She will provide.

In the marsh, past the “Noxious: Keep Out” sign; there was a place which reeked of flatulence.

When Fangy found this place she curtsied and the cat bells in her hair did tinkle.  Mouth and nose muffled behind a scarf she politely said: “Hi, how you doing?”

Then she fell silent for a while. There were words in her head but they were a bit shy coming out. Suddenly self-conscious, she glanced over her right shoulder where congealing swamp gas billowed and stewed. Then she glanced over her left shoulder, but no, the words she was seeking did not linger in that direction either. There was only the mud, secretly stealing back her footprints.

“Okay,” she cleared her throat with a nervous rasp. “It is like this … we’re fucking up Moult World and we’ve only just got here!” … …

Serpent Time

The beast’s long antelope legs stretched from one side of the cove to the other. This impressive feat conjured into mind the Colossus bridging the harbour of Rhodes …  but that wonder of antiquity was not half as curious – or friendly – as this thing. Its calf like head curved down towards the ferry men as they steered their raft home. A placid look of intrigue writ large on its alien features.

Nestled on her knees Beth met its eyes and let out a small whimper.

“You thought the Habitat side of the lake weird,” Ming leaned over and patted her reassuringly on the knee. “Wait until you cop a load of Edenist Central!” He swept open his arms in an expansive gesture that set the raft rocking.

Beth tried desperately to ride on the coat tails of Ming’s enthusiasm. The water on this side of the lake shimmered in perfect transparency. The gentle sweep of hillside felted with grasses in many hues of green … as well as others of not such a conventional colour. Outbreaks of indecent pink coral grew on the land and splayed softly in the wind like the flowering insides of sexual organs. It was indeed a vision; but Beth could not muster any excitement at the prospect of her new life in this pastel painted paradise.

Since coming to Moult World Beth’s life had warped into something hideously different to the one promised to her on her wedding day. Weirdness and lewd behaviour were everywhere she turned. In this strange alien world she craved something familiar to cling to less she drowned. But her husband was insane with the Shock Syndrome … and seemingly more loyal to his friends in the Habitat than to her.

When the Ferry Men arrived one consistent from the Olde World had at last won out … God! She reasoned, only he could have trumped her wedding vows. One day she would be reunited with the Ralph she knew; but for now, she needed something tangible  to rely upon. She hoped and prayed that He … that They … understood.

“Hey, they’ve sent out a welcome party,” Errol observed. He was now so weak from paddling all day that Ming had to row in double time to keep the raft on course.

The strange leggy creature elegantly withdrew its four shamefully long limbs as they sailed beneath it. The Edenist community gathered on the encroaching shore. A cheering crowd with a catalogue of raised arms waving in joyful greeting to the ferry men and their first ever passenger.

“Oh shit,” muttered Ming his trademark playfulness suddenly absent. “Lotty and Fergus will be there.” His tone dropped to a conspiratorial whisper even though there was no chance of anyone hearing him on the shore. “Anticipate Hosannas and much gnashing of teeth, dear friends.”

There was splashing as two bare chested men ran into the water.  Their spectacularly white smiles flashing as they broke into competitive butterfly strokes.

“Ming, please don’t go antagonising anyone,” Errol pleaded with his friend. “You don’t know how lucky you were last time.”

“Errol I do solemnly promise,” Ming placed one paw over his heart. “That as the good Lord is my witness on this day …. I shall not antagonise one solitary, single good Christian.” Errol glowered at his friend suspicious as always of his choice of words.

The swimmers were almost to the raft.

“Praise Be Brothers!” Ming suddenly called out his booming voice a fog horn shattering the tranquility of the bay. “And Oh Lordy Lord do we have a treat for you? Oh yes and indeed!” He lobbed the oar over his shoulder causing Errol to duck and the raft to rock precariously. “See here!” and he gestured grandly towards Beth. “We got us an honest-to-goodness atheist Convert. And let me tell you boys she just can’t wait to have her belly stuffed full of apple pie and her head crammed to the point of splintering with the name of Hey-Zeus!”

The swimmers beamed uncomprehendingly out of the water. They gripped the sides of the raft and with strong legs started to kick for the shore.

Ming turned to Errol

“So how was that?”

Errol shrugged.

“Another victory for Christian patience I suppose.”

Charon & Co.

Out in the lake’s depths the faces of the water-weirds gazed gloomily towards the shore. The mid-winter high gravity had pinned the water surface drum tight. Under that glassy pressure the bubbles containing their songs could not float into the air to pop. Along with the entire valley they ached for the day when ripples would be free to skitter across the water and their whale-song melodies could  rise and once again greet each new sun rise.

Then one cold witching hour the fat winter moon started to shrink back to its old haunt in the night’s sky. Within a fortnight it had retreated enough for the lake’s water to rise and for water-weirds everywhere to rejoice in bubbly joy.

