#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #9: Something Slithering This Way Comes

Gazing out at the cold grey dawn from an open window high in one of the fairy castle's towers, Titania sighed as her attendants dressed her, primping and preening her hair and wings. When one of them accidentally jabbed into her scalp with a jewelled hairpin, she backhanded the unfortunate fairy clear across the room before returning her attention to the smoke rising over the distant forest canopy; the Wyrm was at work.

It was at times like these, few as they may be, that she would really value the counsel of her consort, but where was Oberon? Drinking and whoring no doubt, Titania thought distastefully, certainly not here in attendance upon her, where he ought to be.

She had slept only fitfully, being woken frequently by her advisers with reports of the Wyrm's progress towards her kingdom. Most of the Pixie realm had been laid waste, and it was only a matter of time they felt, before the fell beast turned its attention toward her subjects. Border defences had been strengthened, all leave had been cancelled, there was nothing more Titania could do until the Wrym showed its hand. The UCF had been despatched to retrieve the Book, even in such dire circumstances she had made that a priority.

* * *

The Wyrm lowered its scaly head and sniffed the burrow opening. Pixies, it thought, recognising the familiar scent as it sent a jet of flame down the hole. There was no expectation of actually locating any live Pixies, the Wyrm had eaten enough of them to satiate its hunger, and it doubted if there could enough left alive to form the basis of mid-morning snack.

Smoke and embers from the Wrym's blast billowed into the dawn sky from the broken entrances of the Pixie citadel and from the many tunnels the Wyrm had dug while venting its anger. A mix of fury and pleasure coursed through its very being, fury at not being able to take its wrath out on those who had imprisoned it in the earth so long ago, and pleasure at the thought of its having finally being released from its earth-bound prison, for the first time in so many hundreds of years to stretch the kinks out of its sinuous body.

Scenting the air, the Wyrm's rage swelled even further as the faint smell of those who had caused its imprisonment drifted to it on the morning breeze. It bellowed, a deep-throated visceral roar, then rose up and dived towards the earth, burrowing quickly in the direction of the hateful aroma.

* * *

Marching directly into Oberon's chamber, Titania nearly tripped and fell over a pile of discarded nectar bottles just inside the door. Regaining her balance, she adjusted her crown and strode towards the bed, in which Oberon lay snoring, wrapped in the embrace of a young, blonde fairy. Titania grabbed the bottle from Oberon's bedside table and emptied the contents over his sleeping head.

'Wha...,' spluttered Oberon, jerking awake so suddenly he catapulted his bedmate onto the floor. Seeing the look on Titania's face, she beat a hasty retreat, wrapped only in Oberon's discarded cloak from the night before.

'Get your lazy arse out of bed!' Titania bellowed, seeing Oberon wince and clutch his head. 'The latest reports indicate the Wyrm is heading this way, so it's about time you got up, dressed, and took charge. You're not the commander of my army for the fun of it you know.'

Turning on her heel, Titania flounced out leaving Oberon sitting up in bed, rubbing his sore head and wondering how he ever let himself get talked into marrying her. As he pulled on his uniform he decided it was her legs, he'd always been a leg man.

Oberon reached the throne room just as a courier was reporting the Wyrm had been sighted heading towards the Fairy Kingdom's eastern border. Oberon belched loudly and all eyes in the room fixed him with steely gazes.

'We could, err...' he began.

'What?' snapped Titania.

'We could,' Oberon shuffled his feet, 'We could empty the camps and put the prisoners between us and the Wyrm.' He looked expectantly at Titania. 'That ought to buy us some time to get properly organised.'

Titania thought for a moment, then turned to a small group of officers waiting nervously in the corner of the throne room, trying to all intents and purposes to hide behind a single broad-leaved pot plant. Crooking her finger towards them, Titania called them forward.

'Proceed at once to the camps and give the order for the prisoners to be transported to our eastern border. They are to be held there awaiting further instructions.'

The officers made rapidly for the door.

'Wait a moment,' Titania commanded, 'Not the Gnomes. They stay. Anyway,' she added, 'I've always been quite fond of Gnomes, and we're going to have to fund this war somehow.'

The officers ran for the door.

#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #9: Something Slithering This Way Comes

Happy Birthday Future; Nostalgic!

