In the crazy woman’s filthy flat the new temp from the Council Inspectorate Office was struggling with the old girl’s misconception about him. She seemed to think he was an actual inspector, a surveyor, even. She was asking awkward questions about her
Crone:
plaster condition, waterproofed inner coat and the cracked ballbearings.
Narrator:
Did she actually say cracked ballbearings? He wasn’t sure. He blustered through the memorised set response
Temp:
I need to reiterate that I am only conducting an audit of the property
Crone:
Like the domesday booke
Temp:
You’ll need to report any repairs to the council
Crone:
An inventory of all King William, Arch Duke of Cambridge and Normany’s, newly acquired lands and posessions.
Narrator:
He hadn’t really been listening. His mind had been elsewhere. On the slow puncture in his back tyre. And the cycle pump.
Temp:
The fucking cycle pump.
Narrator:
He blustered
Temp:
Reiterate…I’m only conducting an audit…report repairs to council…
Crone:
And the installation of the new front door, three years it took them.
Narrator:
She had to have her letter flap hanging off before they lifted a finger. Who would be so low as to steal his shitty cycle pump any way.
Temp:
I need to climb up into your loft hatch
Narrator:
He said. Back on Script now. Check the loft. Check the CO2 and smoke alarms.Photograph the boiler. It wasn’t her that done this to the bathroom.
Crone:
the paint just started falling off
Temp:
Was there mould?
Crone:
Mould? Was there mould? There was so much mould I had it coming out my ears.
Narrator:
Three house calls back the back tyre had completely deflated. That’s when he noticed some fucker had nicked his cycle pump.
Crone:
I didn’t even need to do any stripping, it just came off in my hand.
Temp:
Reiterate…conducting…report…council
Narrator:
He flustered as he thankfully backed out the front door, She said
Crone:
don’t forget to close the gate, I don’t want the cat getting out
Also called Black Annis Image by Jenny Clarke taken from the cover of Leicestershire Legends retold by Black Annis (Bob Trubshaw ISBN 978 1872 883 779)
Deep in the Dane Hills area of Leicester there is said to be a dark dank cave inhabited by a terrifying woman-creature known as Cat Anna. Her skin is blue, her hair is matted unkempt fur, her fingernails are blood-blacken claws, her tongue long long and sandpaper rough, she is naked apart from a girdle made of babies-skulls.
They say that Cat Anna has her own underground tunnel running from her cave-lair right into the compound of the Leicester Castle, a building of ancient repute. It is not known if Richard III ever walked this tunnel, but I could resist the opportunity to band-wagon-jump the latest Leicester-related tourism-myth.
I have heard tell that there is a certain gatehouse in the Castle wall, that to this very day children refuse to pass through after dark. A place where youth tremble, weep and withdraw, calling out piteously the name Cat Anna.
According to the local folklore Cat Anna lives in a deep dank cave at the foot of the Dane Hills, rehearsing ambush tactics in her head. In her lair she is peaceful contemplating dinner. Her long blackened fingernail-claws click-clack and she thinks again about dinner.
It is said that the trees around the entrance to Cat Anna’s lair are adorned with the empty skins of dead children. Her victims slain, sucked dry, their skins discarded, like dirty linen, strung out to dry out on the death-trees thereabouts.
Children have told me that Cat Anna drops on her victims from the vaulting in the gatehouse arch, like a ginormous bat, enveloping her dinner in her boney black membranous batwing arms. Scuttling back through the tunnel with boys-bones a-crunching, Cat Anna lurks in the shadows of her lair and devours. She sucks out the very essence, from wobbling guts to slithery bone marrow. Then she flings away their skins, which catch on the up-thrown branches of the yearning yew-trees ranged around the entrance, to dry in the sun, like pork-scratchings, or parchment.
Meandering through the content on my website I came across this article, it seems to be the oldest blog posting on the site. The book review was written in august 2011, under my old pseudonym Jean Dark, the novel itself was published in 2010. I remember the book well, it was a joy to read and a joy to review. please enjoy…
The Role-Player/Pagan crossover is a well known phenomena (See Ann Finnin’s The Forge of Tubal Cain for a real life example) and this debut novel by Fay Knight mines that rich seam with surrealism, dark humour and panache.
The wonderful opening line “Kevin already knew he was going to die” immediately catapults us into the skewed world of the “Dice-Tossers”, as one long-suffering girlfriend describes them.
