Cocktales

Cocktales

 

The Bangkok Sling

2 parts Necessity

1 part Unsure Approach Tactic

1 part Jet Lag

A dash of Age Related Social Anxiety  

I go for a two-seater, somewhere near the edge, placing my bag on my lap. I scan the room with a forced nonchalance.  Everyone else is sitting with someone but that’s to be expected. I’ll have that soon enough.  

I get my book out, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It contrasts magnificently with my surroundings and also acts as a friendly reminder that some people will slit your throat for absolutely no reason. It’s nice to keep that in mind, when travelling alone.  

I take a sip of my Chang and tuck into my Pad Thai, taking in the cultural sights of Koh San Road – the ping pong shows, the beer towers, the sweaty tourists and the tuktuk drivers that will fleece you without a second thought. Just yesterday I saw a mystic man spit into a girl’s mouth. ‘Healing’ he called it, she didn’t seem to agree.  

I lay down my chopsticks and wonder if I have any bean sprouts stuck in my teeth. I light a cigarette, at a pound a pack it’d be rude not to, and let my eyes roam. Those three look alright but they look a bit German, I don’t want to embarrass myself with a language barrier, I keep looking.  

Right, there’s two there. They look nice, and they’re laughing.  And they look English, a bit Essex in fact. Nice teeth, apparent low inebriation level, high approachability, they’re a definite maybe. I finish my drink and head to the bar, skirting perilously close to them to see if they speak English.  

It’s a yes.  

Drink in hand, on the way back from my recon fly-by, I look at their shoes. Shoes are very important, they tell a lot about a person. Let’s see, flip flops and those weird fabric shoes that seem to be in fashion. It’ll do. At least they’re not wearing Crocs. 

Ok, now for the approach. If one of them smoked then I could just ask for a light, the perfect, text book ice breaker.

But no. Healthy bastards.  

I remind myself how I need to meet friends and construct a solid mental image of myself, reading alone in my hotel room. I can only carry so many books. As I mentally count down, I do a final bean sprout check and wipe the sweat off my top lip. 

Three, two, one.

Go.

Serve over ice in a highball, best garnished with a Marlboro Light.

 

 

The Vietnamese Bus Bomb 

2 parts Ridiculously Long Journey

1 part Suspected Dysentery

1 part Reduced Melanin

A splash of Ill-Advised Hareem Trousers 

I climb back into my bed, tucking my newly stamped passport into my money belt. I can’t stretch out of course, anyone over 5’8 is viewed as a giant round here.  We all have our crosses to bear. Mine is an energetic local woman who keeps flicking my face with her hair when she leans over me to adjust the curtain with her umbrella. Something she likes to do a lot. We’ve been on this bus for sixteen hours already, imodium-ed up the eyeballs and rapidly losing patience. 

We’re all pushed into a corner of course, the foreigners. The one nearest to the toilet and furthest away from the fire exits. I was woken up last night by a mouse crawling in my hair, no doubt trying to get at my curry-crab flavoured crisps. As I tried to get back to sleep I watched a large cockroach sauntering across the head rest in front, it paused to pose, silhouetted heroically in the moonlight.  

Suddenly, from the front of the bus comes a commotion. The driver is heading straight for us, ‘the white corner’, gesticulating insanely and pointing at each of us in turn. We look blankly at each other, and then at him. He gets louder. Other passengers around us begin pointing at us, then the border, then at us. It makes no sense.  

He starts pulling us from our seats. We climb down, file out of the bus and stand there in the dust. Then, with no warning, the door closes and he drives off. All of about twenty metres over the border. Then, he opens the door, pokes his head out and starts screaming back at us, motioning for us to get back on and cursing us in Vietnamese for jogging too slow. We get back on the bus and squeeze back into our seats.  

The bus drives on.

Serve in a martini glass with a slice of lemon and a selection of brand-name Loperamide.

 
 

The Skinny Dipper

3 parts Banana Leaves and Tamarind

2 parts Dutch Courage

Top off with Drunken Camaraderie 

I don’t know quite how it happened, but I remember that I was definitely naked. Definitely naked in a group of naked people, in a river, somewhere in the Thai jungle. And there was massaging going on, I remember massaging. 

There are chickens underneath the hut, I can hear them squabbling and scratching in the dirt. The morning light sticks its pudgy hands in between the slats, pawing at my eyelids and shoving its fingers up my nose. 

