Vignette

Might be a little weird... just bear with the description. 

I felt it in the room – the giant egg she was sitting on. It seemed to buzz beneath her squatting buttocks, humming as they clenched thickly, glutinously. Her lips smacked with the aftertaste of the secret and her little finger curled away from the china as she took a sip.

Every time she opened her viscous lips I heard a creak reverberate around the room as the egg fissured under her weight. She tottled and her lips twisted into a leer, the snot treacle secret bubbling between small teeth, leaking through the cracks around her mouth until it seeped, insipid, into the conversation.

“Sophie?”

The egg and slime disappeared as my aunt turned to me. “Who was that boy I saw you cozying up to under the willows this afternoon?”

The egg was gone but I heard it crack. Delicate spindles of white exploded under my aunt’s malice and she dropped into the yoke of my troubles, slurping deliriously.

My mother’s eyes snapped from their scrutiny of her wineglass and her eyes fixed on me. They didn’t blaze, nor did they flash. Rather, a cool contemplation crept over the blue and her chin rose in reappraisal.

“A boy?” she asked.

My aunt’s lips spread over sharp-filed teeth. I saw the yoke on her chin, bubbling ecstatically from her throat. Her green eyes took on a robust flare as they flicked from my mother to me. “The dark-haired one,” her voice quivered before tucking into the next bit of revelry with a prolonged slurp. “Simply gorrrgeous.”

My mother stood up swiftly. Her waved black hair swayed for a moment before falling into place with her rigid posture. Thin fingers grasped my aunt’s pudgy hands.

“That’s quite enough tea for the afternoon, Georgia.”

My aunt writhed to her feet and was led away by my mother.

My fingers brushed the hair out of my face and I pushed myself off the chaise, pushed away from the elaborate lounge. Long fingers clutched my arm and I winced. The hiss of my mother’s voice burnt my ear.

“That boy?”

I squirmed in her grip and closed my eyes. The music laughed in my ears as my voice quivered. “We weren’t –”

“Cozying up? Don’t lie to me Sophia. You think I don’t hear the servants talking? You think I don’t know he comes to your window in the night and leaves notes by your ledge?”

“It’s not my fault!”

The Hermit

There was a sliver of sound near the hovel on the hill. It was the low, wet slithering of something being dragged over forest leaves. If you listened closely, you could hear him: ragged breaths hindered by bile constantly frothing up his throat; small, shuffling footsteps – like long strides were beyond him. And a constant, low muttering of incoherent words.

His crooked arms stretched behind him, fingers tightly curled around the pale flesh of an arm. A woman’s head lolled, her wet hair snagging on twigs and carrying leaves in its wake. Her eyes were open, ants swarming over the ice blue irises.

“Pot’s a brewing, monkeys spewing,” the words bubbled from the man’s cracked and bloodied lips, thinly disguising a leer. His voice was a hissing mess of gurgling sounds, strung together as though he had learnt to talk from something other than a human. “Supper be served tonight…”

When the man reached his hovel the first loud sound pierced the night. A baby’s scream rang through the forest and echoed to the village below. The man’s smile widened, lips cracking even with the small movement. He licked them to stop the blood from dribbling over his filthy chin and released the woman’s arm.

“Supper be ours tonight…”

The villagers sat in silence as the baby’s first cries split the stale twilight. A shudder ran through the small feasting hall and the smoke from a struggling fire in the middle of the room obscured many a wince. Only one man raised his head. Dark eyes darted from one lowered face to the next.

 “COWARDS!” the scream exploded from his shaking body as the first cry died.

Powerful fists gripped the nearest tankard. It exploded against the steps to a raised platform, mead slushing over the sandals of the row of elders sitting there. The wrinkles on each of the five faces twisted into a different expression. There was disgust on one as he shook the mead from his toes. The tiniest twist of sympathy rippled under another’s irritation. The third and fourth looked in different directions, each wishing to be somewhere else. It was only the fifth, the one in the middle, whose tight wrinkles churned into a thin grin. 

“Cowards! Thieves! Maggots!” Tiberius’s rage punched over the baby’s sounds.

But when the squeals stopped and another shudder ran through the hall. The congregation could almost hear the suckling sounds. The deep slurping. The smacking of tiny lips over dead skin. Tiberius closed his eyes, tears spilling into a frazzled black beard. His fists clenched and unclenched as the helplessness, the listless energy of the hopeless and the reckless coursed through his limbs.

“She was my wife... I have to... I need...” he muttered, fingers pulling at his hair. Another villager’s hand shook his shoulder.

“Peace, Tiberius,” the man whispered. “Peace, please. They won’t stand for another outburst.”

Wild eyes rounded on the man. He was slightly younger than Tiberius and recently married, as Tiberius had been nine months ago. The man’s terrified glances shot between the row on the platform and his friend’s crazed face.

“You can control your friend, Dracus?” the man in the middle asked. “A certain level of regret is expected, but he is disgracing himself.”

Tiberius surged forward but Dracus restrained him. Both men were powerful, and Dracus panted with the effort.

