I met her early one grey London morning, the drizzle blanketing the morning commuters as we headed for the warm, underground warren of the Tube.

I was late, threading my way through the throng of umbrellas and latte wielding office types, two months in and still unsure of myself. Dublin just a memory now, a collection of places strung together by long associations. London Irish, that’s what I am now, here to build a life not just the Sasnach’s roads.

Those days were gone, but being alone in a city never changed, Dublin nor London, an empty bed and an empty heart, prick the soul just as much. My prick was half the problem, insistent little bugger.

The women in work didn’t want to know me. Some Paddy straight off the Ryanair flight with no prospects, no cash, living above a takeaway in Camden town, no thanks. Where’s those Irish lads off the rugby team. Big, glowing hair, big teeth and strong calves, a few quid in the back pocket too never hurt. See you when you make some money Paddy.

You should meet the young wans from Dublin 4 Missus, you’d get on grand. Some things never change.

Candy was different. I met her on the Tube that day between Kings Cross and Piccadilly. She tried to nick my wallet. It was somewhere near Picadilly when the train jerked to a halt and the crush of of bodies heaved around me. I felt a hand brush against my chest, a brief flowery scent of newly washed hair, a red butterfly hairclip and a momentary frisson from my neglected loins before the doors clanked open and I realised my wallet was gone.

‘Oi,’ I shouted after the disappearing blonde head. ‘Oi,’ I said again, ‘stop, somebody stop her, she’s got my wallet!’

There was a momentary pause from the crowd as confusion reigned before I shoved my way past onto the platform and spied the red hairclip heading towards the exit.

‘OI, STOP THAT BITCH. SHE’S GOT MY FUCKING WALLET!’ I found my anger and my voice. The crowd around me fell back at the force of my anger and I sprinted after the disappearing thief.

Rounding the curve of the white tiled corridor at a dead run, I came upon the would be thief in the painful looking armlock of one of London Underground’s Transport Police.

‘Stop thief!’ I shouted, somewhat unnecessarily under the circumstances, but the adrenaline had kicked in and I was shaking with rage.

‘Where’s my wallet, where’s my fucking wallet,’ I said, wildly gesticulating at the girl, held fast in the stern grip of the Policewoman.

‘Fuck off you nonce,’ said the girl, without a trace of fear.

‘Keep it quiet young lady,’ said the Policewoman, as she turned to face me. ‘Now sir, if I can ask you to calm down and explain to me why you where pursuing this young lady across the concourse.’

‘She stole my wallet,’ I said, outrage flowing across my burning face, ‘she picked my pocket on the train, just before the station. I need my wallet back.’

‘Yes sir, of course, if you wouldn’t mind stepping over here sir for a moment and I will speak to the young lady.’

‘No, I don’t mind, but she has my wallet and I need it back,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable and rational. Paradoxically embarassed now by my public outburst in the face of authority.

‘What the young lady does or does not have is still to be ascertained. Please, if you wouldn’t mind stepping to one side sir and we will try to clear this up as soon as possible.’

‘What! There’s nothing to clear up, she stole my wallet, it’s as simple as that,’ I said stepping forward.

I realise now that was a mistake.

‘Step back, NOW SIR!’ said the policewoman, placing a restraining hand on my chest and firmly pushing me away. He other hand touching an unspecified pouch on her belt.

Shocked, I stepped back, hovering by the curved wall of the tube corridor as the policewoman spoke rapidly into her radio and took the young woman aside. Commuters flowed past us in an unending stream. I bore the brunt of their furtive glances as they passed. I began to feel uneasy, what did these people think I had done? It was her who had stolen from me, not the other way round.

I looked over at the two women conversing in low tones by the ticket machines and for the first time I actually looked at my would be pickpocket.

She was young, eighteen, nineteen maybe. Dressed as was the fashion in clothes barely covering her skinny frame. ‘Where was her jacket’, the thought burrowed up through the conflicting emotions crowding out my reasoning faculties, it’s raining outside, and cold. I looked harder, the clothes were short, but cheap and unwashed, the hair styled, after a fashion, but dark circles, not the work of a makeup brush hung beneath her haunted eyes.