It was a vivid morning when a solitary raft took to the lake.

Swirling eddies danced where the long pole broke the water. The raft’s wake was gossamer fine; a testimony to how water worthy the large lily-pad, turned lake faring vessel, really was.

The soft breeze disturbed the downy fluff that remained on Errol’s scalp. Of course his nerves were rattling at this new enterprise. Still, there was something about the rhythmic lean that accompanied every gentle plunge of the oar that calmed him some. So he settled into his out-of-time rowing action and found himself meditating on feeling nearly at ease …and purposeful  … for a change.

Errol’s companion suddenly shifted his weight at the stern of the raft. The front of the lily pad yawned into the air and Errol’s thoughts rapidly returned  to drowning, social inadequacy and prematurely thinning hair.

“Please sit still,” he spluttered as the lip of the raft slapped back into the water with an erotic slurp.

Ming languished like a docile silverback gorilla at the stern of the raft. He feigned surprise as if he had woken to find he had company.

“Is that anyway to talk to your first passenger!”

“You’re not a passenger,” Errol spluttered, keen as ever to avoid any form of confrontation “We’re business partners in this, remember? When are you going to do a bit of rowing?”

“Hey I know I can row,” Ming squinted suspiciously at Errol. “But I can’t say with any degree of certainty that I know that you can.”

Errol attempted to process this and after a moment gave up. With a little sigh he reached into the water and scooped up the oar which he had dropped. He steadied himself once more into a rowing position.

“It would be nice if you helped out once in awhile, that’s all,” Errol pouted.

“I am helping on many levels … you’re just not aware of any of them yet.”

There was no certainty in this business venture. In fact Errol got heart palpations when he contemplated the enormity of the task he and Ming had set themselves. To avoid an onset of said palpations Errol closed his eyes and thought back to that moment with Si-Ying Li.

“It is a good thing to do”, she had whispered in his ear when he first mentioned the idea to her. He had looked at her unsure what to do next. Anyone else – he supposed – would have slowly leant in for a kiss. But,  it had been enough to content himself with his reflection luxuriating in her eyes. “It could bring the Edenists and Atheists together,” she had continued. He had wanted to remind her that the other Settlers did not call themselves the ‘A-word’ … but he conceded the moment was too fragile to dispel with a semantic difference of opinions.

“It … is … a … good … thing,” those soft words had followed Errol around like a persistent butterfly ever since.

“Hey twat!” Ming’s reprimand cut through the luxury of Errol’s memory.  “What kind of Ferry Man ferries with his eyes shut?”

Errol jarred back to reality and glanced around  to get his bearings.

“Sorry … I guess I’m getting the fear,” he offered by way of apology. Ming nodded sagely from back where his weight threatened to submerge the aft of the vessel. This would be the first encounter between the two settlements since the Night of the Schism. The two ferry men had no idea how they would be received by their once friends back in the Habitat.

“Yeah, well don’t forget I’m only tagging along to make sure you don’t get yourself drowned or lynched,” Ming settled his chins into his chest about to return to slumber. “The sooner we get this over with,” he mumbled sleepily, “the sooner I can get back to The Garden and those chubby, nekkid, virtuous chicks.”

Errol craned in a bit closer after missing that last mumbled sentence. “Sorry?”

“Oh you know,” Ming yawned behind closed eyes. “The usual: stuff … ‘Praise Be’, ‘Hallelujah’ and all that jazz.”

Errol  suddenly felt  small and alone  out there in the middle of the lake. Alien mountains pitted the horizon and the happy-drowned faces of the water-weirds peeered up at him from the water’s depths.  For the briefest of moments he contemplated turning back. Then distantly, and with growing insistence, he heard the beating of a butterfly’s wings … and knew just what he had to do.

“… On Moult World just as it had been on Earth.”

He licked dust caked lips with a fissured tongue. His body had been dehydrated longer than he cared to recall. A wince or even grimace was enough to crack dry skin. With a deep gasp he dunked his head into the barrel. The rain water jolted his senses and sent invigorated good news to aching limbs and fatigued muscles. Beneath the water level he opened his eyes. He had long grown accustomed to the salinity of sweat stinging his vision. This barrel water soothed tired eyes, and as it did so, he noted that the sunlight from above refracted green through the water. It had been months since he had seen that colour.

A plume of water arced behind him as he whipped his head out of the barrel. His wet matted hair thudding between his scapulas with enough force to leave him slightly winded. He lingered for a moment feeling the breeze cool against his flesh. Then in a violent motion he picked the barrel up and tipped it over himself.

