Once Upon A Broken Dream: A Creativia Anthology

by Richard M. Ankers

  He waited for a grateful smile, so I gave him my best impression of one and said, 'How very wise, sir.”

  He straightened his silk tie and said, “There's no need for you to use your valuable annual leave on this, Sue. It is Sue, isn't it?”

  I bit my tongue and nodded. The power-mad fiend I had been answering to for two years looked pleased with his magnificent memory and continued to patronize me.

  “Good, good. In return for this favour, Susie, I know you'll hurry back to work after the service, no dawdling with sherry and canapés afterward, and, of course, you can make up the lost time.”

  He smiled a magnanimous smile and tipped his head to one side. I realised that he was waiting for me to thank him rather than slap him so I said, “Thank you, Sir,” like the pathetic, subservient, wage slave I used to be. I left his office appreciating that the boss was truly a prince amongst men, we all thought so.

  Work continued to be horrible all morning, it was the kind of hectic yet unproductive misery experienced in offices everywhere; even the photocopier went on a go-slow. I ran myself ragged trying to jolly along my spotty adolescent trainee and cajole the soon to be retired old grump who made up our team to show the youngster what to do. I even resorted to pleading with the finance office for help which taught me patience with pointless and painful pursuits proving that no experience is truly wasted.

  I missed lunch, and, with no time to spare escaped the office and dashed through the pouring rain to my scrappy old mini-cooper. It needed new wiper blades; driving half-blind wasn't going to be a lot of fun. All in all, that Monday morning had been a tortuous start to what I had no doubt would end up as a disastrous week in Happy Valley Incorporated. I loathed, despised and hated that job.

  Cursing my life, the rain and the boss and fighting the groaning gear box and heavy traffic all the way I finally arrived at Gran's apartment. I ran up the rain slicked path under a half-collapsed expensive un-collapsible umbrella. Feeling faint with a mixture of stress and hunger, I found Gran's spare key in my wet pocket and turned it in the lock. Unfortunately, her neighbour, John, pulled the door open from the inside at the same moment I pushed and I almost fell into the hallway.

  Smiling at my sudden stumbling, bedraggled appearance, John caught me and set me back on my feet saying, “Hello, lass, I've been talking to your gran but she seems distracted.” He looked at his watch and said, “I'm glad you made it, now I must go and get myself ready. I'll meet you at the crematorium.”

  Deciding to be polite I asked, “Can I give you a lift?”

  “No, thank you, I've got my own transport arranged. Look after Eve… I mean, your Gran.”

  He left in a whiff of tandoori spices that made my empty stomach rumble and sent me straight to Gran's kitchen to steal a chocolate wafer from the ugly teddy shaped biscuit jar. There was no sign of my grandmother there or in the living room. I went back down the narrow hall way and, after a polite knock, stuck my head round her bedroom door. She was sitting in front of a kidney shaped dresser mirror that, like its owner, had seen better days.

  “Gran, it's time to leave; are you ready?”

  “Hold your horses, Sue, I'm just putting' me lippy on. You've got crumbs on your blouse.”

  I brushed them off saying, “Thank you, Chief Eagle Eye. Now come along, you don't want to be late.”

  She was wearing her best frock and a fancy wedding hat. My grandmother was a good-looking woman who didn't do mourning clothes, saying, “Black never suited my personality,” and she was right.

  I tried to make up for my earlier attitude with a compliment, “Oh, Gran, you look lovely.”

  She smiled like sunshine then, fixing her eyes on mine in the mirror, said, “Do you remember your granddad Tom's funeral? What a shock we had when they dropped his coffin - I thought my heart stopped.” She giggled like a naughty schoolgirl.

  “Gran, I had nightmares about that for years, it wasn't funny.”

  “Ah, Sue, my Tom would've loved it. His brother was to blame; he was drunk like he always was. Not so much a pall-bearer as he was a piss-pot, that one. He fancied me y'know, the dirty little…”

  “Grandmother, please, can we go now?”

  “Of course we can if you're absolutely sure that you're ready. Do you want to borrow a comb and a lipstick?”

