Wells Festival of Literature

Winning Short Stories 2009

First Prize

£500

Making Sense

By Emma Seaman

 

I’m trying to fill in the gaps, the space in my head where my life should be. I can remember the names of things, their labels and shapes and even what I should do with them, but not their meaning, how they relate to me. I could draw you a flower and describe its perfume, but couldn’t tell you which flowers I earned at my wedding, or even that I was ever married.
The grave-faced man with grey prematurely threading his hair keeps telling me he’s my husband. He sits by my bed and tries to jog my memories, telling me over and over again who I am, who he is, what we mean to each other.
“1 can’t believe you can complete a crossword, but you can’t remember me,” he says, incensed, watching the solutions flow easily from my pen, each word pulled effortlessly from my memory banks. I understand his frustration; how can I slot words neatly into this black-and-white grid, but not know who I am? I can smell his weariness, see the dark shadows beneath his lashes, lurking deep within his eyes, and wonder what he looked like, before all of this. The Doctor takes him to one side, holds his arm, talks to him in a calming voice carefully pitched so that I can’t quite overhear. Instead, I watch the orderly wielding his mop, smearing liquid out across the floor in ever-widening circles, filling the ward with the overpowering chemical reek of disinfectant laced with fake pine oil, vilely resinous and harsh.
My husband returns the next day, the faintest hint of a spring in his step, a hopeful light in his eyes. “I’ve brought you pictures,” he says eagerly, “the doctor suggested it, to remind you of our friends, everything we have done, and who we’ve been.”
I tell him I appreciate his patience, always trying to stay calm in the face of my incomprehension. He brushes my thanks aside.
“Don’t be conventional, it doesn’t suit you.” He frowns, and hands me a cardboard box neatly stacked with photo albums.
“It took me a while to find these,” he said, “but you were always so careful to label and sort them. You’d say: ‘How will we look back and recall our lives, if I don’t do this?’ It’s as if you knew....”
I can’t tell him that these pictures are no more meaningful to me than flicking through a stranger’s holiday snaps. These friends of mine could be anyone. They look so anodyne with perfect bland smiles on young happy faces, clustering at parties and barbecues. I think for one moment I can hear the distant thread of their chatter, catch a whiff of spicy meat and charcoal smoke, but then it drifts away again. If I couldn’t see myself in the pictures, I’d think they were adverts, but there I am, or at
least a version of me; a tanned and smiling girl, plumper in the face, with laughing eyes. The mirror-me, the now-me, is thinner, paler. The finest of lines have started to creep and crepe across my skin, and when I catch myself unawares, there’s a little headachy frown bulging between my eyes. They’ve taken the bandages off at last, but can’t remove the pain entirely; I perpetually relive the moment the steering column fractured my skull.
“There are no pictures of our daughter,” I say idly, flipping through the last album. “Is there a book missing?”
“We’ve never had a baby,” my husband says coldly, “I would think even you could remember that.”
I want to shout at him - then why do I know that biscuit-sweet milk-sated baby smell, with its soft hint of lavender powder and the sharp tang of fresh wee? When I close my eyes, I can feel her silky hair tickling my nostrils as I nuzzle the nape of her neck and fill my lungs with her precious apple custardy scent. I look at his face, drained of all colour in that bright sterile hospital light, and bite back the words.
He has spoken to the Doctor again and, really worried now, they refer me to a Therapist. She wants to find a start point, discover where the memories end and the void begins. The machine has broken down, and she thinks she can reformat my hard-drive, re-load my memory.
“It’s not that simple,” I try to explain. I can see flashes, gossamer layers of remembrance, things that may once have been and things that surely never could. I can see a pretty-faced woman I know was my mother, hear her singing in the bathroom, her form silhouetted against a turquoise summer’s evening as I sneak from my bed to watch her. I can smell the Nivea crème she used on her face; remember dipping my inquisitive childish fingers to capture that soothing, lemony-waxy fragrance for myself.
“You use a lot of vivid language connected with scent,” the Therapist notes, “It must be important to you. Music can trigger memories, so maybe smells...”
She seems reluctant to offer solutions, but clearly hopes the right scent with the right picture will be a key turning in the lock of my mind so that the memories will all come tumbling out, falling into place, filling my empty spaces.
I don’t tell her that ever since I woke up here, aching and writhing as the morphine fled my veins, I have been able to smell everything. It’s not just tangible objects, like the lilies by my bedside, wilting in the heat of the ward like brides drooping under the weight of their own summer finery. Theirs is an overpoweringly heady scent, shimmering in the air like cheap perfume, but underneath
their glad rags prowls the swampy vase-water stench of a stagnant pond. I search for the right words, the pictures to describe what my nose is telling me, spend hours with my eyes shut, classifying the myriad scents that assail me.
