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Apologies

This blog has been down way too long. It's going to be active again soon. Just reorganising at little first.

Nik Perring

THE BARGE MAN

I remember thinking that the Barge Man was brave. The last time he�d been in the pub he�d been thrown out - physically. He�d intruded, sat at our table, insisting on performing magic tricks (which consisted of getting too close to the women and intimidating them). I did not think he was not much of a magician.
        That�s why, when I saw him in there again, I thought, that�s brave.
        I was in the back room, playing darts with myself - it was something to do - when a man walked in, oldish, lean and wearing a flat cap. A traveller. He offered me a game of 301 and I accepted. And a few minutes into the game I was winning. That�s when the Barge Man, broad and dirty entered. He was the traveller�s friend. They must have known each other from the canal.
        The Barge Man shuffled over to the table upon which I�d left my belongings: my phone, my wallet, my house keys, jacket and beer.

It takes a brave man to go back into a pub he's been thrown out of

        Suspicious, I moved over to the table and for a moment I thought I was going to have to concede - maybe he was a decent magician:
        My pint had disappeared; glass and all.
        It was a lucky coincidence that at that moment the barman, let�s call him Wayne, entered the room. He heard me ask the Barge Man if he�d seen my beer; if he�d taken it.
        Wayne pulled the Barge Man�s long jacket open.
        Hey presto!
        There it was.
        My beer! In his hand. Not hidden under his jacket any more.
        Slight of hand?
        Shite of hand.
        It takes a brave man to go back to a pub he�s been thrown out of, but to steal on his return must be something else.
        Again, he was barred.

-o0o-

My thoughts, when walking home, were of revenge. Not for me to exact; rather, I was wondering what he might do.
        Burn down my house, maybe.
        In bed I thought of him.
        I saw him in the shadows of a starless night. I saw him with petrol, forcing it through my letterbox. I saw the spark, heard the hiss of a match struck. I saw the petrol burn. The carpets melt. The walls char.
        I saw the smoke rise, curling, strangling the light fittings. And I saw the flames rage orange.
        I saw the smoke crawl under my bedroom door and felt the heat on the other side. I choked on thick fumes, wheezing and desperate. Drowning. I felt the panic, the terror of death.
        And then I wrote it down.

Unmadeup contributor and children's book author Nik Perring lives in the north west of England. He writes short stories and poems and is a workshop leader. His blog is here... and he also wrote this story.

William Shaw

I'm looking for someone who can do some subbing for me for a publishing project coming out in May. Email me for details. Any takers?

Emma J. Lannie

MOTH

He's kissing me and I'm kissing him back. We're completely tangled up in each other. We've only ever been friends. Before now. Before this. We would confide crushes and listen to records and stay up all night, never once letting anything like this happen. Until now.

Things hadn't felt any different. He'd driven me home like he's done a thousand times. And he came in and we talked for a while. And just as he was leaving, as we stood under the hall light, a moth fluttering against the bulb, he kissed me. And I kissed him back.

"She was pregnant," he says, as if that explained everything...

And I'm caught in the moment, but I detach my brain long enough to note how really amazing this all feels. It's such a new thing for us, but it's good. It feels really okay. And I don't run away with any ideas of long term or anything. We're kissing and I am thinking that maybe this will definitely be happening again, perhaps even on a regular basis. And the moth flutters hard against the light-shade, tries again for the bulb, and underneath it, we're a frenzy of lips and tongues and hope.

He pulls back, stares me deep in the eyes, and I'm waiting for what I think will be a joke about us leaving this so long, or maybe even words of love, an admission, but what he says is "I'm married."

And I blink. And I mouth the word "What?" and he hears even though no sound comes out.

"I got married."

And I sit on the stairs and try to think when that could've happened. And I wonder how long I've really been away, and how that could have happened without my knowing, how could I not have even been invited.

"She was pregnant," he says, as if that explained everything, but it kind of did. He's always been the good guy. Until now.

"Why?" And by this I mean all of the above and why kiss me, and why now. Crying, he tells me he's always loved me. And that he couldn't help it tonight. And I tell him it's not okay, and I open the door wide. After a silence of ten or so minutes that feels like an hour he eventually walks out into the night, both of us knowing everything we had before is dead.

I watch him until he's a dot.

The moth scorches itself against the lightbulb and drops down into my face. By instinct I snap my hands up and it crushes between my palms. I look at the mess it's made and I don't even care.

Emma J. Lannie blogs here. She has been published in Tripod and online at The Beat, Six Sentences, and Straight From The Fridge. She is writing her first novel.

The photo of a moth, taken on an illuminated church sign, is by Arvind.

