Owed To Joy - Flash Fiction

She: You know what they say…

Chorus (sing): Oh why are we waiting? Why are we waiting?

She: Two’s company, three’s a crowd

He: Oh really?

Chorus (sing): For he’s a jolly good fellow

He: Just leave my mother out of this

Chorus (sing): Which nobody can deny

She: I wish she would flipping leave our relationship. Take her nose out of business that doesn’t concern her

Chorus (sing): Heads, shoulders, knees and toes. And penetralia

He: You’re jealous of her aren’t you?

She: What, that I can’t possibly snap the apron strings that still tie you to her? I wouldn’t apply the word ‘jealous’ as such

Chorus (sing): One for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane

He: So what word would you use?

Chorus (sing): You’re once, twice, three times a lady

She: Oedipal

Chorus (sing): They all ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife

He: Is that right? 

Chorus (sing): Which nobody can deny

He: Well at least I’m faithful. There’s only the two women in my life. Unlike you

Chorus (sing): Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry

She: What do you mean?

Chorus (sing): Fuck e’m all, fuck ‘em all. The long, the short and the tall

He: Do I really have to spell it out?

Chorus (sing): Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?

He: Maybe you think being in the arms of another woman it doesn’t count as infidelity?

Chorus (sing): One two, buckle my shoe, three four shut the door, five six, pick up six, seven eight, lay them straight

She: Well maybe if I was showed some affection in my marriage, my eye wouldn’t have to rove

Chorus (sing): Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go home

He: Affection is a two-way thing you know

Chorus (sing): This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none

He & She (to chorus): Shut the fuck up and butt out will you? (sing to chorus) You’re going home in a big white ambulance

Vault - Flash Fiction

Once we were gymnasts. Vaulting, tumbling and scissoring. Our bodies soaring, in defiance of gravity’s leadenness. Each was the other’s asymmetric bar containing their flight. Soft landings and angular handholds. Tucking, twisting and pivoting around each’s axis. Contrapuntal convolutions consummately confluent. Heads over heels over hips and all manna in between.

But eventually our mutual routines became routine. Repetitive, rehearsed, rehashed and rote. We became arrhythmic. Hand supination taken for supplication. We floored one another. Me with my fabric ribbons, you with sports ball. You wanted to club me, while I wanted you hanging at the end of a rope. And not even inverted. Each V-sitting at extreme opposite edges of the parallel bars to keep one another at legs' width. Our anatomies reasserted their asymmetricalness to one another on the bars, on the few occasions we made hate, our bodies clashed and collided rather than being cushioned. We flic-flac'd past one another in avoidance. You pommel horsed me, swinging round to keep me at bay or slice me in two. While I lost my balance when straddling the narrow beam of you. The white spray taking leave from your hands was not chalk dust. We stuck the dismount on one another.

Unholy Trinities - Friday Flash

him, her

Nina Pinta Santa Maria

mirror signal manoeuvre

jacket waistcoat trousers

chest waist hips

guitar bass drums

thesis antithesis synthesis

fish chips gravy

fish chips mushy-peas

tick tack toe

inch foot yard

rock paper scissors

Clotho Lachesis Atropos

larva pupa imago

father mother child

frankincense gold myrrh

faith hope charity

DNA amino-acid protein

protein vitamin carbohydrate

cereal toast eggs

Doric Ionic Corinthian 

solid liquid gas

knife fork spoon

morning noon night

liberty equality fraternity 

malleus incus stapes

Satan, Beelzebub Moloch

tens hundreds thousands

thousands hundreds tens

Homo Erectus Home Habilis Home Sapiens

id ego superego

bacon lettuce tomato

Charlotte Emily Anne

Eastern Central Pacific

Rachkovsky Dzerzhinsky Beria 

husband wife mistress

Okhrana, NKVD, KGB

pounds shillings pence

robbery assault battery

birth marriage death

Abraham Isaac Jacob

arrest trial sentence

Pin Cushion Heart - Flash Fiction

He pinned her to his chest. She snipped his grip with her long nails digging into his flesh and unstitched herself from his embrace. As she did so, he threaded his arms around her flanks and reeled her back in. He tilted his head to whisper directly in her ear and broached the subject of marriage. She scissored through his clasp and sewed herself to the wall where he would not be able to cincture her again. He extended his arms towards her “You seem stressed my darling”. She crossed stitched her arms to make a straitjacket of herself.  “Oh really, do I? Maybe because a man who embroiders everything that comes out of his mouth with promises he has no intention of keeping, just proposed marriage to me“. Darn it Rita!” “Oh put a sock in it Serge! You’re a thimblerigger of the first order”. “Look, I admit I may have dropped the odd stitch in my time, but you’ve changed me. Sewn up the emptiness that was deep within me. You’ve opened up this nit-wit’s clamshell and discovered the purl inside”. “Stop layering it on so thick. There is nothing that can selvage this relationship”. “Not even this ring?” He tried to lace her finger through it, but was unable to thread the eye of this particular clenched needle. Now it was his nails driving into her flesh. “Stop needling me!” “Me needling you Rita? You’ve made a pin-cushion of my heart”

Iconocataclysm - Friday Flash

You swore an eternal vow to me. Pledged me your soul. Therefore I should be your solitary votive veneration. Yet your adoration is devoted to this lump of wood. When have you ever entreated me like you do this icon? When was the last time you prostrated yourself before me in such supplication? When you made your proposal of marriage down on one knee, that’s the closest to rubbing your face in the dirt as you do for your Mary there. 