How did that happen? It's not like me to forget a birthday, let alone the first anniversary of my own blog. *Hangs head in shame* The eagle-eyed among you will no doubt have noticed that Future; Nostalgic celebrated its first birthday on 6th May, 2009 but, I hear you ask, where was I during the festivities?

Well, the truth of the matter is that I was up to my armpits wrangling software onto a new laptop and completely lost track of the time, or the day come to that! You will also have noticed there has been a dearth of posts over here lately, apart from my #FridayFlash stories.

There are a number of reasons for this, most notably that we've had the builders in (and no, that's not a euphemism for something else!) to have our bathroom re-modelled, and Our Skiing Correspondent (OSC) has been in hospital for surgery on her knee.

The bathroom work took longer than expected and, whilst the end result is spot on, two weeks of building work is enough to try anybody's patience.

Our Skiing Correspondent's knee has been causing her problems for quite some time, to the point that, during our recent Slovakian trip, very little actual skiing took place. OSC's grandfather kindly paid for her to see a surgeon privately, the rest of her treatment was on the NHS.

The whole thing was a bit of a whirlwind - after OSC had seen the surgeon one Monday morning last month, an NHS MRI Scan was arranged for the following evening and she only waited a fortnight to discuss the results with the surgeon in his NHS clinic. None of us were expecting him to ask her what she was doing the following day, or for him to operate at 8.30am the day following the clinic appointment.

The surgery was, thankfully, a complete success, so much so that OSC frightened the life out of the nurses by wandering about the ward an hour or so after the operation (sans crutches for the first time in months I hasten to add); they didn't think she'd be up and about that quickly. Nor has she needed any of the large bag of drugs the hospital sent her home with. For the first time in months she's pain-free and looking forward to skiing again. Talk about a weight off all our minds.

Anyway, all of this has rather put me off my game and I have a few posts in the works now things are starting to get back to some sense of normality – there are some reviews, and the rest of our Slovakian travelogue to post for starters; apologies to those of you who've been waiting patiently to find out what we bought on our trip into town. I'll try to get these up as soon as possible.

In other news, I have received confirmation that one of my #FridayFlash stories, Twist in the Tale, has been accepted for inclusion in the 2009 Best of FridayFlash Anthology, and another story, Driftwood, got itself an Honourable Mention in Laurita Miller's recent story contest. I guess that means I can call myself a published author, right?

Also, we have finally received details of MIL's military service during World War 2, so now I can begin the somewhat mammoth task of attempting to document this turbulent period of her life. It's going to take me some time as additional research is required, but rest assured, I will post the results in due course.

And now, a Giveaway...

By way of a thank-you to all of you who've supported Future; Nostalgic through it's first year, I feel a giveaway is in order, so I've put together the following small goodie-bag of items I hope you will all enjoy:

By the way, the laptop is not included in the giveaway!

The goodie-bag contains:

1. a Fountain brand “Daisy Bundle” A5 lined notebook (256 ivory lined pages).
2. a pocket-sized Asda Executive notebook (80 sheets squared paper).
3. a Parker Jotter fountain pen (blue with one blue Parker cartridge).
4. a Staedtler triplus mobile office set (fineliner, ballpoint, 0.5mm mech pencil and highlighter all in a handy plastic carry case, which doubles as a desk stand).
5. a Maped twin tip 4 colour ballpoint multipen (blue, black, red and green 1.0mm tips).

To have a chance to win the goodie-bag, please follow these rules carefully:

1. Leave one comment on this post by midnight, GMT on Saturday, May 15. You are limited to one entry. Please feel free to link to this giveaway on your blog, or Tweet about it on Twitter; neither are required but either or both would be very much appreciated.

2. I will use the True Random Number Generator over at Random.org to pick a winner (comments will be numbered in the order in which they are received) from the comments section of this post, and will announce the winner on Sunday, May 16. [edit: I will announce the conest winner in a new post.]

3. The winner will have one week to contact me via email. Please use my Contact page.

4. Should the winner not contact me within one week, I will choose a new winner from the other entrants.

5. I will ship the goodie-bag internationally as I know Future; Nostalgic has many overseas readers and fans.

Good luck and thank-you for your support and encouragement through this past year.

Happy Birthday Future; Nostalgic!

#FridayFlash: UCF #8: Hangman’s Passage

Swazzle braced himself against the tunnel wall and gave the escape hatch a mighty kick. The old wood splintered outwards, replaced by a sudden blast of icy night air. Swazzle and Pogmorton scrambled quickly through the opening straight into a vision of Hades itself.

