Sarah

This week's #whimword, as chosen by yours truly!

This time around, I've used two of the characters from the novel as the starting point. This is a brand-new bit of fiction, depicting a moment unseen in the actual narrative of the novel, early in the relationship between Sarah (yes, that Sarah) and her lover, Jacob. 

If you want to find out what happens to them both, you can always pledge to pre-order the book ;-)


“Do you believe in angels?” she asked. Her voice sounded small and far away, and he saw she’d opened the French doors onto the balcony. She was leaning on the railing, the wind blowing her long, dark hair back over her shoulders. Her slight hands grasped the polished steel like a gymnast getting ready to begin a routine. Jacob looked at her, and half got out of his chair, trying to get a look at her face. He narrowed his eyes, scrutinising her.

“Why?” he asked.

“Do you think,” she said, turning her head just enough so that he could see her profile, but he couldn’t read her expression, “if I jumped off this balcony…an angel would catch me?”

“Sarah,” he said, standing up fully. He was trying to sound stern, authoritative, but she was scaring him. She turned her head all the way, and fixed him with those sad, terrible eyes of hers. Slowly, gingerly, he started to move towards her the way he would towards a wounded animal, terrified of spooking her, making her trip.

“I think they would,” she whispered. She turned away again and began to put her weight, such as it was, onto her forearms. One ill-timed change in the wind and he felt sure she’d blow away.

“Sarah, come on now. Stop-stop kidding around,” he stammered. He was uncomfortably aware that his apartment was on the twenty-third floor. Suddenly, unrestricted city vistas seemed like the worst idea in the world.

“Who’s kidding?” she said, taking a step up onto the little ledge just behind the railing. “Let’s find out.” She leaned over and he felt his heart threaten to burst out of his chest.

“I said stop, Sarah!” he shouted. “Come back inside. Please!” She looked back at him again and smiled, taking another step up. He pitched forward, half tripping over his own feet, and grabbed her around the waist, yanking her backwards. She landed awkwardly on top of him on the reassuringly solid concrete floor of the balcony, both of them breathing hard.

“S-see?” she gasped. “An angel caught me.”

Producers

This is a sort of sequel to Seed, which was my very first #whimword entry. Enjoy! 

As an aside, I'm also planning another exclusive, not-available-anywhere-else bit of flash fiction for supporters of the old crowdfunding campaign, so keep your eyes peeled!

They lived down there with him, the producers. There were the engineers, who mostly fixed the transport and delivery systems these days; the weavers, who made the clothes; the typists and the binders and the printers, who made the state-approved books and pamphlets. And then there was Solomon himself, who was in charge of the team that developed and synthesised the fresh fruit and vegetables.

Once, it had been a vast, underground hive of activity, a buzzing, whirring network of constant production, serving three-dozen settlements within a twenty-mile radius. But things had changed lately – had got harder. Information took a long time to filter through to them, but from what Solomon could gather, maybe a third of the settlements were still standing.

Rumours began to surface about the state tightening its grip, stepping up guard presence, keeping people subjugated and servile. It had forced people to stay in the hot, cramped temporary dwellings that were supposed to have been replaced with permanent housing a decade ago, and Solomon had heard tell of widespread poverty and disease. He knew the buyers always took what they wanted from the provisions meant for the wider population and he wondered if they were distributing much at all anymore.

One of the binders told him people had begun to scatter – had taken up their belongings in the middle of the night and fled towards the far hills, before their homes crumbled around them. The stories had it that there was still arable land beyond the hills, still flowing rivers and beautiful green trees. Still hope.

You couldn’t just go, though. Even Solomon knew that. You had to plan. You had to get everything ready, find weaknesses, set up your exit. You had to wait for darkness, wait for the shift change at the perimeter fences, hope you’d bribed the right person and bribed them enough. Then you could try. There was no guarantee you’d make it. But you could try. Even the guards, who lived fatter than anyone, had their limits. Even they could be pushed too far. Solomon hoped his sister and her husband had got out. He hoped they’d made it to the hills. He hoped they were free.

