Abandoned Beauty

(a writing prompt from Write on Edge)

“He’s on his way, I’ve seen him through the eyes of owls.  Young and full of vigour,” Her voice was self-satisfied, with just a hint of lewd appreciation.

“So romantic,” came the reply in gentle delicate tones of wistful contentment

“Romance be damned,” the third voice was a menacing rumble, “it’s the story that draws him.  Always the story.”

The three of them waited in an upper room, looking out of the window into the wooded valley below.   The house was glorious once, but that was before it had been abandoned to the elements and to time, before moss and vines grew over its surface and the burrowing creatures dug into its rocky foundations, before the rain and wind of countless years wore away the paint and etched age into the face of the building.    

The three of them wore the shapes, more or less, of women.

“We should try to stop him of course,” said the first of them, “Should I…?”

“No,” sighed the second, “let me.  Poor boy.”   She relaxed out of her vanishing body and the valley forest pulsed in response.

“She’ll botch it,” growled the third.       They watched as the canopy of trees quivered far below and a few moments later the one who had vanished returned.   She was ragged and glaring now, her green clothing tattered and torn.

“Clever boy,” she said, and she’d lost the wistfulness,  “My vines and stinging plants engulfed him.  He sprayed me with chemicals and withered me.”  She spat on the floor.  It steamed.

“My wolves will end him,” said the first of them.  Her eyes gleamed orange and she was gone.   Below there was howling and shouting and chasing and…

She was back suddenly, clutching herself and leaking blood.

“Revolvers,” she growled, “and he’s a bloody good shot.”

“Useless,” boomed the third of them and the sky darkened as she vanished.   “Leave.  Him.  To.  Me.”    The last four words were thunder crashes, and lightning stabbed the valley shattering trees and stone where they struck.

The other two looked at each other and waited.

“He’s good,” said the one in tattered green.

“He’s the one,” said the wolf-eyed woman.

Suddenly the third of them was back, pale and furious.

“He’s a pain in the backside,” she said, “And he’s tough.  Made it to the steps.”

They all peered out of the window and looked down.  Far below a young hero staggered up the long flight of stairs leading to the house.   He was injured and soaked and a little scorched, but undaunted.

They sighed and moved further in, resting on a balcony overlooking the grand hall below.  In the centre of the hall was a bed and on the bed a maiden lay, pale and golden haired and untouched by time.

The young man thrust open the mossy doors and staggered into the room.   He paused as he took in the beauty of the maiden sleeping in the mansion lost to time, but he only paused for a second.   And then, his strength renewed he strode forward and bent over her to kiss her flawless skin.

“They always get the story wrong,” the first grumbled as the maiden’s eyes flickered open.

“Such a shame,” agreed the second.   The maiden wrapped her arms around his shoulders and opened her mouth wide, revealing twin rows of pearl white fangs.  The young man screamed as she bit down.

“The sacrifice of the heroic king,” said the third, nodding, “has to be the strongest, the cleverest, the finest.   And they’re the only ones that make it through, who make it past the flora, and the fauna and my merry weather.”     

In the chamber below the maiden sat up and stretched, her gown soaked scarlet, her lips dripping gore.     She waved at the three faerie who had guarded her, and they waved back grinning.

Job done.

Princes and Peashooters

I went on a tour of the City Varieties theatre in Leeds today.   It's not a large venue, nor is it particularly grand, but it does have quite a history.     Its first incarnation was as a singing room above the Swan Inn.  Singing rooms were an innovation that encouraged people to stay longer in the inns you see; people would turn up and sing, and listen to other singers, and consequently they'd stay longer and buy more drinks.   Over the next hundred years or so they became so popular that the entertainment part of it grew and grew, and in the mid 1800s the Swan Inn was replaced by the music hall which was rebuilt as a theatre where the entertainment was much more of a focus.      This wasn't a high-brow place though, in fact music halls were forbidden from putting on plays (must keep Shakespeare dignified you see and out of the hands of the commoners) and so they focussed on songs, comedians and variety acts all put on for the benefit of working class audiences who felt free to heckle, harass, bombard and (hopefully) occasionally applaud the artistes.