Oh God.  

It must’ve have been that stuff we were smoking. ‘Banana leaves and tamarind’ the villager told me. Banana leaves and tamarind, my arse. I look through the open doorway (there is no door) down to the river. I can see our guide down there, talking to the villager and his wife. They’re laughing. Probably about us. 

I try to piece it together. Everything was normal up until that point, ‘banana point’. We had completed the second day of the hike, had a refreshing swim in the river and eaten a sumptuous meal of rice and mayonnaise. We were getting to know our hike-mates – the hot French girl, the German loner, the weird Belgian doctor and his wife and the rest of them.  

It had all gone so wrong.  

I reach for my suitably ethnic, tie dyed handbag and fumble for my camera. The start-up tune slides drawing pins into my pitifully dehydrated brain. I flick through the pictures. Oh yes, here they are, nestled tumour-like after photos of elephants and waterfalls.

Skinny-dipping; I never learn.

Serve Clothed. 

 

The Vang Vienger

1 whole Cunty Gary

2 parts Alcohol Induced Lust

1 part Aphrodisia

A splash of Regret 

After walking for about an hour we eventually find the hospital, nowhere near where we were directed by the last two people we asked. There are plastic garden chairs lined up outside, full of women fanning themselves in the heat, a baby attached to a descending nipple. They stare openly as we pass.  

We mount the steps by the main entrance and kick off our flip flops, pausing to read the signs in broken-English.  

We head towards the pharmacy. 

 “Fucking cunty Gary and his cunty mate. He wasn’t even any fucking good.”

We walk through ward after ward. I’m limping from when I fell through the floor of the bar a few a days ago, the A4 sized bruise hidden under my ever-faithful hareem trousers. We find the pharmacy and approach the window, trying to keep our voices down.  

“I had unprotected sex last night,” whispers my companion, “and I need the pill.” 

We are met with puzzled faces. The nurses here are used to seeing Westerners with injuries, normally broken arms and slashed faces from tubing escapades, with the odd alcohol poisoning and drug-induced stupor thrown in for good measure. They look us up and down.  

She’s floundering. I take over. I point at her.

“No condom,” I say. 

More nurses come to join the confusion. They converse in Lao as I hold my hands under my ribs, and then push them out, imaging an air pregnancy.

More muttering. 

I cross my arms as if cradling a baby. “No baby,” I say. 

A crowd is gathering. It’s getting desperate.

Time for the big guns. 

I hold out my left hand, forming a hoop with my thumb and forefinger. With my right, I extend my index finger. Taking a side-long glance at my red-faced mate, I begin to slowly move my finger towards the hole. The audience watches in anticipation. 

It enters. 

I go in and out a couple of times, quickening in pace to build up the momentum, before signifying the shivering crescendo by jamming my finger to the knuckle and making a raspberry sound with my mouth. I point at my friend (somewhere in the ovary area) and then do the baby cradle again, “No baby”, I say. 

They converse again.   

“Ahh!” one shouts, “The after-morning pill!”
“Yes!” we reply, “The after-morning pill!”  

Embarrassed sniggering and a couple of high fives all round, to commemorate a job well done. 

The crowd disperses. They give us the pill. 

For a mellower version, serve in a low ball with a side of Over The Counter By a False Name Tramadol.

 

Slippery Crabber

2 parts Flor de Caña Rum

1 part Vegetarian Smugness

½ a measure of Peer Pressure

A dollop of Bioluminescent Algae 

“I couldn’t possibly,” I reply, “I’m a vegetarian.” I’m flooded with an image of myself on my high horse, meadow flowers braided into my hair, looking down at the smiling woodland creatures through my iridescent glow.  

I wonder if the guys I’m talking to get the same effect.  

Nevertheless, I help collect driftwood for the fire and give up my pocket knife for the good of the group. We’re already a bottle of rum in, it took longer than we thought for the tide to go out.  

As night falls, we pick up our flip flops and head over to the reef, dragging our feet through the phosphorescent algae in the shoreline. We keep looking back to see our foot prints written in starlight. Those of us on acid find this quite overwhelming.  

 We only have a few torches between us, so we stick together, drunkenly belting out a rousing rendition of ‘I Drove All Night’ by Roy Orbison. We reach the rocks and begin to scramble over, those of us with knives clamping them between our teeth. Then, we gather into a group and assign pairs. I nominate myself the official torch-holder.  

