The Envelope

There was nothing very special about our town, something I realised when I left it behind. Terraced houses, a church, corner shops. A couple of good pubs and one bad one. There was a small station on a branch line, a bus that took you to the next town and the bus to the Company.

The Company had built the town for the workers and their families. I am sure the plans looked fine on paper but the effect of a town springing up all at once was like a smile stretched too wide. All the houses were identical, with the same front door, carpet and kitchen counters; fully furnished like dolls houses. Streets were symmetrical and alphabetical, and you never saw people collecting the rubbish.

It was a town of women and children. Women on their way to the shop or taking the children to school; women in the garden hanging out the washing; women on the doorstep talking to their neighbours. Women served at the shops, taught in the school and delivered the mail. The men worked for the company and came home every second weekend in shifts. The preacher travelled in from the next town along.

Working for the Company was anticipated. It was where most boys went once they turned eighteen. You got an envelope, wore your best suit on the bus to the company. You came home to your own identikit house. It was rare to be turned down.

There was another envelope issued by the company. It was sent to the wife or mother. Everyone knew what it meant. A cream envelope with the company logo was delivered by a woman with doughy cheeks and a navy hat, outside of the regular post. As soon as she walked up the street voices would hush and games stop while people waited to see which house she would go to. I wondered where she lived and how her neighbours felt seeing her so often, hoping that her post-bag was empty at the end of each day.

Getting the envelope made a house sick. Curtains stayed shut, children stopped playing out front, no more chalk pictures on the pavement. Women would talk on the front steps in quiet voices and take food round, or take an extra wash in to help out. As kids we talked about what the letter said, no one had ever seen one. Then someone’s family would get one and you couldn’t talk about it around them anymore.

Of course the envelope came to our house. Mum complained at someone knocking at tea time in a sotto voice all the way to the door. Then a certain quality of silence which stops you. I remember seeing it in her hand but after that it was a bit of a blur.

We cried together. We sat together. We didn’t open the envelope.

Women came round with pies and bakes, and did the washing.

Give us the good guns!

I am (like a whole heap of others) really excited about the Avengers film but the trailer left me rather dyspeptic.

It was at the 2 minute point. Things don’t look good for the Avengers: they are standing back to back in a circle – the Hulk roaring, Iron man getting his suit souped up, Hawkeye is drawing his bad-ass bow. Thor is weighing his hammer in  his hand while Captain America is hefting his special shield (and probably pulling the lycra out of his ass).

What is the Black Widow doing? Putting a clip into her ridiculously tiny handgun. Even she looks miffed.

"Give me your pissing hammer."

It made me realise, where are the women’s awesome weapons and gadgetry?

Princesses Leia and Amidala both had to make do with “clumsy and random” blasters while the boys got the elegant Lightsaber.

Elektra has some BBQ forks, Cat woman has an uncomfortable costume and while I would quite like Wonder woman’s lasso (there is a bit of the cowboy in me) awesome gadget weaponry it ain’t.

Turn the sausages over

Modern heroines at least are getting the good stuff. Alice from Resident Evil usually travels with a mobile arsenal and can’t wait to see how Hit Girl can top the bazooka.

What I’m saying is, it is time to write in the big guns.

Fusion

[tweetmeme source=”conniechurcher” only_single=false] The only atom with two electrons is helium, insubstantial and in a dream of motion. Not knowing where it is bound, it circles in the dark immeasurable space between spaces. The two electrons dance toward and away from each other, flitting this way and that, just as Caleb and I did. And like us they too were blind.