The water crashing against the clay packed road made Lucifer jump. The dog dropped to a submissive posture as V. tossed the barrel aside. It clattered noisily into a wall; V. relishing its echoes as it rolled to a halt. He looked at the dog and instantly regretted the unnecessary display. He owed his life – and sanity – to his two dogs. Water dripping, he crouched down and whispered a gentle apology which Lucifer accepted with a quick lick to the face.

They had stumbled out of the desert into this township only a few hours ago. As always he had been blindfolded; as well as both wrists lashed to metres long lengths of frayed string. The dogs’ had started barking. Their leads going limp in his hands. An excited pitch to their yelps told him that danger was far away and it was safe to remove the blindfold. When he did so he scuffed at the road with his toes to test the truth of the mirage. He growled mistrustful of the doorways and their quaint little door handles that lined the street either side of him. In the desert he had deliberately unlearned his senses to keep the monsters at bay. He had not braved two months in that wasteland – beset by phantoms and nightmares – to end up ensorcelled by an illusion.

But the rain water caught in the deep staved barrels waiting at the corners of each street finally convinced him of the reality of this place. Those first few mouthfuls had turned to sludge in the back of his mouth but had tasted exquisite nonetheless.

He explored the township …  and within an hour knew he could not linger.

So there V. stood at the edge of the street. Fine trickles of ash and dust parting around his ankles as they leaked back into the desert. It was as if that vast desolate place was drawing breath. Each inspiration sucking in countless tiny fragments of the township into its dry, limitless lungs. Soon there would be no evidence of this place left. The desert would claim it. Erase it as assuredly as the tide does writings in the sand.

Lucifer probed at his master’s pocket with an insistent nose. V. smiled and immediately ribbons of blood slid from the edges of his mouth where dry skin could not cope with expression. He glanced down and his gaze was met by two pathetically hopeful expressions. Chuckling, he reached into his pocket then inverted his arm and opened his fist. Lucifer’s and Star’s thin tails beat enthusiastically as they eyed the treats revealed in their master’s palm. One at a time they plucked the dried flesh away and then all delicacy forgotten they wolfed down the meat … oblivious to the fact that that was the last of their master’s supply.

With a deep, heartful sigh V. bent double and threw the cargo bag over his shoulder. Muck encrusted furs draped between its worn leather straps. It took a few moments for him to adjust to its awkward weight. Then he uncoiled two leads and without any fuss found Lucifer and Star at the ends.

Finally he unpacked the blindfold.

It was an old strip of suede he had cut from the back of a walking boot. Two tattered laces served to secure it over his eyes. Weeks of tight wear had moulded it to the contours of his eyes sockets and nose bridge.

The monsters in the desert did not appreciate being seen. He had learned that the hard way. Early on in his search one of the great beasts  had unfurled a tendril that crashed into him like an ooze encrusted steam engine. The blindfold was now hovering a few centimetres from his eyes before he tied it in place. The desert yawned open over its dirty suede edge. At that moment it looked utterly empty between him and that eerily straight horizon … but he knew just how densely populated it was out there! That thought alone was enough to trigger the process that brought the monsters out into the open. Terror told him to tie the blindfold now, but standing there on the border of the town, he guessed he was just beyond the scope of their strange territory.

Perhaps -  he reasoned – he could afford one peek.

His imagination and human senses fell like a mesh over the panorama before him. The combination was a heady mix to the things that lived in that desert. It painted them into being with clumsy strokes of the mind’s eye. V. knew they were not inherently malevolent. Something about the process of being perceived by human senses hurt them.

The things towered into the stratosphere, inexhaustible, like looking up at skyscrapers whilst emersed within their concrete foundations. Only comparisons could come close to translating the creatures into words. Even then those words were clumsy and inaccurate. The monsters swarmed all over the desert like a huge, impassive reef of jellyfish. Individually they were like brain matter that had been uncurled as if intestines. Viewed from this distance they were like nebulous bacteria that defied scale.  They were like these things … but completely unlike anything human vocabulary was built to describe .

Humans had no common ground with these things at all.

V. shrugged and tied the blindfold in place. Immediately banishing the monsters and plunging himself into darkness. Then he groped for the clay with which he plugged his ears: a safety measure less a stray sound wished one of the creatures into creation.

There he stood momentarily in the sensory alienation with which he had crossed the great desert … until two soft tugs of the leads in his hands reassured him that he was not alone.

Led by Star and Lucifer, Victor returned to the desert; a blind man clinging onto the memories of a crumbling town he had happened to chance upon. He needed to make haste. Time would erode his memories just as surely as the wasteland was dissolving the town itself. Time and desert conspiring to rob him of the knowledge and lessons he had learned today.

The knowledge that they were not the first human ‘guests’ invited to live on this planet was indeed something of a surprise. But the lessons that “ leaders, beliefs and War were the only monsters they need fear on “Moult World”  … came as  no revelation at all.