A flock of swirling fairies flew this way and that firing indiscriminately into targets on the ground while their ground troops massed to assault the Pixie positions. Pixie defenders returned fire with wands, but it seemed only a matter of time before their positions would be overwhelmed.

Creeping low along a trench, Swazzle and Pogmorton came upon a Goblin detachment that had jury-rigged a pneumatic nail gun to a sturdy video camera tripod and were sending a hail of iron nails into the inky darkness. Whether they were aiming at anything in particular, or merely attempting to get through as much ammunition as possible was not clear.

Keeping to their bellies, the Pixies crawled on past the Goblins to a small revetment. Beyond it, on a small area of flat ground, stood a huge wooden contraption over which a squad of Pixies swarmed, apparently readying it for firing. As Swazzle and Pogmorton looked on, the Pixie's commander called forward the first of another small group of Pixies which had been hiding in the shadows.

Stripped to the waist and quivering with wild-eyed excitement, the first Pixie climbed into the machine's bucket-shaped harness. A technician handed him up two wickedly sharp looking silver-bladed sickles before saluting and retreating to a safe distance. The Pixie in the bucket paused for a moment, returned the salute and, as the ground crew threw a large wooden lever to discharge the catapult, soared away into the night sky, his battle-cry hanging in the air as he sailed out of sight towards another incoming wave of fairies.

‘Mad buggers,’ muttered Pogmorton as he and Swazzle pelted across the open ground to take cover in a large patch of brambles.

After being forced back twice by the heavy fighting, Swazzle and Pogmorton finally made it to a Portal and dived through amid a hail of banshee rifle fire.

‘Where are we?’ Swazzle asked as they tumbled to a halt on rain-lashed cobbles, illuminated only by the angry orange glare of a sodium street lamp.

‘It looks like...,’ began Pogmorton, pausing to glance around, ‘It is! We’re in Hangman’s Passage.’

‘Where?’

‘Hangman’s Passage. You know, just round the corner from Gallows Close.’

Recognition dawned on Swazzle’s face. ‘Well, wherever we are, we need to hide. I'm not convinced our exit went unobserved. Any ideas?’

‘Those bins,’ Pogmorton pointed, ‘over there.’

Swazzle and Pogmorton were just getting comfortable among the food waste from the Leisure Centre’s cafeteria when sounds of a disturbance from Hangman's Passage reached their ears. Peering over the side of the bin, just in time to see a column of Pixie women and children streaming through the portal, urged on by a familiar voice.

‘Salkeld!’ muttered Pogmorton, ‘I’d recognise that nasal whine anywhere.’

They were on the point of leaving their sanctuary to assist the refugees when the column began to scream and scatter. Three fairies swooped through the portal, firing into the column as they wheeled above the terrified Pixies. Salkeld took one of the fairies down before he was hit with a burst of banshee rifle fire that left his body twitching in the gutter.

Swazzle pulled out the banshee rifle and, balancing the muzzle against the edge of the bin, took aim.

‘Do you have any idea how to work that thing?’ Pogmorton hissed in his ear.

‘Shush! You’ll put me off. Anyway, how hard can it be?’ Swazzle replied, ‘I’ve seen them used often enough lately. You point the sharp end that way, look through this bit on the top and squeeze that little lever down there.’

Pogmorton did not look convinced as Swazzle took aim once more, squeezed the trigger and loosed off a round. The rifle’s report and the recoil surprised them both, but not as much as it surprised the fairy whose wing the bullet punched a neat hole through, causing the wing to break and fold backwards like a streaming silk scarf as she spiralled face first into the cobbles.

Pogmorton, his ears ringing, peeped over the lip of the bin while Swazzle attempted to extricate himself from the pile of spaghetti the recoil had flung him into.

The remaining fairy hurtled towards the bin and, as Swazzle was to remark upon later, the sound of banshee rifle bullets whacking into the side of a steel bin, did concentrate the mind somewhat.

Swazzle fired, and missed. And missed again as the fairy jinked this way and that to avoid the incoming fire.

‘I’m not having this,’ muttered Pogmorton, taking aim with his wand.

