Friday Flash: "Good"

"Good"by Jen Brubacher Vera wound her old hands around themselves over and over as if she were washing them. Harriet thought it didn’t matter how often Vera washed them, using water or otherwise. They would never be clean.

"He’s a good boy," Vera croaked, for perhaps the eighteenth time.

And Harriet nodded, for the eighteenth time.

There was a muted click as she set her tea cup to its saucer on the glass table.

Vera waved her hand near her wrinkled throat. "Is it six o’clock yet?"

"No."

The police would be there at six o’clock. The detective had promised. Spring sunlight was melting over the far hills to the west and it might be dark before anyone arrived. Harriet got up to light the candles and the thick smell of beeswax filled the conservatory. She stared with longing through the windows at those far hills. But there was no use in running with Neil still away.

"I suppose we could put together a stew and ask the detectives to stay." Vera tilted her head as if imagining the ingredients.

Harriet could imagine them too well. The thick chunks of red meat, hacked off the bone. Blood soup. She gagged.

Vera frowned at her. "Goodness, girl. Get ahold of yourself."

"Sorry."

"You don’t want to be making faces like that when the police arrive, do you?"

"No."

"Neil handled it just fine. He’s a good boy."

"He should be back soon." Harriet hugged herself and forced the images away. "It isn’t far to the lake."


"Don’t patronize me," Vera snapped. "This is my home.  I know where the lake is."

"Okay."

The old woman reached for the last biscuit on the bone china plate. A Blue Italian pattern showed peaceful peasants herding their cows into a river. The biscuit scraped over the dish and was taken between Vera’s fingernails. She nibbled and brown crumbs fell from her sagging lip.


"We can ask them to stay for dinner and it will put them off their guard."

"Yes." Harriet let herself be mesmerized by Vera’s false teeth as they chewed. She didn’t want to think about the police, or the house or the family, or what would come next, tomorrow. When Neil was back and Vera was sleeping she could beg him to tell her what they should do. For now she just had to hang on. She listened to the biscuit crunching and tried not think about crushed bones and a cry cut short.

Vera caught her staring and glared.

"I hope you aren’t making plans."

"No, of course not."

"We’ve no need of your plans. Neil handled it just fine."

"Yes."

"Anyway," the old woman continued. "It’s not like it’s the first time."

They both froze as footsteps started in the great hall outside the conservatory. Their eyes went to the door. It was opened, and Neil stood framed, the cut-glass chandelier in the hall shining out from behind his head.

"It’s done." His voice dragged with weariness.

The overalls he’d been wearing were gone, perhaps sunk into the lake with the rest. They’d been stained, anyway. But he’d kept the boots. Harriet saw chunks of mud stuck to the laces. She glanced up to his big hands and saw dirt beneath his fingernails. Just dirt? He caught her looking and put his hands behind his back like a naughty child.

Vera grinned. Her mouth stretched out, crumbs trapped at its corners. "Good boy."

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Click here for my previous Friday Flash.

This story came about from an exercise called "An Iceberg," from The 3a.m. Epiphany and suggested by Angela Dorsey.  The idea was to write a scene where much of it is below the surface, untold.

A Quiet love of books

The world is noisy. The radio wakes me up, I stand on a bus with a hundred others packed together, I stand on a train with a thousand. Headphones and telephones. Even when the crowds are quiet the machines are loud. The traffic is loud. Engines huff and tracks scream. Storefronts blare advertising. Products insist themselves between my television programs. Between songs. They shout from billboards. Twenty minutes of obnoxious building-sized commercials, market-driven cacophony, before every movie. Blaring at my trapped eyes. On a platform yesterday: a moving billboard, a car driving behind the Central Line, showing off.

I like the quiet.

A common question for writers is what music they listen to while writing.  For me it's a useless question. Music? While writing? Give me two inches of solid oak, and earplugs between me and anything else. A conversation in the next room can be distracting, let alone a song.

A book is the antithesis of all these things. Books don't shout at me. However rude their covers, when opened (or switched on) they are smooth, pale pages with subtle tracks of language. The gentle swish of a turning page, or no sound at all as I press a small button. My mind trickles into the story, into the world created years ago by the author, nudged to life now by my attention. Even a yell on the page is tempered to the volume of my thoughts. They dissolve the chaos around me. I am concentrated into the page.

Ahhh.