The hunt begins.  

He goes only for the big ones, stabbing them neatly in the middle of the shell and flicking them into the saucepan I’m holding. I replace the top each time to stop them crawling out. I found the first few quite upsetting. Poor little buggers. 

But as it goes on, I get more and more into it. The thrill of the chase has awoken previously repressed primal instincts. I can smell their fear. After about fifteen minutes, I turn into the ultimate hunter, scaling rocky outcrops and seaweed covered rock pools to find the biggest. 

“Here’s a massive one!” I scream, “Hurry up! Stab it! Fucking stab it!”, as the doomed crustacean tries to jam itself into a too-small hole, its spindly little legs paddling uselessly at the wet sand. Take that, you crabby bastard.  

It wasn’t until we made our way back to the fire, with our saucepans full of our pelagic bounty, did I feel any kind of remorse. As I watched them sizzle on the grate, lined up claw to claw next to their fallen comrades, I was overcome by shame. We had orchestrated and carried out a mass slaughter. They had never even seen us coming.  

I never knew I had such bloodlust in me.

Lightly dust brim of glass with some Fraudulently Obtained Pseudoephedrine. Serve on ice.

Cardiff Alms

The Monico 

We are gathered here today in remembrance of a lady dear to all our hearts, who has now been demolished and turned into luxury flats.  

I remember when it happened. After years of darkness she sat blinking in the sun, her back wall ripped out exposing row upon row of faded red seats. Through the lesion I could see her sleepy projector window clouded with glaucoma, and her set of centre steps which now just led to nothing.  

Unfortunately, it wasn’t done with any kind of decorum. It was as if someone had bent her over, lifted up her brown and yellow skirt and showed her big granny knickers to the world.  

And that was that, the heavy velvet curtains drawn on the days of Saturday cinema, the screechy Wurlitzer organ and the parade of birthday children. The credits had rolled on the excitement of seeing the stern-faced, Mr Monico in the foyer and the nomination of who was going to ring up the answer machine to get the timetable. 

Her carpets were sticky with generations of ‘not to be sold separately’ cans of coke, kernel-heavy popcorn and overpriced Revels. “Keep the floor neat beneath your feet”, she’d say, “Refreshments are available in the lobby,” and then serenade us with the ‘Pearl and Dean’ theme tune. 

She was a place of playdates, first dates and Beauty and the Beast. Not to mention burgeoning romances and first-time teenage fumblings. I distinctly remember a man smoking in there once, big puffs billowing up through the projector beam. My mum was too polite to say anything. 

Mr Monico came through my brother’s till in Tesco a few years after, and he was surprised to learn that his name wasn’t Mr Monico at all, it was in fact, Mr Bull. He looked genuinely upset when he later informed me of this.  

And so, with a heavy heart, we say goodbye to this Disney sympathiser, Titanic trader and Star Wars supplier. 

We’ll miss you. 

 

The Cabin

Roald Dahl referred to the sweet shop in Boy as ‘the very centre of our lives.  To us, it was what a bar is to a drunk or a church is to a Bishop.’ And I would hasten to agree.  

What The Cabin brought us, with her little round windows and moss-green roof tiles, was a haven. She was the communal grandmother, the saccharine reward to keep me still in church that became a Sunday ritual. 

With my pocket money burning a hole through my ladybird purse, I would count out penny sweets into the paper bag, pondering over my selection. Kola Kubes, Millions, Sherbet Lemons, Milk Bottles, Flying Saucers, Lemon Bonbons; all were scrutinised and mulled over. Not just anyone got in.

Once, the man behind the counter informed me, to my horror, that I was one penny short. He winked at me and told me not to tell anyone, handing over the corrupted bag with its nefarious stash. I reached up and took it, awe-struck. I couldn’t believe he’d put his neck on the line just for me. There and then I made a solemn oath that to my dying day, I would not reveal this treacherous debt. As soon as I got home, I hid the incriminating sweet bag in the back of Noel, my zip up monkey, and took from it furtively.  

She’s a chiropractic clinic now, the Cabin. They tore out her wooden shelves, shelves which used to hold jar upon jar of tooth-rotting bribes and sticky enticers, to make room for treatment couches. They lino’d over the wood and white-washed her walls. Now people go there to get their backs cracked and joints adjusted.  