For now I can smell thoughts, emotions. Fear, for example. Stomach-churning dread turns the men’s sweat cold and acrid; they secrete a pungent, heavy, meaty smell like cheap tinned mince with onions, while the hot flush of anxiety sours all feminine perfumes, so a cocktail of overripe fruit and nail-polish remover exudes from their pores. Weariness has a scent too, and old age. The elderly ladies on this ward are redolent of wizened apples left too long in a fruit-bowl, of desiccation barely racing ahead of decay. Their breath whispers of autumn leaves moldering under a tree, of crumbling antacid tablets at the bottom of an old handbag, stale peppermint and chalk. These scents hang in the air, waft along corridors, intensifying and pooling in corners, a lingering beige miasma of anxiety and despair around the drinks machine where relatives huddle, clutching their bitter cups of melting plastic tea.
Each smell is vivid as a trace of colour across my mind, as if I can see the floating chiffon veils of scent that follow every movement. Doctors trail the bright white alcoholic tang of antibacterial handgel tinged with a steely hint of impatience; nurses breathe a whiff of coffee-break chocolate leavened with creamy soap. They say the blind develop their other senses, as compensation perhaps for the sly theft of their vision. I am wondering if it works the other way as well, that for this sense that has been heightened, there is something that has been irretrievably lost.
Maybe I was always like this. If so, I can’t imagine mine was ever a comfortable life. I want to turn down the volume, tone down the colours, stuff my nose with cotton wool to block out the smells that attack me from all sides. Each scent must come to me new, from this side of my memory chasm, but unlike the people in my life, it takes just seconds to find the name, the label, slot each scent into place. But I do not tell the therapist this, for I am afraid she will keep me here, and I know I’ll never recover my self in this hospital, this in-between world. The crash stalled me and I’m caught, as if holding my breath, between the void of the death that so nearly claimed me and the urge to reboot my real life.
And so my putative husband takes me back to the place he calls home. I dutifully look into every room, but no memories stir. He watches my face carefully, trying not to show his disappointment. The house’s smell is no aide-memoire; there’s just a musty air of neglect, of a lonely man living for weeks on microwave meals, overlaid by a hurried blast of powdery peach air-freshener.
I sit in front of the mirror in the bedroom and stare at myself, willing recognition to come. There’s still a dent in my skull the size of a ten pence piece, fuzzed with stubble as the hair grows through. If I comb my fringe to hide the place, it’s barely noticeable.
“You haven’t worn your hair down for years,” he says. Then he tilts his head to one side, smiles a little, “It always suited you that way.”
I can smell it now when he is sad, nostalgic for what he feels he has lost; it is tart, like osmanthus. I don’t even know what osmanthus looks like, but can picture the scent, like a delicate, barely-ripe apricot tinged with bitter smoky tears.
I become absurdly conscious of how I must smell to him, showering and bathing morning and night., needing to be clean, cleaner still; a blank canvas for the new scents in my life. I spend hours haunting the perfume counters, seeking the purest, richest, most exotic fragrances. I open all the bottles and pots, sniff hungrily at the liquids and unguents within. I discover a riot of colour, the brightest pinks and clarion oranges, smells violent in their intensity; angry roses pumped-up with steroids, peonies tormented by musk-laden bees, jonquils powdered with neon pollen. My bathroom suddenly blooms with a hundred tiny bottles, golden oils culled from spice and herb and flower.
Smell and taste and touch are now so entwined, that every sensual experience feels like an explosion, as if my body and soul are dancing. In bed at night I devour my husband, licking him, sucking him; relishing that sweet-savoury scent of good clean man. I am enjoying him anew, as no woman has ever pleasured before, want to drizzle him in butter and gobble him down whole. Afterwards he looks at me bemusedly, raises himself up on one arm, and grins.
“That’s another thing I can’t remember,” I say bitterly.
“It’s never been like that,” he says softly, “that’s something new.”
He’s smiling at me properly now. The years drop away, and for the first time since my accident, I can almost remember what brought us together, what we saw in each other. I think I’m remembering what might have been, what may yet be.
And then, one morning, a transformation. I rise early, stomach fluttering, nose a-quiver with the expectation of a new day, and make breakfast with an unexpected curve of smile. But suddenly his morning tea looks vilely orange, sour and tannin-astringent, chalky with the sickly rancour of milk. The smell makes me heave and I bury my nose in my coffee cup, searching for the familiar woody aroma, but there’s no sanctuary, for my stomach roils, chums again. As I kneel by the loo, I inhale the unholy stench of bleach, nothing like the zesty kick of real lemons but a garish fluorescent approximation. I lose my breakfast.
The doctors say that the sickness will pass, after twelve weeks or so. And with each day that passes, I find I mind less about the years I’ve lost. The first day waking in hospital will be my Day One, and everything else will remain just snatches and whispers, like the waking memories of a dream. But the space within me will soon be filled up, and I will be brimfull of this child gently growing and moving inside me. I can’t remember all the long sad years of trying, and perhaps that is for the best; for she can be my own quiet miracle, entirely untinged with sorrow. And it will be good; for I already know just how sweet my daughter will smell.

