I wanted to be like them, but I had learned patience already. I was a saint. Perhaps, I thought, as I waited, this was a test. Maybe in my next incarnation I could be a sofa, full of interesting days, or a television, ever the centre of attention.
What will be will be. You have to be philosophical to be a Buddhist.
At last, my day came. I was taken out (gentle hands, I remember) by a short girl, young, probably about five. I was moved from a kitchen (I don’t remember much about kitchens from my former life, but I remember this one – it had yellow walls, and terracotta tiles three deep above oak work surfaces. The taps were stainless steel, the sink ceramic, a kind of beige colour that was not quiet beige. It was a lovely kitchen. I still remember it with fondness).
And then, oh, then, pure bliss. The girl, seated at the counter, tore me open. It was for this that I had been born into this life. One moment of sheer joy out of a stream of banal memories and drivel.
The sounds of crunching was music to my ears. I rustled to my hearts content. Every second, every time her hand delved into my depths, I was in ecstasy.
And then, the bin.
And that, my friends, is reincarnation in a nutshell – or a crisp packet, and Stephen Hawkins’ next easily accessible theory is likely to be called.
One moment of emptiment, then, emptiness. The bin, to the dump, and the last seventy percent of your life on the scrap heap.
Reincarnation sounds great, but really, all you do is live the same life over again. That’s the rub.
Now, as I wait to rot, I finally realise what the Buddhists don’t like to tell you. There is a hell, and this life, and the next, and the next…that is all there is.
The End
Some reviewers have questioned whether these stories all come from one mind. Here's an example of why they do. This is a mean bastard of a story, a junkyard dog of a story. About a fridge.
Refrigerator
Joseph Dean watched his wife burn. The service had been beautiful. John Joseph, their only son, read the eulogy.
John Joseph struggled to get his words out, but Joseph Dean didn’t cry. He kept a smile inside.
Thank God, he thought. The fat bitch has finally gone.
*
The refrigerator wasn’t full like it used to be. Before she died Maude Dean had filled it to overflowing twice a week with low fat yoghurts and diet Coca-Cola and Weightwatchers cakes and half tins of low salt beans and soups and spaghetti and pickles and so many other things she would never eat. Under the kitchen sink, in the cupboard with the bleach, the furniture polish and other things Joseph never used (the cupboard under the sink was as alien to him as the refrigerator) was where the fat bitch, Maudlin Maude Dean, kept her stash.
People asked where he would place the ashes, after the funeral. In the ground, with a stone, to remember where she was, or on the mantel piece, or in the sea.
John really didn’t know. For a time he kept her on the mantel piece, like he was expected to do. He toyed with the idea of sticking her in the ground in the local cemetery, but he didn’t want to pay for her.
She’d racked up such a bill on those TV shows where God asked for her money that he didn’t have much left himself.
Her God, though, hadn’t been the one on TV, but the cupboard under the sink. The cupboard where she’d keep her ‘naughty food’.
She’d be happiest under the sink, probably happy enough until Joseph himself died and new tenants moved in and threw out her ashes along with their mouldering carpets and mildewed bathroom fixtures.
But he didn’t want her to be happy. The bitch had made his life a misery for so many years he’d lost count. He didn’t want her stuffing her face with spirit food in the great beyond. He wanted her to lose some bloody weight, even if it was only in heaven, looking down on him with that perpetual frown on her face.
She’d believed in her twin Gods, the one above, and the one she could stuff in her squished up pudgy face. Joseph didn’t believe in the afterlife, but he believed in second chances. This was his. His second shot at happiness.
No, he didn’t want her to be happy.
Two weeks after the funeral, her ashes in a fancy urn, he took her down and put her on the kitchen worktop.
He rolled up his sleeves and set to work. With rubber gloves on his hands and strange cleaning things, those alien cleaning things, he cleared the refrigerator from top to bottom. Then he put her ashes in there and proceeded to smoke a cigarette in his living room, alone, in peace, for the first time since he’d married that slim beautiful girl who’d promised happiness and only brought misery.
*
That night Joseph Dean dreamed of his wife straddling him and riding his old cock, his old balls jouncing up and down. She was the woman of his youth...but then she got heavier and heavier, until it felt like she was crushing down on him, nearly heavy enough to break his pelvis.
He tried to push her off.
He imagined the refrigerator was riding him in his dream and woke with a rare, disturbing erection.
Taking his milk from beside his wife for his morning coffee, he could have sworn the thing groaned.
*
‘Dad,’ said John Joseph, later that morning. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Doing fine, son. Just fine. Settling into the widower’s life, I suppose. Coffee in the morning. Read for a while. Doze. Make a dinner. Watch some television. Go to bed. Rinse and repeat.’
‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You sound tired.’
‘Just bad dreams.’
‘You want to talk about it?’
‘Nope.’
Joseph and John Joseph talked for a while longer. Things on no consequence. Joseph put his book down, a Louis L’amour western, and made himself a sandwich with bread and butter and ham from the fridge. Must be eating a hell of a lot of white bread, he thought, because there were only three slices left.