(Part 3 of 3)

Chinese Whisperings

Forgive the blatant self promotion … normal Moult World activities will be resumed shortly!

At the beginning of the year the nice people at “Chinese Whisperings” publications kindly invited me along to join their intertwined short story experiment. Their offer caught me in a rare moment of sobreity and lucidity and I said “yes”. The results proper will be published in Novemeber in something ever so antiquated called a “Book” … but in the meantime you can check out some excerpts from my story by clicking on this here link =  Blog | Chinese Whispering

Apparently I am the Featured Writer of the week so as well as giving you some tasters from “Something Mean in the Dream Scene” each day they’ll be dropping pieces of an interview with me (as if anyone would want to read that!) and another one of my shorts and/or some more Moult World stuff … ‘cos I love Moult World so.

That aside I would just like to add – at the risk of sounding like some mawkish fool of an actor at an award ceremony – that  Dale deserves a doff of the hat for designing such a sweet, kick ass website. And that it has been an absolute joy and learning experience working with my two editors Jodi and Paul (links to whose respective websites you can find in my Blog Roll column opposite). They are two of the finest people I have never met.

So please do come over and have a read … and help keep storytelling alive.

“Thy Will Be Done … .”

Mister Pants:         It is thinking of “Mr Stay Puft the Marshmallow Man” when Peter Venkman tells you to empty your mind.

Michael:       Gravity was a tyrant to wake up to.  I remember Jim’s heavy footfalls hammering down into my dreams. Before I heaved open my eyes lids I collected myself with a small mantra. I start every day with some repetitious and familiar words. It helps prepare for whatever Moult World has in store for me and keeps the trapdoor barred for another day.

Mister Pants:       It is the lies we tell ourselves to keep the world aligned.

Hedge:         A headache like a crown of cement demanded my head stay on the jacket I was using for a pillow. But Jimbo demanded louder that we wake up. I peeled myself from my sleeping mat. The three “Georges” peeked nervously at our camp site from a good few paces off … but it was the spectacle of my best friend that made me draw my breath.

Mister Pants:        It is when bad news arrives before its messenger.

Michael:       The desert was grey; but Jim was greyer. He stood before us like a cadaver of someone we had known since school. Lines of red shock etched his eyes. He opened his mouth once … twice but no sounds came out. He then visibly steeled himself and tried again.

Hedge:         When at last he spoke it was to tell us we had to go back. To leave our possessions here, forget Victor, flee The Kingdom and make haste back to the Habitat. Once there we were to gather everyone we loved: his children, our lovers. One of us would even have to cross the lake and drag Ming away from the Edenists … for we needed to return to the Olde World now!

Mister Pants:        It is the knowing when unseen eyes push against you.

Michael:       Of course, we argued. We had come too far, I said, and now on the trail of Victor’s camp sites it was only a matter of time before we found him. Hedge agreed but much more forcibly. He was adamant, even furious, that abandoning Moult World would never be an option for him. Our reedy little people voices must have echoed throughout that desolate land. Jim’s head shook heavily from side to side as he denied our every answer … but our intransigence grew louder and louder until it thundered across the plains.

Hedge:         NOTHING WILL EVER DRIVE US FROM MOULT WORLD!

Michael:       We fell into a hushed truce. Hedge sullenly made breakfast as I packed the camp. Jim stood there frowning and trembling ignoring our industry. He was deep inside his own head and I was not inclined to help him rationalise his hysteria. Mister Pants clearly upset by the argument led the three “Georges” off into the distance … once more on the trail of our missing friend.

Mister Pants:         It is getting up in the middle of the night and not looking in the bathroom mirror less you conjure into existence something over your shoulder.

Michael:       That night we camped again on the remains of another of Vic’s camps. He had dug a small trench, sheltered beneath a boulder, in which he had slept with his dogs. We made camp and still none of us spoke. Mister Pants tethered “The Georges” some distant off because they had began to smell. I wrapped myself in a sleeping bag as their lonely bellows carried on the wind.  When sleep came it took me to a primal corner of my subconscious where I was reptilian simple and uncaring.

I awoke in the early hours to a strange noise.

Hedge:         Blood clots glistened in the night; ruby puddles varnished the ground. Congealed sticky tendrils, dripping on the breeze. What was this nightmare I had woken to? I took another sleepwalker’s step into the visceral landscape. Bones lay scattered and cast off, flailed meat and severed veins hanging off them. The smell of offal warm against my cheek.

I don’t recall which of us vomited first.

Jim:                      It is suddenly remembering what it was as a child … to know – for a fact – that monsters exist.

Michael:       Jim stood glistening in gore and he made us understand. He told us what he had been seeing. And his words etched at the night around us and slowly he carved the monsters into plain sight.