That hope sustained him. It kept him going when the state diktats came down, which they did more and more frequently, telling them to scale back, telling them not all their services were needed anymore. Prices dropped. Buyers dwindled. But the producers remained. The bright and glorious future they’d been promised, as captains of industry, as the saviours and the nurturers of those that remained on the surface, had faded. They’d become emblems of the waste and decay above them, rotting fruit and unsold clothes and engine parts stacked high around them, no matter how much they cut back. But still, they remained.  

Window

This is a lot grimmer than I was expecting it to be! Must be the murder mystery...
 
It's dark. Too dark. No light outside, no light in. I can't see anything, but I know I'm running out of time. No one outside to help me, no one in.


Click.


Click.


Click.


He's getting closer. He hits the crumbling walls as he goes, with that awful left hand of his, looking for me, trying to scare me into giving myself away. He doesn't call out to me or say anything. Just...


Click.


Click.


Click.


I can hear it more clearly with every passing second. I know he's only a few hundred feet away at most. I can't hide in here anymore. He knows I'm in here somewhere. It's too late to turn back. He's coming for me.


Click.


Click.


Click.


My hands are shaking. I feel like I could throw up. I can barely think straight but I know what I have to do now. There's only one way out. I have to reach the window, high up on the far wall, before he finds me.


Click.


Click.


Click.


The sun was still setting when I lost him in the woods, and then suddenly it was dark, all at once, inescapably. I wish I could see, but I don't dare turn on my flashlight. He'll only find me sooner.


Click.


Click.


Click.


I've been in here long enough to know the dimensions of the room pretty well but I'll have to guess where the window is, guess where the jagged glass juts out, waiting to slice through my skin.


Click.


Click.


Click.


It's now or never. I can still see his left hand in my mind's eye, ancient rusted metal fused with wrinkled grey flesh. I can see his low slung jaw, his empty eyes, his slack, ghoulish skin.


Click.


Click.


Click.


It's about ten or fifteen paces across the room. I pray I don't run straight into the wall and knock myself out. I pray I get the right wall.


Click.


Click.


Click.


I can see it. I'm going to make it. I'm almost there. I make a grab for the window frame. I'm free. But I slip. My hand closes around the broken window pane instead. I can feel the blood running down my arm. I want to scream, but I can't. I lunge forward, force myself through the opening, feel the ridges of glass scraping every inch of exposed flesh. I land, hard on the cold ground outside. I get to my feet, stagger forward, try to run.


Click.


Click. 


Click.

New York, a summer ago

When it's too hot
(oppressively so; clingy, sticky, messy
heat like this)
I'm minded of New York, that
summer when I ran away

and the streets
were so hot, so impossible, I thought
I'd melt,
like human ice cream,
clean away into the tarmac.

The stink of it, the crowd of it, the rush of steam
from mirage-shimmering
subway grates still
stings my nostrils even
now - brings back those days when
I longed
for the sky to burst and
free the cloud-pent
electricity -

and reminds me of the fractious,
temporary love I
felt there, that boiled and blistered in my heart,
with something like
shame
and joy in equal measure,

like taking someone else's (better, sexier) life
and trying it on, just to see how it fit,
just because I could,
then discarding it
when I was done.

Now I'm in another city (home, you
could say) with
another sea to hold me in, and
the stink is different
but the heat's the same,
swelling veins on the surface of my hands, turning skin
pink, the memory boils again.

The sweat will settle, inescapable,
just like then, and
I'll slow cook on the train
and think
of that summer when I ran away.

The Spider

Here's this week's Whimword entry. The crowdfunding thing is still going on, of course, but it's nice to take a break.

He paused for a moment on his way out when the spider caught his eye. It was only a little money spider, but there was something beautiful about it. He watched it, weaving this way and that through the bicycle's spokes, shooting tiny gossamer threads behind it. It was sort of mesmerising, the way it did that, building the web, one strand at a time. It made the bike come back to life for a second, healing it. He hadn't ridden it in years and the thing was so rusted, it was about to crumble into dust, but that spider...

"Come on," the officer called from outside. "I ain't got all day." He looked up at the doorway, but he didn't move. He wasn't done yet. He couldn't see the officer from where he was sitting, and if he closed his eyes, he could pretend he wasn't there. He could pretend it was just another day.