The City Varieties is not, as I mentioned earlier, a large venue.  Today it seats about four hundred people in relatively spacious comfort.   In its original incarnation the same space housed about two thousand complete with balconies where people stood four or five deep, leaning over the rows in front and craning their necks to see the small and sloping stage.   The balconies, I learned today, were not even supported from below, just held up by rods fixed to the ceiling.    This particular touch of structural genius wasn't even known to the owners until the refurbishments a few years ago.   Needless to say the balconies are no longer used for the audience.

The tour guide, Grace, really knew her stuff and brought the history of the venue alive.   Particularly entertaining were her accounts of some of the acts that had played there over the years.   Charlie Chaplin performed there in the 1890s as part of the "Lancashire Clog Boys" for instance, before his journey into the west.    Lillie Langtry was a regular artiste, a renowned Victorian beauty and performer.   The then Prince of Wales was quite enamoured of her but of course it wasn't the done thing for someone of his standing to attend such a low class venue... so the staff of the theatre used to discreetly smuggle him into the place after the show had started, via unused corridors and into the box nearest the stage where the curtains were already drawn, so he could watch Lillie perform.  Afterward he would be smuggled out again before the show as a whole finished and depart for the nearby Harewood Hall where he could lodge with his noble cousins and resume his princely duties.     Later he awarded the City Varieties the right to display his royal crest though whether this was as a thanks for the good times he'd had there, or a bribe to keep quiet it's hard to say.   If it was the latter, well, it didn't work.

"Discretion if you please"

During the first World War the City Varieties, like many music halls throughout the country, became the venue for a method of recruitment that was a masterpiece of psychological manipulation if not the most ethical method.    Vesta Tilly a female artiste known for her male impersonation would lead an evening of rousing patriotic songs during which the bar kept the audience well plied with beer.   When spirits were high she'd invite the young men on stage to join in the singing, all very uplifting and jingoistic and inspiring nationalistic pride and fervour, with the audience cheering and applauding and joining in.... and then the young men on stage would be handed documents to sign... and the next week they'd be in the army and on their way to the trenches.     You have to applaud the thought that went into that sinister little performance if not the morality of it.

Vesta Tilley

On a lighter note I learned of a creative use for peashooters.   When music hall attendance started to flag during the 1920s and 1930s with the rise of cinema and radio the shows began to entice audiences in with nude displays.    The laws at the time were quite strict and nudity was allowed only in an artistic context.    After all, nude statues and paintings are art, right?   So shows began to incorporate naked tableaux that were perfectly legal as long as the ladies on stage did not move.  If they moved it became obscene and the theatre could be prosecuted.      With a typically human approach to regulations and restrictions however the owners tried to find ways to push that boundary a little and managed to inject a little movement into the shows by introducing elements such as having one of the naked artistes sitting or standing on a wheeled trolley that could be moved across the stage, or having moments where the lights went out entirely and the performers would move to a new position before the lights came up again.   It must have been like a very slow X Rated stop motion animation.        We were told that one visitor to the theatre had confessed to the tour guide that he and his friends attended these shows when he was a young man and they used to use pea-shooters to fire at the naked ladies on stage to try to get them to move, or that they would try to get a spot by the stage and all blow in unison in the hope of moving some of the feathery fans that obscured some of the more... artistic... parts of the display.    How successful the attempts were we were not informed, but I imagine it helped them pass a happy hour.

The theatre has been open continuously since the 1850s, staying open through both world wars and in fact only closed for refurbishment for the first time in 2009, reopening in 2011.   The refurbishment removed the grime and dillapidation of a century and a half of constant use and it's now redecorated in the same style that it was in its heyday of 1900 or so - clean and airy with tasteful floral decorations on the roof and gold leaf highlights here and there.    It's still a cosy little theatre, not grand but welcoming, and full of character and history, and true to its roots it hosts shows that you would not often find in grander places - comedians and circus shows, pantomimes and experimental theatre.   It's a great little place and if you find yourself in the neighbourhood it's well worth a visit.