It just doesn’t seem as fun.

May she rest in peace.

 

The Bandstand

A friend to the people of Cardiff and to Bon Jovi, the Bandstand was a man to be trusted and depended upon. He the meeting place for countless people over numerous generations. I myself used to wait for friends with him, in the days before mobile phones, when we just made solid plans. I also spent most of an afternoon with him once, queueing to meet the Super Furry Animals in Virgin Megastore. There was an awkward picture of me in the Echo the next day, clutching my newly signed copy of ‘Rings Around the World’ and looking like, as I did for about a year, the oldest one from Hanson.  

“I’ll see you there at eleven”, we’d say, carefully timing our phone call to try to avoid the embarrassment of having to speak to one of our friends’ parents. I’d only had the five minute window of when my mum chucked my brother off the dial-up so I could use the phone. “You should get outside more”, she’d tell him, brushing back her perm and adjusting her massive glasses. So, bang on eleven we’d turn up in our hippy skirts and Gwen Stefani bindis, skirting the Goths which congregated on him to smoke.  

He supplied a familiar facade, a destination to aim for. He was reliable and stalwart, a permanent fixture. And then one day, he was gone. It happened so fast it was over before I’d even acknowledged it.  

They paved over his uprooted foundations and twisted his ribs up through the concrete to make bike racks.  

 People walk over his grave every day and have no idea he was ever there.  

 

Rhiwbeina Infants

I am happy to see so many of her friends here today, and I’m sure many of you will remember her with the same fondness and affection as I do.  

She had been my first teacher. She had stuck star stickers on my recorder and taught me how to write my name. She was there the time I forgot my vest and had to do PE with my dress tucked into my knickers, and when Sophie peed herself during assembly and I had to keep shuffling further and further back to escape the spread.  

She had sympathised with me when I was sick all over her parquet floor (in my black and white stripy jumper) and the time I was caught drawing pencil stars on the desk (wearing the cursed flowery dress which I refused to wear ever again). I was made to wipe them off with the entire class standing around the table watching, my face hot and red.  

“You missed a bit,” said Chloe, which was ludicrous, as she had drawn just as many stars as me. In fact, she had drawn the first.

It was that moment that I realised that there was no justice in the world.  

It was a sad time, the night she burnt down. I was there myself, watching her impromptu pyre from the fence, bundled up in my snowflake dressing gown and wellies. I remember feeling the heat on my face and the cold autumn air on my back, like ice cream and warm chocolate sauce.  

We stood in silence, the whole street, the dead air punctured by a steady crackle and the occasional muffled crunch. Her immolation was hard to watch. I thought of all the ‘mummy and daddy’ crayon drawings and the painted hand prints that were now reduced to just spiralling embers.  

But she lives on through us. I have many fond memories of her, which I’m sure you all do too. She was a teacher to us all.  

 

Zeus

It is with great sadness that I stand in front of you to remember the life of Zeus. He was a brother, a father and a friend, not to mention a matchmaker and a pretty damn good dancer. 

For me, he bridged the gap between childhood and adolescence, a neon lantern in the dark no-man’s land of the first few years of high school. Through his under-sixteen nights he taught me about boys, about wearing heels and the importance of keeping your head up during a foam party.  

We’d queue round the block for an hour or so, girls on one side, boys on the other. The doormen would check our pockets for cigarettes and our bags for booze. I never tried to sneak anything in, I was far too much of a goody two shoes. One time, the woman on the door gave me an odd look when she reached into the pockets of my denim jacket and found them packed to the brim with sanitary towels. My mum said I only needed to take one, two at the most, but I always was paranoid about stuff like that.  

Once inside, we’d totter up the stairs in our super cool wedged sandals and pedal pushers and immediately cluster in a corner. We couldn’t believe what some of the girls were wearing.  

After scoping it out a bit, and getting the obligatory group photo taken (that’s three pounds each, you can pick it up on the way out), we’d make our way over to the dance floor. He’d always play the 90s favourite, ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’, which was always, always followed up with ‘Mambo Number Five’. We’d always dance in a circle, not daring to put our handbags down after our parent’s stern warnings: there could be kids from Cantonian here.  

Although someone now stands where he once stood, he’ll always be special to us. He was the platform for our first foray into adulthood, showed us what it was going to be like from there on in, taught us what it was to be big.

And for that, I thank him.