  I stuck my tongue out at her reflection and said, “No thanks, but I do need to borrow a brolly.”

  We huddled under granddad's old golf umbrella and dashed down the path as fast as Gran's arthritic hips and a walking stick would allow. She puffed and panted while I squeezed her into my little car and strapped her soft body in tight. It was like tying a marshmallow to a chair, she didn't raise a finger to help me clearly preferring to give herself up to my tender ministrations. I found myself fantasizing about a different funeral, then feeling a rush of guilt I sent up a silent “I didn't mean it, God, please forgive me,” prayer.

  Gran hung onto the seat belt for dear life while I managed to achieve a high speed of 25 mph through the same awful weather and traffic that had plagued me earlier. My passenger was oddly silent, I thought she might be scared given the poor visibility, I was a little anxious myself. It never occurred to me that she might be feeling sad. That's how insensitive I used to be. I'm a changed woman now.

  We were the last mourners to arrive at the crematorium chapel. The building was a modern monstrosity which, on that wet Monday afternoon, sheltered a miserly scattering of friends and family. The scarcity of people saying their last goodbyes somehow made the place feel bleaker than I'd imagined possible.

  Gran pointed to a plump, many pierced young woman dressed in unflattering black Lycra from head to toe and said, “Sugar me, it's her again, I know her. It's…er, it's Thingy Wotsit, the weddin' and funeral singer. She gets around does that one. Her mum ought to buy her a mirror, it'd be a kindness to us all.”

  I shook my head, avoided all eye contact and swiftly guided my sweet granny to sit on a nearby pew.

  The Crem's duty vicar began the service by introducing Thingy Wotsit as John's niece, Alice, who then proceeded to sing Amazing Grace a cappella and slightly off-key. Gran covered her ears while I looked around for Alice's Uncle - I couldn't find him. I took hold of Gran's right hand and leaning in close asked, “Where's your neighbour?”

  “In the box,” she replied loudly, drawing stares of disapproval.

  “Ssh, Gran, keep your voice down. I meant, where's the singer's uncle?”

  “Are you deaf?” she asked in a ludicrously loud stage whisper.

  “No, Gran. Can you see John, your neighbour who loves curry? His wife was Punjabi, a brilliant cook. He should be experiencing this recital with the rest of us.”

  “Ssh, Susan, listen to the lovely song, one of us ought to have the pleasure.”

  “When I'm old and crazy like you, Gran, I hope they shoot me.”

  Alice Thingy Wotsit chose the precise moment those words left my mouth to stop crucifying the hymn, which somehow created the impression that I was shouting at my daft old bat of a grandmother. The pompous vicar glared at me in a most unforgiving manner while he said, “Thank you Alice, now let us remember the solemn reason we are gathered here today…”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, I snatched it out and saw caller display warning me that it was the Boss in a Million desiring my attention. Gran added her glare to the vicar's. I muttered, “Good God, it's the bloody, bastarding control freak,” then I crossed myself and practically sprinted out of the chapel.

  I answered the summons in the stone flagged porch where I stood sheltering from the downpour with the hearse driver, breathing in his cigarette smoke and the cloying scent of half-a-dozen sad looking wreaths.

  Ending the call with two fawning 'sorrys' and three groveling 'right-aways,' I decided to skip the rest of the service and wait for Gran to hobble out. My guardian angel must have been looking after me because, at the exact moment the driver (a man clearly unused to female company) got an unsolicited glint i
n his eye, the rain stopped and I spotted Alice's Uncle John resting on a nearby bench. Given my location and earlier blasphemy I gave thanks to God, unglued myself from the driver's goosebump provoking stares and made my way over to John for a chat with someone normal.

  Sitting beside him on the wet seat, I elbowed him in the ribs and teased, “Hey, John, shouldn't you be inside with the rest of the coffin-dodgers?”

  “I am.” He replied, his voice gentle as the breeze.

  “Right you are, I understand perfectly; you're there in spirit just like me. I bloody hate funerals.”

