She pouted, or tried to: it was hard to see since the white of her cheeks bled into her lips.
“The Soap is the topic this year. You know that.”
Toms, his temples palpitating, teeth clenched.
“It’s the topic every year...” Katrīne watched him, art book clutched to her chest, foot tapping as she waited for some sensible conclusion. “Never mind. Just go, Kathy.”
She smiled at her little victory and left.
* * * * *
The purple smear-stain of last night’s wine looked at Toms. He looked back, saw it, closed the curtains. He wished he could live up to its live berry depths but he felt like the bottle: empty, green.
It was that time again: seven. But this time was different. He grabbed a microwave meal as a disguise, bagging it in a generic supermarket plastic. Then he donned his most hated gift: a plain grey hoody. It was exactly what Katrīne loved. It was unimaginative, popular, boring; perfect.
Smiling, he dropped a mini sketchpad in a hidden inner pocket.
“Katrīne, I’m going out.”
She didn’t turn from the telly but her rag-tied ringlets, heavy with grease, bounced in their moulded cast – a nod.
“Will you be okay honey?”
“Dad. It’s starting.”
“I brought you up to be polite, Katrīne!”
She shrugged and hugged her knees. The palest of rosebuds blushed her cheeks
“Well, don’t get caught.”
Toms let go of a lopsided smile: it was the best he’d get. All he could expect, really, when The Soap was all she knew.
“Love you, Kat.”
“Bye dad.”
His keys knocked with the bobby head of the newest “bad boy”, Danny something. The Soap star had impregnated two women and his fourteen year old daughter hated him. At least, that’s what his daughter told him.
He locked Katrīne in and left The Soap behind.
* * * * *
The road glittered, its dusting of dusk water turned crystal. Street lamps cooled the air around the bulb still wispy with smoke. Cars creaked, mounted on the curbs, bonnets still warm but abandoned. Every few hundred metres, the glint of keys left in the ignition caught Toms’ eye.
He took a deep breath and pulled his hood against the chill and the cameras. They searched for stragglers to cart sofa-side. Even the theatres played The Soap now - show biz was dead.
Every fifty metres, two cameras groaned on their joints as they twisted to sight him. Their red dot brains stared him down – the lone straggler with a bagged meal. They soon wrote him off and turned away, only for the process to be completed at the next corner, the next street number or the next road marking. There was no escaping The Soap’s reach. Anyone trying was a fugitive, suspect in some new black market deal.
Toms was careful to keep his head down, hidden in the shadows of the hoody: he couldn’t let the cameras recognise him should he do this again tomorrow. Repeat offenders were always brought in for questioning.
The streets were much the same: old town was still cobbled, forcing a slip on the rounded ice every few steps. The old buildings were still there too but they had been ruined, painted white and renovated to look much the same as the next. Window on window lit grey-scale hallmark cards with white to reveal row on row of large families glued to the TV, baby to grandparent swaddled in blankets, throws, all smiling, all watching the same channel. They wore the same black trousers and white shirt, just settled from work, school, but even the babies wore onesies covered in black and white squares.
Shaking his head, Tom sped past these monstrosities of progress to reach the square. He hadn’t dared visit it before; afraid it would send him over the edge. It was deserted and empty, bar the loudspeaker raised on a metal pole at its centre. The pole was near new, shining with icy water. The speaker was pumping out the conclusion of last night’s Soap cliff hanger.
He didn’t listen but stared: a set of handcuffs still rested at the pole’s base. They would be freezing in this weather, metal icicles against the wrist. Anne would have shivered as the patrol officer cuffed her. That would be why the pictures showed her huddled in on herself, into her blue coat. She hadn’t been guilt-ridden, no. Anne would never have regretted a break for freedom.
Toms pushed out his chest and took a deep breath, chin high as he stared the nearest camera down; his wife wasn’t a criminal. She had been a visionary. The old CD player that had landed her an arrest warrant was her only comfort in winter when even nature abandons colour for The Soap.