William Shaw

Inspired by the French critic F�lix F�n�on, whose "Nouvelles En Trois Lignes" column appeared in Le Matin in 1906, I have created a new site called In Other News. It's a collaboration with the brilliant illustrator Steve Larder who writes the fanzine Rum Lad. Please go and take a look at it.

Nik Perring

THAT LIGHT, THAT NIGHT

The flowers made me suspect it, gave me reason to suspect it, but the illnesses confirmed it. And I have to tell you, I�m a little worried; things haven�t been the same here since that light, that night.
I think I�d like to blame it on the smoking ban. If that hadn�t been passed then I�d have known no different. It wouldn�t have stopped it happening but at least I wouldn�t know. Ignorance, bliss and all that?
Summer 2007. August to be more accurate. I�ve tried to get an exact date for you but the sites that Google spews out are confusing and meant for people with a more scientific interest in these things than me, and meant for people with more brains. Sure, I�m a writer but that doesn�t mean I�m clever.

On two small bushes were (I counted) at least fifty spiders

        So, at some point at the beginning of August 2007 I�d gone to the pub with my girlfriend. It�s a cosy little place at the top of our village, not all that far from the lights of Manchester which, on a clearish night, you can see from it. Behind the pub, up some steps, backing onto fields and hills, is the smoking area. There�s a wooden shelter there now, with lights and heaters, but then there was just grass, fences to keep the sheep out, and half a dozen benches. And one of those benches was where my girlfriend and I were sitting. It was dusk and we were just taking the tops off our first drinks.
        We could hear sirens wailing; there must have been some accident on the dual carriageway a mile or so down the road � and when we saw the light in the sky we assumed that it was in some way connected to it. It was an odd light, unusual and striking enough for me, when I saw it, to exclaim, �What the fuck is that?�
        I thought initially that we were looking at a helicopter�s search light, though a second later I knew that�s not what it was.
        It looked like a star. A little more orange than a typical star and much, much closer than one ought to be. It was certainly more mobile than any star I�d ever seen. And it was moving towards us, in a line as straight as if it had been guided by a laser. It was fast, it was purposeful and it passed straight over our heads. It was absolutely silent. And it was flying under the clouds. We watched it disappear beyond the hills and then we went inside, both feeling oddly unnerved.
        Of course, as would happen in a pub where you know people, you tell them what you�ve just seen. And when the barman said, �Meteor. It�ll have been a meteor. Meteor shower tonight, bud,� we felt relieved. Both me and my girlfriend had read about that. It was true.
        �It can�t have been a meteor,� my girlfriend said emphatically a few seconds later. �It was below the clouds.�
        I was less relieved on hearing that; the clouds that night were low and I knew that meteors barely tickled the fingertips of earth�s atmosphere.
        What followed were discussions of weather balloons, Roswell, tricks of light, optical illusions, shooting stars, aliens don�t exist, meteors and the like, and more of that odd, unnerved feeling before conversations moved on, back to jobs, football, TV and the weather.
        Until the barman went outside for a cigarette and saw it. He said it was just as we�d said it had been...
        Later, when the sky was night-black, and I was outside smoking a cigarette, I saw it again. I rushed inside and ushered out a couple of witnesses. The light was on a slightly different course to the one it had been on when I�d first seen it, it was a few miles north though still travelling roughly west to east. It still looked more like a star than anything else, it was still tinged orange and it was still absolutely silent. Nobody knew what it could have been. And living not that far from Manchester Airport we�ve all seen plenty of flying things.
        Although no-one else saw it again that night, the story does not end there. The following week, on the bar and on every ledge and sill in the pub, vases filled with the most striking and unusual flowers had appeared. They were orange and fiery and round and strange and looked like shiny plastic baubles. I asked, with a view to buying some for my girlfriend, where they were from.
        �Some bloke,� said the landlady with her chewy Manchester lilt, �never seen him before. Just came in and dropped them off. All for free. Lovely, aren�t they?�
        The following week, while in my girlfriend�s garden, I noticed something else unusual and new. On two small bushes were (I counted) at least fifty spiders. (Seeing spiders in a garden is not unusual, living in the country; seeing that many is though.) They were not anything like the sorts of spiders I�d seen before. These were half as big again as garden spiders and had large jaws and those predatory front legs. The most striking thing about them, what made them stand out as being very different, was their colour; they were fiery orange and yellow. They remained in the bushes constantly for two weeks, and then, very suddenly, they were gone.