  John nodded and said, “They aren't a lot of fun. Even when the deceased's life was no fairytale…”

  I interrupted him saying, “No princess, no talking animals, no happily ever after…”

  John raised an eyebrow and said, “Well yes, even after such an ordinary life I can't bear to watch when the coffin rolls behind those awful red velvet curtains and you know the poor sod is on the way to a final barbeque.”

  He looked so sad that I wanted to hug him. Then he gave me a small smile and said, “The funeral is over now. Please remember to tell your lovely gran goodbye from me, I tried to tell her myself just before you collected her, but she wasn't listening.”

  I laughed and said, “She never is, John. Thanks for your company; you saved me from a pervert in a bad suit. Bye.”

  I left him on the bench admiring a rainbow and wondered how soon I could get back to the office; I didn't fancy making too much time up for a duty call.

  Gran was waiting for me in the porch, leaning on her stick, flirting with the disappointed driver and admiring the damp floral tributes. I took her arm and in my chirpiest voice said, “Come along, my lady, your royal carriage awaits and my charming boss is desperate to see me, so let's be off.”

  After going through the same strapping in ceremony followed by another dare-devil ride among traffic jams I delivered my unusually quiet grandmother home. Back in her tiny apartment, I settled her into her over stuffed armchair, threw my expensive brolly in the waste, pinched another biscuit and prepared to make my excuses for an obedient dash back to the office. Then it occurred to me that I'd never bothered to ask the polite and obvious question, so I said, “Gran, I'm sorry, I should have asked before the service – whose funeral was that?”

  Was that a tear in her eye? I stared, horrified as it rolled down her cheek filling her wrinkles like a flash flood. I pulled a hardly used soggy tissue out of my pocket and my gran, a woman I had never before seen show a moment's weakness, dabbed at her eyes sniffling as she said, “I thought you knew.” I shook my head. “No? Oh Sue, it was John's funeral, y'know John, his wife was Punjabi. He was such a good friend to me despite stinking of that foreign muck. I shall miss him so much.”

  Before my knees gave way I slumped into the chair opposite her. Gran blew her nose and said, “Sue, are you OK? You look like you've seen a ghost.”

  “I think I have. I saw John twice today, first here when I came to collect you and then during the funeral. I spoke with him in the crematorium garden. He asked me to tell you he said goodbye.”

  Gran's teary eyes shone with excitement as she said. “I always hoped you'd inherit my gift. This is great news. I know what we can do, you ring your boss and tell him to stick his job. I'll put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea then and we can have a chat about your future career in spiritualism or, as I like to call it, spookerology.”

  The End.

  About the Author: Leo Kane

  Over the years, Leo's experiences with people from all walks of life and cultures created a compelling curiosity with the darker side of the human psyche. So, ten years ago, Leo qualified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist specialising in the satisfying task of curing people of their fears and phobias. As you might expect a few of the more disturbed clients wandered into Leo's imagination and now find themselves in Heavensgate.

  In 2008, Leo resigned her position as a Strategic Director in one of the UK's largest local authorities along with her judiciary role in the Employment Tribunal. She and her husband, David, took the decision to emigrate to warmer climes where, free of the day jobs, Leo's ambition to become a writer could finally begin to take shape. This major life change was both terrifying and exhilarating and, for the next few years, all consuming and from a literary success point of view, utterly pointless.

  Books by Leo Kane:

  Heavensgate: Hope

  Heavensgate: Joy

  Links:

  Website: http://hgleokane.wix.com/heavensgate

  Jericho Jordan

  By Natalie J Case

  From her earliest memory, she knew that there were no such things as fairytales, not for her anyway. Jericho Jordan was unwanted by the people around her. Worse than that, she was different. It was written in her red-brown skin, in the freckles that crawled across her wide nose, in the thick head of wiry black hair that resisted all urge to be tamed, and in the odd, pale green of her eyes.

  She shaded those eyes and squinted into the late afternoon glare of the hot sun bouncing off the red rocks. Dust rose in the distance, vehicles of some sort dragging through the desert that separated them from the rest of civilization, toward the scattering of small towns that grew up out of the rock as the desert gave way to mountain and mines.