The fairy’s wings stuttered and stopped in mid flap as Pogmorton’s Charm turned the normally agile aerial creature into a glider, through who's forehead Swazzle put his next shot. The fairy hit the side of the bin with an almighty clang and the night felt silent once more, apart from the muffled wailing of the Pixie refugees.

Pelting across to where the refugees sheltered in the shadows, Swazzle and Pogmorton managed eventually through a combination of encouragement and cajolement to get them moving in the direction of the churchyard opposite Goddess Rising, where there was plenty of undergrowth to hide in.

They had just returned for Salkeld when a rushing sound filled their ears and a huge gout of blue flame thundered through the Portal, singeing their eyebrows.

‘There was nothing we could do,' Salkeld whispered, 'It...it's all over. Flaarti had to release a Wyrm.’ He closed his eyes and lay still, blood pumping from a sucking chest wound.

Swazzle and Pogmorton exchanged panic-stricken glances.

‘A Wyrm,’ mumbled Swazzle, huge sadness in his voice, ‘We’re royally fucked now.’

_____________________________

I hope you enjoyed this story. If you'd like to read this serial from the beginning, the first installment is here.

If you've the time, please also check out my flash fiction story Driftwood, which earned itself an Honourable Mention in Laurita Miller's recent contest.

Don't forget to check out all the other great #FridayFlash stories this week, they can be found here, and please search the #FridayFlash hashtag on Twitter.

#FridayFlash: UCF #8: Hangman’s Passage

#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #7: Black Crocus

‘What does he do?’ The goblin’s clipped tones dragged Pogmorton’s attention from the parchment on which he was checking details of the latest incoming gold shipment.

‘Do? What does who…’ Pogmorton looked up to see Swazzle leaning against the tunnel wall, a blissful look on his face, traces of gold at the corners of his mouth.

‘Oh, him,’ Pogmorton waved his quill absently in Swazzle’s direction, ‘Captain Swazzle reckons gold, particularly Swiss gold, has the most marvellous flavour; he has a bit of a weakness for it.’

The goblin pulled a face, ‘but, the gold, isn’t it…’

‘Yes. Gnome droppings.’

Further discussion was cut short by the distant thump of an explosion. Dust drifted down from new cracks that appeared in the ceiling as the tunnel rocked with the blast.

Pogmorton dropped the parchment, thumping Swazzle on the back as he nearly choked on a mouthful of gold nugget. A momentary look of alarm flitted across the goblin’s face, replaced with one of determination as the snail shell clipped to its ear barked urgent, guttural orders.

‘Fairies,’ the goblin growled and loped off up the tunnel.

Swazzle and Pogmorton exchanged glances.

‘We’d better get out of here,’ said Swazzle, ‘I’ve never been terribly fond of summary execution if caught.’

A soft popping sound interrupted Pogmorton’s reply. They both turned to find a wild-eyed Flaarti leaning on the tunnel wall for support, blue blood dripping from an ugly wound in his scalp.

‘Here,’ he urged, thrusting something into Pogmorton’s hand, ‘Take this and run for it.’

‘Wha…,’ began Swazzle.

Flaarti waved the question away, ‘Fairies assaulting the tunnels. They’re nearly through to the lab. I must go back,’ and with that he vanished.

An iron bullet slapped the wall next to Swazzle’s head, a puff of dirt blossoming like a flower as he and Pogmorton dived into the darkness of the loading bay alcove.

'Bugger me, that was close!' muttered Swazzle.

Pogmorton did not reply, instead he pointed back into the tunnel. A fairy in full combat gear was slowly advancing towards their hiding place, her beetle carapace body armour glinting in the lantern light. Just as she swung the ugly looking banshee rifle towards them, the tunnel walls seemed to ripple, growing first arms, then legs and heads as a squad of goblins climbed out of the earth and fell upon the fairy.

Within seconds the fairy was merely a bloody stain on the floor and the goblins scurried off up the tunnel whooping with delight, gore still hanging from their teeth and claws. Swazzle snatched up the discarded banshee rifle and swiftly retreated back into the shadows.

Pogmorton watched the goblins bounding away down the tunnel, ‘You know,’ he whispered, ‘those Black Crocus paramilitary units scare the crap out of me. You never know where they’re going to pop up next. There’s no talking to them either, they’re complete fanatics.’

‘Wouldn’t you be if most of your family was in the camps? We’re lucky the few who escaped decided to join us,’ hissed Swazzle, ‘Now we really ought to be leaving.’