The two other policemen arrived without warning, appearing silently out of the steady stream of commuters and positioning themselves between myself, the policewoman and her charge. I smiled weakly at them, they smiled politely back, but said nothing.

Finally the policewoman left her charge and stepped over to me. I smiled at her too, hoping to ease the tension in the air. The policewoman did not smile, she merely regarded me without comment and opened her notebook.

‘Sir, I must warn you the young lady has made some serious allegations regarding your conduct.’

‘What!” I shouted, fear and anger rising up inside me. ‘I was just on the train, going to work. This person picked my pocket, she stole my wallet and I ran after her. You caught her running away from me. That’s the sole interaction I have had with this person. I have never met her before in my life.’

‘That’s not how she puts it.’

———————————–

This abruptly truncated piece of Flicktion is brought to you using this photograph from Flickr user Anavrin. Sometimes the days are too short to fit in all your plans.

The caller leaned on the doorbell again, playing a staccato pattern with the single drilling bell. Cursing them I pulled on my discarded clothes, the least repugnant I could lay hand to and stalked downstairs. The old house was cold and draughty, unseen currents pulled at my bare legs and feet as I descended, passing the silent doorways of my neighbours.

‘Package for Number 19,’ said the delivery man, thrusting a large cardboard box into my hands.

‘No, I’m 16,’ I said, with a sigh, pointing at the mass of mislabelled doorbells to my left, ‘See, I’m sixteen, you want nineteen, that’s this one here,’ I said, indicating a doorbell labelled Flat 09.

The deliveryman regarded me, wearily unconvinced.

‘This happens all the time, I don’t know how many times I’ve asked the landlord to sort it out,’ I threw up my hands in a gesture of helplessness.

‘Nah, ain’t got time mate, I’d be here all day. Be a good neighbour and stick it under the door for them,’ he said shoving a clipboard at me, ‘just sign here.’

I sighed and gave up, allowing myself to become steward of someone else’s property, now matter how brief, might go some way towards taking my mind of my worries. A good deed, a good neighbour. That’s what they’ll say about me. ‘He was a good neighbour, that bloke in Number 16, he fed my cat once.’ ‘Oh yes, Number 16, quiet man, very mannerly. He collected the post for me that one time.’

I amused myself with these brief plaudits from my unknown neighbours as I mounted the stairs towards the top of the house. Number 19 occupied the top floor of the crumbling Georgian house I currently called home. My own flat, 16, lay wedged between two of the bigger apartments 15 and 18. Curiously, as far as I could ascertain from casual observance, there was no Flat 17. The doorbell existed, it lay at a right angle to my own, but the physical manifestation of Flat 17, was not. I found this neither surprising nor particularly unnerving, having met the landlord only briefly, the impression he made was of a man slowly passing through the latter stages of senile dementia. I gathered, from my brief interview before becoming a tenant, that the house once belonged to his mother and had been his childhood home. Once the mother was safely ensconced in a home for the bewildered or a lonely grave, I assumed junior, along with some very cheap builders, had divided the house into bijou apartments.

Hence the mass of doorbells clinging to the doorframe like barnacles and the mystery of missing Flat No.17. I sighed and trudged upwards into the the draughty upper floors in search of No.19 and my good deed for the day.

No.19 was the attic, or what appeared to be the entrance to what could only be an attic space. The door was tiny, barely five feet high. I searched up and down the long narrow hallway for another door, another possible entrance, but there was none.

‘This can’t be right,’ I thought, ‘the package has been mislabelled too.’

I knocked tentatively on the door, silence. I knocked again, a little harder, still silence or perhaps a noise somewhere within. I banged on the door and shouted, ‘hallooo, halloo, anyone in there? I’ve got a parcel for you! Hallooo.’

Silence.

Cursing my good Samaritan instincts I stumped off down the hall. Clearly Flat 19 was unoccupied, or not even a flat at all. In all probability I had spent the last ten minutes banging on the door of a dusty old attic filled with mouldering furniture and moth eaten rugs.