Cellar Door

(A writing prompt from Write on the Edge)

Monsters live in cellars.    All children know this.    It's true of most cellars, but it is particularly true of cellars in old houses, cellars with uneven stone stairs and lighting that works only intermittently; cellars with odd corners and more than one room, and cobwebs piled up so thickly in the corners they look like ghosts' furniture or albino shadows.  Those cellars are always the haunt of monsters and they should not be carelessly explored except for the dullest of purposes and certainly not alone.

Cellar doors therefore are important.   Cellar doors are the boundary between one world and another, the world of television and electric light and games consoles on one side, and shadows and whispers and things moving out of sight and dusty smells  that come and go of their own accord on the other.    Boundaries are special.   Boundaries with sturdy locks are both special and sensible.

My cellar door was everything it should have been.  I crept up to it often, the smell of the house changing near it, an old smell of not-quite-damp and not-quite-clean that made my skin crawl.   It looked perfect, thick and sturdy, chunky and old and blocky.   The paint was old and cracked and had come off in places so you could see the layers of different colours like geological strata - gloss green, sickly yellow, off-white, faux-wood brown.    It was like a scarred face, and never looked the same twice.   The hinges were clunky iron  things that could withstand sledgehammer blows.   I was glad about that.

I'd press my ears to the wood and listen.   At times I was sure that I could hear movement beyond it.   Footsteps.   The hint of voices whispering -too quiet for me to be sure, far too quiet to make out words.  I'd lay awake at night and wonder what on earth they could talk about beyond the cellar door.

I didn't tell my parents.  They were practical and sensible and they would have dismissed my thoughts as mere imagination.    When they caught me with my ear pressed to the cellar door I was told not to waste my time, and not to go exploring by myself as it was dangerous.    They were probably worried about me falling, or breaking something, or any number of mundane accidents.   But I knew it was far more dangerous than that, and I was never really tempted to open the cellar door.

Until... 

Until one day when I was absolutely sure I heard a voice.  Not a whisper or a hint, but an actual voice.   A girl's voice, and she was singing.   My heart pounded in mingled panic and exhilaration.    I listened, enraptured for several minutes and then it simply stopped, and before I could do anything foolish my mother called me to eat and I left the door, and the song behind me.

After dinner though I crept back and pressed my ear against the scarred paint and closed my eyes, willing myself to hear the mysterious song from beyond one more time.  

And it was there.  It was faint but there.   And I knew that I could not ignore it any more, knew that in every life there comes a moment when the unknown must be faced.    I had never even tried to open the cellar door before, not once.   But now, with the song still faintly sounding from beyond, and heedless of the consequences I touched the iron handle.  It was cold, and it was solid and it was real, and I knew there would be no going back.

Holding my breath I turned the handle and the cellar door opened.   I did not look back at the safe, normal, secure world I knew.  I stepped through the door and into the house above in search of songs and a strange new world of sunlight and mystery.

Lucksmith - done

It took a few false starts but finally, finally I've finished the short story I've been working on.   I remembered the advice I was given "Start as close to the end as possible" and ditched all the preamble and exposition and cut straight to the key scene that was at the heart of the story.

I'm frustrated that it took me so long to recall that, but once I found the right starting point everything flowed just as it should.     Next time I'll remember that lesson earlier (I hope) and spare myself a few days worth of rewrites.

Magus and Hermit

This is something I was working on as part of a larger project.  A few thousand words in I realised the focus needed to be somewhere else entirely.   Rather than consign this to the outer darkness entirely I'm posting it here just for the sake of keeping up with regular posting.  

It is unpolished and may see the light of day in another form sooner or later.   In the meantime, meet Abraxas and Lucas:

“What’s the story, Old and Hoary?”

The old Magus sighed at the informal address and raised his eyes from the green-fire crackling in the heart of the vast scrying globe before him. The speaker was a middle aged man whose dark hair was showing more than a hint of grey, and whose face showed two or three days worth of not-being-bothered stubble. He was lean and scruffy, wearing a dark suit and a weatherbeaten overcoat in whose pockets his hands were thrust. The Magus, resplendent in robes of dark imperial purple girt with a belt of golden cords and whose white beard was long and immaculately kept merely shook his head.