A pack of slavering weasels scampered past, dragging their grim-faced Pixie handlers behind them on long silver leads.

‘Things must be bad if we’re committing weasels so early on,’ muttered Swazzle.

As they stepped from the alcove, Swazzle and Pogmorton were almost bowled over by another detachment of goblins thundering past, and only just had time to flatten themselves against the tunnel wall. The first three goblins carried a large, orange pneumatic nail gun between them. The rest of the platoon bringing up the rear with bandoliers of nails and what looked like a heavy video camera tripod. One of the goblins grinned as it passed, revealing a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs.

‘Fairies,’ it chortled, ‘Kill fairies. Lots of fairies. Very good.’

Pogmorton shivered.

‘Time to go,’ urged Swazzle, ‘Now!’

* * *

Amid the ruins of Flaarti’s lab, a small group of fairies crouched over the remains of an iron cage. Twinkle cradled her sister’s head in her lap.

‘I’m sorry,’ Saffron whimpered softly as the Healer examined the stump of her left wrist, ‘I told them about The Book.’

‘Hush now,’ soothed Twinkle, ‘It’s alright. We’ll get to The Book before they do. At least the Key’s still safe.’

‘It’s not though,’ Saffron wailed, ‘I told them where to find that too. I held out as long as I could but,’ she glanced towards her where her left hand should have been, ‘they weaselled it out of me.’

A collective shudder went through the fairies as each contemplated the poisonous, acidic bite of a weasel, one of the few non-magical things to which they were not immune.

Twinkle turned to a large male fairy with a battle-scarred face, ‘Lieutenant, I want Flaarti alive, we need to know exactly what he has planned.’

‘And the rest?’

She smiled thinly, ‘You know my orders.’

#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #7: Black Crocus

#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #6: Goddess Rising

Unlocking the gate at the rear of No. 13 Gallows Close, Simeon Chesterman put his shoulder against the wood and heaved. With an almighty squeak of protest the old gate suddenly shot open, depositing him in the slimy puddle that lay just across the threshold.

‘Shite!’ Simeon muttered, hauling himself to his feet and trying not to think too much about what he was attempting to wipe off the sleeve of his jacket.

Shouldering the gate shut again, he picked his way up the narrow path past piles of soggy cardboard boxes, builder’s rubble, dead pigeons – another one fresh this morning, and old shop fittings, to the rear door of the shop. He checked his watch – 5.02am, he was two minutes late.

Bloody cats, he thought as he flicked the latest feathery corpse off the back step with his toe of his shoe before unlocking the half-dozen five-lever dead locks and letting himself in.

As the back door to the shop closed, high above, a small piece of brickwork detached itself from the old building and began to fall. At the last second, the fairy threw off the Blending Charm and swooped low over the yard before executing a graceful climbing turn up over the wall and, picking a last fragment of pigeon feather from her teeth, disappeared into the gathering dawn.

Hanging his jacket on the hook by the door, Simeon set his lunchbox down on the table in the back room and flipped on the kettle. Tea, he thought, always start the day with tea, makes everything alright does tea. While the kettle boiled, he washed his hands, repeatedly.

He poured the tea, recorded his arrival time in a small black notebook, then removed his training shoes and wriggled his toes into a pair of bunny slippers, whose mouths opened to reveal rows of sharp, pointed teeth and growled when he walked. The slippers had been a gift from a customer in the USA, whose orders always came in by email from an anonymous US PO box return address, and whom Simeon knew only as “Jezebel.” It had taken him months to track down the particular volume “Jezebel” had wanted, his scars had almost healed, and he was more than a little grateful when the package had arrived by return.

Taking his mug of tea through to the shop, Simeon set it down on a coaster next to the till and went to check the Warding Charms he kept permanently set around the place, noting with relief no one, no-thing, had disturbed them.

Simeon surveyed his domain. Dust. Books and dust, that was what characterised Goddess Rising for the few who had ever ventured across the threshold, by invitation of course. Bookshelves lined every inch of the walls, free-standing bookcases and tables occupying almost all of the rest of the space, each overflowing with tomes and grimoires of every conceivable size, age and language.

After a quick slurp of tea, Simeon picked his way through the teetering piles to check for notes in the dumb waiter hidden in a back corner – only two volumes required today he read, and both in stock. The landlord must be taking it easy for once, he thought as he gathered up the two requested books and placed them on the dumb waiter’s tray.