I used to believe in the transcendence of storytelling from one medium to the next. Discussing a favourite television show, or film, in the same breath as my favourite book. And the story, yes, maybe something in the story can survive the noise and chaos. But the mediums have diverged. In the television and movie worlds it's all advertising. It's all about how much can be force-fed through your eyes. You pay your money for the film, you pay for cable, you buy the DVD, and you still spend half your time with ads. The brainwash of the visual.

Yesterday news broke that Odeon, and perhaps other theatres, will boycott Alice in Wonderland because Disney isn't giving them enough weeks before the DVD.  Odeon says the reduced time will hurt small theatres.  Disney want it to go to DVD sooner so they can "beat piracy." Everyone needs to be paid.

Writers want to be paid too, of course, but no one grabs you by the throat and beams popcorn ads into your eyes before you're allowed to crack the cover.

Unsurprisingly, I could not have less interest in vooks if they came with a free smack to the head.

Give me the quiet any day.

Vancouver Libraries and Olympic Censorship

If public libraries around the world got rid of all their newfangled technology and stopped holding author readings and generally shifted towards the worst that libraries can be-- that is: dull, lifeless building-sized boxes full of old books nobody reads-- I'd still love them.  I'd have to love them because they'd still be bastions of free-speech and learning in a sometimes limiting and profit-centric world.  Because librarians (real librarians, by my own definition) can't abide censorship.

The Olympic Games are taking place in Vancouver this month.  Last month it was reported that,

"Librarians in Vancouver are being warned to solicit only official Olympic sponsors for any Games-themed events they organize next month, and to cover up the names of any competitors - even slapping tape on offending logos on audiovisual equipment."

And naturally those librarians reacted as librarians do: they made sure this warning was reported to everyone and that their policy ("There's something in my library to offend everybody.  And that's our job. Our job as library staff is to not ever censor any information") was also reported.

Be still my heart. Whatever your own or the corporations' opinions about how far Olympic sponsorship should go towards wiping out your competitors from the city, or the public library, the statement of fact and opinion remains.  We will not be blinded by ignorance or silence.  We will operate with as much information as possible, and being so illuminated, we will stumble less often.  And I love it.

That is all.

Opportunity sends an email

Some time ago I reviewed the The Red Book, the first anthology in the Chinese Whisperings series. I'm now very pleased to announce that I've been asked to contribute to the next book in the series! My short story will be part of another intertwined collection. I won't give away too much about the premise but it has me very excited about participating.

This will be my first collaborative project. I'm intimidated by the idea of involving other people in what has previously been my exclusive creative headspace. And I'm also thrilled to have the chance, and stupidly excited to be pushed outside of my comfort zone and given this challenge. It's not so much that I don't play well with others as I'm not sure what the result will be. All these people with their fabulous creative brains. What will we create?

One of the contradictions in the writing life is that writers are generally introverted people practicing a solitary skill, and yet the only way to get your work read is to get it out there and talk about it. In other words: to involve other people. The joke is that writers have to be salespeople, and sales is probably the furthest career choice from any author's ideal. As jokes go, it isn't very funny.

The internet offers a (relatively) new method of connecting with other people and unlike most other mediums it's perfect for writers.  Here our words-- the part of us that we value most anyway, that we most want to be seen-- represent us entirely.  I have been trying to involve myself in the network of writers (and readers) online for a while via this blog, twitter, and wherever else I can.  And I would not have been offered this opportunity with Chinese Whisperings if I hadn't. That's a nice nudge of a reminder that my efforts have been worthwhile.

So, since you're reading this: Thank you for being a part of it all. Whether we've interacted much or little I'm happy that you took a chance on my words and I hope you'll continue. The media regularly predicts the death of the publishing industry, published authors lament the massacre of the way they used to publish, and ebooks are going to destroy the universe, maybe using flamethrowers or a plague of locusts, but forget it. Let's just be satisfied a little while here with what we've accomplished and what we've yet to do. I think we're on the right track.

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Photo: Writing instruments by KaCey97007 on flickr

Friday Flash: "Familiar"

"Familiar"
by Jen Brubacher
He caught the smell of her hair: shampoo, the almost-scent between flowers and soap.  It drifted from her as she flicked a lock over her shoulder, and he caught her eye— or thought he did— but then she'd turned away and was walking with the rest of the lunchtime pedestrians, caught in the sea of city impatience.

He started walking after her.  Had to.  What had it been, five years?  Six?  The shampoo smell had brought him back to that first meeting at University orientation.  Sitting with hundreds of other students full of desperate dreams, too nervous to be themselves.  She'd laughed.  He could hear it now, again.  He'd said something witty or stupid and she'd laughed, but she'd blushed, too: charmed.