“Show some respect for the sanctity of this place, if not for my sake Lucas,” he said.

Lucas shrugged and walked closer, peering into the scrying globe. “You sent for me ‘Raxas, I was having a fine old time minding my own business and annoying all the right people in all the wrong ways. I assumed it was urgent. Too urgent to stand on ceremony, eh?”

The Magus, Abraxas was the name he had chosen for the moment, sniffed irritably. “And your clothing, Lucas, your apparel… it is entirely inappropriate.”

“And certainly too urgent to worry about costuming. Anyway, robes always make me feel like a transvestite and not in a good way. So I say again, what’s the story?”

Abraxas gave up on the idea of squabbling with Lucas, time was too short, and the scotsman had an endless appetite for disagreement that had made many people grateful that he was also by nature a recluse.

“The story, Lucas, is that our enemy is gathering their strength for a major incursion.” That at least prompted the appropriate reaction. Lucas took a pair of wire framed spectacles from his pocket and put them on peering closer at the patterns of shifting emerald flames within the crystal sphere.

“Where? And when?”

“Everywhere of course, and everywhen.”

Lucas glanced sideways at the Magus and scowled. “An answer of great philosophical depth no doubt, and no bloody use. Anything specific?”

The Magus shook his head and said slowly, “No. No, not yet. We are working on that I promise you.”

“Aye, good. Somebody should be. We don’t want any more surprises, we’ve lost enough ground. So why the call? Why’d you want me, eh?”

“Do you know the term hamingja, Lucas?”

Lucas put away the spectacles, and shook his head. “Enlighten me,”

“Enlightenment is not my field of expertise,” Abraxas said with a wry smile, “It is an old Norse concept. It represents an individual’s luck. They considered it to be part of a person’s soul, and some people had a powerful beneficial hamingja, some did not.”

Lucas grunted and moved away from the scrying sphere and stooped over a slender silver stand on which a single tarot card was propped. It showed an old man in hooded robes, a lantern held aloft. The Hermit. “This supposed to be me? I don’t do robes, I told you. So this is basically a fancy way of saying some people are luckier than others? That’s not exactly news, ‘Raxas. See me down at the bookies and watch the money melt away, that’ll tell you all you need to know about luck.” 

 The Magus shook his head.

“It is more than that. An individual with a powerful hamingja is lucky not just on their own behalf, but also on behalf of their friends and allies. In the sagas we read often of individuals setting out on a dangerous journey or an important expedition will seek to enlist the aid of someone known to be lucky. Either as a companion, or to entreat them to send some of their luck along in their place.”

Lucas turned to face Abraxas and nodded. “So you and your boys and girls here at Source have identified a big threat on the horizon, and now you’re talking to me about obscure Norse folklore. Let me take a wild stab in the dark here, you’ve also found someone with a suitably powerful ham- thing.”

“Hamingja,” said Abraxas, “Indeed. And it would be to our advantage if they could be recruited. Form a team and find him. I will let you know the where and when.”

Lucas reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a battered leather case, opening it to reveal a deck of cards. “I suppose I need to gather the team from Close-Context.”

Abraxas shook his head. “This is important enough to bend the rules a little,” he said with a smile at Lucas’ look of incredulity, “Draw them from anywhere, anywhen. And find this Lucksmith, before our enemies do.”

“Aye,” said Lucas clearly rattled by the thought of the Magus being willing to play fast and loose with the Source’s own rules, and he started shuffling through the sketches on the faces of the tarot deck he carried. A team to build…

Twisty Turny

I've been working on a short story today, something that's been bubbling away in my imagination for a week or so.  I'd got most of it worked out in  my head - the characters, the storyline, the key scenes that needed to be there.  And today I had the leisure and the health (I've been feeling rough this week) to sit down and write it.

And 1500 words in it suddenly becomes clear that it will work better if I focus on someone that in my original idea was going to be more or less incidental, and if the characters that I had decided were the key characters be introduced more tangentially.

I quite enjoy stories with a twist, but why do they insist on springing their surprises on the person trying to write them?