 

 

Second Prize

£200

Alopecia

By Bea Davenport

 

I just freaked out the wedding photographer. It was really funny, just for a moment.  There I am looking all demure with my pink cheeks and my blue eyes and my little mop of brown curls. Clutching my tiny bouquet, the smallest of the three, for the youngest attendant. Every inch the perfect bridesmaid.  So while he’s lining everyone up and waving his hands – “this way a little, that way a little” – I just slipped my hand up behind my head and pushed my wig down over my face. From Little Sis to Cousin It in ten seconds. I give him a minute to really notice and then I pull it back up again and give him a dazzling smile. He is standing frozen, staring. I wish I had the camera myself. His face is a picture. 

I’ve been bald for months now and Mum threatened that I couldn’t be a bridesmaid at all if I didn’t wear the wig. “It’s embarrassing enough that she looks the way she does,” complained my sister. “But she’s not ruining my wedding photos. No way.” 

It was a tiny flash of white, like a bandage – this is what I saw, first of all, in the bathroom  mirror.  I looked again – and there seemed to be a strip of pale scalp, where my almost-black hair should be. The first feeling was disbelief.  It was a trick of the light. So I blinked, held up a section of hair and fingered the little patch of naked scalp. Its spongy-smoothness was repulsive. My whole body shuddered. Cover it over, is all I could think - get it hidden! 

It was a few days before anyone else spotted  it. My needle-eyed mother was the one, of course. A moment off-guard, I was watching Scooby Doo.  Suddenly she said: “Hold still,” and made for my head. My stomach flipped in fear. She’ll kill me. She’ll ask me loads of questions I can’t answer. She’ll want to know how it’s happened and I don’t know. She’ll go on and on.  And she did. 

It was my fault, of course, in my mother’s eyes.  I must have cut it, pulled it, twisted it, at least somehow willed it to happen.  Later, she thought, perhaps it was her fault: strong shampoo. Nit cream. Itchy woolly hats.  Anything, except for no explanation at all.  Anything but that. 

But the doctor had  no explanation. He shrugged and suggested, with narrowed eyes, that I may have pulled my hair out myself.  Young girls do that sort of thing, he said. To get attention, that’s all. 

Hairs. Everywhere. Looking like smears of dirt on the pastel pillow case. It got worse.

Pink-white skin on the sides of my head and across the top, in uneven stripes.  The skin on my scalp feels so different to the smooth flesh on the rest of my body. It is leathery, it does not lend itself naturally to being stroked. Well, it was never meant to be exposed like this.  Stupidly, ridiculously, there is an unaffected badger’s tail of thick, dark hair along the back of my head. I can close my eyes, run my fingers through this section and pretend it feels like this all over. 

Some people think, because of this radical haircut, that I am very, very tough. They are scared.

Some people think, because of this eccentric hairstyle, I must be mad. They are wary.                                                          

Some people think, because of these messed-up bits of baldness, I must be ill. They are repulsed.

No one thinks I may be afraid or embarrassed or ashamed.

No one doesn’t react.

No one talks to me while looking at my eyes or my mouth or my clothes. Their eyes are always pulled up to my hair, or where my hair should be. 

My mother suggested wearing a little knotted headscarf for school. I got away with this for a few days and then the teacher decreed it was against the rules. So I had to take it off, in front of the class, to a ripple of suppressed giggles.

Cures. There are none, of course. All snake oil, which is quite funny in a way, because people actually use snakes in all sorts of medicines so sometimes it probably works.  My mother listened to every old tale that was passed on to her and tried them all. Sometimes I think my baldness is worse for my mother than for me. It reflects on her, makes her a bad or at least a neglectful mother, with a little thug or a lunatic for a daughter.