And your purring susurrations offered up to her blockish ears, when was I ever the recipient of such tender exaltation? The only thing about these words that she shares with me, is that they are scripted for you, since you lack for any imagination of your own. 

Don’t you know, that isn’t any radiant halo emanating from behind her head? Rather it’s the searchlight from a gulag watchtower. She’s no less a miserable prisoner than me. She fails to  illuminate anything, since her so called hallowed head only eclipses the rays. 

It’s jut a trick of the light anyway. Down here in your dingy dungeon. You would have nothing without your beeswax candles to cast their feeble shine so that the gold leaf can amplify it. There is so much precious leaf poured into this one image, it suggests you spent more money to procure her than you would do to keep you wife. Augmented by you clearly spending money to cense her, rather than buy me scents and perfumes to draw you close to me. 

Don’t think I haven’t seen you betray me with her. You could kiss her on the cheek, her forehead or the hand that cups the infant. Yet you opt to osculate her paint-caked lips with the very passion withheld from me in the marital bed. Perhaps you only like virgins and I became tarnished for you on our wedding night. I see the rapture in your eyes as you press your face to hers, yet I am cursorily pecked with your peepers shuttered. 

So I will reclaim your Judas and Mary kisses. I will inject some real fervour into them. Touch up the paint work, by envenoming her lips with my tinctures of arsenic. Each time you brush her lips with your own, will inject some more of my stigmatic dose of mortification. My lip-salve salvation. Slowly purging you of your misconceived and misplaced ardour. No one will ever suspect this to be by my hand. But do not worry my sweet, you can lie eternal with her your one true love. For I will consign her image into your coffin to keep you company.

Customer Swervices - Friday Flash

The Customer Services Liaison was explaining to him why his scheduled journey had been cancelled. He realised he was stood there with his arms were crossed which seemed a touch vehement, so he unfolded them and clasped them behind his coccyx while he listened to her bull. Her words jangled and reverberated in his ears even though they were delivered with mellifluous cadence. It was like being informed of a family bereavement in sing-song tones. Not that a family bereavement equated to a cancelled journey. Yet him being stood still in place rather than in motion was the bottom line, so all the rest was florid superfluity. Nevertheless he knew from previous experiences with the likes of this customer’s swervices ilk, that it behoved him to remain calm and not lose his temper, if he had any shot at satisfactory redress. He scrutinised her corporate uniform. He wanted to see if it was shoddy or sleek. Although neither really determined the heft with which he should treat her words. She could still be slick with her disavowals even shod in a flimsy manmade fabric, just as clad in quality wool twill might make her complacent in her pre-ordained patter. He wanted to see beneath the tissue, to scan for any guilty pigmenting of the skin. He wanted to smell her fragrance, to see if he could sniff out her respiring lies, but the synthetic terminus atmosphere prevented any scents from spooring on the air. She had paused in her soliloquy, adjudging for his response, with moistened finger held up to the windsock of his face. He grasped her hand and shook it. A brief connection solely in order to break their engagement entirely. A man shaking a woman by her hand felt all wrong. He wanted to kiss her, to stop up her insincere mouth, but knew that was unseemly. 

He marched back over to his partner. She stood there with her own arms crossed but made no move to relent her angular fury. He began to relay the bare bones of what he had been told. Her eyes widened as she challenged him to the usual semiotic interpretation of a handshake at the end of transacted business. He could not admit to her that it merely signalled his desperation to end the unsuccessful conference. Instead he found himself giving a fuller rendition of the liaison officer’s justifications. He had taken her role and was reiterating the very same discourse, with his partner playing him. Only a superior more imposing version of him. How had he wound up being the proxy for the corporation that had failed him, them so unutterably? He too was professionally besuited, but not branded like the liaison. he had very different stakes in this exchange than had the functionary. He knew the arguments he was mustering would brook no weight with his partner, how had he allowed them to do so with himself? Had he become distracted by her peregrinity and so allowed her to daintily ride roughshod over him? Whereas his partner knew him intimately, so would in no way be swayed by his allure, more familiar than institutionally unctuous. She was fully aware of just how and where his body blushed, while she could unfailingly detect his reek of petty deceit. He could see it in her eyes, her determination to sweep him aside and march over to the woman and have it out with her. Maybe woman to woman she might garner satisfaction, where woman to man he could not, with either of these females. He knew he had two options. He could grab her arm and pull her back. Or he could just shake that hand and take his leave of his partner as he had with the liaison officer. And in this situation, he could in fair propriety stop up her all-to-sincere mouth with a kiss. 