Mister Pants:      It is realising that five senses are meagre indeed when it comes to describing the mysteries … and terrors … of a universe that will always need answering.

Hedge:         His words were just clues. But once on that path our senses hurried to their own conclusions. Bit by bit we  understood … They were everywhere.

(Part 2 of 3)

“Thy Kingdom Come … “

Michael:                A skeptic is someone who recognises that whatever we know is only the way things seem …

Jimbo:                   The desert leeched colour. The sky, once so brilliant, was a cloying mass of shifting cloud. Mists formed spontaneously wherever I looked, manifesting – as if deliberately – to suck vision into narrow avenues. Sound couldn’t be trusted either. Our voices, no matter how loud we shouted were reduced to the size and pitch of mice. What’s more exposed flesh told the brain lies! I had to walk with my sleeves rolled right down over my fists. If not the hairs on my arms leapt to attention. Where my skin touched air I couldn’t shake the sensation that my flesh was being pinched by unseen babies … pleading for me to turn around and leave my friends to this foolhardy rescue mission.

Michael: … but a skeptic is only half way there if he denies that metaphysical forces may be at work in the world. In “The Kingdom”  appearance was as mercurial as dreams …  and your point of view needed to be supple in order to survive. I believe that is why Jim suffered so much more than the rest of us.

Mister Pants:       I liked the pretty colours. They tasted great.

Jimbo: After we found Victor’s first camp we located a dozen more. Each tucked into the border of the Plant Superhighway and showing evidence of wholesale butchery. It seemed our friend had spent time curing meat and fattening himself (and his dogs) up before entering the wilderness … signs of a man clearly comfortable with his place at the top of the food chain.

Hedge: The herd of Doozers gibbered like Frenchmen as we approached. These shaggy, buffalo like beasts occupied a valley which swept away from the desert and divided the Plant Superhighway in a disturbingly perpendicular line. They looked at us blankly as Michael and Jimbo set about slaughtering one of their number. They used short bladed camping knives, and it took an eternity for the baffled beast to gently lower itself to the floor and die. The rest of the herd, now silent, observed with solemn, docile eyes.

Jimbo: We separated three other Doozers from the herd. The plan was to use them to carry our water supplies … and later as food. Their ginger fur was so long we did not need to use ropes to yoke them. Mister Pants and Hedge spent one afternoon plaiting their tails and beards into one long, stylish harness.

Mister Pants: Doozers melancholy merchants of dust. I called them “The Georges” on account that one name was as useful as many.

Jimbo: Under a sky dominated by a swollen moon we at last set out into the desert. “The Georges” were reluctant at first. They’d place a tentative hoof onto the desert floor then backed off slowly shaking their dome shaped skulls. Mister Pants spent awhile cooing and clucking to them … … after which the stupid beasts followed him like new born ducklings to their mother.

Mister Pants: Trust. Mister Victor obviously understood that when he entered “The Kingdom”. Trust in a Moult World that has always looked after us. Trust in a Moult World that was slowly opening up her secrets for us.

Jimbo: Less than an hour into the rubble and desolation I became uneasy. When I glanced back  I had the impression that even our footprints wanted to deceive us. I hate admitting to such irrational paranoia. One thing I hate even more though is the attributing of human qualities to inanimate things, but damn it if I could not shake the feeling that the desert did not welcome us.

That first night we collapsed exhausted into a sloping trench. Under a sky dominated by a swollen moon we pitched a dowdy camp. When sleep came it pinned us to the desert floor.

The next morning I woke and crawled out of the trench. “The Georges” looked at me expectantly as I gazed up the pathway from which we had come. Not only had our footprints vanished but I had this lingering sensation – like something left over from sleep – that there was something malevolent hanging there. It was as if with that thought alone I caused something to coagulate in the air. It was nothing more than this clot on my vision. Yet, the more I appreciated that there was something there the more it became real. I was etching it into existence with eyes and the more my brain made sense of it the more real it seem to become.

Michael: The route between knowing and how things seem is indeed a thwart one.

Jimbo:                   Michael would have you believe I lost it that morning because I don’t have the imagination to cope with stuff outside the evidence of my senses … or some such crap! Well, I reckon I’ve coped with the crazy shit Moult World has thrown at us better than ninety per-cent of you. From Day One I was out there building things with my hands. I got off my arse when the rest of you were off your faces on drink and drugs and made sure you and our children were all safe and fed.

So you reckon Mister Pants is enlightened just because he is insane with “Moult World Shock Syndrome”? And Hedge can deal with weirdness just because of all the drugs he’s taken? And Michael … Michael with his head full of pseudo-mystical, psychobabble arrived here equipped to cope with the thing I saw out there in the mist that morning?