The Endless Winter - Review

Top professional Cornish surfers Mark ‘Igor’ Harris and Mitch Corbett are on a mission, a mission to discover the roots of surfing in the UK. Along the way they meet the iconic locals who went on to become legends and get to grips with what makes British surfing so special. The product of this journey is ‘The Endless Winter’, and what a journey it is.

“We wanted to make a film that British surfers could be proud of,” says producer Matt Crocker who, along with James Dean, is responsible for the movie.  And that they have done. The film is both interesting and informative, avoiding the Cornwall-heavy bias of many British surf films by including many spots such as the Gower, Brighton and Thurso East.

 

 

The film’s tagline is ‘A very British surf movie’, and it certainly goes to fill a gap in a market oversaturated with footage of warm water barrels in exotic locations. British surfing has evolved on its own terms and in its own time and the resulting eccentric characters and hardcore surfing community is covered well. 

Igor and Mitch come across as genuinely nice guys and connect well with those they are interviewing, such as surfing icons Pete ‘PJ’ Jones, Spencer Hargraves and Nigel Semmens. They reveal what UK surfing was like at its birth, such as the ridiculousness of surfing in a woolly jumper in January, whilst tackling more sensitive issues, such as the suicide of promising young surfer Nigel Veitch who dived off the cliffs at Tynemouth after losing his sponsor. The story is handled well and goes to show that getting British surfers on the map, not to mention the rankings, was not all plain sailing.

 Memorable scenes include when Igor and Mitch join ‘The Muddy Brothers’ by surfing the Severn Bore tidal wave in total darkness, and the section on Sennen’s legendary Skewjack Surf Camp. The film also reveals some surprising facts, such as surfing’s link to Agatha Christie, King Edward 8^th and Captain James Cook, as well as the effect of the World Wars on the surfing community.  

It’s had a positive reception, it won Best British Film at the 2012 London Surf/Film Festival and enjoyed outdoor premiers all over the UK.  The soundtrack isn’t bad either; featuring the obvious, but still good, Devonshire surfer Ben Howard as well as others, such as The Fairport Convention and the imaginatively named Hotel Flamingo (I’d never heard of them either). It also includes black and white film footage as well as animations, courtesy of Simon Ball.

But there are problems. The in-water footage leaves a lot to desired, it’s shaky and unsteady and a couple of times during the Badlands section it even gets jammed into the sand, leaving viewers with an invigorating few seconds of Cornish seaweed. The film could have also done with some more footage of women surfers and groms, of which Britain has many, and excellent ones at that.

 

However, my main bugbear is that the production team are not surfers. Let me reiterate that, these guys don’t surf. In fact, in ‘The Making Of’ section, they admit that they found it hard when filming to anticipate the surfers’ next move on the wave, their lack of knowledge being so. It seems strange to have outsiders documenting and commenting on a community which is so notoriously insular and close-knit. Those of us who were not lucky enough to grow up surfing know how intimidating it can be at the beginning– the language, rules, hierarchy, etiquette, not to mention the sometimes aggressive localism. The well-worn idiom of ‘Only a surfer knows the feeling’ seems to be tested by this DVD.  

But they do make any effort to stick to just the main spots and don’t reveal any that viewers wouldn’t know about already. I wonder how much of that decision was based on the surfers’ code rather than the risk of getting their windscreen waxed or face the backlash from revealing a secret spot. Plus, when they approached and met the featured local surfers, who are legends in the surfing world, I wonder if they had the same deep-set respect and admiration that a surfer would have.  

On the flip side, it means that even those who are not surfers can understand, appreciate and be inspired by the film. And along with the 30 minutes of extras, the film is definitely worth a watch. It really does encapsulate what makes British surfing unique, the history and evolution surfing in the UK, and the fact that the never ending search for the perfect wave has been with us from the very beginning.

The Endless Winter trailer

The Mayfly - Assessment Short Story.

Long time no see!

So, assessment time is upon is again and I chose to write a steampunk, alternate history love story.

In class we looked at China Mieville's novel The City and the City in which the city in question is split into two cities occupying the same space but not acknowledging eachother. It's a bit hard to explain, here's the wiki.