She looked different now, in jail. Dressed in the black uniform of the bad, her skin was as white as Katrīne’s and she watched The Soap like the rest of them. Toms couldn’t let Katrīne see her mother like that: it wasn’t who she was, who she should be.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Anne.”
Toms bowed his head long enough to remember his wife smiling, singing in the shower as he fed Katrīne milk from the bottle.
He looked up, his eyes creasing over the handcuffs.
“Rest well.”
* * * * *
Toms was glad to see Daugava River and the maze of industrial warehouses at its side. It was forgotten now, a junk yard for the past. Steepled church towers were left, crumbling, on their heads in the rubbish as if faith had left them. Sculptures commemorating forgotten triumph and misery lay toppled on the scrap heap. Even memorials to old heroes, martyrs, were worn, their names weathered to unreadable bumps in steel, bronze, metal. They’d only been there seventy years, since the movement on art. Time was no healer.
Toms turned from this disaster with a shiver: ghosts prowled the stones, keening wails over the water and clatters of nails, bumps of ghoulish hammer. They wanted their world back. He ducked into a doorway, under the cover of his scratchy hood.
The building he left the past for was as run down as the junk yard. Water pulled at its moorings. A pile of bricks from the wall lay broken, lapped by the shallows below. They had cracked after falling at high tide. Crusted ice-salt ate at what was left.
He stood before the door, a metre from the precipice, hoping the inside was still intact; it had been eight years since he’d first read his wife’s diary entry with the address.
Night dew froze against the reinforced steel door bolted to its frame.
Two knocks. His knuckles were numb; he wiped them.
“It’s Toms.”
Four deadbolts cracked over the slosh of the shallows. The steel gave way to a long corridor and a tiny, moustached man. He was born a dwarf and had relaxed into it, out of sight in this warehouse. Wire frame glasses perched half down his nose, a plain red velvet waistcoat over his white shirt and blue jeans. He’d noticed my eyes, breathing the pure colour and feathered texture of it.
“Have to act out some time.”
He was smiling, tugging at the pointed base of the waistcoat. Its gold buttons smiled in the light, too, like a child’s memory of a cartoon sun.
“I have a duffel to take it home.”
Toms nodded, seeing the bag on top of the desk.
“Black duffel, no marks. Nice. So, can I see?”
He gestured to the code locked door at other end of the corridor. The diminutive man looked up at Toms, assessed him.
“Why did you come here?”
“I read about what’s here. My wife – she never made it.”
Lou brushed some dust from his waistcoat.
“Anne? Yes, I remember. But why do you want to see it? Why now?”
Toms thought about the dull sheen to his daughter’s born eggshell blue eyes. He thought about their white house, identical to all the others on fifty-first street. The risk was nothing.
“Colour and,” he paused, swallowing, “I
need to save my daughter, for Anne.”
The dwarf’s eyes clouded but he nodded, putting out a hand.
“Name’s Lou.”
Toms shook firm, serious, with all the pomp of meeting a general. Lou’s eyes pinched at the corners, atwinkle with humour.
“Welcome to the resistance.”
His feet skipped down the corridor, fingers a blur of numbers. He pulled the door handle. No sound. Then, no door.
There was a high painted ceiling, renaissance style naked bodies, the leaves pasted over genitals in gold leaf, an artist’s joke. There was a jumble of paintings, big names, statues, scripts, books, words, mummies, stacks of wine. There was lime, chocolate, maroon, cream, lily, azure, violent hues; vermilion scarlet creation.
“You okay?”
Toms nodded. “It’s wonderful.” He pulled the sketchpad from his hoody, as much an artist as his daughter. “Got a pen?”
“Yeah.” Lou offered one from the pocket of his waistcoat.
The pen inked pink lines, shading, miniature versions of the treasure filling the hall around them but the flurry of ink stopped with a blot when the pen loitered.