“Take pity on him, Adrastus,” Dracus pleaded. “They were newlywed when the creature...”

“This is why,” Adrastus’ voice barked over him, “we do not take brides in the hunting season. Any loss he experienced is born from his wasted crotch, not a broken heart. He knows the laws of our land – the nature of our village. If their feelings had been true they would have waited, lest our saviour –” his eyes flicked dangerously around the villagers, “choose her.”

“Bastard!” Tiberius’s voice broke and Dracus’s face turned red with effort. “We were in love. We waited years! She could wait no longer.”

Adrastus’ wrinkles deepened. “You flout our way of life and dare excuse it with love? Restrain him now, Dracus, before he defiles himself any further.”

The elder sat with groan, his fellows shook their heads, condemning stares fixing on the friends before them.

“Light behold you,” Dracus whispered to Tiberius. “Take your peace before they take it from you.”

Tiberius twisted with speed Dracus did not recognise. His shoulder pounded into Dracus’s gut and they catapulted onto the table as villagers scrambled out of their way.

Dracus’s fist connected with Tiberius’s cheek. Fingers dug into his throat and he was dragged down with Tiberius. They grappled, villagers swarming closer as Tiberius gained the upper hand. Fist after fist cracked into Dracus’s face. Blood burst with every impact until Tiberius was pulled off by the other men in the room.

“All of you!” he yelled, flailing wildly in the grip of his friends. “You sit with your heads bowed, your hands folded, thanking the gods he did not take that of yours!”

The sound of his voice filled the entire hall. It curled around the smoke and smothered it, filling every sense of every villager with a cruel taste of the emotions tormenting him.

“Andrea was mine!”

“Fool!” blood sprayed as Dracus spit the words. “We are all his, and his alone. He keeps us and we thank him. And if he wants your whore it is right that he should take her.”

Tiberius screamed as he burst free from the men’s hold. By the time they slung him off Dracus was all but dead. Tiberius scrambled for the door, the men checking swords as they readied for pursuit.

“Leave him!”

Adrastus banged a staff to the platform. “Let him seek the curse! His fate will be worse than any retribution we could muster. Worse even than his wife’s.”

Tiberius burst into the night as strangled cheers rose to match the baby’s renewed screams.

He was found three weeks later, at the base of the hill in an open grave. The boy who had found him thought him dead. He was immobile, slumped, half sinking into the muddy grave.

But as the elder had promised, who approaches the hovel suffers a fate worse than death. When the villagers dragged him out of the grave they recoiled. His lips had been cut off, bloodied teeth distorted in a never-ending smile. Two brown eyes forever stared in the absence of eyelids, the skin roughly hewn beneath his brow bone, eyeballs swimming in blood. His beard covered most of the boils, but some of them festered on his nose and forehead, quivering evilly.

One villager cracked. In a rage of fear he raised an axe and dropped it, blade screaming toward Tiberius’s neck. The surrounding villagers closed their eyes but there was no wet thwack of metal carving through flesh.

Instead an echoing crack rose from the blade as it splintered, and a cruel cackle rang through the valley. The villagers’ eyes cast around the surrounding hills but the creature was nowhere to be seen.

Yes, Tiberius’s fate was indeed worse than his wife’s. Cursed by his arrogance, he could neither be murdered nor take his own life, only live with the pain of his injuries until a ripe old age.

Last moments

I die.

It's surprisingly hard to do. I swallow the cloth many times before it gets lodged in the entrance to my lungs and he cannot pull it out quickly enough. I see the panic in his eyes as he gropes. They widen, horrified that this would be his last round. My lungs spasm. The veins pumping blood to bruising wrists and ankles are already slackening. The bruises on my nose will last longer.  I breathe the fabric coarsely. The water does nothing to soften its penetration.  

The worst part is that I suck it in myself.
 

Random Descriptions

The following are random descriptions I have accrued over the years. They don't fit into any specific story or have any specific purpose other than that they might someday be useful. If you like them, please comment. If they confuse you, also please comment, and perhaps I can give some context. If they annoy you... Basically just please comment if it evokes any feeling at all.

The paper tiger sat on the table, reflected in its glossy shine. It was completely white, fangs agape, tail curved into the perfect expression of irritation. As I stared at it, I could imagine it jumping to life, pouncing on the smooth surface, roaring wildly.

She had strange eyes. One was bright, sharp and intelligent. The other was dull and muddled. At first I thought it was blind, but when I turned around to glance at her, I saw it turn slowly to me, her other eye still staring at the painting.

The poem was like a puzzle, an intricate little riddle I was dying to know the answer of. The words swam before my eyes, mischievously diving in and out of comprehension. Just when I thought I had it, the words would shift, swimming and slipping away from me – darting in their mischief.




I love his hands. They are like crabby beige spiders and when he types they twitch flowingly, long fingers stretching as a sleepy animal would at the end of each sentence.

She had no eyelashes. Instead, blue flames were tattooed on her eyelids. They flickered as she blinked, alive with her movements. Her eyebrows were thick and a luminous blue. Even her pale skin took on a soft tinge of the colour.