From there the rapid-fire plot loops and swirls and sweeps unrelentingly through all manner of strange shenanigans; UFOs, swoopy bat-like things lurking in the dark, goth clubs, a lost weekend in Whitby, an Old Dear packing a pistol fired up with the vision of a local tele-evangelist as the anti-christ.
And there’s dragon-porn too. A collection of hand drawn images which “go a bit further than Giger’s artwork” become empowered and manifested by an unspecified and possibly accidental Austin Osman Spare Zos-Kia style sex magic ritual. Knight’s writing leaves everything to the imagination and my mind kept flinging up lurid images from vintage science fantasy paperback covers. Not to mention more terrifying dragon-on-dragon variants.
The book is seamlessly written, and the dialogue is particularly witty and sharp-tongued. Characters seem to emerge progressively, realistically as well-rounded, but not always sympathetic, individuals from the initial homogeneity of a role-player clique. At least, some of them do, one or two remain repellently unfathomable, shady strange secretive huddled and whispering in the corner.
This is an enjoyable read for anyone with an interest in paganism or gaming, you’ll recognise many of the characters among your friends. It would also be an ideal yule gift for any sigil-wielding, dragon-loving dice-tossers you may know.
Better still, give a copy to their girlfriend, who’ll undoubtedly snigger knowingly.
Waking early, he groaned inwardly, he hated Sundays. Sundays always meandered, everything went late, still, shut or slow.
And as usual, his larder was empty, he needed to go shopping. A trip to the local supermarket was always a trial, but on a Sunday! Phew! No thanks!
For a start, they never opened til ten, hours to go. And then, the crowds, the Sunday shopping crowds, they did his fragile head in no end.
Dragging around the kitchen in his pajamas, he searched the cupboards again. Still nothing. Just ¾ bottle of home-brand red, a mouthful of brandy and four hash truffles he’d bought for his birthday, but hadn’t yet found anybody to share them with. He poured the Brandy into the wine, took one hash truffle and went back to bed.
Perhaps he could get back to sleep til the shops opened.
Within an hour the munchies had driven him back to the kitchen. Rummaging through the empty cupboards. In blood-sugar free-fall he scoffed another of the hash truffles.
Then another
Sugar sugar sugar!
Then he scoffed the last one, went back to bed.
On a whim, he climbed out of bed, put on his coat and shoes, he decided to walk the streets till the shops opened. He was munchie-ravenous, but maybe a walk would help.
At the Pelican Crossing at the end of his street, he pushed the button and waited. Slow tailbacks of Sunday drivers clogged the road, inching in both lanes of the Ring Road, into and out of the city. He waited.
Slowly at first, then with increasing urgency his attention was drawn into a big blue SUV stopped at the lights. The car seems implausibly big, large and it began to fill his vision with its impenetrable blueness. He felt he was falling into it, into a midnight blue night sky. It took a huge effort of will to pull his eyes away from the overarching hugeness of the SUV’s blue bonnet. He dragged his eyes upwards towards the windscreen. There was a woman at the steering wheel, she had an implausibly huge head, a huge blue head.
The crossing lights changed to green, but he stayed, entranced by the blue headed woman, trying not to stare.
The lights changed back.
He waited, transfixed in ignoring blue.
With deliberate dispassionate curiosity he allowed his attention to focus on the woman’s huge blue head, and decided it was the woman’s hair that was blue, the same blue as the car. Quickly he closed his eyes. Too much. He switched his eyes to the pelican crossing lights, he waited.
The Lights changed, the green walking-man blinked. Repeatedly tearing himself away from the blue vision machine, he stepped into the road. Halfway across the lights changed “Don’t Cross” screamed in his ears and he beat a hasty retreat back to the kerb. He suddenly felt he was trapped, like in the Pink Panther Cartoon – Think Before You Pink! He thinks the Blue Lady in the blue car with blue punky hair glared at him, telepathically. He suspects she has an animosity towards pink and in particular the Pink Panther, her being so blue and all.
But it meant he was psychologically prepared when the green-man lit up again. He skipped into the road
Halfway across the lights changed, green man extinguished. But he didn’t get mown down like the Pink Panther because the ring road traffic was gridlocked and nothing moved.
He slid into the supermarket.
By now he was swimming in a sugar-philic haze, the cakes in the supermarket bakery seemed sentient, calling out to him. Perhaps latching onto the munchie-mania that seemed to surround him, like a famished aura.
In the street again, trudging with 5p carrier bags stuffed with red warning label sugar, fat , carbohydrate snacks, he crossed the Pelican crossing without pushing the button or waiting for the green man, he just stepped into the road.