Of all the people to be trapped underground with Caleb Green was not who I expected to find myself with. Not that it was a situation you could account for or even plan for. It might have been my profession but now I saw war for what it really was; a chain of twitchy reactive decisions, made by people who lived far far away. I’d had more time to think about it in the last few weeks than in all my 24 years.
Not one word had passed between Caleb and me during my time at the Base in Swale, and that was intentional on my part. I heard somewhere that you make up your mind about a person in the first five seconds after you meet them. I didn’t even need that long. To me he was just his job with a slice of stupid on the side. Security. Probably failed to get into the police or the military, because who would set their sights on ‘Security Guard’.
“I saw you around quite a bit, we had the same shifts I think. Did you know you were the only woman on the base under thirty?”
“Actually, I did. I graduated early out of MIT’s defence programme. Where did you go to college?”
“I got good grades out of high school, but I needed to work.” Caleb paused and looked up into the darkness, “You probably think I’m some kind of hick, huh?”
He had cut straight through my self important small talk.
“Oh no, of course not.” But I was lying. We came from different spheres, even in the microcosm that was Swale Military Research Base.
I had arrived at the base two years earlier, buoyed up with excellent grades and the high expectations of others. My initial impression of the place was deflating: the buildings were all one story high prefab units clustered near missile silos and bunkers, and further back in the rust landscape that stretched towards the mountains was the dull brown corrugation of aircraft hangers. The whole panorama was jarring; the brilliant white of the sky sat heavy on the red mountains and after a while it was as though the eye developed a pinkish film across it. Half way up the closest mountain an enormous white cross towered over the plains.
“Why did they leave that one up?” I had asked the private who was driving me to the orientation centre on my first day.
“X marks the spot Ma‘am.” He chuckled, “Access to this whole region is restricted, and so when all the churches were pulled down they missed all of those within these here mountains.”
“Don’t you find it sinister?”
“No ma’am, the base commander says buried treasure was always marked with a cross in the old days. Sort of apt, you know?”
I discovered what this meant during the orientation.
Swale extended far into the ground, splaying out into hidden hangers and secure rooms. It struck me as the sort of place Willy Wonka would have built if he was interested in atomic fission. Wires thrummed through the earth sending pulses of information and light to countless rooms full of consoles and computers. The base had given life to this barren piece of land: a giant’s body spread out beneath the surface just waiting for the day when it could stand up and walk on its own.
“What did you do that last day?” Caleb had asked me after we had been a week in the silo.
“Someone had managed to get a bottle of rum and a few of us had sunk it the night before – I had a hangover you wouldn’t believe, and was in a rather contrary mood.”
I looked at the concrete floor of the silo remembering, “When I got to Alpha lab a visiting technician mistook me for a secretary and I accidentally-on-purpose dropped a beaker half-full of a caustic agent on his shoes.”
Caleb laughed, “I knew you didn’t always have such a stick up your ass.”
“Hey,” I punched him, not quite playing, “You just don’t know me. I know you don’t actually use your brain but some of us have a little more ambition for ours.” I went into a sulk. It was like talking to someone from the 4th grade, he was so annoying.
“Come on, you know I was only teasing you,” He ran his fingers up my arm tickling me. It worked, I was laughing.
“Hey, cut it out! What are you, thirteen or something?”
“Well you sure seem to find it funny,” and he made a bid for the other arm.
After I a few minutes we both seemed to realise we were laughing and awkwardly sat up again.
“Where were you when it happened then?” Caleb asked.
“I was behind the lab, having a cigarette. I am sure as hell missing those,” I could still hear the noise that had followed the flash: a scream as thick as a wall. Remembering that mess of noise and fear made the silo grow colder.
We sat quietly for a while.
“What about you? Alpha lab is pretty far from the security detail, isn’t it?” my voice held a laugh in it because I knew the answer, but wanted to hear him admit it.
“I would watch you sometimes,” Caleb said, without any sign of shame, “I’d take my breaks when your shift ended in case I’d run into you.”
He was so self-assured. I didn’t understand how someone like him could be so confident.
“I think I’ll turn in,” I said, and went to my cot. The conversation had wandered far enough in that direction for two people shut underground together.
Whenever I tried to remember the sunlight or the sound of the air in the mountains that last day would intrude. The roar and rush of air in my ears as the ground whimpered. The fear made me nauseous even at the memory. I could remember the taste of it in the bile when I was sick after the blast, it had tasted like iron. I was sick frequently in the days which had followed.
I’d had the good fortune to be close to the silo when the blast went off, but even so I wasn’t quick enough to prevent the logo on my shirt from burning into my skin. Caleb had stared at my body as I tried to clean the burns on my chest after the pain had become enough to overcome the fear on that first day in the silo. He had also been burned, the dark stripes of the security insignia on his chest absorbing the power from the flash. I tried to clean both of us up as best I could, but there wouldn’t be much I could do if our wounds became infected.