Wasn’t unusual for an old man to forget a few things, here and there. Was a time when he could look at his watch and know the time straight away. Now he could look ten times and forget the damn time a second later.
Didn’t matter though. He’d have some shopping to do anyway. Maybe treat himself to a cream cake tomorrow and a spot of gardening if the weather held.
*
That morning Joseph woke not remembering his dreams. He awoke with a fierce erection and when he made the morning coffee he could have sworn that the refrigerator had moved.
*
‘Dad,’ said John Joseph. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Didn’t I talk to you yesterday?’ said Joseph.
‘Dad? Are you alright?’
‘Of course.’
‘I spoke to you last week.’
‘Oh,’ said Joseph, feeling a little of that personal terror only the very forgetful can truly know.
‘You want me to come over?’
Joseph looked over at the refrigerator. It seemed to shake, like it was saying no.
‘Nope,’ said Joseph. ‘Just a little tired,’ he said. ‘Bad dreams.’
‘I’m coming over.’
‘No. I’m fine. Come over next week. Bring a chicken, I’ll do a roast.’
‘OK, Dad. You sure?’
The refrigerator shook.
‘I’m sure. Bring some cream cakes, too? OK?’
‘OK. I will. See you Sunday?’
Joseph nearly asked what day it was today, but that would have been like asking to go into a home.
‘See you then,’ he said.
*
Joseph was shocked when he got off the phone with John Joseph and he turned the digital television on for the date. A month had passed since his wife’s funeral.
He was losing weight and his memory was going.
Maybe he was due a home.
*
Joseph watched John Joseph rifling through his cupboards. He couldn’t seem to care.
‘Dad, you’ve got nothing i
n the cupboards. You’ve lost weight. What have you been eating?’
The fact was, Joseph didn’t know. He didn’t think he’d been eating anything. He put food in the refrigerator, and when he was hungry it wasn’t there anymore.
‘I don’t want to do this, Dad...you know...have this conversation...but Daisy and I...we’ve been thinking...’
‘A home,’ said Joseph, and managed a sickly smile.
‘God, no. We’d like you to move in with us.’
‘Let me think about it. A couple of days.’
‘Don’t take too long, OK?’
‘OK,’ Joseph said. One more night, he thought. One more night. Just give me...
*
Joseph must have taken a nap because the next thing he remembered it was the middle of the night and he was standing before the refrigerator.
‘You think you know God,’ said his wife. ‘But it turns out I didn’t know anything.’
‘Maude,’ said Joseph. ‘Please. Don’t do this anymore.’
The refrigerator, inanimate, couldn’t smile. But it could laugh, because it had a voice and a mouth.
And why couldn’t it smile? It had a mouth, didn’t it?
And so the refrigerator smiled.
‘You think you know God, but you know, those Buddhas, they’ve got the right of it, haven’t they?’
‘Please leave me alone, Maude,’ said Joseph.
‘I can’t, Joe. I’m hungry, and you haven’t fed me.’
‘Don’t make me,’ said Joseph, tears streaming down his stubbly face.
‘I’m hungry, Joe. Feed me, you little shit. Feed me.’
‘Maude...I’m...sorry.’
‘Too late, Joe. You fucking killed me. You put poison in my cream cakes, you fucking little weasel. And now I’m hungry...’
‘I couldn’t bear it anymore, Maude. I never meant to...I just couldn’t take it anymore.’
‘And neither can I, Joe, neither can I. I’m hungry, and you’re all I’ve got left.’
The door to the refrigerator opened. Seemed to call Joseph in, that little light at the back like the lure of a deep sea fish, drawing him on in fascination toward its maw.
Joseph climbed into the fridge and the door closed behind him.
*
John Joseph opened the door to the refrigerator three days later. It sighed open.
His father hadn’t even spoiled.
The End
Yeah, I write fantasy, too. Here's a story set in the world of Rythe.
The Unknown Warrior
The wounded man looked around. Each movement of his head drove daggers into the bones of his neck. Pinpricks of light stood out against the evening’s glow.
His arms ached fiercely, but it felt good. Good to be alive.
So much blood already spilled, and yet…
He found himself smiling, despite the carnage.
The pain was welcome. It was constant. It could not be forgotten. He had forgotten too much. In this perfect moment he was living, there was no escape, no respite, just a constant stream of men to skewer on the end of his blade.
If this was the afterlife, he must have lived well.
He did not know if it was even his sword he held, but he knew enough of himself to understand how to wield it. It was a fine sword, unembellished and beautifully balanced.
He gave it a practised flick to clear the blood. He saw the sword was etched, perhaps by acid. Rare work indeed, for a sword in the hands of a commoner.
He knew he was a commoner. Only the Thane’s men wore full armour. The Thanes too, of course, but they mostly spent their time directing this war, waving their soldiers on with a chicken leg in one hand and a mistress’ young behind in the other.
Thanes had no use for their fancy armour. Neither did the wounded man. His breastplate had served him well. He could tell, even if he couldn’t remember the blows. It was scored on the front maybe six times, where it had turned away a thrust from a weapon, perhaps a pike, or an axe (although the Draymen they faced rarely used axes), or a short sword.