I stopped, perhaps there’s no one in. I’ll leave the package by the door and they can collect it later. It’ll be safe enough, who but the occupier would happen along. I laid it by the door and started back down the hallway again.

I stopped. No, I should leave a note instead. The package might be mislabelled too, like the colony of untrustworthy doorbells below. I’ll take the package in for safekeeping and leave a note. Pleased with myself, I thrust the package under one arm and returned to No.16.

Laying the package carefully on the table, I went in search of a pen and paper with which to compose my neighbourly note. Several minutes later I marshalled my resources; a sheet of wastepaper, torn from an old yellow pages and a rather forlorn looking biro, it’s top, a chewed plastic stump.

‘Right. Let’s get to it.’

My pen paused over the yellow paper, I had no idea who the note was addressed to. Returning to the package for a clue, I found, to my distress, the label had been torn away. Either through accident or design the universe had left me in possession of a package, addressed to an unknown person, occupying a possibly non-existent flat.

‘Dear Sir or Madam,’ I began, ‘I have your package.’ No, that wouldn’t do. It sounded too formal and the second sentence practically screamed ransom note. It needed a more whimsical style, something light and neighbourly, lacking in sinister undertones.

‘Dear Neighbour,’ I began. No, too formal. ‘Hi Neighbour!’ Christ, now I sound like an American. No, dispense with all attempts at friendliness, stick to the facts.

‘Package arrived. Delivered to No.16. Please call to collect.’

I reviewed my handiwork. Not bad. A tad functional perhaps, but it would suffice. Another search turned up a fuzzy ball of blue tac and a roll of yellowed sellotape, down to it’s last few inches. Armed with these adhesive tools and my masterpiece I mounted the stairs to No.19 again and affixed my notice to the tiny door. I stood back and admired my creation.

‘Perfect,’ I thought. My eye fell on the advertisements crowding the yellow scrap paper torn from the phone book. The page had been selected for it’s expanse of unused space in the upper right hand corner where my birowork had been placed in a neat, spidery script.

The advertisements to the left read:

‘Naughty Boys, Call Ms.Teek, Discretion Assured.’

‘DIAL NOW, FOR INSTANT RELIEF!’

I ripped the page from the door and stuffed it into the pocket of my dressing gown. The hell with the note, I would simply try again later. Sweating with relief I turned away when I perceived a sound coming from beyond the small door. A kind of rustling sound, perhaps of cloth or material.

‘Ah, a late riser like myself,’ I thought. Probably opening the curtains. What a relief. I knocked confidently on the door again. The sounds within ceased abruptly.

I knocked again, a little louder. ‘Hello, anyone there?’ I said, ‘it’s your neighbour from No.16. I have your package.’

There was a definite rustling sound. Anger and impatience swelled up in me. ‘Look here,’ I shouted at the door, ‘Some idiot of a deliveryman rang the wrong doorbell and now I have your package. If you want it, I’m in No.16. NUMBER SIXTEEN OK!’ I shouted the last bit through the keyhole.

Silence from within.

I stumped back to my flat in a huff.

Opening the window of my living room I could just make out the window of Flat No.19, several floors above. A long black, cast iron drainpipe ran up the length of the building. I toyed with the idea of shinning up and hurling the package through the window, but came to my senses when I perceived it was a haven for spiders and vermin.

No, I would be the magnanimous ‘Good Neighbour’. I would await the timid knock of No.19′s occupant upon my door. I would arise and greet them as if nothing untoward had occurred.

‘Ah, Mr. or Mrs. No.19,’ I would say, ‘so good of you to drop by, I have your package right here. No, it was no trouble at all. Please, don’t even mention it. What’s that? Why yes I’d be delighted to join you for a drink this evening. Mr. No.19 won’t be around by any chance, will he? Oh, there is no Mr. No.19, I see. In that case I’d be doubly delighted, enchante mademoiselle, ’til tonight then.’

This got me through ten minutes, then I returned, package in hand.