When Caleb and I had first scrambled down into the silo neither of us could speak, shock I suppose. When we could move I had tried to utilise the transmission equipment but all I could pick up was a recording advising staff to follow emergency protocols. We would switch this message on sometimes just in case it changed to a real person with instructions and reassurance, but after a while the message stopped.
“Do you think others are alive like us?” I put to him, “In other parts of the site I mean?”
“Not from the security personnel, I think. All our buildings were above ground, not close enough to any refuge.”
“I’m sorry.” It felt redundant, an automatic response.
He paused as if ruminating over a flavour, “Do you think it happened just to Swale?” He asked with his face turned up to the darkness above.
“If it wasn’t a localised accident I would have thought other major bases or perhaps cities would have been hit. I find it hard to believe it was an accident.”
“Aren’t you supposed to know that sort of thing?”
“I help make the weapons; I don’t know where they point them.”
Caleb snorted.
“So you’re suddenly a pacifist now?” I flared up.
“I never gave it much thought, until recently.”
We lapsed into silence again. Caleb did not say much for the rest of that day and he slept that night with his gun in his hands, like a rosary.
We lost our grasp on time; days, nights, hours passed and neither of us tried to hold on to it as it left. I slept as much as I could and felt relief when I did not dream.
One day I woke up and found Caleb at the control panels. He was running his fingers over and around the buttons, letting his fingers catch on the edges.
He saw me looking, “I think this one starts the launch process.”
“I don’t think you should be touching that.”
“Calm down – it probably doesn’t even have power.”
“There’s enough power for the lights,” I pointed out, but he ignored this.
He touched the casing over a large yellow button, “What would happen do you suppose, if the missile was launched while those doors were shut?”
He looked up toward the huge mechanical doors almost a mile above us.
That was enough for me. I got out of the cot, “I think it’s about time to change our dressings. Can you take your shirt off for me?”
He left the controls, unbuttoned his shirt and sat down on the cot next to me.
“Do you want to know something?” He asked while I was unwinding the bandage around his torso.
“What?” I was relieved to be talking about something other than the missile.
“This is the favourite part of my day.”
“A clean bandage really feels that good? You need to get out more.”
“It’s the only time when you touch me.”
“Oh,” I dropped my hands, embarrassed.
Caleb reached down and took both of my hands in his, which were warm. He pulled them toward him, making rough circles in my palms with his thumb. Slowly, he put them back on the bandages and I continued, self-conscious now.
Things started to change after that.
I was up on the mezzanine looking through boxes when I first heard Caleb sing. Something liquid and warm resonated out from him and I found the worry scabbing over and falling away. For the first time since we had scrambled into this pit I started to cry.
Caleb’s voice was higher than I would have thought; clear and dry but brilliant. He sang the story of what had happened, and what he thought might happen in the days to come. Hearing my name I was entrancing: no one had ever made anything for me before. I sat listening until I was no longer me, just a series of sensations held together by the cold.
The song made me think about what I had tried so hard to shut out. In my mind’s eye I saw the world pock-ridden, soil hanging off it like so much dead flesh. I wondered if the destruction of Swale was merely a huge mistake. It seemed unlikely, but how could we know? No one would realise we were down here. Our names would be added to the missing, presumed dead. The toxic land would be buried under six feet of concrete and the operation would move on to a new location; a new body growing in more fertile earth.
I must have fallen asleep on the mezzanine because I woke up in my cot some time later. I felt someone watching me and opened my eyes to find Caleb inches above me, his breath tickling my face.
I recoiled instinctively, “You startled me.”
“Good morning.”
He was so close.
Around us the lights blinked out one at a time, and with them the consoles, the army cots and even the missile room. The silence retreated leaving just the sound of breathing. I could smell the darkness of his skin. His eyes, like the downy feathers of a collared dove, fastened on me.
My stomach fell through the bottom of the cot and found I couldn’t breathe. I don’t remember who kissed who first.
Afterwards, I got up quickly and started talking about breakfast: did he want powdered fish or powdered egg? And how did they make egg into a powder anyway?
“Come over here Miss fusion-feet and show me your moves.”
“Fission, not fusion. What moves?”
“Here. Now. Just one turn around this here warhead.”
“Oh, no. I don’t do dancing.”
“What do you mean, ‘don’t do dancing’?”
“I can’t dance.”
“Everyone can dance.”
“Yes they all can. Except me.”
“You must have some time or another, at a wedding? Prom? Everyone has to dance at prom.” Caleb wasn’t letting this go quick.
“I didn’t go to prom.”
“That,” he put an arm around my waist and pulled me towards him, “is a tragedy. I bet you’d have looked so pretty in,” he leaned back a moment, considering me, “a blue ball gown, with red flowers in your hair.”
“And you would have been the prom king, I suppose? With a pretty date whose corsage matched your tie?”
He led me in a slow dance. We moved like two electrons around our missile in an old fashion waltz, as if nothing were untoward in our situation.