-o0o-

We�re now in October. Plenty of other unusual things have occurred since: reliable cars have become faulty, people have suffered odd month-long colds, strange sores have been found on the bellies of previously healthy family cats, the birds do not stop singing, the landlady�s husband has suffered a stroke and one man has had to have a toe removed.
And do you know the worst thing about it?
As I was driving home last night I think I saw it again. That fucking thing; that strange orange light. What next, I wonder.

That Light, That Night is Nik Perring's first contribution to Unmadeup.

The photo is one doing the rounds on UFOlogy sites. It's of a crowd of around 100 people outside the One Elm Pub in Stratford-upon-Avon, who gathered to watch lights in the sky on the night of July 14 2007.

"Working Girl"

FLOWERS

I went into her room having already gotten the scoop from her previous nurse during report. She'd been married for years with two kids, one in elementary school, one in junior high. Labor was being induced at 38 weeks because the baby looked (on ultrasound) like he might be a big guy. She was petite and pretty. Her husband had already gone home for the night to take care of the kids. But here's the kicker: Her husband was not the father of the baby. Not only that, but he knew! And whatever had happened before they came to us, they had made their peace with the situation. She had, after years of marriage, had a brief affair that resulted in this pregnancy -- which she discovered after the affair ended. She and her husband would raise the child, but the FOB (father of the baby) would be involved.

For a scruffy little guy he had really shelled, out big...

Wow, how mature! I thought. These people were really dealing with this very difficult situation in a very constructive way. Then I met the rest of the family and the FOB. I won't elaborate on specifics here, but the patient and her husband were a biracial couple - and the kids were just gorgeous. But the FOB was clearly of yet a third race.

Hmmm, maybe she confessed because she knew that once that baby was out, it was going to be pretty obvious that her husband wasn't the daddy.

Oh well, whatever.

I met the FOB as he was coming out of her room. He had visited for several hours. After he left, she pointed to a huge arrangement of silk flowers that the FOB had brought.

Could you find a place for that at the nurses' station? I just can't have that here when my husband comes back in the morning. It would be too upsetting for him, she asked me.

No problem.

I hefted the arrangement up, impressed by the size and weight of it, if not the tacky silk flowerness of it. For a scruffy little guy, he had really shelled out for a big, if hideous, arrangement. Not bad! As I was walking up to the nurse's station, a patient care tech who was sitting there looked at me sharply.

What are you doing with that?

I started to explain the whole complicated, delicate situation.

No, no, no, she said. That arrangement is supposed to be on the table right by the door to the call room. It's been missing for hours.

I put it back in its place, noticing that it was sort of dusty -- and it did sort of match the carpet.

Later on the patient asked me if I'd found a place for the arrangement. I said that I had. And it looks like it's always been there...

"Working Girl" writes, frequently exteremly funnily, about her life as a nurse in America in Mostly True Stories. Artificial flower photographer merlinprincesse is Qu�b�coise.

William Shaw

Apologies for being away so long. Life is busy. But there is a great big pile of stories waiting to go up so it's time to get going again.

This story is by William Shaw. Not this William Shaw, but one William Shaw of Auburn, New Hampshire who kindly sent it to me a couple of months back.

UNTITLED

When people are young, having limited resources and money, living space has to be compromised. Roommates are sometimes necessary to keep up with bills. These roommates can be friends, family, or people who need to save money. Sometimes this living condition can lead to parties, fights, and police intervention when things go wrong. I speak from experience since I�ve had many roommates, most of which led to those problems. During 1993, I moved into an apartment in Manchester on Hanover Street. My friend Mike and I shared this home, with fewer of the problems found in shared living than usual. Although we had many parties, we kept ourselves out of trouble while having fun. Out of all the parties we had, one uneventful party quickly turned into a strange night.

The apartment on Hanover Street was on the first floor of a three-family Victorian house. The ceilings were high, and there were belt lines in some rooms. Cabinets with glass doors adorned the kitchen, and old cast-iron radiators heated each room. The living room had bay windows wrapping it on one side. Our modern furniture and appliances looked out of place in such an old-fashioned environment. Our dress styles also contrasted with this home; we were more party animals than conservative. Everyone who knew us loved this apartment, as if they were attracted to it like a moth flies into the light. Some people thought our apartment had a personality about it, an almost living quality that spoke to all who entered it.

Mike and I had a good friend named Doug who came to our place often. He called us one night, and said he was coming over. Mike asked me if Doug was bringing beer, because we had none. Doug said, �I�ll have to get forties, because I only have five bucks.� Doug was the kind of friend who shared what he had with us, so I told him, �That�s fine, man. We got the food if you bring the beer to wash it down!� He arrived in ten minutes.