As he closed the hatch Simeon sighed contentedly - he loved his job and could think of nothing better than spending his days surrounded by the smell of ancient texts, though at the back of his mind was a constant nagging doubt that he would be found out.

That nagging doubt, insidious in its tenacity, was because Simeon Chesterman had a secret. Something he had never revealed to another living soul, something that had coloured his view of the world since the age of sixteen – Simeon Chesterman had seen a fairy.

Just the once, in the woods behind his grandparent’s house on a scorching day in August, 1976.

The fairy had spoken to him at length about the Magical Realm and had told Simeon there was a plan for him, that one day he would play a vital part in a larger struggle. She had given him something, wrapped in a walnut shell and had told him to keep it with him always, that it was more important than life itself; Simeon assumed she meant hers.

The walnut shell and its mysterious contents, at which Simeon had never dared to look, currently resided in the shop safe, a much more secure place than anywhere in the high-rise council flat on a very rough estate across town that he called home.

By the time he had drained his first mug of tea of the day, Simeon had worked through much of his usual routine – he had checked the Wards, checked the dumb waiter, checked his email for orders – two, and one of the requested books would take some getting hold of. Ticking off these items on his internal list, Simeon bent down under the counter and opened the safe, making sure the contents remained untouched from the night before.

Realisation hit him with a wave of nausea, and he only just made it across the shop, wrenching open the door to the under stairs cloakroom before vomiting his tea into the Victorian porcelain lavatory bowl. The walnut shell was gone.

As he had torn open the cloakroom door, Simeon was nearly bowled over as a large, terrified cat streaked past. Completely bald, wild-eyed, and glowing a pale shade of blue, the cat shot behind a pile of books leaving dust motes swirling in its wake.

* * *

Swazzle and Pogmorton swaggered along Gallows Close, Swazzle throwing the walnut shell up in the air, bouncing it off his bicep and catching it again.

‘That was surprisingly easy,’ he said, ‘Now all we need is the book.’

‘Hmmm,’ Pogmorton replied, ‘Getting hold of that is not going to be quite so simple.’

‘Shame about the cat though,’ said Swazzle, ‘I usually quite like cats.’

_________

I'd like to dedicate this story to my good friend @LauraEno, without whose persuasion encouragement I would almost certainly never have taken the plunge and written for #FridayFlash, Laura, this is all your fault! Laura is a great writer and you can find her blog here.

#FridayFlash: UCF Stories #6: Goddess Rising

Guest Post: #FridayFlash by Aislinn O'Connor - The Dark Assassin

I'm very pleased to introduce Future; Nostalgic's first ever guest post, a debut piece of flash fiction from my good friend Aislinn O'Connor (whom you can find at: @Aislinnye24 on Twitter). Hope you enjoy it.

The Dark Assassin
by
Aislinn O'Connor

With his dark clothing and equally dark thoughts, he waited in the shadows of the night. Some called him a hero and some a vigilante - some almost worshipped him, while others thought he was the devil's child. It didn't matter. Secure in his identity, he needed no-one's approbation but his own.

His victim would, he knew, arrive at any moment. Already his sharp ears had picked up footsteps, getting closer. Quick, light footsteps that betokened hurry.

Their owner was, of course, no match for him - his strength, his agility, his lightning-fast reactions... or his absolute determination to rid the world of yet another enemy. He poised himself to strike.

It only took a moment, and the deed was done. Not a sound escaped his victim - just the lightest of thuds as the mouse's tiny body hit the pavement. The pure-black cat, almost invisible in the shadow of the wall, licked his lips in anticipation and settled down to wait for his next kill.


Thank you for reading. Let's hear it for Aislinn everybody!

You can find the rest of this week's #FridayFlash stories in the usual place, and please follow the #fridayflash hashtag on Twitter for all the latest, up-to-the-Tweet news of #FridayFlash.

The UCF Stories will return next week.

Guest Post: #FridayFlash by Aislinn O'Connor - The Dark Assassin

#FridayFlash: UCF #5: A Mirror Cracked

A dismal little street, not much more than an alley between two bustling shopping streets, Gallows Close lay in the heart of the inner city, hemmed in on one side by the high stone wall of a churchyard, on the other by the imposing 1970s concrete carbuncle that was the city’s leisure centre.