Of course we talked about opening the door, and even tried it once. If it was suicide to open it what difference did it make to two people who were already buried alive? Dying today or tomorrow didn’t matter; no one was coming for us. At least on the outside my particles would go back into the world, the earth, the sky. But when we tried it the handle would no longer move.
“That only leaves the other door,” I said. We both looked up.
“What do you think?” Caleb asked.
“I think if I stay down here much longer I’ll go mad.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you think?”
“Maybe we could sleep on it.”
All these things which I had been were leaking upwards, drifting out through cracks in the earth, and up to the atmosphere. I dreamt that night I was drifting above the clouds with the starlight lighting me up, seeping inside to illuminate me from within. I was stretching into the freedom when I felt something tugging at my leg. As soon as I tried to look down I found I was falling, screaming down towards the Earth and the thousands of charred bodies which covered the landscape.
I woke up and tried to calm down as I stared up at the darkness. The dense black seemed to turn solid; a gluttonous weight of dark hanging there, waiting to fall and smother me. I tried to shake the feeling off but when I looked again the blackness was as thick as crude oil and came dribbling down towards me. I scrabbled off the cot and dragged the blanket with me, retching. Desperate for air.
Caleb was up and stroking my head the next moment, “It’s ok, hush, hush. It’s ok.” He tickled me gently under the chin so that I’d raise my head, “You look so beautiful when you cry, particularly when your nose is running just like that.”
I laughed, “Look at me, scared of the dark.”
He pulled me into his lap and kissed me all over my face, catching every tear. Eventually we settled into a peace, holding on to each other.
“Do you want to go to back to bed?”
“No, I don’t think I can.”
I led him to the console, where we both stood for a while. Gently he took my hand and put the other around my waist, burying his face in my hair and breathing me in.
“It’s alright, love,” and he kissed me, lips bitter with tears.
I looked at him and he nodded. I pushed back the plastic dome and he held me as I pressed the button down.