Whatever you think you are wrong: Moult World is not a  fairy tale.

So you need to listen and learn  … even if it turns the tidy explanations you’ve devised  to make sense of your lives,  inside out.

(part 1 of 3)

Stephan’s Splendiferous Palette

Stephan scanned the kitchen and found the light perfect. A fierce brightness roared in through the bay window. Its clarity so pure that the ice gripped work surfaces shone as if sapphire finished. Icicles and the blades of domestic knives were indistinguishable before it. Stephan turned his elegant cheek bones  to the light and squinted outside; only to be rendered snow-blind by the glare. When he turned back to the kitchen it took a moment or two for the retina burn to seep from his vision. Blinking, he unfolded the easel, reached down and placed a canvas on its frame. Considering the rest of the Habitat was besieged by cold and shadow to find a blank canvas so flawlessly illuminated pleased Stephan no end.

Now for his subject ….

He fished into the deep pockets of his trench coat. There he fumbled for half a minute before he realised he had forgotten how many layers he was wearing. He peeled the trench coat from his rakish shoulders and revealed a tailed dinner jacket beneath. It took him another minute to remove a scarf, cravat, a skin tight striped jumper and a burgundy waist coat before he found that which he was looking for. A wry lipless smile creased his face as he looked down at the stump of candle lying in the palm of his fingerless glove. It was a stumpy tallow thing, already half spent … conspicuous because it was the very last candle on the planet.

Stork like he navigated the black-iced kitchen floor. About four metres away from his easel and shielded from the daylight there was a recess. With one sweep of his hand he cleared it of spice pots and tea strainers. They clattered onto the floor. In their place he reverently placed the candle. Then, his breath a pillar of smoke before his eyes, he fumbled out a box of matches. His hand felt like a clubbed fist with five clumsy thumbs instead of fingers as he struggled with the match. On the tenth attempt the match ignited with a sulfurous explosion. With the candle lit he scurried back to behind the easel and reached for his palette.

His precious palette. The paints awaited him there; every brush tip dipped into them an immersion into his soul. The paints conjured his nature into pictures so much more truthfully than words or actions ever could.

“You selfish, selfish bastard,” came the South London accent.

Stephan looked around, his loose mane tumbling over his eyes. Zeek stood in the door way, a blanket like poncho over her shoulders. Her lips blue  she continued:

“There’s children freezing to death next door and you’ve been holding out on a candle!”

Her anger poured in through the kitchen door as fiercely as the light through the bay window. “I’d lamp you one if I didn’t think you’d snap.”

She made her way deliberately across the traitorous kitchen floor, steadying herself on work tops and the backs of chairs. Stephan waved his brush indignantly in her general direction, but words – as ever- failed him. By the time she reached the recess his mute indignation was fit to erupt. He frantically glanced left and right, as if an answer might be found waiting on one of his shoulders. Finding nothing there, he began to tremble with something more profound than the cold.

Zeek was now obscuring his view of the candle and recess entirely. She turned gingerly around, holding the candle before her pregnant belly. Behind her the shadows poured back into the recess. Her outline perished with that influx of darkness, but where she held the candle a most wonderful vision presented itself to Stephan. The weak orange flame washed the young girl’s features and cast in relief the bump of her pregnancy. At that moment she presented a portrait that he could not resist.

“No, don’t go!” he barked as he dropped behind the canvas. It started to tremble as his paint brush began to lick its surface.

“Screw you,” Zeek took a tentative half step forward. “You’re bonkers man.”

“NO!” Stephan screamed. He rose above the easel and the natural light behind him suddenly eclipsed. “You will let me paint you!”

The fury of his words paralyzed her … just as surely as the plume of smoke which billowed from the tip of his paintbrush.

(to be concluded)

The Kingdom of Shit hits Fan (part 4)

Hedge: Agoraphobia came knocking. I did not want to open my eyes to it. When I was a child gravity seemed too convenient a thing. To this day I still cannot kneel in the middle of a field, tuck my head beneath my legs and stare upwards. That inversion is too much like the view one would experience if gravity suddenly stopped and we did fall up into the sky. Even with my eyes closed tight I could sense the vastness before me. Space – whether Outer or just great big open expanses  – has a way of letting itself be known with senses other than sight.

The voices of my friends were too distant for comfort. The luxury of lying there – still enough for the immense emptiness to ignore me – was no longer an option. My finger tips awoke and instinctively gripped the turf for purchase.

I opened my eyes.

A desert stretched before me. A neat line scratched in the dust marked its beginning … before it hurtled into the distant uninterrupted horizon.