‘Hello. HELLO!’ I bellowed, hammering on the door. Silence from within. Right, that tears it. I grabbed the handle and shoved. To my utter shock and surprise the door burst open causing me to fall headlong into a small flat where a terrified cat shot up off the sofa into my face, clawing frantically at my eyes. Whereupon clutching at the furry ball of rage attached to my face, I promptly screamed, dropped the precious package and tripped over the sofa, knocking myself senseless on the coffee table.

The occupant of Flat No.19, an elderly gent, retired from the police service, knew at once what had occurred, burglars. It was the only answer that could be remotely acceptable upon finding your next door neighbour, semi-naked and unconscious, face down in a bowl of pot-pourri, having been face molested by your cat. I was happy to oblige the old man and gave a full report to the young policeman who took my statement, paying special attention to the odd sounds and ‘bumping about’ I had heard from my flat below.

‘I was just being neighbourly officer,’ I said, grinning wildly. ‘Trying to be a good neighbour and look out for Mr. No.19.’

‘Mr. who, sir?’ said the officer, in that stern way police officers are trained to have.

‘Mr. who, no, ah Mr. upstairs, I mean, Mr. Johns upstairs.’

‘Mr. Jones, from Flat 19.’

‘Yes, that’s right, sorry, this bump on the head you know. Knocked things about up there,’ I said, tapping my bandaged head furiously. Hopefully he would think I was a mental and leave it a that.

Clearly my mental act worked and after taking my statement down in his notebook and issuing me with a stern warning regarding calling the proper authorities should anything similar happen in the future, he left me to my thoughts.

I fell into the couch with a massive sigh, vowing not to rise for a week, but not before taking a lump hammer to my doorbell.

There was a sharp rap at the door.

‘Coming,’ I said springing up from the couch and racing to the door.

‘Officer, what a surprise. Back already, any new suspects, hmm?’ I stifled a giggle and promised myself another few of the special pills the doctor had given me for my injured headbones.

‘No sir,’ the young officer said stiffly, ‘I spotted this by the door sir and thought you would want to take it inside, what with the recent criminal activity.’ He handed me the package with a note attached.

‘Dear neighbour,’ it read, ‘thank you for your brave actions this past Monday morning. If more people comported themselves in this manner the world would be a safer and nicer place to be. Here is your package, left behind during the recent fracas. I hope this note finds you in good health and recovering from your injuries. Your neighbour, Mr. Jones.’

I had a lump in my throat. That man could write a note. I was a mere amateur.

‘Thank you officer,’ I said grabbing the package from him and slamming the door. The sooner I burned this thing the better.

But I could not. It sat there on the kitchen table, mute witness to my crimes. ‘All you have to do is take a midnight stroll down by the canal and drop the bugger in,’ a little voice said to me.

There was no way I could do that, not after Mr. No.19′s lovely note. No, I would simply readdress it to him, now I knew he existed and send it through the post again.

This, of course, meant I would have to open the package to see what it contained. This act of criminal enterprise horrified me less than I had expected, now the package was wholly in my possession, having been returned to me by the very gentleman I had attempted to deliver it to. Also in my current, drug addled state coupled with severe concussion, who could blame me if I accidently opened someone else’s post.

‘Alright, I’ll do it,’ I screamed and tore open the package to reveal a sheaf of papers and a note, from her.

‘Dear Steadman,’ it read, ‘Please find enclosed our final divorce papers. I hope this note finds you well. I was unable to ascertain nor discover your exact flat number, your mother thought it might be Flat No.19. I’m sure this package will find you nonetheless. One can always rely on one’s neighbours to look after your post for you. I will send a courier around to collect them on Friday. Yours sincerely, Kate.’

‘God, there’s a woman who could write a lovely note,’ I thought, before downing the rest of the headpills.

———————–

This weeks Flickr Fiction is brought to you from sunny France, using this picture from Flickr user Ed Ed.

He left in the Summer of my ninth year. The Summer of the big wind, when all the houses on Bergen street lost their roofs. Stripped of their slate clad coverings and sturdy, red brick chimneys they resembled nothing more than a row of glum, naked pated gentlemen, their finery forfeited to the elements. Down below, amongst the denizens, gardens were strewn with smashed slates and broken brick. Mrs. Endercrine’s dog, Millie, was crushed by a falling chimney pot and Jamie Fenster’s ten speed bike mangled beyond repair.