She started with iodine. It stained my scalp a bruised blue-brown, made me smell as if I was wearing a concentrated perfume of distilled hospital. It also stung and made my eyes smart. I started to hide when it was time to put it on. She gave up on this when she realised that not only did it not work, it wouldn’t wash out of the pillowcase. 

A friend of hers recommended something called Bay Rum. It’s a sweet-scented, oily stuff that feels quite cool on the scalp, but then I smelled like I am wearing some old uncle’s historic aftershave. It made what’s left of my hair greasy.  When the bottle ran out, my mother announced she wouldn’t bother buying any more. It was too expensive and didn’t have any noticeable effect. What’s more, she couldn’t wash the grease stains out of the pillowcases. I have inadvertently ruined a fantastic amount of bedding. 

Next she started sprinkling Brewer’s Yeast all over my Sugar Puffs.  

The doctor suggested injections (of what?! I never discover). A visit to a hospital where a long needle was pushed directly into the top of my scalp. The first time, I fainted. The second time, I cried and cried because it was, it really was, just as painful as it sounds. Then I refused to go back. 

Then the doctor suggested sun-lamps, a special kind, used mostly for people with skin complaints.  I had to sit next to them in the hospital out-patients, where they reeked of some kind of ointment. I was afraid of catching their flaking skin

conditions and  no doubt they were afraid of catching whatever made this freakish child go bald.  As patients we all eyed each other with mutual suspicion. When you were sent into the sun-lamp room, the people waiting outside could see you through dark green glass. The ones with the skin problems were naked so I tried not to look. I didn’t have to take my clothes off because it was just my head that was the problem. I just had to stand there in front of a brilliant light for a few minutes. I thought this might be what it’s like when you first go to heaven. The tiny black goggles on their tight elastic gave me white owl-rings around my eyes, in a too-pink face. The sessions meant I missed a term’s worth of morning maths and my mother said all that has happened is that I got stupider. Still, the hair did not grow back.

My sister tried to keep me out of sight of her friends. I was just too embarrassing. One of them found me, however, sitting in my bedroom listening to the Sunday night chart countdown on Radio 1. Christine was fantastically tall, with tiny jewel eyes and waist length locks to die for. She came in and danced to Where’s Your Mama Gone with me. I asked her how it felt to have such long hair. “I’ll show you,” she said. We stood back-to-back. She leaned over backwards until her glossy black hair trailed across my shoulders and our heads bumped together. She stayed there, leaning over, giggling, while I fondled the strands of hair and draped them across my shoulders like a stole. It was like being stroked by a thousand satin ribbons. Until Christine groaned and laughed and said she had to stand up straight because her back was killing her.     

The hospital gave my mother a leaflet. I could get an NHS wig. We went to a room above a shop, full of old ladies.  They each came out smiling nervously and wearing, like a new hat, some stiff, puffed-up, nylon confection on top of their head, with a distinct line along their forehead which looked like what it was – black elastic. I imagined myself in one of these and thought how people would laugh at a 10-year-old girl with a hairdo that’s six times her age.

 The hairdresser (is that what she was?) clucked around me. She said they didn’t have much in such a small size. I wanted long, dark, rebellious curls like Carlotta, the wild gypsy girl in Enid Blyton’s circus stories.  The woman put a thing on my head which sat like a polished tea cake somewhere above my ears. I went hot with embarrassment. The lady pulled and flicked at the horrid, prickly strands but it looked no better. It was Tressy-

doll hair, thick and un-natural, fixed in a shape, the wrong shape for me. I said  I’d rather be a skinhead after all.  My mother bought the wig anyway and said I must at least wear it for my sister’s wedding.  No one wants a bald bridesmaid in their photo album. That’s the weird thing about baldness. It’s so much worse for everyone else to deal with.

 I tried the thing on in public – if you can call it that – in front of my friend from next door, whose mother wasn’t sure if she should play with me anymore because I didn’t look right. I didn’t want to do this at all, but my mother persuaded me that I had to come out in it sometime. As I came down the stairs towards her, my best friend laughed so hard she cried. She almost choked with laughter, especially when she tried to apologise for laughing at the same time as wiping the tears away and corpsing again. I turned round and walked back up the stairs, pulled the itchy thing off my head and flung it into a corner where it skulked for the rest of the evening like a scolded cat. 