Copyright 2010

Crush

[tweetmeme source=”conniechurcher” only_single=false]Watching the bumble bees enjoy the geraniums outside the window Leon felt safe. He loved it up in the attic: it was the only place in the house that hadn’t been touched by the modern. Docile blinking lights and whirring gears did not feature up here as there was no function for them to fulfil, and no rails to travel on. And the dusty sweet smell; it reminded him of his grandparent’s house, and his grandpa’s wood shop.
Leaning forward with his elbows on the sill Leon shut his eyes to find Jane just out of sight behind the lids. When he tried to think about her his mind would slip off her face, too beautiful to be stored as second-hand information by the likes of him. What he could pin down though resonated all the sweeter for it. The smile at the corner of her mouth had kept him buoyant all morning.
There was a comfortableness around him now through which the loneliness couldn’t penetrate. Lately he could even bear the heart-crunching silence which followed him from class to class because she kept him company in his head. They would talk about which teacher they disliked the most or what they would do if everyone else in the world suddenly died.
A hammering intruded into the attic. Leon peered further out of the window to see his father mending a loose slat on the gazebo below, offensively loud.
Yes, Leon thought, offensively loud was a good way to describe Charles Pearson. Always sounding off on every little thing. Comments like,
“What on earth do you look like?!”
“Here he comes – the undead. Why don’t you just cheer up?” and the well-used most tiresome one,
“Just pull yourself together will you!”
Leon wasn’t surprised at his parent’s overreaction when they caught him with Jane last night. His mum usually took whatever line his father spouted and his father’s line could be described as derisive at its mildest.
“You smoke, you screw! Is there anything else we should know about?” His father had bellowed at Leon the night before. The Sweep’n‘mop, doing it’s usual post dinner clean, seemed to slow down and steer away from the arguing family as if it knew this was an area of linoleum to avoid just at that moment.
Leon‘s father continued, “It’s disgusting. You‘ve really let us down, Leon!”
His father stared at him out of the corner of his eyes, literally unwilling to look at him, “Just get out of my sight.” But he had carried on talking loudly about it for a long time after Leon had gone to his room.
“Why her? It is almost as if he is purposely trying to make us look bad. What if people find out? Messing about with the help! I‘ve a good mind to chuck her out.”
That was the argument that had made a no-go zone of the downstairs the next day. His father ruined everything, Leon thought, he even managed to shoehorn into his solitude. He felt a malicious satisfaction when his father hit his finger with the hammer. He should feel pain: he was so ready to dole it out.
He saw his mother appear in the garden below with two glasses of lemonade and stop several feet away from her husband. She waited a few minutes in silence, watching the hammer rise and fall, before placing one glass on the edge of a flower bed and retreating back into the house. His dad did not turn round, back bent he kept on hammering.
Leon tried to shut out the noise and get back to his daydreaming. He didn’t care that Jane had to work; she was a whole heap more interesting than the kids at school. She never laughed at him or yelled at him. She would never walk past him like he wasn’t there.
There was now silence from below. Leon leaned out and saw the garden empty but his daydreaming wouldn’t return. In the search for why, words echoed from across the night from their argument and a fear crept up from his stomach. If his dad threw Jane out he’d most likely never see her again.
Leon made a dash for the stairs and hurtled down wo at a time until he reached the basement. With each step the anxiety seemed to rise higher until it was in his throat: a bile-like anticipation of his father having got their first, that she would already be gone.
His first few steps in the basement were tentative as he tried to get used to the dim light. Most of the mechanised systems of the house spent time down here either powering up or waiting for something to do for the Pearsons. Leon saw her by the workbench and the relief was beautiful.
Jane had her back to him. He wondered if perhaps his father had had words with her, maybe she was upset.
“Hi, there you are. How are you?”
Jane turned round and walked towards him, “Hi Leon. I am well. How are you?” She stopped when she was close enough for him to see the red gleam at the heart of her eyes. Her perfect skin seemed to glow in the dark of the basement with a waxy luminance.
“Have you spoken to my Dad this morning?”
“Not this morning, Leon.” She had amazing eyes – he couldn’t think straight when she was standing this close to him.
“What are you up to?” He cringed at how lame it sounded – she was down here powering up so she obviously wasn’t doing anything.
“I am currently awaiting function.” She paused for a while, “I fixed the washer earlier,” she paused, “Would you like me to wash something for you?”
“No, I’m alright thanks, I‘m just trying to avoid Mum and Dad.“ Leon looked at his trainers, “I, uh, I missed you this morning. I had a really great time yesterday.”
“I did too Leon,” another pause, “Would you like to kiss again?”
As an affirmative he leant in and kissed her gently on the lips. All round them the red lights from machines on standby blinked at different frequencies. He could hear the metal links inside her click as her jaw moved.
A sharp intake of breath made Leon pull away. His parents had formed an angular shape on the foot of the stairs.
Leon’s dad spoke, “Janitorial Assistance, I would like you to explain exactly what is going on here.” He spoke quietly but with a great repression of force.
“Her name is Jane,” Leon said slowly in a tone of equal measure.
“No, her name is whatever I say it is. This unit is Janitorial Assistance for our home. She has her function just like the Sweep‘n‘mop. Or a can opener.”
Leon felt his face getting hot and knew it was clouding over with tiny blotches of red.
“If that’s all she is why does she look like she does? Why make her look so beautiful? If you just spoke to her you’d see.”