But there were other casualties far more pressing to my nine year old eyes. At the bottom of our garden, amidst the tangle of blackberry briars and scutch grass stood the Grey General. Ancient in years beyond counting, his huge arms and mighty roots girt the green world of my childhood. Our silent sentinel my father called him. Otsï called him the Grey General. ‘Morning General,’ he would say, leaning his broad blue furred shoulders against the oak’s wide trunk. ‘I have an itch today, right there. Can you reach it? Oh yes, that’s it, right there, aahh,’ and he would scratch himself back and forth letting out little sighs of satisfaction.

The night of the big wind the storm finally retired the Grey General from his time honoured post. With a mighty crack his oak heart broke and spilled his life into the eye of the storm. Down he came, a wooden avalanche, sending his long wide body crashing through the glasshouse and the fish pond and smashing flat the long, low roofed den where Otsï lived.

In the morning, when the wind had died to a howl and the air was filled with torn leaves and brickdust, I ran, bare kneed, into the wreckage of the garden. Mother followed, clucking with concern, calling out to me, ‘mind for falling slates, it’s not safe.’ I ran on, deaf to her cries, my eyes drinking in the chaos and destruction of the General’s passing, my heart crying in anguish at each new discovery. The swings were gone, shouldered aside by the storm, they lay in a heap of tangled metal. Worse was the glasshouse, torn asunder by the General’s broad trunk, the windows smashed and shattered, driven into the earth like sharp glass tears, the delicate plants within crushed. As I rounded the muddy pond, dark with torn roots, fish flapping in the newly made shallows, I saw my father.

‘What is it Papa?’ I said, as he appeared from beneath the base of the General’s gnarled roots, double headed axe gripped in his strong hands, his blonde hair plastered to this head in sweaty strips.

‘My little one, I am sorry, our General has taken a great toll upon of our sanctuary. None have been spared.’

And I saw he was right, my little den of sticks and secrets where Otsï slept and played was smashed all to flinders. Not a scrap remained. I saw and my eyes filled with tears, my chest tight with wracking sobs.

My father scooped me up in his strong arms and whispered in my ear, ‘Now, now, little one do not cry. We can build new forts and new treehouses. From the bones of the Grey General himself I will raise you a mighty wooden house, I promise.’

‘But Otsï, lived in my house,’ I cried through sobs, inconsolable.

‘Otsï? He will be fine little one, do not worry. When your new house is built he will return to play. You’ll see.’

But Otsï did not return, not later that day after the big wind emptied itself over the town, nor the next day, nor the next. Not after my father took a chainsaw with cruel, hungry metal teeth that devoured the corpse of the grey general and fashioned me a great wooden fort to play in. Nor after I waited there one night until the moon was high in the sky and I shivered beneath it in thin cotton pyjamas waiting for Otsï to come shambling out of the night like he always did, hallooooing to the moon and the stars.

And as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months I stopped waiting for Otsï to return and in time as all children must, I left him behind with my wooden fort, buried beneath the bones of the Grey General.

—

My father died in the Summer, tending to his garden. Across the great stump of the General where he had raised the wooden fort and later a small Summer house they found him in his favourite chair, a clay pot in his hand, his fingers stained brown with rich dark earth, he was smiling.

In the city there is not so much time for gardening and not so much time for thinking. In the haze of grief and ritual that follows death I mumbled prayers and thank yous and all the things a son must do. And when it was done and the house was finally empty, I sat in the garden and thought. I thought about the endless childhood days of Summer, the sun hot against our faces as we raced through green woods and hid in the cool branches of trees, Copper and beech and ash, and the shadow of the Grey General over all. I thought of my father as he moved about the garden, the vigor of youth still on limbs, tending to his plants and stirring mounds of compost. Planting green shoots in his red clay pots, pruning the unruly thickets of hedgerow and cursing gently at the tenacity of persistent weeds. And yes, I thought of Otsï, my long lost childhood friend, blue bear, protector and companion.

