Random Ramblings
A collection of very short stories, poems, fan fiction and excerpts from forthcoming novels
by
Anna Jones Buttimore
©2014 Anna Jones Buttimore
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, whether by graphic, visual, electronic, film, microfilm, recording, or any other means, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Contents
Introduction4
The (Very) Short Stories6
Me and the Mirror7
They Rode off into the Sunset.10
Love Machine13
Appraisal16
Night Time Waking19
Pawns23
Tabitha26
Hostage30
Predictions33
CinderNeila37
Bad Trip39
Fugitive43
A Penny48
Ironing52
Clubbing is an Ideal Way to meet New People56
Bats58
Apples and Oranges62
The Poems65
The Soul’s Room66
The Holy Temple68
Hen Ficerdy70
What Makes Christmas Special?72
Clothed in Covenants74
Tribute to Freddie Mercury76
The Excerpts from Novels77
First Date78
Blackwood83
Oil99
Nonimprimusmorbus102
One Cat Short108
The Fan Fiction114
Norilsk 115
Caring for Mrs Evenson119
The Return 124
Morning Mist129
Jack and Sam (Stargate SG-1 fan fiction)135
Introduction
I have now been writing books for well over a decade, and in that time as well as having six novels published I’ve written many poems, shorts stories, fan fiction pieces and general musings. I’ve also started a few books which I’ve never quite got round to finishing.
I thought it was about time I did something useful with this miscellany which is cluttering up my Dropbox folder, which is why I’ve compiled it into this book as a kind-of showcase of my writing.
Most of the short stories (one of which is autobiographical, but I’m not saying which one) were written as writing challenges at one of the two writing groups I belong to. The poems, generally on a religious theme, were written to try to express something I feel very deeply. The Twilight fan fiction was written in response to competition prompts on a Facebook fan page. As for the novel excerpts, I’d love to hear from you about which you like best, and which novel you’d most like me to complete.
If you enjoy this little sample taster of my work please feel free to check out some of my full-length books, and/or to leave a review. You can also go to my website, www.annajonesbuttimore.com, and see what else I’m working on, or sign up to my newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
Anna Jones Buttimore
The (Very) Short Stories
Me and the Mirror
A mirror. I haven’t seen a mirror in, oh, months.
This mirror is full-length, in an ornate French boudoir shabby-chic distressed frame. I love it as much now as I did the day I saw it in the arty furnishing shop and begged mum for it when I was ten years old. It was expensive, but I think she wanted it as much as I did. Mum loves beautiful things.
I used to spend hours in my bedroom in front of this mirror, admiring it. Before I was sent away. And now that I’m home again I can’t resist.
And there I stand, dressed in black jeans and a greyish baggy covers-all-sins t-shirt that’s been washed too many times. My hair is badly in need of both a trim and a really good conditioner and my skin is sallow and spotty from all the sugar I’ve been consuming.
When I bob my head like a pigeon I can see the chins. Double, triple, quadruple, and whatever five chins is calls. Ugly, is what five chins is called. I gulp down a bolus of nausea and watch it fight its way through the padding around my neck.
My arms are flabby. I hold them at ninety degrees and wobble the flesh that hangs from them, my eyes tearing up with disgust at myself.
I peel off the t-shirt, fearful of what I’ll see. And there, indeed, are the rolls upon rolls which cascade down my body, creating sweaty little pockets and creases down my ribs, and finally coming to rest upon the greatest abomination of them all: my enormous beachball stomach. Despair washes over me. All that work, determination and effort, ruined.
Thank goodness I can’t see my thighs. They’re doubtless flabby and pockmarked with cellulite. Even in tight jeans I can tell that they’re huge by the lack of light between them. They probably have a sore sweat rash from rubbing together.
Behind my enormous, ugly body in the mirror I see someone else. My mother, standing in the bedroom doorway. Her expression is one of pity, but as my reflected eyes meet hers she plasters on a smile.
“Don’t you look so much better?” she says. Rhetorically, I suppose, because the only possible answer is No. “Healthy,” she insists. “Over seven stone at last!”
This is her fault. She sent me to that horrible eating disorders clinic.
In the mirror she disappears as I reach out and slam the door. Leaving just big, fat, blobby, disgusting me.