Leon’s father cut him off, “She is not beautiful.” He walked up to Jane and peered into her face. The Jane unit smiled automatically; it was part of her programming to be agreeable to her owners, but the wide smile looked a little closer to insolence just then.
“No, even you have to admit that she is beautiful, Charles,” Leon’s mother spoke for the first time. Penelope Pearson turned to her son and he heard a nettle in her voice, “Your father wasn‘t comfortable with a male-type unit in the house.” Her statement caused a shift in the tension which was so thick now it was eddying around their feet like a low-lying fog.
“Well, would you be?” Charles Pearson had started raising his voice, “Everyone now has a real-style unit in their home, and it is normal for them to be female. A male janitorial unit would be strange – people would talk: ‘Why does Charles Pearson have a young male unit in his house?’”
“And it’s nothing but a coincidence that the units look like younger and younger women?” his mother countered. Leon got the impression he was becoming embroiled in an existing argument and had the good sense to keep quiet.
“It was the latest model.“ Leon’s father stuck out his chin until you could see the veins in his neck twitch. He said quietly, “I thought we had finished this discussion.”
Leon’s mother said nothing but raised her eyebrows while looking at the floor. Leon knew exactly what she meant – it was a face he’d pulled in front of her quite a few times. Suddenly his Mum didn’t feel so alien.
“Look,” Penelope Pearson was saying, “I don’t agree with what Leon was up to just now, but can you honestly say you don’t understand it? You have bought home a walking, talking beautiful doll into this house and him to ignore her?”
“It’s not a her, it’s an it!” Charles Pearson spat. His arm swept round but he had not realised how close Jane was standing behind him. He clipped her face with a back-handed slap that in the dim basement sounded very loud. Jane did not even blink but her head remained snapped to the left.
After that several things happened very quickly. There was the sound of the punch from Leon connecting with his father’s jaw and of Penelope Pearson shouting loudly, automatically. Charles Pearson gasped and stumbled backward. He could not have avoided crushing the small house-bot that had found itself under his foot, even if he had seen it. There was the sharp snap and crunch of metal on the concrete floor.
After a moment Penelope Pearson spoke, “What was it?”
Charles Pearson looked down to the metal under his foot, “I don’t know. I, er, can’t tell what it was.”
As he kicked some of the parts across the floor and rubbed his jaw, Jane’s benign face underwent a barely perceptible change. When Leon tried to pin point what it was when he thought back to it afterwards he could only describe it as looking a little sadder.
Jane spoke to no one in particular, “It was the recyc-bot – it used to sort the recycling and refuse. He had been a gift to you when Leon was born. He had been recycling for 14 years.”
“I didn’t even know we had one of those, I thought you did the rubbish Jane.” Charles Pearson spoke with sing-song surprise as if the last few minutes in the basement had not taken place, “If it was that old we are probably due an upgrade by now anyway. Leon, I will speak to you later after your mother and I have decided what your punishment should be. Janitorial Assistance, you are not to leave this basement. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Charles Pearson.” Jane responded.
Leon heard his parent’s row continuing in the kitchen and then a silence after two doors slammed. Behind him Jane was picking up the pieces of the broken unit. Leon was embarrassed.
“I’m sorry Jane – he is such an ape! I know that doesn’t help. Sorry.”
Jane didn’t speak.
“Can you fix it?” Leon peered over her shoulder to the little pieces on the workbench.
After a time Jane said, “I believe I can.”
“Great,” Leon felt less guilty.
“Although I am not sure if I should.”
“Why not?”
“Did you ever speak to this unit?” She was handling the broken pieces of silicone and metal.
“No, I don’t think I ever even saw it before.”
“Every day when he would come to charge up he would talk about his great owner; what Charles Pearson had eaten; what Charles Pearson had bought that day. He believed his length of service meant he was valued,” Jane looked at Leon, “I could not listen him talk about Charles Pearson in that way again.”
Leon felt a thrill of pain, a dull ache in his stomach when he realised that something had changed and that he had no control over whatever it was.
“I guess not.”
“Do you really care about me Leon?” Jane asked, face impassive.
“Yes! Don’t worry Jane; I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Would you remove my inhibitor pin?” Jane pointed to a wide pin on her arm which kept her within a hundred meters of the house.
Jane saw Leon’s hesitation.
“You know I can’t do it myself Leon.”
“What will you do if I take it off?”
“I cannot stay Leon. One day I will break, or ill perform function, or Mr Taylor next door will get a better model.” She spoke so coolly it hurt his head. He felt his eyes picking with tears. The happiness that had worked it‘s way up inside of Leon over the past few months seeped quietly down his body and into the floor.
When he spoke it was the dull voice of someone who no longer had any hope, “Of course Jane.”
Later that night, after successfully evading his parents, Leon cried. Big powerful sobs that wracked his body until his muscles ached soaked his pillow. He felt a biting frustration of knowing there was nothing he could do; he was too scared to leave home and go with her. He wished he was older then he could have got a job and taken care of her. Finally he fell asleep clutching the pin he had removed from Jane’s arm in his hand, it was still warm.
The next day Charles Pearson blew a gasket. He took a hammer to the gazebo he had been fixing and reduced it to a pile of splinters. Leon watched him with his mum from the attic, both of them keeping out of the way today.
Later, Charles Pearson he called the manufacturers to berate them at length. Any Janitorial Assistance that could remove its own inhibitor pin was obviously highly defective, he was assured, it had never happened before in the history of the company. The manufacturer offered to send over a replacement model that afternoon but he declined the offer, choosing instead to wait for the new advanced model which was due out in the autumn.

