ANGLING

By the weed pool, the fat man sat.

The heat of the day had made it seem natural to be bare...but, of course, with the beer belly between, he could never seem nude to himself...except, on reflection, by other means.

He stared into the pool, watching colourful fish amid his own mountainous geography. By some quirk of light and meniscus, he suddenly envisioned a winsome woman draped in fine greenery and darting jewellery, fantail eyebrows above sparkling nipplestones.

He shook free of the daydream, before the flattering image could take purchase.

He was not fishing for compliments.

His flyrod cranked like a crane, in full view from each and every angle.

(published 'Small Press Scrappings' 1991)

A NEEDLESS PALLIATIVE

Far too many ghosts believe that they actually exist, whereas, self-evidently, they are fallacious forgeries, iniquitous imitators, malicious mimics, cheap cheeky charlatans and other choice names that I can easily find to describe them, if the need ever arises. Simply because they are dead and have assumed a wispy watery whitish garb, they should not take it upon themselves to act like phenomena which, needless to say, cannot bear sane, sensible nor scientific scrutiny without shrivelling up into a yet more untenable gossamer of mumbo-jumbo, more akin to spiritual panaceas than delicious frissons of terror. You can be sure of believing me, because it goes without saying that I am the only genuine ghost in existence and, thus, very much in the know about such matters. So, rest easy and don't ever, ever invest belief in ghosts, because, of course, I've retired. I gave up haunting even before so-called Mankind emerged from the primeval slime.

(Published 'The Third Half' 1994)

DUST TO DUST

Mrs. Barge peered into the bath. There was an ingrained tide-mark looping about six inches from the rim. Almost gouged into the enamel: the strongest astringent would have no possible purchase upon it.

Mrs. Barge's first-born baby, now grown-up, barged around the house in a lonesome game of blind bluff. Her husband, even at this moment, was grunting in a far-away closet. The other babies were braying in the empty scullery, eager for something to eat. Even the kitten looked old.

Returning from a holiday was always like this.

Mrs. Barge did not question the ugly bath-mark, despite nobody having been in their house for a whole fortnight. Probably burglars, one of whom had taken a bath, instead of their more usual stigmata.

Nothing appeared missing except a large chunk of her memory. The house was far too shiny for a fortnight's dust-filled emptiness.

"Mummy, Mummy!" A baby had run into the bathroom.

"Yes, Dear." Second nature to respond.

"Daddy says the house smells of clean things - like wax polish - and air-wick - and pine disinfectant - and suds - and coal-tar - and ..."

"Yes, Dear." The same reply but said differently.

Something was in the air, amid the warmth rising from the radiators. It was in the churning pipes that fed the benighted house and emptied its deepest slurries. It was in the shadow-beams of dust. It was in the bath.

Mrs. Barge vowed never to go on holiday again, because it always made coming back worse than ever. Holidays were hell.

She ignored the wave of dirty darkness as it swept from room to room, seeking the sluice trough of its own spent dreams. Each dust particle a baby one.

(published  'Whispers From The Dark' 1995)

IF BREATH BE FIRE

If breath be fire, then we shall finally go up in smoke. As they say, there's no breath without life. But life without breath? Who knows. Yet I really must start at the beginning: the graveyard: a place that would normally have served better as an ending. Furthermore, in that same graveyard, Mary Louise lost her innocence. When she possessed two Christian names up front when other people had to make do with merely one (with any additional ones barely hinted at by initial letters) I am still uncertain. Perhaps she needed the force of two Christian names when faced with evil in the shape of myself. But I was not evil until she created the evil in me simply by her act of existence: like bait. And, yes, I am fully aware that graveyards were not exactly prime places for 'wooing a sweetheart'; but as her widower father seemed to know more about young men's intentions than an old man had any right to know, what alternative had I other than to sneak here out one moonless night, ensuring that the latch on the garden gate didn't click? Only darkness, in the end, could further our possibilities. It was a short hop to the graveyard where I set about proving to her father, if vicariously, that I was no motherfucker, but simply someone who wanted to lay a ghost.

Mary Louise, I hasten to add, was no easy target. Her prerequisite was love. Indeed, we had already undergone a relentless period of 'courting': a word her father would have used in his right royal failure to call spades, spades. Public places had worn rather thin as means of passing time together. Time, if nothing else, needed to be spent expensively, given the nature of Mary Louise's passion for nothing-but-the-best. If the trust were known (and, even upon the bring of breathlessness, she failed to grasp it), I was both nothing and the best: a fact which could not be understood other than by inference. Strong words and exactitude merely subtracted from meaning. Truth had to be worked at: worried and teased from the unsurrendering past. Only digging would suffice: through one of the loosened earths: towards a sainted fire.

(published 'Vampires Anonymous' 1993)

SALT RITES

The beach was empty of all things unseaworthy, except for the flowers, palely bedraggled and indistinguishable from the salt-ridden seaweed. The mourners cast them upon the grey waves only for the waves to cast them back.

The wake was being held in the cliff-top manor, the noise of which could even be heard at the sea's edge. Tiny shapes danced slowly across the bay windows, since nobody had possessed the foresight to draw the long heavy curtains across the huge expanses of moonglit glass.

From the beach, though, with fitful frothy gurgles of prematurely night-stained sea in frisky dalliance with my bare toes, the manor appeared as small as a windswept dolls house precariously set against the precocious deepening of the sky.