So, I chose to write about a city which is divided not politically but temporally, meaning that the characters experience time at different speeds with each group ignorant of those who move faster than them. In fact, one group experiences time so slowly, that they only live for one of our days. SImilar to the fact that we know trees get bigger but we never see them actually grow, because it's too slow for us to acknowledge. Hmm, maybe you should just read it, let me know what you think:

 

The Mayfly

She was falling to the ground, her hair out in front of her like ribbons, her eyes locked on mine. I had touched her and she could see me.

She was looking right at me.

I should have moved, hidden, but her gaze held me petrified.  I watched her tumble, I stood by and saw her skirt begin to billow out in front of her. They moved around her, the others, the rumbling rocks. No one had noticed her yet.

But I had.

This one that I had been watching my whole life, who my Elder and his Elder had watched before me, and theirs before that. She was ours, our girl, our reason. My life revolved around her, around this moment. I saw the sign and I had acted, I had reached out and touched her.

 And now she could see me.

She had packed her bags, was carrying her luggage. She had taken her pictures off the wall and her trinkets off the shelf, she wasn’t planning on returning. Before my Elder passed, he told me that he had seen her book her ticket, that she was going to leave and we’d have to go with her.

We were bound to her.

I had watched her leave her house and followed her here, to this place which is full of them, the Dwellers. Their different shapes and sizes, colours and shadows. I looked on, as I do every day, as she took one ponderous step after another, surrounded by those who are like her yet not quite the same.  Their deliberate movements, their thundering speech. They moved around her but did not see what I saw.

She shone among them.

I’ve seen her grow. Spent an age watching her brush her hair or tie her laces. I know all her secrets, the Automon Spider she carries with her that’s been broken for years yet can’t bear to throw away, her grandmother’s engagement ring that she lost and didn’t tell anyone about. I know where it is of course, it had rolled between the floorboards and fell through a crack. It sits there still. She had looked for it for hours.

My Elder told me about the time she had fallen from a wheeler and broken her leg, she had screws in there now. His Elder had seen her trip when she was smaller, bite her lip and draw blood. If you looked closely you could still see the scar there now. She hated it, but for me it linked me to my Elder-Line, they had witnessed the event and I could still see the evidence. It tied me to them.

I knew every line on her face, every mark, scar and freckle. I knew her routines, that she didn’t like strawberries, that she secretly wished she could be a little taller, and that one time she had cut herself just to see what it would feel like. In her almanacs I had read about the first boy she had loved, the one she kept a picture of in her diary. He didn’t know, she never told him.

He didn’t deserve her.

Others had begun to notice she was falling, I saw their eyes pivot toward her. The girl all in red, a battered suitcase in each hand, tipping back on her heels. A lamplighter over near the clacker stand had seen her, he made as if to go to her and break her fall. He wouldn’t make it in time though. Neither would the woman with the cages of bronze birds, little gems and beads lining their wings, clicking and whirring, their tiny eyes lit green. Souls made from cogs and springs.

And through all of this she watched me, her eyes crinkled in confusion. Or in fear.

I looked down at her tickets, the ones I had taken from her hand, embossed and perforated and gold around the edges. There were words on them, a language we didn’t understand. I had panicked, I had had to stop her getting on that airship, it wasn’t the way for her. I had felt it, the premonition, the foreboding feeling, I saw a flash and that had confirmed it.  I was taught to rely on my instincts and it had been my time to act.

I looked up at the airship, creaking on its ropes, the bunting tethered to the ground undulated in the breeze. There was a band on the boarding platform, their brass buttons shone in the noon sun. Above, the propellers cut lazy circles from the heavy summer air and the steering bellows wheezed laboriously. The light glinted off the domed observation windows and mottled on the side sails, it was hard to look right at it.

Everything seemed so perfect.

There were Dwellers up there, hundreds of them, hanging their heads over the railing and waving, smiling and laughing, shouting and singing. I watched the streamers spiral, the confetti rain down around the Dweller crowd. I could have plucked it right out of the air if I had wanted to, but instead I let it fall to my feet, to become muddied in the cobbled puddles.

 

When I looked at her again, she was nearing horizontal, her back straight and her body stiff. The woman with the birds had opened her mouth and was booming, the lamplighter had dropped his torch and was midflight, other Dwellers were turning to look. A sea of moving faces under feathers and hats.

 Yet still she fell.

Then, her eyes left mine and began to roll up into her head.  Through her eyelashes I could see the white crescents, her blinking drummed a rhythm. I saw a tear scribe a smooth arc down her cheek, one and then another. She stayed like this until she hit the floor. They were almost to her, to try and catch her as she fell, to cushion the impact.