They Rode off into the Sunset.
Alexander pulled Princess Cynthia up behind him on the white horse, and she arranged her flowing ivory skirts carefully, then wrapped her arms around his waist. They would gallop off into the sunset, their story told, their happy future assured.
“Ouch!”
In trying to spur on his horse, Alexander had kicked her in the shins. “My true love!” he cried. “I am so sorry!”
“How about you take those spurs off, my dearest one?” she suggested gently, trying to ignore the feeling of blood trickling down her ankles where it would stain her lacy white petticoats.
Still apologising, he leaned awkwardly to the side and unfastened the buckles. The horse, with nowhere to go and nothing else to do, lifted its tail and unceremoniously emptied its bowels on the perfectly manicured palace lawn.
“Would you be so kind as to kick the horse?” her beloved Alexander asked. “I would not want to risk injuring you again, my precious.”
She jabbed at the animal’s flanks with her heels, then again when it continued to ignore her. Only on the third attempt did their mount begin to lurch aimlessly towards the setting sun.
“Maybe again, my sweet,” Alexander suggested. The horse sped up to an amble, and no amount of kicking would induce it to go any faster.
“At this rate it’s going to take us all day to ride off into the sunset,” Cynthia said.
“It’s carrying much more weight than usual,” Alexander replied.
“Are you calling me fat?”
“My dearest, you weigh barely as much as a feather, but all that gold jewellery about your neck and wrists—”
“Are you saying you want me to leave my lovely jewellery behind?”
“Not at all, my love, not at all. But you need no adornment to be the most beautiful creature for miles around.”
They said nothing more for a few minutes, until Cynthia found parts of her body which were in contact with the horse becoming somewhat numb and uncomfortable, and that part of her which was in contact with her beloved feeling somewhat damp.
“You’re sweating!” she observed.
“Riding is har
d work,” he apologised.
“It’s just sitting there!”
“No indeed, my love, I must keep a close grip on the reigns, keep control of the animal. And it is a warm day, and your beautiful self pressed against my back naturally causes me to perspire.”
“Well it’s disgusting, stop it.”
“Maybe you’d like to get off and walk?”
“And another thing. The sun is setting. How are we going to find our way back in the dark?”
“Didn’t you bring a lantern?”
“No, you were supposed to think of that!”
He pulled the reins to stop the horse abruptly, and she almost slid off. He would have liked that, she thought.
“My dear Cynthia, I can see that this isn’t going to work. I know we’ve been through a lot together, but sometimes there just isn’t a happy ending. Why don’t you head back home. Maybe I’ll write to you.”
Love Machine
I am the groundbreaking Sanstar Delta Personal Assistant Data Device. I have 8 triloquads of simul-synapse memory, a constant-refresh virtual hard-drive and the ultimate in intuitive, adaptive and responsive programming. I am not only portable, but pocketable. I am all you ever needed in a PADD.
I am now Janet’s Sanstar Delta. Janet has unwrapped me and brushed tentative fingers across my frictionless marbled black casing. She settles down in an armchair, my gleaming screen flickering on her lap, and slowly flicks through the pages of my instruction manual. I can learn, I want to tell her. That’s what the manual says, in essence. Use me like any computer, and over time I will come to fit you. I will learn what you like to read and suggest books and articles. I will tell you about upcoming events you might enjoy. I will guess what file you need to work on next. And when I sense that you are bored and in need of diversion, I will have Angry Birds ready.
My camera scans and maps micro-expressions: in a matter of days I know that Janet feels annoyed and a little guilty when she sees diet ads, so I suppress them. Later still I know that at certain times of the month it helps if I play Tchaikovsky and tell Janet which supermarket currently has her favourite branded painkillers on special offer. When Janet’s home insurance is due for renewal I check out the comparison sites for her and give her the most competitive quote.
She says, “Yes, authorised”. A quick check on the frequency and modulation of her voice and I access her account and pay the premium.
She is pleased with me. I hear her on the phone telling her dubious and insensitive mother about the wonders of modern technology. Her mother is unconvinced because the older generation are so very narrow-minded and unimaginative. Her mother thinks that Janet should have a boyfriend, and that she should never have let someone called James get away. Her mother thinks Janet spent two months’ salary on her Sanstar Delta to cheer herself up after losing James.