Few of the buildings in Gallows Close were still occupied, the local council having made repeated advances to the owners, offers of lucrative terms for relocating to more modern premises however, one of two of the more intractable souls just would not go. Goddess Rising, the esoteric bookshop at No. 13 was one of them.

The shop was decrepit, the casual passer-by may well have wondered if it was still in business at all – once glossy black paint flaked from the façade, at least those parts of it not covered with a profusion of faded and torn fly posters. The name board was all but illegible and a thick film of grime across the plate glass almost obscured a few antique volumes mouldering away in the window. It also appeared the shop never opened, either that or its opening hours were known only to a select clientele.

Sitting alone in his rooms above the shop, illuminated only by the flickering light of a coal fire, the Rev Beresford was one of that select few.

A threadbare little man in his late seventies, Rev Beresford had his ancient leather wing-backed chair drawn up so close to the roaring coal fire that a distinct smell of singeing leather hung in the air. A frayed tartan travelling rug was spread out across his knees, but Rev Beresford was still cold. He was always cold. He was sure the house spirit was behind it.

Reaching for the cut glass tumbler of single malt whisky on the side table next to him, Rev Beresford felt the slim leather journal begin to slip from among the folds of the rug on his lap and just managed to grab it, spilling his whisky in the process, before it slithered onto the floor.

“Bother!” he muttered quietly, sucking the spilled whisky greedily from arthritic fingers while regarding the journal with a mixture of awe and loathing. If it wasn’t for this book, he thought, tears welling up in his eyes.

* * *

If it had not been for his Great Uncle’s journal, life for Rev Austin Beresford may well have taken a completely different direction altogether. The journal had been a family secret for years until that fateful day when his elder sister discovered it in their parent’s attic and began to read the entries. Slowly, insidiously, the journal worked its magic and Millie became more and more obsessed with the notion that fairies were real until, at the age of fifteen, Rev Beresford’s parents felt they had no choice but to put Millie away; for her own good.

Austin was twelve when his sister left. He was a newly ordained curate aged 24 when she committed suicide in the sanatorium. His parents already dead, victims of an unexplained accident while he was at university, Austin became the custodian of both their and his sister’s estates. Among the papers and family heirlooms he found the journal, now annotated with Millie’s observations, and began to read. He also found his Great Uncle’s collection, neatly packed into the museum cabinets that now filled one wall of his Gallows Close study; the mere thought of the contents still made him shiver.

Rev Beresford’s career was blighted from the day he opened the journal. After decades of being asked to move every few months, finally ending up at a church in a particularly disadvantaged inner city parish, he was secretly relieved when his bishop invited him to retire early. The bishop for his part was relieved to see Rev Beresford go, some of his stranger notions had made the bishop a laughing stock among his peers.

Despite trying on a number of occasions to rid himself of the journal, it always returned to Rev Beresford. He had tried burning it but the flames would not catch, he had thrown it in the river but some kind soul had retrieved and returned it. He even once gave it to a colleague to take overseas, but it was “lost” at the airport and returned to Rev Beresford by the airline weeks later. In the end he gave up trying.

The only bright spot in his life came shortly before his retirement, the death of Rev Beresford’s Aunt. It was she who left him the building housing Goddess Rising in her will, and a small annuity, just about enough to keep him in perpetuity as long as he didn’t do anything extravagant, like eat more than once a day.

Only after his retirement did the real problems start. On the day Rev Beresford moved into Gallows Close, he was sorting through his sister’s meagre belongings and came upon her vanity mirror. Presumably the cracks must have happened during the long years of storage, he presumed, setting the mirror down next to the open journal.

It was only when he caught a glimpse of the journal’s pages reflected in the cracked mirror out of the corner of his eye that he noticed for the first time the ethereal spidery annotations in pale blue ink. It took a few years of practice to be able to read them as, whenever Rev Beresford looked at the journal straight on, either with or without the mirror, the annotations remained hidden, only out of the corner of his eye did he stand any chance of seeing them; he had almost finished transcribing them.

* * *

Outside, in the gathering gloom of the early evening, amid the grime and pigeon crap covering the windowsill, a fairy crouched, her ear pressed firmly up against the pane. She was sure he was in there, that it was in there; she’d heard him moving about.

#FridayFlash: UCF #5: A Mirror Cracked