Scrivening

I'm experimenting with Scrivener.   For those who aren't familiar with it, this is software designed to assist writers with the task of writing.    I'm a few days into the free trial and already convinced enough to purchase it (which I have in fact just done).

The big selling point for me is the organisational features.    For novel writing for instance (and Scrivener has templates for other types of writing too) it is very easy to divide a project not only into chapters, but into scenes within that chapter which can be written individually and then - importantly - seen in a file card on corkboard layout that allows them to be moved around and tinkered with.    For someone like me who has an idea of the key milestones of the novel I'm working on this has proven invaluable - I can put those milestones down formally (heck, even write some of them in advance) and then see very clearly and dynamically what goes where and what needs to be done.

There's a lot more to it than this, and I'm enjoying finding it all out.   Does anyone else reading this use Scrivener or similar & what impressions do you have of it?

The Installation

(a writing prompt from Write on Edge)

Clang.

A metal hammer struck a metal chime.    A silvered-steel ball cranked up an incline toward the highest point.    Around it in the cabinet balls that had made the journey before were rolling and spinning and cascading.   It never stopped.  Never.    The silvered-steel ball reached the high point, paused for a second as it had done countless times before and then dropped, beginning the next stage of its journey.

Mister Hermann was not the machine’s inventor, though he had designed it and commissioned its creation, and he stood by with pride in his eyes and watched it work.    The visitors to the gallery often paused to watch the little spheres on their journeys, occasionally exchanged a few words with Mister Hermann, joked about it being a fair imitation of perpetual motion and then passed on.   He’d chuckle in response and say that not even a skilled craftsman could break the laws of physics.

Clang.

He’d broken plenty of laws in his time, but his time was a long time ago and he’d settled a bit since then.  Mostly.   Approaching chatter and one angry voice in particular drew his attention suddenly.  School children.

“You’re such a sissy, Cooper,” one unpleasant red haired boy said, “always whining.  Always fussing.  I didn’t shove you, you’re just clumsy.”   He gave another shove with the flat of his hand as if to demonstrate the difference.

The boy he was addressing did not retort, just shrank back from the larger child and drew himself together like curtains closing at the end of a bad day.    Mister Hermann glanced from the red haired boy to the teacher in charge who was studiously not noticing the incident.    

Clang.

The boys and girls clustered round the cabinet and watched the intricate mechanisms inside; the turning wheels and ratcheted inclines, the slopes and circled drains and tubes, and of course the endless rolling and running and climbing spheres in many different colours.

“It’s beautiful,” said the boy, Cooper, in a voice that was as quiet as Mister Hermann expected it would have been.   But not quiet enough.

“So so beautiful,” mocked the red haired boy in a high voice, “Cooper you are such a sissy.”

The teacher was standing nearby but did not hear, or seemed not to.  Mister Hermann heard and he walked closer and past the red haired boy and stood just to one side of the machine.    The child that had been mocked looked like he was about to cry but barely held it in.

“Fussing again?” sneered red-hair, then he saw Mr Hermann looking at him.   And smiling broadly.

Cooper shivered and stepped back as though he’d missed a step though he wasn’t actually moving.  He felt... better and did not know why.   He looked around at his schoolmates.  They were all there, all enthralled by the wonderful device just as he had been.   There was no child with red hair among them... but why had he thought there should be?

Clang.

The school party moved away after the teacher did a quick head count.   He counted the right number of pupils of course, though that right number was not perhaps what it had been when they had set out that morning.  

When they had gone Mister Hermann crouched down by the side of the cabinet and looked in.    There at the base of the steep mechanical upward incline was a ball of steel, tinted a dull red colour.   Perhaps it was the working of the mechanism beneath it that made it quiver in place for a few seconds after it had rolled into its position.   Perhaps.

“Oh come now,” whispered Mister Hermann in a voice too low and words too unknown for human ears to comprehend, “don’t make such a sissy fuss.”

The ball began the first of its upward journeys, up toward the very top, at the start of its endless progression.

Clang.