 So it is the wedding day and no one is interested in me and the fact that I really do not want to wear the fake thing or that it makes me scratch or looks ridiculous. They only have eyes for

my sister with her soft, dark ringlets, which are so real and touchable, and look so perfect next to her pink skin and the bright white nylon of her bridal dress.  When I try to ask her to back me up, she hisses, eyes narrowed so that they almost disappear into their turquoise liner. “This is not your day. You’ve had all the attention for months. This is my day. If you spoil it, I will kill you. I mean it. Kill you.”  

 I haven’t spoiled her day because she doesn’t know the reason why the photographer went so white in the face.  She’ll find out much later on, when it won’t matter anymore.  And that’s one snap that won’t end up in the album.

Third Prize

£100

Jenny

By JS Watts

 
Edward was trying hard not to show just how worried he was. He was sitting down, which at his age was both sensible and a full time occupation, whilst watching Jenny play with her best friend. He was determined that Jenny should not pick up on any of his concerns. She was still too young to understand and, anyway, there was no point in worrying her unnecessarily. The trouble was, Edward was not convinced that it would be worrying her unnecessarily. He was becoming increasingly conscious that, irrespective of her young age, certain truths would have to be faced sooner rather than later.
Age itself was one facet of Edward’s concerns: in particular, his ever advancing years in relation to Jenny’ s extreme youth. She had come to live with him when his daughter and her husband were killed in a motorway traffic incident. It had seemed like the only possible way forward at the time, but now that Jenny was five and he was eighty four he was worried that the powers that be within the local Social Services Department were growing increasingly uncomfortable with the situation and in particular, it seemed, the age difference between Jenny and him. Edward himself was only too aware that, notwithstanding his family’s natural longevity, the chances of him living for anything more than another nine or ten years at the outside were impossibly slight and how capable he’d be of looking after Jenny as he got progressively older was anybody’s guess. He had no family other than Jenny, so who would look after her when, not if, he passed on before she had finished growing up?
Jenny was sublimely unaware of Edward’s worries. At this moment in time she was happily perched on a step half way up the stairs and two steps above the one occupied by her best friend Abby. Jenny was dressed in her best Sunday frock of dark red velvet with its trim white lace collar and was very, very conscious of the need to keep her clothes clean. She and Abby had been entertaining themselves by telling one another stories. When the possibility of acting out some of the stories came up Jenny decided it would be better if the acting game took place in her bedroom, where any increase in activity and noise levels would be less of a disturbance to Edward.
Downstairs in his armchair, Edward watched while Jenny stood up, carefully brushed down her best and most favourite dress and carried on up the stairs to her bedroom. She was a very precise and solemn little girl. Edward wondered if this was because of her mother’s death or because of his advancing years. It couldn’t be much fun for a youngster living in a house where the only other occupant was an elderly man in his eighties. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that she had developed such a strong tie to Abby.
Upstairs in the bedroom the acting up game was proceeding apace. Whilst a livelier activity than the sedentary story telling on the staircase, it was still far from rumbustious by usual childhood standards. Edward was able to hear at least half of what was going on.
“...but if you are playing the mummy then you have to pretend to be dead.”
“Because that’s the way it is.”
“Yes, if you want to, but you still have to be dead.”
“Daddies always die too.”
“Because.”
It was Jenny’s childish voice that Edward was listening to and what he heard just added to his worries. It was clearly the tale of Happy Families that was being acted out upstairs - again. Happy Families was Jenny’s favourite story and game and she was always playing it with Abby. In fact, they seemed to play little else. It was far from happy, though. In Jenny’s version Mummy and Daddy always ended up dead.
“No, if you’re the daddy you have to die so I can hold your hand.”
Jenny’s best friend was normally extremely compliant, so Edward was surprised that there seemed to be some form of minor insurrection taking place upstairs. Come to think of it, Abby had appeared to grow increasingly challenging of Jenny over the last few days. Edward was not sure if this was a good sign or a bad one. He adored Jenny and wanted more than anything to see her happy, but he was not convinced that her relationship with Abby was an entirely healthy one. Also, he knew all too well that Social Services were not comfortable with the Jenny and Abby situation and their friendship would inevitably become another cross on the interminable check lists that the department representatives were always carrying
these days. Although he hated himself for admitting it, it would be no bad thing if Jenny fell out naturally with Abby. It would certainly save Edward the difficulty of tackling the issue direct with Jenny; something he was dreading having to do.
At that moment, Jenny came downstairs.
“Where’s Abby?” Edward tried to keep the question neutral sounding.
“Upstairs in my bedroom. I came down to give you a hug and to ask for a drink, please.”