I fumbled my way into a crouch. The clearing I found myself in was strewn with our equipment. The rucksacks had been hastily dumped. Gourds and other uneaten fruit, sheets of paper, some socks, our waterproofs, spare tent pegs, pens, whistles and other junk from our ill fated rescue mission spilled around me like orbiting satellites. The tarp billowed in the breeze. Rope lay uncoiled like it did not matter. To my side animal ribs jutted up from the grass. Where were my friends? What could have made them abandon our precious camping gear?

Reluctantly I clambered to my feet. I took my bearings. Behind me, lush greenery towered. I could not recall our escape from the Plant Superhighway and it seemed to me that I had not stood under the sky for weeks. Still, it was reassuring to have some recent history to cling to.

My companions voices carried towards me and my heart sunk.

They were out there …in the desert.

Michael:       For a time Mister Pants had radiated a confidence that was hard to ignore. I don’t know how he did it, but he had saved us … but upon reaching the desert he did not stop. He just kept on walking.

Mister Pants:         Brains grow fat on thinking too much. I just do and you should too.

Jimbo:         It was the dumbest thing I have ever seen! No water, no supplies – beyond his stained, lime green Y-fronts – and he’s wandering off into the middle of a big bloody desert! What else could I do?

Michael:       In truth, I don’t think Jim needed to rugby tackle him so hard. Actually, I don’t think he needed to rugby tackle him at all. I suspect it had more to do with Mister Pants words when he had led us out of the Plant Superhighway than actually stopping him wandering off. They fell and scuffled in the dust for awhile. Mister Pants eventually gave up and lay there gasping like a fish out of water. Jim looked grim and was beetroot red as he hauled our friend up off the desert floor and tossed him over his shoulder like a rag doll.

We turned to return to Hedge and the vegetative tangle we had left behind. The three of us were silent. Each step was an effort like wading through porridge. It was about then I noted how suddenly the jungle terminated. My comment was offhand really. All I said was that it looked like a perfectly straight line had been drawn between desert and jungle. A straight, uncurvng line which continued right out to the horizon. Jim’s reply was the angriest I have ever heard from him.

Jimbo:         “Don’t you start! Blame it on plate tectonics or rock stratification or something! This world was not Intelligently Designed  … and it most definitely is not Flat!”

Michael:       I did not say another thing. His words were resonating in my head like a chimed bell.

Hedge:         I had never seen a desert before. I remember thinking how like the ocean it was. No detail, only simple repetition for as far as the eye can see. Such a compelling openness; and just like the sea it was trying to suck me in. But there was something more to my disquiet that mere agoraphobia. From the sound rainbows to the memory springs, we have witnessed much that is strange in Moult World. But no matter how mind-shatteringly improbable, I had never felt ill-at-ease … until now.

Animal ribs?

I looked around at the mess of our equipment. We had been surviving on fruits and the bounties of the Plant Superhighway for weeks now. The guys hadn’t eaten meat since way before we had gotten ourselves lost. The anxiety which had been with me since waking grew. Unmistakably, the picked bones of some long deceased creature trailed off into the undergrowth. Tentatively I followed the boomerang strewn ribs. An ochre creeper curtained off the clearing like a hanging sari. I separated this veil and peered into the gloom behind it.

Seven rocks marked a neat circle on the ground; old charcoal lumps in its centre. A stump of a log had clearly been dragged next to this fireplace to be used as a seat. A pile of bones, shells and fruit husks resided next to this. And my pulse quickened as my eyes fell upon a pair of old shoes. Moss creeping up their damp suede, laces removed and heels peeling off, but unmistakably manufactured on a planet far, far from here.

He had been here. Vic.

Meanwhile …

The second moon grew huge in the night’s sky. Its lunar landscape obscuring the constellations … so vast and immediate it looked close enough to touch.

Winter was at last coming to Moult World and the Settlers were ill prepared. Limbs and feet heavy beneath the pull of the moon. They went to work. The majority in search of firewood whilst Zach and his small team laboured on a spindly wooden tower. Zach lamented the wasted months planning and discussing this project. Summer’s dimmer switch was being turned down swifter than he liked. If the temperature plummeted much more the Habitat would become a frozen tomb for his community and family. He was not going to allow that to happen.

Ralph hammered the final mooring peg into the ground. The increasing gravity did not seem to affect the ever dependable giant. Each hefty swing of his mallet punctuated with a few hummed bars of “The Rolling Stones” greatest hits. Ralph looked up and beamed proudly at Zach. The tower’s frame was now secured not only into its hastily dug foundations, but by a tight network of ropes.

“Well done,” Zach gave Ralph the thumb’s up and even that simple gesture was a battle against gravity.

Lexei lumbered to Zach’s side. An empty spool tucked under his arm.

“The cable’s laid just as you wanted it,” he wheezed. “That Stefan wanted to know when we would be done.” Lex gestured behind him. Off toward the side of a storage shed a long haired figure was erecting a painting easel. “I think we’re mucking up his view.”

