain permanently out of print.

But what are Le Carre and Fleming yielding to the generations that come after them? Well great stories and central protagonists certainly. But I think Literary Fiction writers might crave for more of a legacy than that. I think they yearn to contribute to the great debate. To furnish some ideas for the great pool of human knowledge. To create a meme in the current parlance. If it can't render them any benefit from beyond the grave, at least it might serve humanity into the future. We still live by the notions of virtue portrayed in Greek Tragedies. Shakespeare left us plenty to ponder on the condition and make up of man. Nick Hornby gave us the insight about running an independent music store. Mind you, it's all a bit wooly this conceptual inheritance thing. Maybe if you help instigate a paradigm shift in the thought of all mankind, as you can argue that the Impressionist painters achieved, rather than just a trend shift as say the Beats or the Bloomsbury Circle, then it moves us all forwards. To put it in perspective, such creative impulse throwing tiny conceptual pebbles, is hard to hold up to comparison with the creativity of a bridge builder whose artistry solves a practical problem.

So here's the thing. As altruistic as it was of Sophocles and the Bard to leave us these testimonies for us to reflect on hundreds/thousand years down the line, (funny sort of altruism that has a sadistic element to it through contemplation of the ineffably ambiguous, but still), I'm not convinced it was just to help us all along a millennium hence. They didn't have the media to project their fame much beyond their local geography, so don't think they were about celebrity status either. Okay they got decent working wages out of the writing gig so that's not to be sniffed at. But I reckon they were driven to consider the human condition out of an awareness/fear of their own mortality. In fact I believe all artists, consciously or unconcsciously have the same drive.

This becomes more so as the myth of Heaven/God/The afterlife recedes from ever greater numbers of the populace. There is no useful posterity to be had. So rather than look ahead to the hereafter, now artists look to their immediate lives. We may all celebrate birthdays, but the artist calibrates back from his imagined death day, in order to make sense of his purpose here on earth. He knows he's going to pass over, so what is the best way to make use of the time in the here and now? Well justifying it, explaining it, deconstructing it, might all be fair uses of his time. And that means not only telling his own story, but locating it within the cosmic tragedy/comedy of its inevitable full stop. We already know how this story is ultimately going to end. Therefore that is not really where the interest in it lies. Steve Tesich, who died tragically young, wrote the funniest novel I have ever read called "Karoo" Tesich's protagonist Saul Karoo, a fixer up of failing movie scripts, explains away his need to write: "from the constant need to narrate my existence". For as much as we cease to exist after death, now the nagging inquiry is that we may not purposefully exist all that much in life.

Writers may just be aware of this hollowness and in addition to probing it in their own being, also tug urgently at everybody else's sleeves to alert them to this fact. Even celebrants of Eros who write escapist fantasy books, are still driven by a need to have their voice heard (despite choosing to neglect examining the motives behind that impulse). Thanatos lies behind all contemporary literature. It is merely up to the individual author whether he doffs his hat at the spectral cortege as it passes over his future grave.