If Edward was disappointed by this response, he didn’t let it show. He just dealt with it in the same way that he tried not to let his ongoing worry show: he absorbed it inside himself. He stood up very slowly and with Jenny close beside him, made his less than steady way into the kitchen.
“What flavour would you like?”
“Choose for me.”
“Orange?” She always had orange.
“Yes please.”
Edward slowly and carefully made up a glass of orange squash and handed it to Jenny. She took it equally carefully, said thank you and then just stood there waiting. Even before Jenny finally asked, Edward knew what the matter was.
“May Abby have a glass of orange squash too, please?”
Edward turned slowly back to the sink and painstakingly mimed the act of making another glass of squash. The he handed the make-believe drink to Jenny, who accepted it gravely, said thank you and proceeded to take the two drinks, the real and the imaginary, carefully back upstairs with her.
“Do you need any help with those?” said Edward to her retreating back.
“No thank you. I can manage and Abby can always help me.”
Edward winced. The relationship with Abby didn’t really seem to be getting any weaker. With Social Services increasingly in the frame, he needed it to be. There had been a couple of high profile child-care disasters in the last year or so and the check list wielding social workers were hyper-sensitive and on the case, determined that there would be no repetition on their patch. They were waiting, he was sure; just looking for an excuse to intervene with him and Jenny. He didn’t want the thing with Abby to be the straw that broke the institutional camel’s back. Then again, Jenny was only five. Surely an imaginary friend was not a major mental health issue when one was only five? Yet Edward himself, if he was honest, was not comfortable with the nature of Jenny’s friendship with Abby. The ongoing morbidity of their games,
Jenny’s trusting reliance on Abby, the fact that she only ever played with Abby and had no real friends of her own age were all equally disquieting. And yet, and yet; Jenny was so devoted to Abby, derived so much pleasure from her supposed company and seemed so happy now, having already experienced enough unhappiness in her young life to have sunk a full grown adult, that he hadn’t the heart to disillusion her about Abby. He was not totally sure that he could, come to that; so strong were the little girl’s ties to her imaginary best friend.
Up in her bedroom Jenny was laughing loudly, by her standards, at something Abby had said or done. Edward was not prepared to take such happiness, however false, away from her. There was little enough joy in the real world; Edward was only too aware of it. If it were not for Jenny, the only thing that he would have left to look forward to now was death. She was the source of his own late flowering happiness and he was not going to deprive her of what she, in her innocence, had given him. She would grow out of the friendship eventually. In the meantime he’d find a way to hold off Social Services; small minded, check-list tickers, each and every one of them. His blood pressure rose just thinking about the comments made by the last snooping busybody who had come calling,
“But Mr Thomas, the little girl’s not real. This really isn’t healthy.”
Healthy: what did the silly cow know about being healthy after all that his Jenny had been through? He’d show them. He might be elderly, but he was still capable of putting up a good fight and he’d not give up without one. He’d write letters, he’d phone them, he’d turn up at their offices; he’d make them see the truth of
it, but first he’d have a sit down and maybe a little nap. He wasn’t as young as he used to be and his heart was pumping a bit too wildly for comfort.
Edward lay back in his chair and shut his eyes. As he started to drift off he sensed Jenny come quietly down the stairs and perch herself on the arm of his chair. She took one of his large, but increasingly strengthless hands in both of hers and gently cradled it. Edward smiled to himself, but no one else would ever know.
There was a great deal of paperwork in the Social Services offices and it had taken a while to get processed. The social worker finalizing the case file on Mr. Edward Thomas was secretly grateful for this. It had given her a valuable bit of leeway. Otherwise it would have fallen to her to have had Mr Thomas admitted against his wishes into a care home. Fortunately, he had passed away peacefully in his own home and in his own armchair before all the necessary formalities had been completed. The poor old soul had been badly affected by the death of his wife, but appeared to have finally lost it when, so soon after, his daughter Jennifer and her husband had been killed tragically and rather horrifically in a multiple pile-up on the motorway. In his distress Mr Thomas had become convinced that his daughter was a little girl again and was living with him. Nothing the social worker could say or do would convince him otherwise; in some ways, if she was honest, she hadn’t really wanted to. Before the little girl had “arrived” he had been inconsolable and was always saying that the only thing he had left to look forward to was dying. His mood had noticeably changed once Jenny turned up and, for once in these cases, it had
changed for the better: the onset of this type of dementia was normally the cause of negative mood swings and hallucinations, not beneficial ones. She had been disinclined to take what little comfort he had found for himself away from him, though it would have come to that sooner rather than later. Still, she thought as she closed his case file, his troubles were all over now. If there was a heaven, she hoped that he had found himself an angel.