Once Doug showed up, I began bringing out some food for us to eat. Just as I sat down to drink my freshly poured beer, someone knocked on the door. I peered through the peephole in the door to see a female face. It was Natalie, a friend of ours who frequently came over. I let her in, and within ten minutes she and Mike disappeared into his bedroom to watch a movie she brought with her. Doug and I listened to music for a while, and until someone else knocked on the door, it was an uneventful evening.

This man was going to die soon, if he didn't stop bleeding...

The knock came around eleven at night, and by this time Mike was back in the living room with Doug and I. Natalie peeked out from Mike�s room to see who was knocking. I got up to answer the door once again, only to see an unremarkable male face on the other side of the door. I assumed someone would know this person, so I opened the door. Our front door opened inwards, so I didn�t have a chance to see him in full until he was inside the apartment. The first thing I noticed about this man wasn�t visual; it was a feeling I had. Since both Doug and Mike had the opportunity to see this man before I did, their expressions made me uncomfortable at once. I stood there behind the door momentarily, looking at both of them, as they looked at each other with confusion. I stepped back to see a man in his late twenties, with a medium build and height. He had brown hair and eyes, and he was obviously drunk. In his hands he carried two tall Budweiser beers, and his coat pockets overflowed with four more. His presence in our home and his level of drunkenness was strange enough to raise concern about our safety, and stranger still was his silence. The man swayed like a small boat in the Pacific Ocean.

Finally, after a few moments which seemed like minutes, Mike asked the man harshly, �Who the fuck are you?� The man replied, �I did something I think I�ll regret in the morning.� Blood dripped from his hand generously, and his jeans suddenly stood out in my eyes, for they were soaked with blood. I immediately assumed he murdered someone. Doug stood up and asked him whom he had killed. I asked him to leave, and mike returned to his room to get a weapon. With a Scuba knife held in his hand behind his arm, trying not to be obvious, Mike closed his door in Natalie�s face, telling her without words to stay inside. Mike walked up to the man and told him, �Get out.�

�I need a place to stay for a while,� the man said without reservation. �I did something I�m going to regret tomorrow.� I reasoned with him, �You can�t stay here. We don�t know you, and why the hell are you all bloody?� The man continued his silence while he took off his jacket. �Didn�t you hear us?� Doug added. �We don�t want you here.� I could see Natalie peeking through the doorway again. She mouthed the words, �Who is he?� I walked up to the door and shut it again. The man finished taking his jacket off, and with it came a towel that looked maroon in color. Soon I noticed that it was soaked with blood, too.

�What did you do?� Doug asked. �I had a fight with my girlfriend,� the man replied. �I was drinking all night, just don�t call the cops or the hospital and I�ll show you what I did.� We agreed not to call the authorities, so he pulled up his sleeve to show us one of the worst wounds I had ever seen. I asked him if he cut himself. He said, �Yeah, it�s pretty bad. I just wanted to kill myself.�

Mike walked into the kitchen to grab a plastic bag, and put the towel into it. Then he got a new towel from the bathroom and returned to the man. Mike told me, �Go pick up that bag in there. It�s heavy as hell. You couldn�t fit another drop into that towel.� I examined the heft of the used towel, and mike was right. This man was going to die soon, if he kept bleeding. We fixed the towel to his wounded arm, and told him it was time to leave. The man put his jacket back on and grabbed his beers. He said, �Thanks for not calling the cops, guys. You�re cool people.� I told him, �You�re lucky you didn�t go to a different house, guy. Anybody else would have left you for dead and called the cops.� Mike wrote our names and address down on a piece of paper, and placed it in the man�s pocket. �Call us tomorrow and tell us how it turned out.�

We watched the man leave through Mike�s bedroom window, all four of us. Natalie asked us why we didn�t want her in the same room as the man who was now walking past the window. Doug said, �That�s why we hang out here. Mike and Will were looking out for you. That guy could have killed three people for all we know.�

�I wonder where he�s going?� Mike said. Just then he fell in the street. The man struggled to get back up and fell again. We started betting on if he could get up at all, but he surprised us once again when he got up and stumbled across the street. A car pulled up ahead of him and opened the door. The man who arrived in our lives so quickly disappeared into the night, never to be heard from again by us.

William Shaw hails from New Hampshire. The photo was taken by Suvi Korhonen who found the blood on a street in the middle of Helsinki.

William Shaw

If anyone in the Brighton area wants to put Oct 11 in their diaries - several of the people whose stories are featured in 41 Places: 41 Stories will be reading their story at Waterstones, North Street, Brighton from 7.30pm. I'll be there too. It should be fun.