I returned at last to the city and it’s all consuming needs.

—

The meeting was long and tedious. An hour had gone by, lost to endless flowcharts and spiked graphs. I sat with my workmates, bulled into submission by waves of statistics, our presenter unveiling each new slide with an absurd pride. My eyes wandered about the room, but found only the blank eyed stares of my companions, walled in their own apathy and there at the window was Otsï.

He was bigger now, much bigger, towering twenty feet high, but there was no doubt, it was Otsï. Those big, black, mournful eyes, the long inquisitive snout, and teeth that smiled. His blue furred head filled the window frame, blocking out the sunlight. Bringing up a large padded paw ending in a long curving claw, he tapped gently on the glass. ‘Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, rising from my seat, ‘I have to leave, duty calls.’

‘Duty Peter?’ said Magda, irked at this interruption.

‘Yes duty, a…call of nature,’ I smiled. No one else could see Otsï, only me. Nevertheless one could not simply ignore a twenty foot blue bear, even if you were the only one who could see him.

When I emerged from the lobby, Otsï was waiting in the parking lot, scratching his broad blue back against a lamp post.

‘It’s not the same,’ he lamented.

‘Hello Otsï,’ I said, shading my hands in the glare of the late Summer sun to gaze up into those dark eyes.

‘Hello Peter,’ he replied.

‘You came back,’ I said, ‘I was not expecting that.’

‘You called me back.’

‘Did I?’ I said. ‘I don’t remember?’

‘Yes, you called me back and now I am here,’ he said, with an air of finality, sitting back on his great haunches and considering the slow moving clouds scudding across the pale blue sky.

‘Papa is dead,’ I said, ‘he died in the garden.’

‘I know,’ said Otsï.

‘Why have you come back?’

‘I told you, you called me back. Why did you call me Peter?’

‘You never came back before, not after the night of the Big Wind. Not even when I stood sentry all night beneath the cold sky and almost caught pneumonia.’

Otsï regarded me with those dark black eyes.

‘I am here now.’

‘You’re bigger now,’ I said.

‘So are you.’

It was a fair point.

‘So what do we do now?’ I said.

Otsï grinned with his smiling teeth.

‘Now? Now we have fun. I have a hankering on me to see the curling tops of the white waves at Lykammer and take a long roll in the yellow sand dunes. I like the way the sand tickles my feet and it’s been too long since I saw the green sea and greeted her with my smile. Hop up on my broad blue back Peter and we’ll fly.’

I hesitated a moment and looked back towards the grey, glass shod building behind us, imagining the dull, stuffy room filled with my suffering compatriots and Magda’s never ending graphs.

‘Well, just this once then,’ I said, grasping a handful of Otsï’s soft blue fur and hauling myself up onto his broad back.

‘It’s good to have you back Otsï,’ I said, scratching him behind his great furry ears the way he always liked.

Otsï twisted his head around and gave me a long grin.

‘It’s good to be back Peter,’ said Otsï and then we flew.

——————–

This weeks Ficktion is a strange beast, that said I’m quite happy with this piece. It feels finished in the sense it conveys the tone I wanted. I have found, more often than not, recently that my reach exceeds my grasp in the stories I wish to tell, but slowly, slowly, gradations appear in the work. Those are the nights when it’s good to be alive.

This weeks photo is brought to you by Flickr user Altamons. More Ficktion can be found over on our website.

I sat with the regulars, at the bar, slumped on flimsy stools that shifted uneasily beneath you as if weighing your worth. The regulars sat in silence, sucking on whiskey and damp fags, nursing gins and flat beer. Peering across that well worn barrier into the shadowy recesses of the barman’s dominion, drinking up the delights that rested there on dusty shelves, counting off the days of their lives, drop by drop.

He arrived in the final hours of the long night, shaking rain drops from lank brown hair like a wet dog. I had not seen him in the Severed Arms before, but I recognised him from the market down on Brenton street. A short, wiry guy with restless eyes and a pointed, angular face. His clothes always travel stained and arms laden down with grimy plastic carrier bags bulging under the weight of broken electronics, snakes of insulated wiring poking through the thin plastic sheaths, like brightly coloured hernias. Tonight he was no different, clutching a black plastic bin liner to his chest he took the stool next to mine.