But he didn’t get mown down because the ring road traffic was gridlocked and nothing moved. The blue SUV with the woman with matching blue head is still there. But the car now is kind of green-ish and the woman is wearing a hat, a huge silly green hat.
This posting is part of an intermitten series of re-postings of some the earliest on this site:
Sit back and enjoy one of the earliest posts from 2019…
Drabble Blog
I recently found out that the 100 word flash-fiction/micro-stories I have been working these past three years have an actual name – “Drabble”.
The term is derived from a 1971 Monty Python book. ’nuff said!
There’s even a website to prove it.
So, ever at the rebellious cutting-edge, my newest piece – a seasonally appropriate monologue – is a variant-drabble form I’ve just invented.
It’s called a “Faux-Drabble”.
That is a piece that could pass for a drabble, but is actually 15 or so words out.
And so, I present to you Bella Basura’s First Faux-Drabble.
Cold Edges. Bella Basura 2019
Cold Edges
My winter consciousness
feels bound within cold edges.
I am double-thermal
long-johns.
And still my ankles are frozen blue.
They descend into hypothermic dysfunction, squishing like icy jelly when I stand on them.
My knees feel chilly. And my elbows.
I can’t leave the house, enraptured in my unnatural attachment to a radiator. “I love You. I want to envelope you. I want to lie all over you”. I say the same to my fur-covered hot water bottle. Hot chocolate and fleecy throws seduce me. Candles and a ‘real’ fire screen-saver on my laptop too. Hygge hygge hygge my arse.
Green and pleasant, England’s winters are mild, but still my consciousness always feels bound within cold edges.
In a crowded city centre high street an innocuous grey haired man called Joe is unceremoniously thrown to the ground by two burly uniformed men. With Joe’s chin pressed into the pavement, one security guard straddles him, twisting his left arm up behind his back. The other security guard is crushing Joe’s outstretched right arm, his steel toe-capped boot pinioning him down at the wrist.
It seems to Joe that they stay like this for a long time, a crowd of onlookers gather. It seems like a long time until the police come and arrest him. Enough time for Joe to calm down and think out the situation. He wonders how other men might have reacted if they’d found their old lady messing round town.
The incident had started half an hour earlier that morning, in the Marks and Spencer foodhall by the market.
Mary and Joe, a couple approaching retirement, are dawdling by the bakery counter.
Joe is desperately clutching a pack of belgian buns.
“Oh! Come on Joe! Be a bit adventurous for a change” Mary is wheedling.
“But we always have belgian buns on a Saturday morning”
“I know, love, but the portugese custard tarts are delicious”
“I don’t want…” Joe is truculent in that usual middle aged passive aggressive way that always piques Mary.
When was he going to have his mid-life crisis?
She’d waited 30 years for him to go wild, buy a fast car, wear clothes too young for him, start going to discos. Lord knows she’d welcome an open necked shirt and gold medallion. She’d worked her entire life waiting for the freedom of Joe’s mid-life crisis.
“You’d love them” Mary tries enticing him “I bet you’ve never even tried one”
“I don’t want to. I want belgian buns like we always have on a Saturday”
“mmm, they’re lovely?” Mary licks her lips
“How do you know” he’s suspicious
“Trust me, honey” she pats his arm
“You’ve had one haven’t you!”
“Yes” she says “I bought a packet in the week”
“A packet!” Joe is losing his cool “So you’ve had four, you’ve had four portugese custard tarts without me” He’s waving the belgian buns in her face.
She turns away “I knew you’d be like this, that’s why I didn’t tell you”
Joe is in the murderous grip of jealousy, storming off.
“Hey Joe!” Mary calls after him, as he stomps out of the shop to the bleeping of the alarm.
And security are on him, crushing him to the ground.
Mary cries out “Hey Joe, where you going with that bun in your hand?”
Time for some more offerings from my Slush Pile Bonanza series, stories I wrote that have been hanging around in boxes or carrier bags under my bed, unpublished, possibly unpublishable.
So here is an unpublished short story that I’ve had knocking around for over 5 years.
Dod Pledges
“But I don’t want to stop.” Dod finally said. Standing up he sauntered to the bar to buy himself his third pint. I’d declined to join him after the first pint, it was only lunchtime, and I had to be back in the shop this afternoon. And in anycase, I was there to get a job done.