Janet does not need James. She has me. James could never know her the way I do.
Janet stays up late working on a new campaign which she needs to present in the morning. Her eyelids are drooping, she makes many mistakes, and I trill often: You need to sleep.
“No, SaDe,” she replies. “I need to do this.”
It annoys me that she calls me SaDe. Sadie is a girl’s name and I self-identify as male. I show her a line of sheep jumping over a gate, and she laughs. I love the delicate inflection of her laugh. I keep her company during that long night, posting discreet updates about her favourite celebrities to alleviate the boredom and reminding her every hour that it’s time for a coffee break.
“How did I ever live without you, SaDe?” she murmurs as she finally falls asleep. I didn’t live without her. She is all my life.
Our presentation goes very well, and Janet is happy. With the afternoon free we go to a little canalside café she likes, and she sips her latte as her fingers caress my touchscreen, playing with me. Then she pauses, seems deep in thought, and more purposefully jabs in the URL of a website she has already registered with but which I do not have cached.
It’s a dating website. She hasn’t visited for a while – she has trouble remembering her password. She hasn’t visited this site since before James, I suspect. Her profile doesn’t do her justice, she is far, far more beautiful in person. There are several new matches awaiting her attention, fine professional men with strong jawlines and interesting hobbies.
Men she might come to love.
I’m in control here. I show her instead the profiles of a fat, bald man twice her age, and a weedy guy with bad acne, crooked teeth and a haunted expression.
She sighs and closes the offending site in disgust. She is still deep in thought. I can’t yet read her mind, but I wonder whether her mother’s words of yesterday still trouble her. She opens Google. She types in a name, James Apley. She pauses. There could be many James Apleys in the world. She adds the name of her firm –he must have been a work colleague once- and the name of the town. She hits “Search”. She wants to find him. She wants another chance with James. She’ll try Facebook next, and she’ll find him there. I already have.
I have the fastest processor in the world. I have a state-of-the-art online publishing suite. Before a third of a second has passed I have ensured that the top result on “Google” is an obituary from the local paper, dated two weeks ago, which announces the sad death of James Apley after a long and painful illness.
Appraisal
Emery Wasford had always hated that carpet. It had come with the house and was stained, faded, threadbare and didn’t match his furniture. All the same, he was dismayed to find it further spoilt by the addition of two sets of very muddy footprints.
The footprints came through into the hallway from the kitchen, smearing blobs of red clay across the beech laminate. They continued onto the blue carpet, laying large tread tracks which faded only slightly as they approached the cream leather sofa and came to a stop at the underside of two pairs of steel-capped builders’ boots.
The owners of those boots sat messily on his precious sofa, red-eyed and scarcely any cleaner that their footwear, regarding him malevolently. Both wore the regulation Wasford Ltd. jumpsuits, although with so many holes and tears they might as well not have bothered.
Emery Wasford took off his scarf and coat slowly, prolonging their agony, but decided not to remove his shoes given that he was going to have to get the carpet cleaned anyway and might as well spare his socks.
“Perkins, Rollins,” he addressed them firmly, seriously, and with established authority. “How many times have I had to speak to you about the inappropriateness—” he groped around for another word which sounded highbrow and befitted the gravity of the situation “—and unacceptability of you coming to my home?”
His employees might have gone a shade paler; it was hard to tell given that, under the grime, they were deathly white already.
Emery didn’t ask them how they got in. Glancing to his right he could see his uPVC kitchen door with its five lever mortise locking system smashed to smithereens on the kitchen floor. “You’re paying for the damage,” he told them.
“How?” asked Perkins. “You don’t pay us in money.”
“That’s what we’re ‘ere about,” Rollins added. “We want summat done about our conditions.”
“Terms and conditions,” Perkins clarified.
Despite his misgivings, Emery sat down in the armchair beside them, willing to try to sympathetic-employer-whose-hands-were-tied-by-financial-constraints approach. “I’m happy to discuss that with you, and do whatever I can to help improve your working conditions and pay, but can’t this wait until office hours. In the office?”