Breaking Up - Friday Flash

“… connection… Frustrating…” 

“What?… hear me… …out?”

“Difficult… trying… very…”

“… not enough… and… bars”

“… signal… You… … lousy…”

“Can’t fight… You… there?”

“… forget… us… bother…”

“… give… chance… might”

“…my… back… Unforgivable”

“Time…”

“… later…”

“Actually… meaning…”

“… much too…”

“Static… both… …”

“Oath?”

“… said ‘growth’…”

“Let’s… clear…”

“This…”

“Pointless… … ring… back”

“… waste… …precious…”

“… breaking up…”

“Sorry…?”

“Dumped”

The Gift That Keeps On Giving - Flash Story

JANUARY: To see in the New Year and to prevent her head turning and casting a roving eye, I bought her a heavy choke chain necklace


FEBRUARY: For the designated month of love, I splashed out on pearl drop earrings


MARCH: Easter came early this year as did my beneficence, since her egg was a Fabergé one


APRIL: Ducking inside from a particularly squally Spring shower, I found myself imprisoned in a jewellers and could only secure our freedom through the purchase of a gold (contra-) armband


MAY: For my faerie queen I bought her a filigreed wreath, albeit it more closely approximated a diadem. Actually it was a diadem


JUNE: Flaming June and another coruscation of light refracted off gem facets. This time a diamond encrusted watch. Yet still she was forever late, perhaps getting lost in gazing at the diamonds and losing track of time


JULY: To prepare for our Summer travels, she had to get her accessories in order for our evenings out. Several handbags were purchased in different materials while I silently implored there to be no crocodiles or snakes where we were heading for surely we would incense these animal gods by culling their progeny and then flouting the fact


AUGUST: I had anticipated an expensive Caribbean holiday to suffice for outlay this month, but she insisted on a memento of the trip and that meant some expensive pearls which may or may not have been locally sourced. Then there was the 'small' gift from the Duty Free, just to exploit the tax situation on offer, because it would be remiss not to.


SEPTEMBER: I was given a month off for good behaviour. However I was exhorted to make a sizeable donation to her pet charity for pets


OCTOBER: I didn't know she was Jewish, no matter how much she had strayed from that particular faith. They apparently have four different new years and this month saw not only one of them, but the most significant. Even though it was the month of atonement and expiation and a laying bare, so that on the High Holy day itself leather shoes are not permitted as man is not to raise himself above the beast. She purged all her footwear and after the ceremonies were over, we had to go out and restock her wardrobe for an entire array of soles


NOVEMBER: Arrogating as many holidays as humanly possible, we were also marked to honour Thanksgiving and more importantly the start of the headlong rush to shop. I had to show my gratitude with a generous purchase of a bracelet bedecked with precious stones. I was a tad charmless in the store I admit.


DECEMBER: And what did Santa bring her for Christmas? Why an eternity ring of course. A same- again for next year and all years thereafter cast iron platinum plated guarantee. And what did he bring for me? A pair of fur-lined handcuffs.

Gieger Countering - Friday Flash

This is a sample story from my new flash collection "28 Far Cries"

URANIUM:

With our mutual leaden marital cores, affection was stopped up by my blockish shields, while it merely passed through yours like gamma rays.

PLUTONIUM:

We are each charged with containing the neuroses and blind spots of our partner, it being rare that we both share the same agitators. But such were the reciprocal irritations that more and more were classified as neuroses and blind spots, until it reached the critical mass of every single word out of our mouth, or every single one of our actions being deemed as being beyond redemption. We were both balls of seething fissile material.

THORIUM

In respect of cleaving together in a fusion that makes us more powerful, we manage to effect a fission that only serves to cleave us apart and bleed away any supposedly enriched energies. We were both left depleted.

CALIFORNIUM:

Each live radioactive substance will naturally decay and transform into another element, which if isotopic will in turn decay further, until finally a stable, inert element is rendered. My spouse and I have hit our inert basal states and yet I cannot say we went through the transmutations into other constitutions along the way. Spontaneous half-life decay takes eons to occur. We achieved a rapid acceleration of the process.

NEPTUNIUM:

It has been pointed out to me that smashing the atom in order to release the pent up energy of rage is a particularly destructive practice. And yet it was one we were both content to pursue.

AMERICIUM:

In order for a chain reaction to be unleashed, we both had to stockpile an impressive and intricate battery of sleights, grudges and other grievances. We conducted our own arms race to mutually assured destruction with barely a bat of an eyelid in the direction of the concept of deterrent.