The shared enterprise of preparing for winter had pulled the Settlers together unlike anything since the departure of the Edenists and Hedonists …. everyone that is except Stefan. As the others stocked piled logs and preserved food, Stefan painted. Since arriving on Moult World there was not a landscape that the he had not captured. And now, facing out towards the bronze hued lake, the newly constructed Wind Turbine presented a silhouette he could not resist. With Zach and Lexei looking on, Stefan impatiently tossed a lock of hair out of his eyes.

“Man, what a plectrum,” Lexei muttered.

“He’s harmless,” Zach shrugged. “Now let’s get this baby fired up.” He lifted his chin to assess the breeze which flowed in from the valley’s mouth. Satisfied he toed a switch on the transformer at his feet. The blades of the Wind Turbine began to whisper for anyone who cared to listen.

Lexei’s smile stretched from ear to ear like a Halloween pumpkin. “Alright, we got electric!” He turned to stride off towards the iPod cemetery. “I’m gonna get my iPod … I’ve had it to my back teeth with you lot and your bloody bongos.”

The moon continued to swallow the sky. The once excitable forest grew eerily still. The trees which hadn’t slunk off to find somewhere warmer shrugged off their greenery and posed for the Settlers like a montage of picked bones.

Then the first Frost came.

It edged out of the forest crawling towards Flax-man’s paddock. A handful of Settlers gathered to watch this new Moult World oddity go about its business. A mist, like dry-ice, billowed beneath it. In its wake a snail’s trail of perfect ice. Even Flax-man took a break from his perpetual dozing to shuffle over and investigate the creature. The Frost which resembled a slowly breaking surf-break turned its icy crest towards him. Flax-man raised his wet nose then thought better of making the acquaintance of the Frost as a long fragile finger of ice formed from within its shifting icy body. The finger slowly reached out – and with a tinkling sound – a glaze of frosted ice encased the gate. Flax-man marked his displeasure with a prolonged fart and retreated from the now sub-zero top part of his field. The Settlers looked on aghast as the Frost set about painting their world with ice.

Over the next day and night more and more Frostz came. They converged on the lake and The Habitat’s doorstep. When daylight was only a handful of hours long and it seemed like night would never end: no stone nor tile, tent nor fence, nose or beak was spared the icy touch of the Frostz.

Winter on Moult World was a perfect, slick mirror below; reflecting the fattest of fattest moons above. Its nights were cruel on the Settlers. The roof of the Habitat protested under the glaciers left upon it by the pack of Frostz which hunted outside. Icicles fanged the windows like the view from the back of a serpent’s mouth. A belligerent plug of ice sealed the chimney.

At any one time since its construction the Habitat had never housed more than fifteen souls. Now, every Settler on this side of the lake sought refuge within its walls. Maya had designed the building to ergonomically enhance heat and air flow, but that ingenious design could not cope with the demand of sixty lungs filling it with plumes of frozen dragon breath. Now a shivering sea of bundled bodies littered the main hall. A lone oil heater stood like a feeble idol at their centre. Despite the Wind Turbine’s valiant efforts the heater’s LED (which should have glowed red) … burnt a pathetic pink.

“All that work for this,” Lexei’s head was a blue plum balanced on top of a pile of rugs and dusty old sheepskins. Zach’s wife, Clare rested back to back with him. Her two sleeping offspring buried at their side, soaking up whatever body heat was spare. Zach stood above them and dragged a mitten onto one hand.

“It’s the cells,” he said. “The turbine itself is generating enough charge but we didn’t steal enough batteries from the Olde World to store it.”

“You’re not really going through with this are you?” Clare looked up at her husband from within her cocoon of blankets.

“Someone’s got to unplug that chimney,” Zach apologised. “And perhaps we can take out a few of those Frostz while we’re at it.”

Ralph gently picked his way though the melancholy gathering of people and stood at Zach’s side. Little girl’s ear muffs clipped tightly either side of his head.

“Don’t play with me ‘cos you’re playing with fire!” he sang.

“Whatever,” Lexei stumbled beneath the additional gravity as he stood up. “Count me in.” He zipped up the hood of his fur lined parka, tight like “South Park’s” Kenny. He took one of the cricket bats Ralph was carrying.

Wrapped up tight, the three men lumbered out of the breath choked hall.

All was silent bar the chattering of teeth. Then slowly and stiffly the artist Stefan unbundled himself from the floor. Clare peeked at the man as picked his way through the hall like a stork navigating a stream. He must have heard the previous conversation but had not offered to help. Instead, he glanced furtively around and unfolded his easel. As he started to rummage nosily through his paints Clare  pulled the blanket over her head:

“That guy is such a plectrum,” she sighed.

To be concluded …