The Monster Within

I was about to enter the woods when I saw a sign I'd never seen, though I'd been there many times before . It looked pretty official, had a heading on it that stated it was from the magistrates office. It read (in a horribly lurid font): "Beware the monster within."

That was it, all it said, well, that and it was signed by someone's who surname I assumed (from its presentation) was "Mr Squiggly". I laughed. Surely this was some April fool's day prank, or something, even though that month was far away. Clearly just some kid's prank, so I hitched my heavy backpack and ventured into the darkness of the trees.

It wasn't long before I felt myself being watched. I'd only been walking half an hour at most, and the sign's warning that I had so easily dismissed was now praying heavily on my mind. Every little noise from things moving about unseen caused me to jump a little. I tried to take my mind off of things. I thought about my childhood, my friends and that assuaged the fear a little. But then...a different fear awoke.

I began to think about all the little evils, the peccadilloes, the times I'd say I'd do something or another and then not done them. Or the occasions where I'd taken the last bit of food without first offering it to someone else. Gradually these thoughts were replaced with the bigger sins. The time I'd got that person fired not because they were bad at their job, but simply because I didn't like them. The time me and my friends were rotten drunk and kicked a homeless man half to death just because we thought it would be funny and because we could. The time I did that thing that even now, even all these years later, even in my own mind, I can only ever refer to as "that thing"...was the sign that I had seen at the entrance of the woods an illusion preying upon my subconscious guilt? The mysterious sign that I had never seen before though I'd been through here many times and even quite recently, was it just a fevered figment of my own overwrought and sinful mind that was trying to tell me that I was, that I had always been the monster?

And then The Beast bit off my head...I was kind of relieved, in a way, I mean I hate metaphysical soul searching.

The Magician - Part 3

Two years later

"Ladies and gentlemen, will you please put your hands together in a warm round of applause for our first guest this evening, Mr Frank Spinelli!"

Just off-stage Spinelli straightened his suit and stiffly walked out into the spotlight. He waved a half hearted wave toward the audience and smiled laconically as he made his way across to the seat beside the presenter. He shook the hand of the presenter and, awkwardly, bent his bad leg into a comfortable position as he sat down.

"It's great to have you on the show, Frank, can I call you Frank?" the presenter asked, straightening the cue cards in his hand.

"Spinelli, please." Spinelli replied.

"Spinelli it is then!" The presenter said, not missing a beat. "Now, you first came to prominence about what? A year and a half ago, two years now? Where had you been hiding before then?"

"Well, Jack, I wasn't hiding, as such, I was just working on my act, you know. The thing is that in today's society everyone thinks they can get ahead by just being in the right place at the right time and to be fair, sometimes you can, but mostly" Spinelli paused for dramatic effect, and smiled at the audience's silence "but mostly it takes a lot of hard work. A ton of effort. Multiple knockbacks and an indecent number of failures before things finally start clicking for you."

"So what was that click then that worked for you, that moment when things finally started going your way?"

Two years ago

"Mr...Spinelli is it?"

The bright light burned Spinelli's eyes as he opened them. His arms felt heavy and he struggled to lift them and block out the fluorescent light of the hospital ward.

Through bleary vision he could make out the indistinct figure of a woman.

"Mr Frank Spinelli?" the woman asked.

"Yes?" He croaked, his mouth dry.

"How are you feeling today?" As Spinelli's eyes adjusted he could now make out the doctor's coat, the clipboard in her hands, the appraising look of her eyes in contrast with her easy smile.

"Thirsty...how long...how long have I been here? Where is here?" Spinelli asked.

"Saint Jude's hospital. We brought you in about ten days ago now, well, over ten days, closer to eleven now actually." The doctor looked down at her phone, tapped on the screen and then looked back at Spinelli. "A nurse will be along with water in just a moment. My name is Doctor Ingles, this isn't the first time we've spoken but the last time you were in such a dreadful state and then you've been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past week and a half."

"I was? I have been?" Spinelli closed his eyes.

"Mr Spinelli?"

"Yes," he opened his eyes, "sorry, I'm still awake, just the light...it's very bright."

"Sorry about that, I'll get it for you." Doctor Ingles walked across the room and turned a dial, dimming the light. "Better?"

"Much, thank you."

"No problem." She smiled, and then went on, "I'll be back shortly to check up on you."

She left the room and Spinelli pushed himself up into a sitting position. A great pain shot up his left leg and he gasped sharply. Gingerly he lifted the blanket and saw why he'd felt such pain; attached to his leg was a rod a few inches long which was apparently bolted through the flesh and to his shin bone.

"I see you've found your external fixator." said a voice from the door. Spinelli looked up and saw a nurse standing at the door. "Hi, I'm nurse Roberts, I'm here to help clean the open wounds on your leg."