He thought about the day he bought the house. There were spiders then, too - hundreds of them, live and otherwise, cobwebs clinging to every surface, dust everywhere. No one had lived in it for a good twenty years and it was basically falling apart, but he loved it the minute he saw it. He could see the strong, steady bones of it, the life it could have again. It was a good house. Good things had happened there. He opened his eyes again and looked around the room. The bike was propped up against one wall, just the way it had been when Dotty was still there. He could still see her sometimes, at the very edges of his vision, laughing in the bedroom, watching him from the kitchen. But he could never turn his head fast enough to see her properly.

She'd loved this house, too. It was supposed to be their home. It was supposed to be forever. They poured so much of themselves into it, making it perfect, making it theirs. Oh well, he thought. There were bad things, too, of course - the things that had brought him here, brought him to this point. There was pain and sadness, anger and bitterness. There were things he couldn't take back, things he couldn't forgive. It was hot outside, the air breathless and full of electricity the way it was before a storm. But he felt cold all of a sudden. A shiver ran through him and he was back in the present.

"Buddy, come on," the officer yelled, his voice a little meaner. "It's time."

As he got up, he saw an unwary insect had flown into the web, its wings all gummed up as it tried to wriggle free. The more it struggled, the more stuck it became. It was only a matter of time before the spider got to it. He felt a little prickle in his eye as he watched the wretched creature.

"You and me," he said out loud. "We got a lot in common."

Dirigible

Here's another go at the Whimword challenge, and this time, it's on time! I must say, I enjoy this. It's good to make sure I keep writing while I do the whole crowdfunding thing. 

I wonder sometimes what the people on the Hindenburg airship thought when the whole thing went up in flames. I think it must have been something like what Andy was thinking towards the end of things. All happening in slow motion, or the 1937 equivalent. No escaping now. We’re going to die and it’s going to hurt more than we can bear and we’ll always be remembered as the people who died here. We were the triers, the doers, the adventurers and look what it got us.

I think the people on the ground, watching, must have been thinking something like what we were thinking while we watched him destroy himself. Rigid with horror. Powerless, but transfixed. Andy was an adventurer, too, or he was before…before. It was what I loved most about him. He was exciting. He climbed things. He jumped out of things. He crashed society parties. He sang, all the time, out loud. He danced like a wild man. Women fell at his feet. He lived.

No one could say for sure what changed or why, but somewhere along the way, the light went out in him. It didn’t happen all at once. It was more like a candle, sputtering, burning down to the wick. Giving up. He stopped living long before he died. He tried to brush it aside at first, tried to pretend it was nothing. He’d be fine, he said. Just a little funk, he said, that’s all. Happens to the best of us, he said, and then he laughed, and I believed him. We all did, for a while. But you can’t relight a candle when there’s nothing left to burn.

There was something apt about the way he went out. It was like he was trying to reignite himself. The difference between his ending and the Hindenburg, I suppose, is that it wasn’t an accident, no matter what the police report said. He stole his brother’s sports car, and crashed it, going a hundred miles an hour, into the side of a townhouse. He took out himself, the car and half the ground floor in one big ball of flames. It was almost impressive, if you didn’t stop to think about it.

Here’s to you, Andy, I guess. I loved you more than you ever knew. The trier. The doer. The adventurer. The doomed dirigible passenger. 

My novel

It's time. I am now commencing banging on about this everywhere I can. I've already done it on my other blog. I've already done it on email and Facebook and Twitter. The novel is written. The crowd-funding page is up. You can find it here.

This has been a long time in the making but we're not there yet, so if anyone who reads this feels inclined to pledge, I'd be incredibly grateful. Modern times being what they are, it's now vanishingly rare for debut novelists to get big book deals straight out of the gate, so I've decided to go a different way.

I was sceptical at first, I admit, but I've seen the quality of the work that comes out of Unbound and I am heartily impressed. I only hope people are also impressed enough with me!

I must also add that I am already incredibly grateful to everyone who has helped so far. I'm truly humbled by your generosity!

By the way, don't forget this is the first draft and will be edited, but if you do pick up any little hiccups (like my mum noticed I'd said "jumble sale", which is a UK thing, instead of "rummage sale", the US equivalent) let me know and I'll make a note.