Wyvern Prize

£100

Freedom Fighter

By Jill Flanders

 

 

To

John Milton Esq.

Burnhill Row

 

Esteemed Sir,

I write after perusing the first edition of your work, ‘Paradise Lost’.  First, let me compliment you upon your mastery of blank verse.  This is truly an epic poem. You have brought together striking imagery and intellectual argument in brilliant harmony.

 The pity, oh the very great pity, is that you have only taken Genesis for your source. You may not be aware that Genesis is an early propaganda document which sprang from the house of one whom I shall call, The Supreme Entrepreneur.

 Knowing you to be a gentleman of great intellect and fairness, I ask only that you consider my side of the story.  Take time to read and ponder this short account. 

When you have finished, it is with some trembling at my own audacity, I beg you to begin work on a new version of ‘Paradise Lost’.

I will not trouble you with my early history but shall begin from the moment when I first encountered The Supreme Entrepreneur.

 From your poem, I know you understand that, when young, I was remarkably good looking.  I read your words, ‘he above the rest, in shape and gesture proudly eminent’, with a wry smile.  It was of course just these same qualities that attracted The Supreme Entrepreneur.  He sent his acolytes to hunt me down and ‘invite’ me for interview.

 I shall never forget the moment that I stepped into His space.  I was blinded by the light.  All seemed made of crystal that reflected a thousand rainbows and the view – the view was to die for.  It was almost impossible to see The Supreme Entrepreneur.  Such light shone behind Him that it almost enveloped Him.  It’s an old trick, I know: make the candidate face the light. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

  “The business is all about futures”, He said.  “Creating new worlds is what we are about. I need my acolytes totally committed and focused. Are you up to it?”

 “Yes, yes”, I replied.

 “Once is enough.  We don’t waste words.  We don’t waste anything here.”

And with that, the interview was over.  I had the job.  I would have sold my soul for that job, if I’d had a soul.

 I was whisked from His presence by one of the recruitment assistants - tall blonde and very smooth indeed.

“You’re in then”, he said

“In where? I don’t even know the name of the corporation”, I answered in a sort of daze.

“Heaven Inc.  We don’t bandy the name about too much actually.  Lots of holding companies you see and then again when you’re in futures and derivatives you need to be pretty fast on your feet.  We’re always on the wing to different places.  Our mission statement is simple ‘Speculation is Creation’ and you’d better not forget it.”

 “What are the rewards like?”  I ventured.

“Rewards?” He looked at me strangely.  “The real reward is the excitement. The ‘Big Bang’.  Being part of it, you know.”

I felt a slight twinge of anxiety.  I should have taken notice of that twinge.

 “Here’s where you get kitted out.  We call it the wardrobe.”

I looked round.  Rows and rows of suits – all white.

“All white?” I queried.

“Corporate uniform.  They call us the angels.  It’s a sort of joke really.  I’m Gabriel and you’ll soon meet the others. They’re the cream, the elite.  The Supreme Entrepreneur only employs the best.”

 The job went like a dream.  I was a real high flyer.  The buzz you wouldn’t believe.  The Supreme Entrepreneur encouraged us to ever greater heights.  There was nothing we didn’t attempt.  We hardly seemed to need to rest,

 Then the cracks began to appear.  We were over extended.  The new speculations couldn’t be controlled.  No matter how far or fast we flew, things were spinning out of control.  Some of the practices we were being encouraged to employ began to worry me more and more. 

 I began to talk to other angels.  “He’s lost it”, I said.  “He’s totally reckless - maybe even mad.  A lot of what’s going on might be beyond the reach of the law but it’s very, very dodgy.  This corporation is going to crash.” Some agreed with me. Others wouldn’t listen.

  “The Supreme Entrepreneur is never wrong and it’s pretty dangerous even to think like that”, Gabriel told them.  He was well respected and the old guard looked to him as a leader.

 So we split into two groups.  The group loyal to the Supreme Entrepreneur and the group led by me.  I gained a good number of supporters from those who had begun to entertain doubts about the ethics of the organisation.   I met more and more frequently with my supporters.  We pondered ways to save the corporation from the madness of The Supreme Entrepreneur.  Gradually we saw the only way was a successful takeover.  I won’t bore you with the details of how we set up‘Damnation.com’.   