Spinelli nodded grimly and Roberts entered the room properly.

"It's not too bad," said Roberts, "I wouldn't look so worried about it. You just take these swabs and basically gently scrap around the bolts. Stops bacterial growth because, you know, it's an open wound and all essentially."

Roberts opened a pack of sterile swabs and sat at the foot of Spinelli's bed.

"While you're in here, I'll be doing it for you, but I'll show you to be doing it properly for when you get out of here."

"How long does it have to stay on for?"

"Can't really say," Roberts said, putting on a pair of surgical gloves, "however long it needs to be, could be a month, could be six. Could be even longer. Can I be entirely honest though?" He looked around conspiratorially, Spinelli followed his gaze and then nodded. "To be honest, I'm surprised you've still got a leg in all fairness. I was here the night they brought you in, your leg was mangled to bits, I've never seen a leg in as bad a shape as yours without the person losing it. Don't know what was going on with the surgeons, normally with something so bad they'd have just chopped it, maybe they just felt like a challenge or something. Seriously good luck that it's still attached and doing so well."

"It doesn't feel like good luck." Spinelli said through gritted teeth as Roberts started dabbing at the first bolt.

"Well, relatively speaking it's good luck." Roberts picked up a new swab. "What were you doing out there anyway, they say they picked you up in the middle of a deserted street."

"I was walking home, it was a shortcut..." Spinelli paused, thinking about the old man in the house, he decided not to mention that detail, "I thought I saw something in one of the abandoned houses but I must have imagined it. The staircase fell in when I was coming out and I gashed my leg pretty badly, I guess, though I didn't think it was this bad. I made it out and must have made a call but I don't remember."

"See, that's the weird thing, people have been talking," Roberts looked around again to make sure they were alone, "an old man made the call to the ambulance service. Mate of mine works up in the dispatch room, said it was right weird. An old man, sounded welsh, called and said something like 'the idiots injured himself, can you get up to Prendergast Road, he's bleeding out on the pavement. Now the call came from a landline, but like you said that entire area's abandoned, has been for years. Right spooky it is, if you ask me."

"It was probably just a passerby or something," Spinelli grimaced as Roberts wiped the pus from the open wound. "If he was old probably didn't have a mobile phone, must've hurried home and made the call."

"Maybe, maybe." said Roberts, sounding sceptical. "Still bloody weird though. They found you next to a suitcase of magician crap as well."

"Ah." Spinelli turned crimson, "That would have been my case...I'm something of an amateur magician. I was actually on my way back from a gig."

"Really?" Roberts said, enthusiastically, "I love magic, always have done. Would you be against doing a trick for me?"

"What, now? And also, I'm not very good, it was mostly coin and card tricks, I tried doing an animal bit and I was actually..."he tailed off as he saw Roberts rifling though the pockets of his scrubs, "what are you doing?"

"You said coins right," Roberts handed Spinelli a couple of coins, "do a trick!"

"Seriously, I've only just come out of a coma or whatever?"

"Please, come on man, I'm cleaning your wounds for you."

"Yeah, but that's your job."

"I know, but still..."

Spinelli looked at the pleading look on Roberts' face and sighed.

"Fine, one trick." and to himself he added "I'll just do a piss poor trick so he'll not ask again."

 He picked up the two coins and presented them. Waving one hand over the other he dropped one of the coins into the passing hand as it went by, then opened the first hand to reveal one coin had gone missing. He then threw that coin up into the air and caught it in his other hand. He opened his hand to reveal...three coins.

"What..." he glared at the three coins in his hand, where had the other one came from.

"Hey, that's pretty good. Where'd you get the other coin?"

"I...a magician never reveals his secrets." Spinelli said, handing the coins to Roberts.

"Do you mind if I get some of the others in here to see you do that?" asked Roberts.

"I...no, I wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind at all." Spinelli said, before realising that he had no idea how he had performed the trick.

Within ten minutes, Spinelli's room was filled with patients, doctors, nurses who all gasped and marvelled at his trick. They clapped enthusiastically each time. They hung onto his every word, laughing with, instead of at, him. He smiled, he had no idea how, but he was finally where he wanted to be.

Present day

"Before you go, Spinelli," the presented beamed a smile, "it would be remiss of me to let you leave without asking to see the trick that made you so famous in the first place."

Spinelli smiled a plastic smile.

"Of course," he said. He stood up, and performed the same simple trick, the only trick his audience wanted, the only trick the audience ever desired from him. Still, they loved and applauded him for it and still, he had no idea how it worked.

"Thank you," said the host to Spinelli, and then turning to the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Frank Spinelli everybody!"