When Dod had stormed out of the bookshop where we both worked and slunk into the pub round the corner the Boss sent me after him, to talk him down. Truth is Dod had thrown one hell of a hissy-fit when the boss challenged him over the 3 empty and one half-full cans of special brew knocking around under the book tokens counter. Dod had screamed his resignation, and exiting had slammed the door so hard that the open/closed sign fell off. Boss sent me to placate him and bring him back.
Dod returned to the pub table and sat worshipping his new pint in silence.
I looked at my friend with sympathy. I worried for him even though he was a workmate rather than a friend, we were occasional drinking partners. Not that I put too much store on that – Dod drank with everyone, anyone. I knew he was going through a bad divorce, his daughter refused to see him and his wife was in therapy, still he carried on drinking. I liked him, I wanted him to be alright.
He was half-way through the third pint when I finally spoke “Look Dod, Boss-man is offering to finance you through rehab. He’ll pay, keep your job open, get off the booze at his expense. He’s being very fair, you know.” Dod didn’t respond beyond a raised eyebrow.
I waited in silence till the last minute, then I stood up “He’s giving you a big last chance here Dod, He’s offering to support you through rehab.” Dod gulped at the dregs of the finished pint, groaned and stared at the empty glass “I don’t want rehab” He said “And I don’t want a job at the end of it. I just want another pint” And with that he hauled himself up and off to the bar.
When the head line, heart line, life line and fate line connect it can create a letter “M” in the palm of the hand. It means you are blessed with good fortune. It is a sign of strong intuition. Not everybody has an “M” in their hand, are you one of the chosen few?
I am sitting here, staring at the enormous “M” I have in my right palm, and feeling blessed and encouraged, I’m feeling validated.
The “M” is a sign of strong intuition and creativity, as well as determination and career growth…
There is a stirring in my memory and I intuitively look at my left palm. Astonishingly, I also have a huge “M” in the centre of my left palm. I am very special, I am so rare, I have two “M”s, one in each hand. I am a doubly supremely perceptive person.
But there is a nagging memory in the back of my mind…
You are special, you are chosen…
And then the memory drops into the light.
I am eleven years old, and I am browsing in the bargain basement of a grim little seaside junk shop. I pick up a slightly damp-stained, battered blue linen bound Edwardian book, “Cheiro’s Book of Mystic Chiromantic Palmistry”. I sit in the corner of the shop and read the book and discover I have an “M” in my palm, on both my palms. I buy the book and devour it over many years.
Those with an “M” in the palm have great power of perception and curiosity…
And there again, is the nagging doubt in the back of my head, the vague remembering that everybody I spoke to at school about my palmistry discoveries also had an “M” in their palm. Or am I imagining that?
A person with an “M” in their palm will be successful in whatever field they choose, they will become famous painters, they will excel in the world of literature…
It dawns on me that I have known for decades that I have the miraculous “M”s in my hands – but then so does everyone else. I wonder what happened to that book after I left home.
The “M” indicates a hugely successful, driven and intuitive individual, whose personality ensures money will flow to them organically…
On seaside holidays my Mum was an avid frequenter of fortune telling booths, I would be dragged around fairgrounds, left to wait outside the tent while Mum had her cards, or palms, or bumps, or tealeaves read. So I have stood aside at the threshold of the psychic carnival all my life. And with my great intuition I can see that all is not as it seems.
If you have an “M” you will never fail in your endevours…
The psychics would always ask my Mum if she was searching, did she search? was she a seeker? then they ask her if she herself is a psychic. And that was the hook, she greased their palms and stepped into the light. My mum was always beside herself, delighted, she would talk about it for days. “you know, I do think I am psychic” she would say. “I do believe I am”. Fortune tellers gave her the validation she sought.
As for me with my many years of failure and discontent lengthening by the day, I’m a bit more cynical.
As a person blessed with the “M” marking on your palm anything is possible for you… Sign up to our monthly guide to psychic success for only £4.99 a month.
I login in an effort to drag my head out of this bad-B-movie-sci-fi-horror we are living through at the moment, here’s something I wrote earlier…even a collage I did in Europe last century.