  They didn't get many visitors and those that came never really stayed.

  She tore her eyes from the line of vehicles, at least three that she could make out, and looked down at the town where she had been raised. It wasn't much. Most of the homes were built down into the rock in an effort to escape the heat, with just vents and heat releases visible above ground. There were some buildings, mostly ancient structures that had survived from before, gutted and repurposed to serve as meeting space and church, a school and other community buildings. All told there weren't a hundred people living in the very loosely defined town.

  On the west side was the mountain, the yawning opening of the mine where men and women disappeared every day and came out later with metals that sold on the other side of the desert to buy the things they couldn't grow or make themselves. The range stretched out into the north, cutting through the desert and up into where there had once been a forest.

  To the south was the wall, a defense that only served to keep at bay the reminder of how the world had ended. The wall had crumbled in places, and there were ways over and through it if you knew how to look. The town of Judah gave way to desert in the north and east, red and black sands and dry brown weeds as far as the eye could see. The south though, beyond the wall was a playground of ruins and relics from before, abandoned and forbidden. It lay between the now and then of the world, cutting a line from the mountain out to the ocean, or so they were told by the elders. The badlands were off limits, the place of boogie men and history that had long since been rewritten.

  Jericho dropped off that wall, her arm on the worn leather satchel over her shoulder to keep it from falling. She was late and she knew it. She knew it meant getting screamed at and assigned extra chores, but it beat spending the long, hot afternoon hiding from the heat and Mother Ruth in one of her worse moods. Of course, getting caught coming over the wall would earn her far more than extra chores.

  She picked her way over the rocky terrain, her eyes skipping up to check the progress of the coming vehicles. She could tell they were black, big. They were land skimmers, the kind only the very wealthy could afford. They seemed to have turned west and north, so they weren't coming near enough to learn more. She shook her head and told herself she had to be wrong. No one wealthy ever came out to the wall.

  Before she even made the turn that would take her up the dry creek bed, bringing her to what passed as her home, she could tell Mother Ruth was not happy. The whole area seemed to vibrate with anger and the Jericho could not escape the emotion as it sank into her. That too was another reason she was so despised. She did her best to hide it, but she knew things she shouldn't and that was a problem here in Judah.

  Je
richo slipped up to the back of the house, pausing to move one of the rocks that lined the small amount of building that cleared the ground. She had created a space beneath the stone, a place of her own to hide things that Mother Ruth would only take away from her. She stuffed the satchel into the space and eased the stone back down before turning to the back door.

  “You better get in there.”

  Jericho looked up at the pale face of the youngest boy currently living under Mother Ruth's graces. “Yeah, what's got her twisted up now, Dex?”

  He shrugged like it didn't really matter, but she knew better. Like her, Dex was unwanted…the product of an unwed mother, damned from birth. At least he fit in physically, his hair and eyes the right shade, his skin properly peach that deepened to a soft tan in the sun.

  “Petre saw you go over the wall.”

  “Shit.” She hesitated, eyeing the distance back to the wall and considering just grabbing her bag and running, but she wasn't prepared for more than an afternoon rummaging the ruins. She'd need food and water and…she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It wouldn't be the first beating she'd endured, and it probably wouldn't be her last. “Thanks for letting me know. Get scarce, I don't want any of it blowing back on you.”

  She tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears and adjusted the tightly plaited braids that was her attempt at keeping her unruly hair from being offensive, while Dex wandered off toward the dirt road that connected the dwellings together. She headed down the steps and in through the back door into the kitchen. Sara sneered at her from where she stood cooking. “Mama! She's back!”

  “Thanks for that.” Jericho said snidely.

  “You're going to get it.”

  Jericho took two steps toward the doorway into the rest of the house, figuring it would be easier to just face her fate, but she didn't have to go far. A hand grabbed her by the braid and physically dragged her into the main room, where the family sat to eat or to watch someone being punished, usually her.