Reversal

(A writing prompt from Write on Edge )

The music in the bar was dreadful.   Manufactured factory pop that lacked any life or enthusiasm, the vocals auto-tuned into sterile blandness that suited the trite lyrics perfectly.   Somewhere in the streets outside a dog was barking furiously and frankly making better music than the juke box.  If I was still in the music business I’d have signed the dog up on the spot and made him a star by the end of the month, seriously (or Siriusly).   

At this point in the evening I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been in the bar.    I’d tipped the cabbie a couple of coins to take me somewhere I could wait and I think he owed me a refund.    Every one of the other patrons was there alone, hunched figures at bar stools or sitting solitary at tables. Their collective silence was deafening.      Each had the hangdog expression of someone drinking to forget.    I threw back the rest of the whisky and swallowed without tasting, wondering if I looked the same to them.  Probably.   Whatever it was I was trying to forget: mission accomplished.    The barman put a full glass in front of me without my asking, without asking for payment.   Nice arrangement.    It had been going on since I’d arrived and I was pleasantly numb from the guilt down.

The door opened letting in a gust of cold air, and the sound of a dog whining outside.  I glanced at the newcomer, a dark haired woman with pale skin, a short dress and an expression that made me look away quickly.   I sighed and took another drink.   The woman came up to the bar and stood next to me, so I drank some more and ignored her.

“No more songs?” she asked. 

“No more anything, I think,” It seemed like a clever response in my mind, but slightly pathetic aloud.     Unsurprisingly she didn’t look impressed.

“I’m taking you home,”

She looked too serious to be trying to pick me up, and her words sounded more like a command than an invitation.  I shook my head.   The bar was lousy, but it was the only place I had now.   Her face softened.

“You don’t know me?”

I shook my head again and finished the glass.   The barman poured another but as I reached for it she dashed it away angrily.

“You wrote a thousand thousand songs for me,” she said, “I’m taking you home.  Get on your feet.”

“I can’t,”

“I’ve come a long way, and there’s a long way back.   Get on your feet.”

The last thing I wanted to do was go anywhere.  I was tired and drunk and… empty.   But there was something in her voice that would not be contradicted.  I pushed myself off the stool and lurched a bit. 

“Alright,” she said, “I’ll lead the way.  Keep me in sight and don’t say a word once we’re outside the bar.  Follow me, alright, whatever happens, whatever you see.”

She turned around and walked to the door of the bar.   The other patrons looked at me blank eyed and then returned to their solitary drinking.     As she opened the door the cold air made me catch my breath, and there was nothing outside but the darkness of a bleak alleyway and the scent of dust and dog.   I stood in the doorway, holding onto the frame with both hands trying to stay upright, stay focussed.

“I know you, don’t I?” I say quietly.

She does not turn around, not yet, but I see her nod.

“What’s your name?”   I know I should know it, but I don’t.

She starts walking away from me, into the darkness.

“Eurydice,” she says.   I leave the bar behind and follow her.

Nomentum

Half the problem is of course momentum.   Or in this case Nomentum.   Nomentum builds up day by day in the everyday tiredness and stresses of what I laughingly think of as real life.   Poor health, insomnia, a workplace full of stressy stressy moments and a thousand and one other distractions all conspire to sap strength, erode confidence and make me want to spend my spare time in recreation and mindless distraction rather than sit down and write.   Insidious stuff this Nomentum, since it is the sitting down and writing that will give me the fulfilment and self confidence to shake off the other crap that is weighing me down - both in the sense of immediate boosts and gratification of having done something I like doing and know I should be doing, and also in the long term when I actually accomplish my goals.

Nomentum though is there like a cloud, a particularly heavy cloud draping over my shoulders and weighing me down.   It's time to get rid of it though and that will take (heaven forbid) effort.

Lyssa has suggested I sign  up for sites with writing competitions, short story sites and so on.  I've found a couple and may well do it - in the past I've been able to produce some pretty good work on minimal prompts from the most unlikely sources just for the buzz of getting it done and the feedback that follows.   That may well work here too, since activity builds up Momentum which in turn dissipates Nomentum.

At the very least I hope to post here more regularly and may stick up some snippets of writing just to keep myself busy.