Goodnight

Since I don't have much new material, I have decided to post an old essay for which I won a small competition. The story was written in 2008 and hasn't been edited since then:

The gun lay on the table. In the gloom of the nightlight it looked like a toy gun. A plaything. It sat snugly between porcelain dolls and storybooks, like a viper nestled in a field of daisies. But playtime was over. Now, it was time for action…

                  

I picked up the gun. It felt heavy - my small hands could barely close around the trigger. Slowly, bare feet silent on the panelled floor, I opened the door and stepped into the hall. The lights were dimmed but I wasn’t afraid of the dark. I’ve been living in it all my life.

At the far side of the hall a strip of light fell on the floor. Opera music drifted out through the crack. It was heavy, loud and all consuming. I swallowed silently and made my way to my father’s room. At the door I hesitated. Images, memories, flooded my mind.

I’m four and sitting at the kitchen table. My parents are arguing violently. A dull smack fills the air and my mother crashes into the cupboards. I’m five and I watch my father wash blood from his hands. I’m six and hiding under the table. My parents are screaming. My mother falls to the floor, eyes glazed, mouth bleeding, dead.

I pushed the door open. The music filled my head and drew me forward. On the bed my father stirred. The droning of life-support was drowned out by the heavy music. I watched as the once infamous crime lord raised his head blearily and growled. “Go away I said!”

The nurse had gone away. She had run from the house with a bleeding forehead after my father threw a half-empty glass of apple juice at her, having wanted whiskey. When there was no response he rolled laboriously on his back and looked up at me. “GO TO SLEEP!” he roared. 

“NO!” I yelled. Bitter tears stung my eyes as I raised the gun shakily. My father’s eyes stretched and he started scrambling to get up, useless legs forgotten.  The music reached a crescendo as my little fingers tightened on the trigger.

“Goodnight, daddy.”

The shot tore through the room. Blood hit the walls with sickening splats, but I was smiling. My father rolled off the bed, face down, leaking blood onto the Persian carpet. My tears subsided and I sniffed.

Letting the gun clatter to the floor, I quickly wiped my face. A smile spread my lips. I closed the door quietly as the lasts shreds of the song sounded and I skipped down the hall. Humming cheerfully, and went back to my room to play with my dolls.
 

Description of "The Whisperer"

She had an affinity for the pronunciation of names. No matter what the language or dialect, her tongue snapped around its intricacies and held fast, until names blossomed from her lips like a red carpet. There was the croak of a sleepy frog in her susurrant “Mbembe”, the crack of a breaking bough in “Cormac”.

It was only her own name that flapped from her lips and fell, flaccid, to the floor. She did not speak it often in the village. In fact – she spoke it so seldom that her name was forgotten after some years. She fashioned a new one through hints and nudges, never speaking it until its being was formed through the tongues of others. They struggled, lips clawing over syllables, moulding them jaggedly until at once the name took off, exploded into the air like a spout of water. She caught it, and in her mouth the malleable sounds were softly smoothed into a gentle stream, a rush of water over cobblestones. 

She was The Whisperer.

Description of a possible villain

He had eyes like ants swarming the carcass of a moth. Specks of black writhed over the dull fades of grey and sand; shiny, screaming, devouring – brown like the moth-winged curve of his sharp mouth. Pincer teeth hid behind svelte lips. And a smile, mechanical joints clicking muscles into place; a sharp, evil thing.

The same mechanical joints in his fingers drove them to caress the open book. The words squirmed from his fingertips as a breath oozed from him.

“Delightful.”

A voice like the suckling of marrow. There was a deep slurp to it, a revelling scrumption of joy.

His fingers traced to the edge, slid over the table and up my arm. Maggot breath corrupted the path between his lips and mine. His hand, the white mechanical spider, closed around my throat.

“Simply delightful.”

Webs

He spoke like threading spider webs. Words swathed through the air and connected, as though by magic, thin but unbreakable strands connecting to the smallest sections. It was like a collapsing in of itself, as though he spun the web from the outside in, and each concentric pattern dove inward, folded, augmented the weaker outer strains until neither tornado nor monsoon could tear them apart.

No, like other spider webs, his words could not be forcibly destroyed. Only the gentle caress of one finger’s edge, the sweep of similarly intricate spirals and loops, could slice through the sticky strands as though they were wisps of smoke.

That finger belonged to a woman. Her hands, perhaps fittingly, were long and thin – the legs of a bigger and more imposing spider sweeping down a rival web when those fingers touched his face. He could feel every groove, every pattern, when he closed his eyes and surrendered his words to her indelible touch.

And she would smile, lips trembling at her feat. She had no words. No verbal web to envelope and assault as his did. Her fingers travelled over his face, his eyes, his lips, and she evoked an immobility akin to hers. She felt the relief, the slackening of tight muscles as silence befell him. She pressed his palms, pressed his fingers to her lips and to her body, and they would weave a web of their own in surreptitious silence.