But the only one who could have caught her was me.

Her head cracked against the cobbles with a shattering blow, rebounding twice.  The thud was deafening, her neck snapped back and forth, her ringlets uncoiling. A suitcase burst open, her belongings airborne in a leaden parabola. Out tumbled the Spider, its internal cogs and defunct springs flying, catching the sun as it smashed into the ground, it’s visceral mechanics skittering away.

They were beginning to crowd around her, I needed to move. I slipped in between them as they circled her, leaned in over her, concern on their faces. Through their legs I could see her body lift and contort, her jaw bulging as her teeth churned against each other, her hands balled into fists. I saw her tendons tightening in her neck and forearms, the muscles contracting and twisting. The Dwellers around her looked at each other, unsure of what to do.

She hadn’t done this before, it would have been recorded, written down in her almanacs. I had studied them over and over again and there was nothing like that in there. I knew everything about her yet never expected anything like this.

There must have been a reason, or is all this for nothing, a leap of faith into a bottomless pit. I had felt so sure that it had been the time. I glanced wildly around me.

It has to be something around here, somewhere.

I looked up and I saw it, there was smoke coming from the airship. Only the smallest bit at the moment, not enough for them to realise. Wispy spirals too slight to notice, reaching tendrils that gradually bloomed from white to grey to black. A glow permeated the fabric, it was alight inside. There was no explosion, or warning, just a slow creep of illumination, a lumbering blaze, the shuffling death.

I stood transfixed. A butterfly ambled lethargically past me, I could feel the whirring vibrations of its metal wings as it passed.

This was it.

I looked at her again. She lay still, someone was putting a coat under her head. Her eyes were open, but dull and glazed over, staring straight up. The bird woman was holding her hand, her other lay on her forehead. A man in a tall hat had pulled over a talker, the boy looked over their shoulders in concern as the man shouted into the speaking tube, his other finger jammed into his free ear. Another man had begun to take off his jacket.

The smoke had begun to turn black, spiralling skyward. Before long the plumes were haemorrhaging through the breach, the ribs of the ships structure were already beginning to show.  The flames were spreading, the internal luminosity growing in size and intensity. As I watched, a lone piece of ash pirouetted through my gaze, I let it come to rest on my upturned palm, it was still alight.

They began to scream.

 

From my vantage point I could see it all. He who attended her, the Sleeper in red. I had been watching him from the beginning, from my very birth. From the moment I felt the sliding warmth engender me, I became it and it became me.

As a child I had followed him, from that other part of town. The part with the spirals and bridges, and the towers that sit so close to one another and the lights that live inside, behind the coloured glass. They are like me, but different. They glow through metal, harnessed, enslaved, ready to be used again and again, trapped by those who live through the darkness, when the Mother-Sun has gone, the ones who live forever, through countless cycles.

He was down there in the crowd, among them, surrounded by them, the Sleepers. He was going to follow her onto the ship, the one which was packed full of them. They put so much faith in these things, these objects and technologies. They didn’t see what I see, the near misses, the imperceptible wear and tear. They lived too slow for that.

 

I knew it was going to happen, of course, I had watched the air change and the gas leak. It was lighter than the air around it, I watched it escape and then float away, dissipating into the blue. It was so obvious, to me. I had been watching the cogs and pulleys and cams and pistons, I had seen them ever so slightly skip a beat, or change rhythm, move a little off course, misfire.

They never notice, of course.

I had seen the charge begin to build up, the minute spark which would trigger all this. I knew there and then that the time to act was upon me. I had looked over the side, seen him next to her, they were going to climb the tower, pass the band and then board. He needed to be saved and I was ready to do it.

I had watched him until he slowly rotated his head in my direction, before gathering myself and sending out a charge. Nothing too obvious, just a flash, a reflection perhaps, or a spark. A message.

He had seen.

I had floated down for a closer look, to make sure. This close, I could see the panic in his eyes and etched across his face. I watched him begin to circle her, to search her for a way to intercept, a way to change her life-course without her noticing.

By the time I had drifted back up to the ship, the leak had doubled in intensity. I could see the pressure of it as it forced its way through the puncture holes. I could see the air moving with the rising temperature, shimmering ripples of combustion. I could feel its energy, the static in the air, I watched the dancing phosphoresce as it converged across the fabric.