‘Evening,’ I said.

‘Evening,’ he replied.

We sat in silence, drinking awhile before he spoke again.

‘Have you ever needed to tell someone something, but didn’t know where to begin?’ His eyes were intense, a grey, olive colour, with pupils like tiny pinpricks in a green sea.

‘I don’t know. I imagine most of us have at some point.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there you go then.’

‘I haven’t. Until now.’

He shifted in his seat to face me and I found myself staring uncomfortably into those eyes again.

‘So who do you have to tell this difficult truth to?’ I said.

‘You.’

A finger of fear crawled up my legs and slid into my guts. ‘Me?’ I said, affecting bravado, but my voice quavered.

‘Yes, you,’ he said, pinioning me with those eyes.

‘I don’t know you sir, what could it be that is so hard to tell me, eh? Come on then, spit it out.’ I forced a smile to match my brave words, that rang hollow to my ears.

‘I…I cannot,’ he replied and a look of misery spread across his sharp features. ‘There are dangers.’

‘Come now, you don’t know me from Adam. Did one of the regulars put you up to this?’ I wished he would deliver his message and leave me in peace, or end this tiresome mischief.

He squinted down the length of the oak bar and shook his head.

‘No, not tonight, not yet,’ he said and sliding from his rickety stool he fled into the darkness and the squalling rain.

It was only later, as the barman called last orders and men slid unsteadily from their tottering perches to vanish into the thin night, that I noticed the black plastic bin liner propped by my feet.

——————-

This weeks Ficktion is not inspired by a picture, but by the theme of censorship which Flickr was much preoccupied with recently. There was much more of this planned, but this is all you get. More Ficktion can be found over at our new home.

‘My leg? Nothing, just a mole.’

‘It looks like letters, did you get a tattoo?’

‘What! Christ no.’

I stumbled into the bathroom to take a look. Fuck, she was right. There it was staring at me in the mirror ‘Fi’ it said. What the hell did it mean? No wait ‘If’, if what?

‘You have to leave.’

‘But I’ve only just got here.’

‘Leave, now please.’

‘You said there would be toast.’

‘There’s no toast for whores! Get out, GET OUT!’

That told her, she was gone in an instant. Cursing me for a crazy drunk. I think she stole my lighter. Bitch! The hell with her I thought and went back to the bathroom to look at it again. Christ it’s huge. What the hell is it? Maybe it’s cancer. God knows what I’ve done to myself, all those late nights spent poring over the pages of musty tomes. It’s not like I had any choice, the researches, the volumes of literature and medical journals dumped in piles about the house. They’ve warped my insides, I can feel it. I’ve developed some literate pathology, some violent dermatological reaction to the proximity of all those words.

I rang the office. They weren’t best pleased.

‘What did you say to Bethany you twisted pervert!’

“What? Oh her, nothing. Look I’m not well.’

‘I don’t bloody care if you’re shitting out your intestines you smug bastard, I want that manuscript finished’

‘You don’t understand, I have a..a…growth..something’s gone wrong inside.’

‘Shut up. Bethany says you’re fine, just drunk again, or high on paint thinners, and you can tattoo your cock with singing bluebirds for all I care. The point is she’s quit again and she’s not coming back this time you spineless little shit and I’m not hiring you another research assistant. Now I want a draft on my desk by Friday morning or I’m sending the medical journal people around for your kidneys.’

‘No, no you don’t understand, she was demanding toast and dismissed my growth. Look if I could just have one more month’

The line went dead.

Bastards! That harridan of an editor is responsible for this. She had me poisoned in my sleep, like that poor Russian sod. Radioactive isotopes slipped between the covers of my research volumes. Nubile research assistants sent with the express instruction that I should not live to see the work finished, or spend the advance. Who knew.