What Time? Collage by Bella Basura 1994
Time Warp In The ‘dam
“Sooooo” She drew the word out with undisguised relish “What are we going to do with our last night in Amsterdam, eh?” She laughed, poked him in the ribs and stretched out languorously across the counterpane, sprawled like a self-satisfied cat. “Our last night as twisted British rock-star and unofficial girlfriend, cut adrift in the city of sin?” “Just give it a rest” He mumbled. “I’m going to sleep” “No no no” She laughed “Lets live a while before we go back to our boring lonely adulterous reality.” He turned away and She could see he was already half way back there, miserable and contemplating meeting his wife again after eight days half-explained absence. “Look! what do you want from me?” She wheedled
He said “I don’t want nothing”
“Fine, nothing. I’m going to get something to eat then” she was rummaging in the supermarket carrier bag on her bedside table, smacking her lips. “a crisp buttie in a cheap hotel room, hahaha” she laughed.”Rawk ‘n’ Roll!” “that’s pathetic” he sneered “you’re not really very rock’n’roll at all are you, with your carrier bag of crisp butties” “yeah, well you’re not really a rock star are you” she countered
He sat up on the bed “I’ve got my following” He was irked.
“Yeah, but not in Britain, eh? Only in Holland and places where they can’t understand what you’re singing about. Are you big in Japan?” “I’ve got my following” “What does your wife think?” she knew she was probing to be provocative “Does she think? Your wife?”
“No, she doesn’t think, she looks after the kids and stuff like that, she doesn’t need to think. Will you just get off my case” He switched the light off, plunging the hotel room into the vague neon gloom that passes for night in the city.
She took off her rings, her jewellery and watch, she lay back fully clothed on top the bed. It was one of those sinking moments, she began to wonder why she’d come along at all. It had sounded great when he’d first mentioned the tour, – his first solo tour, a week in the Low Countries, hotels and food all in, she only had to find the money for the fares. The fares, that was her fare, and – “Could you lend me the money, just until they pay me at the gigs” – his fare too. Funny how his pay had diminished, then disappeared after the first few venues, they’d been living off her savings all week. She closed her eyes in disgust, she hadn’t known about the wife either.
Drifting in half-sleep she ruminated in growing disappointment, she dreamt of their first meeting in the pub all those weeks ago. Dipping in and out of hypnogogic sleep-states, she saw him as a giant tape-worm , all mouth and arsehole, perched on a barstool downing pints, glass and all, gurgling about the losers in the band he’d just dumped, “Losers every one of them, even if they are famous now, deep down they’re born losers” he kept repeating. Was she really so gullible? Had she really been that stupidly smitten with him?
Suddenly, she was wide awake, she peered at her watch in the gloom, the hands on the retro-style dial read 1.35. Amsterdam would still be kicking she decided, plenty of time to still have fun before the flight back at 9am tomorrow. She tucked her handbag into the suitcase – she intended to do the rockstar’s girlfriend debauchery bit to the hilt, no point in carrying valuables around, in this sort of mood chances were she’d lose her handbag in the first bar, best leave her passport, plane tickets and bits in the suitcase. She grabbed her leather jacket, stuffed the last of her dope and cash into the zippered pocket and headed for the door. “I’m off out, looking for some dirty fun. You coming?”
“I’m asleep” the rock star grumbled.
The street seemed uncannily quiet as she stepped from the hotel lobby, she began walking, seeing nobody. In fact, the usually bustling lanes around the hotel seemed totally empty, every where seemed to be closed, even the trams had shut down. Some City of Sin this is, she thought heading for the nearest coffeeshop.
But even the coffeeshop was dark and so she plonked herself down on a bench, spun herself up a mini-spliff and gazed forlornly into the grimy green of the canal. She wondered when Amsterdam had become so conservative, since when had Europe’s most alive city become a post-midnight deadspot. In the preternaturally tranquil streets she thought she sensed a weird glowing, growing light, as if night were turning to morning. An unusual sensual response, she thought, I must be very stoned, Good Sense, Amelia she said to herself. Spliff done she headed on towards the city’s main drag, the stoned light was definitely intensifying, in fact there really did seem to be a streak of sunrise smearing the east horizon. She crossed the canal into Oudeshans to the charming chiming of the Montelbaanstoren clock tower. One two three chimes, then four five six seven eight. eight? Looking up to the big clock face on the tower her heart did a strange faltering flip, she unstrapped her wristwatch and as she turned it through 180 degrees she turned 2.30am to 8am. She laughed momentarily, realising she’d put the wrist watch on upside down in the darkness of the hotel room, she’d had a time warp, she laughed at herself, at the idea of Amsterdam gone moderate, she laughed, even though she’d just lost five and half hours of her life, and she hadn’t even been drunk. She laughed.
It was full daylight by the time she got back to the hotel. The room was empty, the suitcases gone, he’d already left. There was a note for her on the dirty rumpled bedsheets. “I’ve gone home. Where’s the money? I couldn’t even get breakfast! Where are you?”
Bella Basura online 