“Toms?”
“Sorry. Lou, I...I’ll be back.”
Toms handed him the pen and grabbed his plastic meal on the way out.
* * * * *
The walk home was easier: the streets were still and his success gave him courage. He tore Danny’s head from the keys as he hurried to open his door. Katrīne was where he’d left her, lost in the wash of society’s heroes.
“Close the door dad. It’s cold.”
She wouldn’t listen, he knew. So, he dropped the meal and picked her up, under the arms.
“Dad!” She struggled, went limp, cried. “What are you doing? I’m missing it! Dad!”
He ignored her, throwing her light, wafer-thin body over his shoulder as he headed for the street. He pulled the door to, not having enough energy or hands to lock it, let alone time. Katrīne knew better than to scream once they were outside.
“Dad, where are you taking me?”
The cameras moaned and flickered, their red lights flashing with the sight of abduction.
“Where you’re meant to be, Katrīne. A world before The Soap. You’ll see.”
She didn’t struggle any more but he didn’t put her down either. Together, they rushed to the warehouse, clutching at what they could grab – a hoody, a handful of denim. Each needed the other as much as themselves. They passed the streets of identical terraced houses, painted white as if buckets of paint had fallen from the sky. They passed the square, and the memory of Katrīne’s mother. Then the waterfront was before them.
The water lapped, as before, but a new sound played over the distorted mumble of Soap pub-talk. Toms hurried, Katrīne stilled. It was a pulse, a sonar rolling through buildings, cobbles, to reach them. It drummed through road, brick, flesh. Toms felt it in the marrow of his bones.
They’d been spotted.
He knocked on the warehouse door twice, as before. Lou opened it quick but kept the far door, the door to an older world, shut. They stood, an odd trio in the corridor.
“Your daughter?”
Toms nodded, letting her feet reach the floor.
“Katrīne.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Could be, yeah.”
Lou nodded, understanding. Katrīne scowled, arms folded.
“It’s Kathy.”
They all waited.
The sirens grew louder, beat the walls, echoed off the steel and the water absorbed them, a happy observer. Toms swallowed bile.
A knock shuddered at the door.
Lou sighed, shook his head, and focused on the cement floor instead of their small family unit. He had to do what was needed to keep the resistance going, even if it was just him. Toms understood. He’d seen it before, when he lost his wife.
“Sorry Toms.”
He shrugged, understanding that Lou could do nothing more to hide them.
“The cameras must have seen us duck in.”
Lou crossed to the desk, stuffed his waistcoat into the duffel and hid it underneath, out of sight. Toms didn’t stop him. Instead, he crouched down and looked his daughter in the dulled eye.
“Katrīne, your aunt will look after you, Griete. Don’t let them change you.”
He kissed her forehead, a tear falling from his nose to her skin. It fell as he watched, as Lou let the police in. They knew where they were: there was no point trying to wait them out.
There were three policemen outside, their black patrol car fuming with smoke in the river winds. One was short, the other two were tall, similar in height. None of them smiled.
“We saw you run in here, with the girl.”
The largest of them stared Toms down, dared him to disagree.
“It’s on camera.”
Toms nodded: there was nothing he could say.
“Why you here?” said the smaller one. He pattered down the hallway, slapped the door at the end. “There’s a code on this.” He faced Lou. “You’re in charge?”
“Yes. I’m paid to watch the door.”
“What’s inside?”
“Stuff from the museum, before The Soap.”
The small guy nodded, his double chins bouncing together above the dwarf’s head.
“Good job, for you. These two want in?”
Lou shrugged. “Don’t see why else they’d pick here.”
The policeman nodded and turned to his taller friends. “Search the both of them,”
They patted Toms down and found the notebook, its sharp corners catching the hand of the tallest guard. He opened Toms’ hoody and grabbed the pad in a rush. So quick, the paper tore a cut in his index finger.
Toms smiled: poetic.