I looked down at him, he was reaching tentatively toward her. I sailed down to them. His hand moving toward hers, carefully as not to touch her unnecessarily. He was going to take the paper tickets which she held pinched between her thumb and forefinger, her others curled around the handle of a case. I watched him for a while as his fingers edged closer and closer towards hers, I was envious of their proximity.

They were almost touching.

I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to feel him like he felt her.

He who made me shine.

I wanted to know what they’d have when they made contact, when he reached to her and they touched. I wanted to share in it, take away its intimacy.

And so, when he was just closing in on her, ready to swipe the tickets out of her hand, I held out my hand and lightly placed it over theirs.

The surge of energy pulsed through me, it hammered at the inside of my chest and jolted down my back. I retreated instantly through the static crackle, electricity flickering on my fingertips

I had bridged the gap.

 I had completed the circuit.

 

I woke up to the sounds of running footsteps. I didn’t understand where I was. My head was pounding, a dull, thudding pain. I could hear voices, screaming. There was something falling from the sky, bits of black paper, a cloud of dust perhaps, I could feel it settling on my face. There was someone holding my hand, a woman. I moved my eyes to look at her, she didn’t see me. She was gazing up at something.

I squeezed her hand, the woman looked down at me.

“She’s awake. You’re ok, just had a fall. Do you think you can walk, we have to move.” There was an edge to her voice.

I nodded, I felt sick. She pulled on my arm and helped me to my feet, slipped her arm around me and under my shoulder.

I could hear the horns of the emergency wheelers, there was something happening.  

“What’s -“

“Don’t try to speak right now, we need to move out of the square,” she began to shuffle me forwards, my head was spinning.

“Why?”

“There’s been an accident.”

I remembered that I had been going to the airship, today was the day that I was leaving for the Islands.  And there was something else...

There were people running everywhere, they bumped into us as they tried to get in or out of the square. I didn’t understand what was happening. My head was still aching, my vision blurry.

There were people crying, shouting. There was a tinge to the air, a taste. I could feel heat pressing through my summer dress and onto my back.

Burning.

I stopped and swung around.  There, suspended from what was once the boarding tower, hung the twisted girders of the airship, like the skeletal remains of some giant insect swathed in fire. I gasped, the scene was like something from the Centre War. Black smoke billowed out of the wreck, diluting the midday sun. There was death in the air.

The sun.

 I remembered. I had seen something, someone, a man.

“Oh Gods, look,” she held her hand out to point, I followed her gaze. There were people jumping from the remains of the ship, a last ditch attempt to escape the engulfing inferno. Some of them were on fire.

A man, a man who had seen me as I fell. A man who was different. A man who moved so fast.

“We have to get out of here,” she said and began pulling at my arm. But I wanted to stay, I wanted to help. I felt...connected to it somehow.

Two wheelermen pushed past me holding a stretcher. The indistinguishable figure on it held its arms up rigidly, the burns so tight around the elbows that they would not bend, charred skin hanging like second sleeves. It was one of the lucky ones, the square was strewn with bodies, pulled out of the wreckage, already dead or deemed without hope, left to go quietly. The wretched meek, scratching pathetically on Death’s door.  

 Yes. I had seen a man, I didn’t recognise him but I knew him. He had been there when I had fainted. I looked for him in the crowd, I’d never find him now.

The airship was now completely in flames, the wood and fabric providing the perfect fuel. The air was filled with ash, it was hard to breathe, many had tied scarves around their faces. The smell of charcoal and burning flesh hung heavy in the air. I tried not to think about it.

 “Come on,” I said to the woman as I tore a strip off my dress and tying it around my mouth. With a sigh she did the same. We pushed further into the square, the heat was almost unbearable even here. We started circling the bodies, checking for signs of life. There weren’t many, most of them had been burnt beyond recognition, their clothes singed and black. This one must have been a child, the rigour mortis bending it into the foetal position it had so recently come from. And here a woman, she still had patches of long blonde hair. I went to move on.

 

Wait. Movement. She was moving.

I bent down, put my cheek near her scorched face, no breath. She moved again, it was under her clothes, I unknotted the fabric at the front of her dress and out shot a tiny hand, clean and perfect.

There was a heaving screech, I looked up. The tower was beginning to collapse. I pulled out the child and ran.

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