He raced after her down the busy street and each time he thought he'd caught up another body would get in the way.  Like rushing to class, late and clutching textbooks and a chocolate bar (breakfast of champions.)  She'd saved him a seat, unexpectedly. Near the window.  The sun came in and lit her hair to gold. Again that blush, and through the haze of student distraction and so many new faces he’d become aware of something magical that belonged to only the two of them.

If she stopped at the crosswalk he could catch up.  He eyed the light: it said stop, stop, stop, go.  Oh, no.  She was off and halfway across the road before he'd reached the curb.  One hand trailed behind her as she turned into the flow of other commuters.  He saw the glint of a ring he'd given her on their first anniversary.  The stone was too small and the gold too thin, but she'd loved it.  Well, she'd said she loved it.  It got stuck on her finger with its tight metal teeth and she was okay with that.

Now she had traded the heavy sweatshirts of University life for a classic long coat, drawn through with a flashy orange thread that kept her apart from the clones of city life.  Her scarf clashed: Ferrari red.  He adored her for that.  Where had it gone wrong?  It had been a slide into rot, the preciousness of themselves sacrificed time and again for other priorities.  They were magic together, sure. But they were young magicians. Lots of time to practice their art. And maybe other magicks to discover. They'd started University alone and ended it similarly.  At the time he’d felt relieved. But the regret had followed quickly.

Here was another chance!  She was buying a hot coffee from a vendor, thank God for that.  He'd reach her.  A dozen steps away she was looking down into a wallet that was printed with an elephant (He laughed: that was very “her.”)  Six steps away she was handing change to the vendor with nails painted blue.  A step away and he was overjoyed he'd chosen this route to the shops.  It was destiny.  Another chance meeting in a very large world.  How long had it been: six years?  Seven.  He smiled and touched her arm.

"Oh!"

"Yes?"

"Oh, I'm sorry.  I thought you were someone else."

"No problem."

"...Sorry.  Bye."

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Click here for my previous Friday Flash.

Photo: Busy Oxford Street on Flickr by tim166

National Storytelling Week, & The Prolific Blogger Award

It's the 10th annual National Storytelling Week! (The nation is Britain, but adopt it for whenever you are, why not?)  To celebrate I'd like to share one of my favourite parts of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, from the chapter "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol" in The Two Towers.

"I don't like anything here at all," said Frodo, "step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid."

"Yes, that's so," said Sam. "And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually-- their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on-- and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same-- like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?"

I love that bit because it says a lot about stories and writing, as well as real life.  And I love it because Samwise says it-- Samwise, who is one of the more innocent characters, who will never have considered any of this before he was landed in his own tale.  What sort of a tale do you suppose you've fallen into?

More about storytelling:
Re-telling our stories
99 ways to tell a story
"The Human heart in conflict with itself" (William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech)

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And I was going to leave it there, but hey, I have been nominated for The Prolific Blogger Award by the lovely (and prolific) Ev Bishop!

 

This is an award for people who "read voraciously, blog tirelessly and have made the blogging community such a vibrant place," to recognize their enthusiasm and achievement.  I'm honoured!  And I'm very happy to pass on the award to some of my favourite bloggers who keep me coming back-- not to kill time, but to learn, discuss, and celebrate the writing life.

So the awards go to:

Ev Bishop at Write Here, Write Now.  She nominated me, but she deserves it right back.  She's inspiring, level-headed, and positive about writing and she knows what she's talking about.  Her passion and experience come across in her posts.

Clare M. Caterer at The Letterpress, who takes a subject at the very heart of writing well-- grammar!-- and makes it fun and interesting, as well as useful.

Jodi Cleghorn at Writing in Black and White.  In the last year or so she's demonstrated what someone can achieve when they set their mind to their goals and dreams and refuse to give up.

Stephen Parolini at noveldoctor, with 20 years editorial experience and a way of blogging useful and well-researched info and opinions... and he's funny.

K.M. Weiland at Wordplay.  She been posting her experiences and the publication of her first two books with kindness and enthusiasm, and she adds a lot of soul to the blogging community.

Livia Blackburne, who writes "a brain scientist's take on creative writing."  Enough said.  It's fascinating.

Tony Noland at Landless, whose honest and humorous views of the writing life and terrific flash fiction make me forget I'm supposed to be off doing my own writing.

Each offers something that adds great value to the blogging community and I recommend you take a look.  The guidelines for winners of the Prolific Blogger Award are here, but if I've nominated you and you don't wish to play along, just take this as a demonstration of my appreciation for what you do.