He noted how his leather bracers were trimmed with steel ringlets. It was quality work.
Not a rich man, then, but one who by the evidence took his work seriously. A warrior of some note, perhaps. Maybe people knew his name. He grinned wryly. Would that he had the chance to ask.
If he was famous, he thought, looking over at the survivors, he was not famous in this country (Sturma, his mind threw at him. He clutched onto the name and found that it held. He knew nothing of himself, but enough of the world to keep on living, if only for a little while longer.)
A dagger of the same etched steel lay beside a downed Drayman. The man was still breathing – the dagger had hit him in the temple, but only the pommel had struck. He was unconscious.
Unconscious, but not near enough Madal’s gates for the wounded warrior’s liking.
He moved toward the sleeping Drayman, the ground shifting like some reluctant whore beneath his feet.
Without a thought as to why, he rammed the point of his sword between the Drayman’s ribs. The fallen warrior passed with only a last gasp escaping his lips. These Drayman, unkempt and filthy savages, these were the enemy. This much he understood. Today, there was to be no mercy. A short glance around the courtyard where they fought was enough to tell him so.
He remembered the enemy well.
He took in his surroundings with a practised eye. Great walls surrounded a stone keep. The keep was crumbling – eons old – but the walls were recently patched. New stone was interspersed with the old. The walls were thick, but ultimately useless. The gates lay broken and twisted on the dirt of the courtyard. A Sturman (his countryman. That seemed right) lay half obscured underneath the massive oak gates. Magic had been used here, but that made no sense. There was no magic on Sturma. But there was no denying it. The gates were warped and ordinary heat or fire would not buckle steel-bound oak so. They would scorch, certainly, and even burn were the heat fierce enough, but buckle, like the memory of the trees they once were had awoken? No.
There was no other reason he could discern. Not only were their enemy legion, they had foul magic users at their beck and call, too.
A strange new world. One he did not fully understand.
But he knew the blade. That would have to be enough for this day.
He spat blood and only then noted that his lip was split and a tooth was cracked. He remembered taking the head wound, but not the blow to the face.
It had always been thus. It was nothing to concern himself over. He knew where he was now, and what he was doing. And, by the look of the ring of Draymen bodies surrounding him, he was good at it.
Hard men stood beside him. Two score or so. Every one of them was bloodied. One man stood aside from the rest. He wore mismatched armour, but apart from gauntlets and a helm he could have been a Thane’s man, or even a battle commander. He searched his memory, straining against his own mind in a struggle that worsened his throbbing head, but he could only remember the man’s name, and that he fought for the man.
To fight for him was to fight for Sturma.
He didn’t know where that came from, but he knew it to be true.
He took stock of the men remaining. The Sturmen in the dirt far outnumbered those standing, but he smiled a little as he counted the Draymar, with their rusting, pillaged weapons, and their grossly matted hair.
They looked like dung.
Where did this enmity come from? What wrong had sparked this war? Did it even matter?
He turned his attention to those remaining defenders he could see without turning his head too far. His eye caught that of a man on his left. He was bleeding heavily from a stomach wound – he only wore chain. It might have saved him from a slashing blow, but had obviously provided little protection from the thrust that was soon to kill him. He wouldn’t stand for much longer.
He bled himself, from numerous wounds. His lip, a slash on his unprotected thigh, and a steady seeping from a
deep laceration to his skull. It throbbed dully. He knew his brain was swollen, too, but that didn’t explain the emptiness.
“Hold the keep!” cried Renir Esyn, the only man he knew by name. “They come again! You! What’s your name?”
A young beardless warrior replied to the war leader, but his words were lost over the clamour of the Draymen, massed before the keep, banging their weapons together in an awful cacophony.
The nameless warrior couldn’t remember what lay outside those walls, but from the sound of it there was little in the way of resistance. The clattering of weapons was rhythmic, boastful. It was not the chaotic clanging of battle, but of victory.
He smiled to himself. There was little else they could take from him. If his dying breath was to be expended protecting this crumbling keep, then so be it. At least he knew what to do now, and why he was here. It made a refreshing change.
He relied on sight instead of sound.
Renir clasped the young man on his shoulder and pushed him gently toward the keep. Along the way the young soldier took the dying man around the waist, taking care not to touch his wounded stomach, and together they limped toward the keep, where their remarkable physician held court over men’s lives. Border rights, spousal disagreements or cattle prices were not at issue in the doctor’s court, but whether you lived or died. It was a heady kind of judgement. He instinctively did not trust the learned, although logically he understood that he had as great a need of him as the gutted man had.
How did he know there was a healer? Perhaps it was just a logical assumption. He did not know, but he presumed a man such as he was relied often on logic, and not experience.
With no memory, what recourse did he have, but for logic?
His head was tender at the best of times, but now he knew what he was doing here he wouldn’t give up and lay his head down on some healer’s sainted lap. He was a fighting man. He would fight until he could fight no more or the enemy had fallen.
Angels in Black and White (Horror Short Stories) Page 9