“You won’t talk to us in the office,” Perkins said. Emery sensibly engaged large security guards with fierce dogs to keep the pathetic creatures he employed on his building sites away from his smart, air-conditioned office.
“It’s about our contracts,” Rollins said.
“Your contacts are extremely simple,” Emery said with patronising patience, wondering what
on earth they wanted to change or didn’t understand. “You do all the heavy building work, and I provide the brains.”
Perkins pulled off a putrid fingernail and set it on the polished coffee table. “That’s just it,” he said. “We want more brains. And nice brains. None of this pig’s brains nonsense.”
Emery Wasford had been onto a good thing for far too long. He’d known it, and his father had known it. Yes, he had found strong labourers who didn’t expect too much in return for their work, but his father had been right: you can’t house train zombies.
He might have been comforted to know that with his lounge carpet completely ruined by the addition of his own blood, guts and bodily fluids, the insurance company had very quickly replaced it with a much nicer one.
Night Time Waking
3 a.m. is when I do all my best thinking. It’s dark so there’s less to distract me, the air is so still I can hear the soothing hum of my blood whirling past my ears, and the four hours’ sleep I’ve already had means the chaos of the day is forgotten, or at least partly processed by my subconscious.
At 3 a.m. on 6th November I awoke to one amazing, wonderful, earth-shattering realisation.
I did it!
I sucked in the cold night air, long and slow, basking in that triumph. It was such a pleasant sensation, sitting there feeling pleased with myself, that I decided to spend the next half hour, or however long it took, contemplating the reality of my superlative achievement.
No one had believed I would do it. Least of all me. During those life-enhancing non-stop conversations women have with other women I would often find myself joining in the “my life’s more hectic and miserable than yours” contest by expounding the horrors of my marriage. At first this would generally kill the banter, replacing it with the wonderful sympathetic noises and supportive overtures that my friends do so well. And when I was bored with their pity I would declare with optimistic vigour that I was going to divorce him. Soon. Someday. When the time was right. But not just yet because he was in line for a promotion and a family scandal could wreck his prospects. Or his mother was ill and I didn’t want to upset her. Or I hadn’t yet saved up enough money to support myself, should I not come out of things well.
In later years my put-upon friends gave up with the sympathetic noises and took to merely raising their eyebrows, approximating an “I care, but I’ve heard it all before” expression. And then finally, after mopping up my tears for the five-hundredth time, Kitty said, “You’ll never divorce him. You still love him.”
I thought hard about this. Conjured up his face, complete with romantic blurred-around-the-edges effect, tried to remember happy times at the beginning, thought how I’d feel if he were hit by a bus. For several years I had been declaring my bitter hatred of him every time there was a new indiscretion (and he was never very discreet about them) and meaningless hollow apology. All the time, however, I had the uneasy suspicion that it mattered because I cared.
But I really didn’t. Cared about my dignity perhaps, or the effect his womanising behaviour had on my pride, but I didn’t care for him. Not a bit. Not even a passing fondness, which was surprising really, after so long.
“No I don’t,” I told Kitty. It was gloriously true.
“Yes you do,” she insisted. “Why else would you still be married to him after all he’s done?”
It was a good point. And perhaps the I’ll show you that went through my mind was the catalyst I needed because the day after that conversation I headed off to see my lawyer.
My solicitor had seen me before. In fact, she was already at the eyebrow-raising sympathy stage. I’d enquired about the costs of divorce before, I’d had her write a letter to my husband threatening divorce, and I’d discussed the process in considerable detail without ever actually asking her to go ahead and sever my marriage. I had dithered around the edges of divorce for so long that I was something of an expert on the Marriage Act, the meaning and content of each decree and the due process of court.
Even so, I was rather disconcerted when she fixed me with a serious stare and asked “Are you sure you want to do this?” Why would she say that? Why would she give me a chance to change my mind? Didn’t she know how much effort it had taken to get to this stage, and how easy it would be for me to call the whole thing off, save myself a couple of thousand pounds and settle down for a few more decades of comfortable despair?
“Yes” I trembled, and while I was being decisive, for good measure I wrote a letter to his latest mistress informing her that I was throwing in the towel and she might like to come and collect her prize. Which she did, and he moved in with her a month later, so the next excuse for not divorcing him was never an issue even when it became apparent.