The cut policeman, Court, his name tag said, sucked on his paper cut before speaking.
“Lock him in the car, Grant.”
Grant, who turned out to be the other tall policeman, grabbed Toms by the elbow and pushed him none too gently under the car’s open door. His caught his fall before his face hit the seat and pulled his legs round to a sitting position. The door shut and clicked as it locked.
He looked out at his daughter and smiled, bitter: this must have been how Anne had felt, looking at all those cameras and only seeing me, Katrīne... He placed his hand on the glass, warming the condensation to make a hand print porthole to his young daughter.
“Maybe I was wrong, Katty. Now you’ll never know what life is like.”
Another tear ached free at the sight of her. She was a small dark figure beside even the dwarf and little Mr double chin. Illuminated by the flash of red and blue, she was still, barefoot. Her face was melted, a constricted twisted smile that wobbled as another parent was wheeled away.
Her life was repeating its vicious cycle and Toms’ last sight of her, clutching her stomach as her knees gave way, told him she might have lost the last of her will to fight - that last semblance of life beneath her rare blushes or worried snap.
He could only hope he was wrong.
* * * * *
Toms’ prison was not the bars that sealed off his cell. It was the brain wash acid of the screens that blared The Soap at top volume. Rerun after rerun, forever. Reprogramming, they called it. Human rights to see this tosh, they called it.
Toms got pictures, letters from his daughter. He drew with a cracked rock on the stone walls. The guards read the letters with glee. He drew the paintings he remembered, the shapes, the wine, the stories he imagined. His heart sped a little with each letter, gaining momentum. He ignored the high-pitched squeak of friction, rock and rock. She was drawing The Soap, living with an aunt. He shaded th
e drawings. She had all grey clothes now – practical. He found another rock, added embellishments - a plant here or there. She’d gone to see the movie, the first showing of The Soap.
He couldn’t sketch colour with rock. Her hand wobbled, apparent in the sketchy lines of her drawings, the scribble of handwriting. She would have dulled eyes now, her hair a solid mass, untied, unkempt. She was a skeleton now, too.
He couldn’t, wasn’t, what she needed, what the world needed.
He smiled when his knuckles scuffed the stone, breaking the skin to seep blood. He did it again, again and again until red pooled and dried to crusty rust. He shook his head side to side, forgetting the world, The Soap, their reality.
Foam bubbled to stuff his mouth. He choked, mad, and The Soap played its intro jingle as he fell to the reddened stone, his last painting a cave drawing in blood.
Drip, Drip, Drip – by Zena Hagger
The trick is to keep warm with good quality thermals but to look pathetic and dingy. Not too pathetic, if you smell bad, if you have snot unwiped, if you have too many holes in your shoes then you are a creature below pity, beyond redemption. Pathos with a dog. A dog is always handy, especially if it is a rangy mutt, always looking half starved and loyally challenging if its pack is threatened. That lifts you from a tramp to a mendicant, especially if a grubby red kerchief is tied around its neck. That shows you care about your dog. Punters have more sympathy for a dog dressed in a rag than a bag lady in rags. A penny whistle, just resting to one side as if you are about to busk a living, is a nice touch. It elevates one from an idle beggar to that of active worker. Of course, I am not really a beggar. I am really a Princess, fallen on hard times.
A paradox. Take a piece of paper and write on it: ‘The other side of this sheet is a lie.’ Turn it over and write: ‘The other side of this sheet is the truth.’
I am an honest liar, I beg because I can watch for Her. I owe Her, big time. I watch, I wait. Someone drops a coin, a 50p, onto the little pile next to the flute. It clinks, once, and I snatch it into my pocket, along with the others. I mutter a thanks, keeping my voice low, hiding my accent. Nobody wants to give to a jolly-hockey-sticks Bunty. I have to be common. As common as a fag-end.
Fall - A Collection of Short Stories (Almond Press Short Story Contest) Page 4