The audience clapped furiously and Spinelli bowed slightly and limped off stage. The second he was off camera, his face took on the haunted, grim look it wore when no one was looking. This was not what he had wanted, this was not what he had wanted at all.

He left the studio. The driver tipped his cap to him as he opened the door of the car that was to take him back to the hotel before tomorrow's journey to London, and then to America, Germany, Japan, the world was his and everyone loved him for something he had no control over. He looked at the future and despaired when suddenly, it occurred to him.

"Driver?" he said.

"Yes sir?"

"...Before the hotel, can you take me to Prendergast Road?"

"I don't know where that is, sir." replied the driver.

"Don't worry, I'll give you directions." said Spinelli, reclining into the back seat of the car, it was finally time.  

Four more pieces of short fiction

Flash fiction! How much fun is it! Well, some, it's definitely some fun, but anyway, I have work due in today which of course, I being me, means that I didn't complete it until this morning (i.e. the morning of the day it is due in) because you know me (and if you don't, you should!)...anyway, the task was to write one story of 101 words about relationships, in the past hour I wrote four and so here I present them for your enjoyment. 

First love

I'm no different really, I was young and in love once, nothing special. It's that same, simple story as old as time; boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy asks girl out, girl says yes, boy and girl go out, make a grand old time of it, boy finds out girl is actually a planet eating leviathan from outer space, girl destroys boys world, boy dies...boy is reborn, boy questions what was so great about girl anyway, boy finds new girl, new girls, new boys, perhaps, but always comes back to that old monster of a girl when alone...always...  

Edward

Don't you hate it when you fall in love with a girl and you go through a series of misadventures, not explicitly trying to get her, but just be around her, but then her boyfriend, jealous at the bond that you two share, rounds up a mob to chase you out of town and you hide in a building and the girl finds you and asks you to hold her, but you can't because you've got scissors for hands because Vincent Price made you out of an old sewing machine but died before he could replace your scissors with hands....

Of relationships

Those hollowed cheeks, those shadow strewn eyes, those cracked lips with their desiccated smile...I think she meant to do me harm, for what I did to that girl, the nymph, what was her name? What was her name? Anyway, I believe she meant to punish me for my transgression. I was afraid, at first, that voice leading me to the pool, but such wonder she has shown me. I never knew just how beguiling sallow skin could be, how intoxicating the taste of rotting teeth could be, how ravishing the hungry can look. Truly, I could die happy here.

Do you remember

We met years ago, so many years ago now. You probably don't remember, why would you? It was a small, insignificant event, and I am a small, insignificant person, but that's where we first met, in that hall, all those years ago. We talked then, briefly, about our hopes, our dreams. Childishly, we talked about where we'd be in five years, ten years, the careers we'd have, the lives we'd be living. I lied though, a bad sign. I didn't say anything about you being there, here, though that would've been my dream. Though that is my dream.   

Restaurantz

"The problem with humanity," said my friend, a fork hovering below his mouth, "is that what was once abhorrent usually, over time, comes to be considered absolutely fine, normal behaviour."

His mouth clamped around the fork. I nodded and, mouth full, grunted assent. He continued;

"After it happens, they're not even human anymore. It's a kindness to be released from that, and with the way the world is now, with no farms, no animals, we still need to eat and they're technically just meat after all."

He lifted the fork to his mouth again.

"Still, having said that, I can't pretend...I just really, really like the taste of zombie flesh."

This was a piece of work (the very first piece of work in fact) that I did on my creative writing degree. We were tasked with writing a piece of flash fiction, that is to say, a piece of fiction that is very short. We were asked to stick to 101 words (I was 9 over, which isn't too terrible) and given a list of story prompts to work with. Stuff like "I saw her at the bus stop" and "I had a dog when I was child" and who knows what else because it was just really banal stuff, so instead I decided to write about a restaurant after the advent of a zombie apocalypse, because come on, you know me. I used zombies but, in a way, it's actually about the dehumanisation of people. Zombies in literature/film are usually represented as being mindless and if you don't take care and get attacked by them, you can find yourself, unwillingly, joining their cause  and becoming mindless yourself. In that way, zombies are the perfect villain because they can represent whatever new threat you need them to be. They can be communist, foreign, homosexual, left wing, right wing, whatever ideology because they are literally, a grey canvas that is held up to an issue as an "us" vs "them" symbol.

So, with that in mind,I encourage people to dissect this piece of work (though I know you won't, because who has time for that right! *surprise me is what I'm saying*), even though I completed it in a very short amount of time, a lot of thought went into the making of this.

Post script: I apologise for the title, it's Restaurantz because I imagine it to be name of a chain of restaurant in post-apocalyptia that serves zombie flesh to its customers...hence Restaurant Z....yeah...it's also a play on the substitution "s" for "z" to seem young and hip, instead of restaurants, restaurantz...