  Eventually we were ready to make a takeover bid. A huge battle ensued and we came near to succeeding but it will suffice to say Heaven Inc. survived and I can tell you that The Supreme Entrepreneur is a pretty unforgiving sort of a guy. Still life goes on as they say and so does ‘Damnation.com’.  We lost the battle but not the war, which brings me to the little tale of ‘Enterprise Eden’.

 Obviously, ‘Damnation.com’ is an entirely ethical company and a strong supporter of environmental projects so, when it came to my ears that The Supreme Entrepreneur was dabbling in Garden Estates, I made it my business to find out more.  I was astounded by what I discovered.  Enterprise Eden was a totally exclusive area.  In the books it was listed as a sort of paradise leisure resort. But leisure for whom, you may well ask?

 The only people allowed into this ‘paradise’ were two caretakers.   Their reward for tending the whole estate was a selection of the produce. In fact, the original plan had been to manage the estate with just one caretaker.  They tried it, but the poor chap became so depressed that Heaven Inc. had been forced to create a second post.  

 Enterprise Eden was not really an estate development at all but a personal garden of delights where The Supreme Entrepreneur could indulge himself. I informed my fellow directors about the caretakers.  Some were in tears when they heard about these unpaid, almost slave, labourers kept in a state of naked subjugation.  They agreed that every effort should be made to end this misery.  As a humanitarian gesture, I allowed myself to be persuaded to make the trip to rescue the oppressed work force.

  It was at great personal inconvenience that I set out to enter Eden.

It took some doing I can tell you.  The place had major security and I had to resort to disguise even to get myself in.  Some of my old colleagues, including Gabriel, were patrolling the entrances and I couldn’t risk a run in with them.

 My word, The Supreme Being was doing himself well.  Every variety of fruit and flower was growing in Eden.  The streams were flowing with milk and honey. (How does He do that?).  Then I saw them - the two caretakers - under a tree. 

He was strong, well formed, with a fine head of dark brown hair and she was tall, graceful and very, very naked. They were conversing

 ‘Adam, why may we not eat an apple from this tree?” asked the woman. “Surely they are ripe and ready for plucking?”

 “Eve, If I’ve if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, the owner has forbidden it.  There is plenty of fruit to choose from.  The peaches are like golden orbs and the pears are running with juice.”

 The woman was silent for a little.  It seemed to me to be a sulky silence. Then she spoke again, “And what is the name that he calls this tree?”

 “’Tis the Tree of Knowledge.  Now I’m going to get some rest and so should you if you’ve any sense.”

 At last I understood.  The Supreme Entrepreneur had found a way to keep Adam and Eve in total ignorance of their plight.  Why else would they stay?  If they were not rescued, they were destined to be slaves for ever.  I made my plans.  Adam did not look like someone who would be easily won over but Eve was a different story.

I have been told I have a silver tongue and certainly Eve was entranced by my words. I think I can say we spent a most delightful evening.  About the details, my lips are sealed.  Eve turned out to have more than beauty to recommend her. She was a woman of both sense and guile. She approached the task of winning Adam round with a technique that drew even my admiration. 

 So the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was consumed and immediately both perceived the truth about the conditions in which they were being kept.   I shall draw a veil over the terrible scenes that followed.  All I shall say is that The Supreme Entrepreneur proved to be a very poor loser indeed – flaming swords were the least of it.  No wonder Eve and Adam were terrified by his ravings.   But all that is of no importance when set against the freedom that they found.  Of course it was hard at first.  What can you expect when people have no experience of the world at all? 

I did not begrudge the time and effort expended.   After all what is more crucial to freedom than the right to make our own choices?  What is more important than the right not to be puppets manipulated by others?  I am proud to say that I, and I alone, gave Adam and Eve the chance to found a truly free society.

 As for The Supreme Entrepreneur – I think I have said before that He is not a forgiving kind of a guy.  He lost no time in using the media to put out stories

about how Eve and Adam would look back on their past life as a paradise lost.  He blackened my name using words like serpent and snake which are probably actionable.  He wages war on Damnation.com and He remains a very, very powerful player in the market.

 I refuse to be intimidated. I shall continue to spend my time asking awkward questions about freedom of choice and fighting for a more democratic sort of capitalism.  That is why, my dear sir, that I trust that I can enlist your support in the fight against oppression.

Yours very truly

Lucifer Satan

@ Damnation.com

  ****************************         

Home