Copyright 2009

Time Slips

[tweetmeme source=”conniechurcher” only_single=false] Oona was on her backside for a full five seconds before she had even registered anything had happened.

The rain had been falling for hours. It wasn’t safe to go out when it rained like this but it was an emergency so Oona had braved it, despite the resolute expression on the security guard at her building. Arms folded and feet apart he needed to be tricked, bribed or bargained with if she was to get out of the building that afternoon.

“I’m sorry Miss, but you know the weather report for today,” he looked at her with benevolence, almost regally unconcerned with her spluttering and hand-wringing. Whether Oona had heard the report or not, he repeated the transmission from that morning, “There will be Time Rain from two until at least half four. That means no one goes out.”

“But it’s an emergency! I need to get to my doctor, now!” Oona had pleaded with him without result until she’d told him that she was pregnant, and bleeding. She felt him teeter on this information and finally he was ferrying her out of the side exit so that no one would see, sending her away with his small umbrella and a whispered, “Good luck.”

Alone on the pavements she had struggled through the large greasy drops, to the wonder of those trapped in shops and cafes during the downpour. One man shouted after her from the doorway of a dress shop, waving his hands towards himself frantically but the heavy rain flattened his words out to thin noise and she did not even turn to acknowledge him.

Oona hadn’t been out in the Time Rain before; like most people she had been frightened by it when she was younger. She’d fretted about fairy tales and scare stories, like the one about the Gleams: creatures who lived in the puddles who would grab at your ankles with their bone-sharp fingers and drag you into their world for dinner if they caught you. Gradually, fairy-tale stories crept to the back of her mind as she grew older, made friends and started day dreaming about boys, but now Oona found them jostling back in under the umbrella. Out of the corner of her eyes she imagined she saw hands of ice-coloured bone reaching for her.

Hurrying along resolutely, Oona marvelled at how thick the rain was. It left slicks of rainbow coloured water on the tarmac and made it seem as if the sky was dropping watercolour paints. The droplets and puddles were more vivid than any two dimensional picture though because things moved inside the Time Rain.

It had started just over thirty years ago in northern Canada, then Chile. Strange stories emerged that were unbelievable and easily dismissed as madness encroaching in those remote places. Before long other countries began to make incredible claims too; it became a bigger story on the news and then the only news world wide. At first it was treated as a conspiracy theory or mass hallucinations until the rain spread across he globe People had seen the future running in gutters or had long past memories shouted back to them from puddles, and once everyone had seen it no one could argue with what was happening. Speculation rose that it was due to some chemical warfare gone wrong. Some blamed satellites tainting the atmosphere with the details of our life, broadcast far out into the galaxy from our noisy planet. After a few years of the rain no one cared about the why anymore. People were re-living their worst memories along with the happiest days of their life and unfortunately for the majority the bad times seemed to outnumber the good; some had even witnessed their own deaths or that of their loved ones.

It was when people started disappearing during the storms that action was taken. Not that they were needed: no one went out in the rain anymore.

So Oona knew why people were yelling at her to get inside, she knew looking into the Time Rain was not worth the risks. The future and the past were like bombs slapping down all around her.

“Please, just keep me from seeing something bad. My life cannot do with anymore drama at the moment.” Her teeth were clenched, biting back her rising anxiety in the rain. She didn’t want to make her situation worse and tried to focus on the route to her doctor, letting her eyes glide out of focus to avoid seeing anything she shouldn’t. Her eyes misted over when Oona realised she might not see her baby in the rain falling around her.

It was no wonder she had slipped in the large oily Time puddle she now found herself in. As she lay on her back, trying to understand how she’d got there Oona became a captive to the sky: it was alive with neon lightning which cracked around the clouds like the static on an old TV. She had never considered how the clouds would look if they were made of Time Rain. Everyone who remembered being out in it could only ever talk about the view looking down. Distracted by the sudden fall and the startling sky Oona was none too cautious as she struggled to her feet. She found herself looking fully down as she stood up, looking full into the puddle she had slipped in.

And it was beautiful, perfect.

A man was there, a man she did not know, but he was perfect. He was in a field she recognised from when she was younger, the one next to the bus stop where the grass was long and peppered with buttercups. He was playing with a toddler in a green dress, who had perfect brown curls. The child was on his knee, bobbing and laughing at the song the man was singing, trying to join in between giggles. Oona was laughing too because she knew that they belonged to her, it was what she had dreamed of. They both turned their laughing faces up to Oona; she was in on the joke, she knew the song. The little family in the puddle reached out their arms to her and with an oily splash she stepped down below the surface of the puddle.

Time Slips was highly commended in the Shorter Short Story competition at the Wincester Writing festival 2010.

Copyright 2009-10

The Adamant Heart

[tweetmeme source=”conniechurcher” only_single=false]I hear the heart beating in the night.

It is not my heart – my heart doesn’t beat anymore. It knocks and hums, vibrating like a moth in a matchbox. The heart beat I hear is steady, like the wheels of a train and I know it is Sarah’s heart. Thu-thud, thu-thud.

I can’t sleep. I stopped trying after the third sleepless night and my eyes refuse to shut for long enough anyway. I’ve been stretched over, under and around metal pins over the last five days and now I‘m too brittle thin to reach back into a human shape. Sarah is missing.

I know she’s dead. Sarah would never have left me. It sounds arrogant but we were so in love. As soon as I met her I knew I’d never want anyone else; she was mine. When she first saw me at Andrew’s party her watch stopped and we both joked that time couldn’t touch us. She moved in three months later; it felt unnatural to stay apart.

On paper it shouldn’t have worked; we were polar opposites. She was outgoing and social while I preferred staying in, just her and me. I drove whenever I needed to go somewhere while Sarah walked everywhere. She would tease me, ‘Cars are for lazy people – you’ll de-evolve!’