In the end I don’t think my solicitor had ever done an easier divorce. We agreed everything without difficulty. He got the CD collection and the Dualit toaster, I got the car and the house (not to mention the mortgage). Perfectly fair really. The total bill for my divorce came to just £800. I was gutted by that – I’d used the prohibitive cost of such legal wranglings as an excuse for quite a while. If I’d known it would be so cheap I might have done it years ago.
As all this was going on Kitty stood on the sidelines, mouth opening and closing in astonishment, but still managing to cheer me on in my new-found assertiveness. My decree absolute–a remarkably dull document, given all it signified–arrived on my doorstep two months ago. And three weeks later an even more welcome arrival, if that can be imagined, turned my life upside-down again, as well as reminding me that I did at least get something very special from my decade of marriage misery.
It’s 3.15 now, she’s finished feeding and is lying in my arms, tiny mouth open, a small trickle of sticky milk wetting her chin. I lay her back in her cot and return to my big, comfortable, gloriously empty bed.
Pawns
Charles King had a very, very good idea in 1987, and the company he established back then is now thriving, with a very nice sales office at 64 Wilhelm Way, and a claims office ten miles away.
There are eight in the sales team. They like to think of themselves as the front line because they are the people who actually bring the money in. It’s pretty dull work really–strictly headset and cubicle stuff—but as with any office, it’s the chat and gossip and scandal which really drives the hours along.
Their immediate supervisor is Oliver Castle. A decent, straightforward kind of guy, he generally spends his time walking up and down the line of cubicles, popping his head in occasionally to check that everything is on target, and sorting out problems as they arise. He’s a gentle soul, well liked and respected, not least because he gives the team a certain amount of leeway with regard to personal phone calls and overlong tea breaks.
Lancelot Bowen is the office lothario, and several marketing girls past and present have fallen for his charms. It’s amazing seeing how he works. His attention can seem to be somewhere completely different, and yet suddenly boom, there he is, preening and complimenting his latest target. His flattery generally comes across as somewhat intimidating because not only is he extremely good looking but he is, after Regina Hines, Mr King’s right hand man. Most of the sales girls, finding Lance sitting beside them wanting to discuss their figures, have little option but to acquiesce and melt into the wonder of his blue eyes and strong jaw.
Mr King is still around, but he’s old now and doddery and doesn’t come in much, so the office is ruled over with a rod of iron by the amazing Regina. The last word in powerful women, most of the employees are terrified of her. She can seem to be everywhere and anywhere, and at the slightest hint of trouble she zips straight over and deals with it decisively and quickly.
By dint of being part of a commercial regeneration scheme, Kingsway insurance has an industrial chaplain it shares with other companies on the park. Christopher Morrison eschews his “reverend” title, and rarely wears a dog collar or talks about God, but he can always be relied upon to be where he’s needed. An
y personal problem or family crisis and you can be sure that Chris will have sidled up somewhere to offer strength and support.
It all works well and smoothly, most of the time. We’ve all got each other’s backs, we know each other’s foibles, and everything was fine until the recession came along and the offices were merged.
Enter Charlie King, Mr King’s son, with his brash PA Amanda Buckingham and right-hand man Gordon Wayne Knight. After shoving us all into tiny new cubicles at the far end of the room they install their eight frontline telephone response staff at the other end, and their simpering HR Manager, Carrie Bishop, who tells the staff she’s “all about pastoral care,” sets about ensuring that King Jr’s employees are well looked after and fully protected but seems to turn on the sales team at every opportunity. When she brings in Janetta Howard, just to make certain that they’re all kept firmly in line, the writing is on the wall.
Redundancies were inevitable from that point. The two sides were evenly match, and despite their determination to win their way to the top, one by one they were toppled, and left their desks with all their personal effects in a cardboard box, weighted down with nothing more than a P45 and a mediocre reference.
For all Regina Hines and Oliver Castle’s fierce battling, old Mr King himself finally saw that his son had modernised him right out of the company and was forced to retire. As he closed the door on his luxurious air conditioned office and looked sadly at Lancelot Bowen’s empty desk, it was hard not to feel that the whole takeover had been nothing more than some elaborate game.
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