I returned to the mirror. ‘Does this look bigger to you?’ I said to no one, before I realized I sent her away. I took a picture with my phone and sent it to my psychiatrist to be certain. ‘if’ it said, but there was more, a dark pregnant smear lurked beneath the pasty skin. My growth had more to say, but then again, I never knew when to shut up either.

‘If,’ if what? Maybe it’s postmodern cancer. That would be just my luck, I fucking hate post modernism. I need to start drinking again. Maybe this will go away, like my ex wife. She went away, all it took was ten years drinking. I don’t know if I had another ten years drinking in me, but I had to make a start.

At eleven I looked in the mirror again. I think it’s going, thank Christ, or maybe the gin’s made me blind. By twelve I was out of gin and it was back, but now it had friends. There was an ‘r’ now and perhaps the beginnings of a ‘t’. I hope there’s no punctuation, I’m useless at punctuation.

I called my psychiatrist.

‘It’s got punctuation now!’

‘Is that you Dave?’

‘Didn’t you hear me, it’s got punctuation!’

‘Dave was that you who sent me that photo of yourself naked?’

‘Of course it was me you fool. Does it look like punctuation or not.’

‘Now Dave, we have discussed inappropriate behaviour before, haven’t we.’

‘Shut up and listen man, did you see the growth, did you see it? Is that a colon or a semi colon?’

‘Dave I’m going to hang up now and we can discuss this at our regular session on Friday morning.’

‘I can’t wait until Friday you fool, they’re coming for my kidneys on Friday!’

He hung up on me too.

Bastards! You’re all bastards! I have a growth, I may be a medical miracle. I went back to the mirror.

‘if r t,’ it said now. I was crestfallen, an illiterate cancer could not be as interesting as a literate one. I was just another freak now, like those ladies who find a picture of Jesus in a potato or the popes face in a lump of birdcrap on their windscreen.

There was no choice now, I had to call a doctor. They knew me in the clinic.

‘No, Mr. Davis. I’m sorry, but you can’t have an appointment. The restraining order bars you from approaching within a hundred yards of the clinic.’

‘What? Oh yes that, well it doesn’t matter I only want to talk to the doctor.’

‘We’re under strict instructions not to let you speak to the doctor. He’s a very busy man.’

‘Look, I have a growth, I promise you. It’s serious, I need to speak to a physician. There may be punctuation.’

‘You have a puncture wound?’

‘No, punctuation, a colon, maybe a semi colon I’m not sure. That’s why I need to speak to the doctor.’

‘Mr. Davis if you have, or believe you have, a puncture wound in your colon I suggest you call the emergency services straight away and get them to take you to hospital.’

‘No I don’t have time, I need to protect my kidneys too.’

She hung up.

I went back to the mirror. ‘Christ on bike!’ It was massive now, snaking across my chest and stomach. ‘i f e r n t’ it said, in dark inky letters. I fern t, now it’s gone surreal. First post modernism, now surrealism, it was more than I could take.

The phone rang. It was my ex wife.

‘If you bother Nigel again on his day off you spineless cocksucker I’ll gut you like a fish!’

‘Hello Marjorie.’

‘Don’t ‘Hello Marjorie’ me you creep. Nigel might be fond of his bloody doctor patient privilege but I couldn’t give a toss. The next time you bother us out of hours I will call social services and tell them you keep pictures of dogs fucking taped to the ceiling and you’ll never see Janice again.’

‘How is Janice?’

‘All the better for not seeing her washed up, wanker of a father.’

‘I have a growth. Marjorie. I think it may be a message of some kind.’

‘Well here’s my message. Stay away from Nigel and stay away from me, you shitheel.’

She hung up.

I went back to the mirror. This time I brought the Thesaurus. ‘ i f f e r n t’ it said and I smiled, uttering a great sigh of relief.

By the teatime it confirmed what I had known all along.

I was different.

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This weeks Flickr Fiction is horribly late, but it was such a lovely idea it wouldn’t leave the me alone and I finally relented and let it out.

The photo for this week is from Flickr user Miss Hagg and a very unusual project. Other Flickr Fiction by our members can be found at our new home Ficktion.