CURIUM:

One segment of the fission process could, I concede, be considered as successful. Parts of our material corpus divided and split off. Eczema, weight loss, hair loss, hearing loss, incontinence, ulcers, thrush, hives and a host of other dermatological rashes afflicted us. Although perhaps some of these could be viewed as a gaining rather than a reduction. In a quantitative rather than a qualitative way of course. 

RADIUM:

Though we have long separated from one another in physical space, we remain contaminated with one another’s toxic waste, rendering us useless for future generative power. We are both decommissioned. 

URANIUM:
Two half-lives do not make a whole. 

For Valentine's Day...

                                                     

"I wish I had choreographed it all out in advance. Maybe a treasure hunt of little ditties placed throughout his apartment. Just to keep pricking the scabs. Closet conference to have read: ‘Love lies bleeding, love lies limp. Forehead’s receding, you dress like a pimp.’ Bathroom meditation: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue. Always said you were anal, now you’re flushed down the loo’. Kitchen corkboard, affixed with pins: ‘Love lies bleeding, love lies limp. Get some other scrubber, dirtying her hands in your sink’. Required bedtime reading: ‘Roses are red, violence black and blue. To the pisshole in your prick, figured to add just a few’. You simply never think of it at the time do you? Just as well really. Doesn’t even scan properly."

from the novel "A,B&E" A revenge tale where it is a dish best served "flush across a bloke's cranium"

Book Review - "Evie And Guy" by Dan Holloway

What a fantastic concept for a book! George Perec may have written a whole novel without a single letter 'E' (ironic seeing as there are four in his name on the spine, bet he still got paid royalties though), but Dan Holloway has created a work of literature constructed almost entirely from numbers.

Each chapter represents a year in the lives of the eponymous Evie and Guy. The text is constructed of dates, times, duration and the parentheses reporting interruptions or other impediments to finishing, the act of masturbation. And that's it. A matrix of numbers that look random and yet means so much. For this is a book about relationship as measured by time. A clusterfuck of a read, both literally and metaphorically.

Relationship, not in that wooly sense of you and your partner, but an actual physical relationship of two bodies (objects) in proximate space. Though the two narrative timetables are separated in the text, Evie’s following on only after the entirety of Guy’s, the reader is silently entreated to superimpose them to try and render meaning. To see where their onanistic acts might coincide (the only way perhaps for them to mutually consummate their love?) or perhaps where they are cast down in their own solitude and simultaneously scratch their own sexual itches. The beauty and simplicity of the 10 digits of the numerical palette are arranged and rearranged with subtle differences so as to offer different emotional tenors and different physical alignments.

I’m reminded of the fathers of forensics such as fingerprinting, who patiently built up a database until the sample was large enough to be able to pronounce it a science that followed rules and predictable observations. Here the reader, if they are so minded, can plot the blow by blow comparison of Evie’s times and dates with that of Guy’s to glean the emotional state of their relationship at any one moment. Was Guy frotting himself to death in a particular year because he was unfulfilled by Evie, or separated from her? Did the Fall of the Berlin Wall give him a hard on in front of the TV that he just had to relive himself? For her part, Evie’s self-pleasuring never falters while with Guy and it is only when he is dying that she becomes less surefooted (handed?). Once she has honoured his passing, she reasserts her sexuality and is able to fulfil her pleasures as before. Guy’s dishonour roll of interrupted or failed tommy tank manoeuvres attests maybe to the more mechanical torquing of the male member, that there is a climactic destination that has to be attained, else it is a failure. A dud. A blank. Even the name 'Guy' perhaps stands for every (male) man perhaps? This is a book about both relationship and gender, employing numbers but not by the numbers.

I don’t think its canvas is quite as large as the author perhaps imagines, citing the artistic language of Rothko and Emin in his preface. It’s actually way more intimate and I believe all the better for that, so that it is not weighed down by notions of grand art and experimentalism. But it is interesting, that just like an opaque piece of contemporary conceptual art may rely on its title and or an explanatory text, “Evie and Guy”  hinges on that one page explanatory preface and the sole appearance of words in the numerical narrative at the year 1995 to draw the novel to its conclusion.  I read the book first without the preface and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the set of figures in the brackets represented. It was only by reading the explanatory words of the preface that those important contextualising devices were set in place.

A brave work, but in form and content. And one that could reward endless revisiting with full attention to detail. Plot your own matrices and enjoy!

The book is free to download from http://danholloway.wordpress.com/work-in-progress/evie-and-guy-2/ or available as a paperback from http://www.lulu.com/shop/dan-holloway/evie-and-guy/paperback/product-20961947.html for £6.99 + p&P or direct from Dan for £7 inc postage by paypalling songsfromtheothersideofthewall@googlemail.com