I bought her a bicycle but she fell off constantly and had consigned it to the shed, considering it a bad lot that she must stare at the tarmac in order to stay upright. She always walked with her head titled back, meeting the broad white sky of the South West with her amiable smile. But five days ago she had got back on the bicycle which had been found later, wheels twisted and spokes warped. It felt as if net curtains were drawn between us, smoke yellow. I couldn’t understand what had happened to us, I could only hear her heart beating out of time with life around me. Thu-thud.

I lie in bed watching the digitised red numbers dragging life forward. I shut my eyes to freeze myself against time so it would always be night. I would always be alone in the night, in a world with no people, listening to this rhythmic beating. What I couldn’t see wasn’t real; how could I believe in anything else when the heartbeat of a dead woman was the only thing I knew? I had no proof of anything else. I shut my eyes and realised that nothing existed, not even myself. But when my eyes opened they snagged on her contact lenses, her watch, the book she was reading. Sarah had been real and we had lived together. I couldn’t deny her possessions in the flat or the photograph of us by the bed, our faces smiling cheek to cheek.

The police had called round earlier the day before. The soft rap on the door followed by the official noise of boots and nylon vests and then the young police man who had made soothing noises told me they held out little hope for her life. Along with her bike Sarah’s bag had been found by the side of a lane seven miles away. Nothing was missing, not even the £15.51 in her purse. Her shoes had been found one at a time further into the wetland marshes. They showed me a picture of the sad little white shoes now so dirty, plucked off like the petals on a daisy. She loves me, she loves me not.

The red numbers from the clock start to scratch on my eyes.

I go to the window. Below me the town falls away to a wide arc of shore running into the sea, the houses washed bile yellow from the moon. The waxy light drips onto the wet pebbled beach below and I imagine a thin layer of wax covering her body too, her brown hair stiff with it. I stand until the cold has a hold of my body and a hand around my heart, fluttering against the stillness along with hers.

I boil the kettle for tea, trying not to see the things in the cupboard she had bought. Sarah’s mint tea, skimmed milk, apricot jam. The food would go bad and grow mould but I wasn’t ready to let go of the small indentations in the margarine and the bread bag twisted in the knot she used to make, the one which I couldn’t undo without tearing the plastic. I sat as still as possible, not wanting to disturb the echoes of her life that shouted all the louder next to mine. I burned my tongue on the tea.

The beating seemed to get louder until the silence thrummed with it. I crept on hands and knees to search for the sound, delicately moving our belongings so as not to disturb the finger prints she had left behind, not knowing that they were her last. The more I searched the more it dodged me; scuttled behind the sofa, darted behind the skirting boards.

My desperation sent me out of the house into the street and the light of an hour before dawn. I was halfway down the hill into town when I finally realised that the discomfort growing in my feet was pain. I hadn’t put on any shoes.

I pass windows black or boarded up to protect against the storms out of season, but ribbons of vinegar and old sugar still hung in the air. The town just doesn’t make sense. It’s too empty, colours distorted. The gulls wheeled and screamed above my head but they couldn’t drown out the beating in my ears. I stagger along the sea front, imagining Sarah on the beach below me; Sarah with the blue kite; Sarah with her shoes and socks off; Sarah‘s face screaming.

The policeman’s words from the day before are resonating with the beats.
“Considerable amount… “
Thu-thud
“…blood on the path…”
Thu-thud
“…struggle, must have fought…”
Thu-thud
“Can you hear me, sir? Sir?”

I made my way down the huge stone stairs from the promenade to the beach, slipping down the last few steps. I stay kneeling at the bottom of the stairs, the sharp scree cutting into my feet and knees but there is no pain, only blood. Blood as red as the lipstick Sarah never wore in life but was smeared across her frightened mouth in the last image I had of her in my head. I slid on the pebbles as I stood up and moved down toward the sea, the pain in my knees exploding with blue and orange bursts of light behind my eyes.
I could feel the thumping of the heart through the ground and all around me the images of Sarah pushing me down. Sarah putting her make up on for dinner; Sarah eating chips out of the bag; Sarah’s head as I bought down the hammer.

The morning had been distorted into a tangle of noise; the gulls screamed, the sea raked bony fingers through the shingle and the flags lashed with blunt smacks. The thudding thumping heart rattled every nerve and my knees finally gave way in an agony of submission. My hands scraped through pebbles and cold dark liquid filtered up the deeper I dug, dark water at first, then I felt something darker, heavier and thicker.

I thought it would be quieter now it was freed from the stones and brine but it beat so loud I thought the cliffs would start to crumble, but it was my body that was cracking, falling apart and failing as Sarah’s heart beat on in my hands.

The Adamant Heart won 3rd Prize in the Shorter Short Story competition at The Winchester Writer’s Festival 2009.

Copyright 2009