Writing

This week’s Friday Flash is not really a direct sequel to the terrible 90s virtual reality movies, but does involve a man and a lawnmower. It’s also quite short, because I didn’t think it needed to be longer.

As ever, more Friday Flash available at the Friday Flash website.

Lawnmower Man III

“Honey, I’m just off to mow the lawn!”

“Phil, wait!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Ellie says she doesn’t want you to hurt the grass.”

“Hurt it?”

“Cut it down.”

“Okay, well, it’s seven at night, she’ll be asleep soon enough.”

“She might hear the lawnmower though.”

“Mandy, she’ll have to learn about grass decapitation eventually.”

“You could use the secateurs?”

“If you want the lawn cut one strand at a time, Amanda, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

“How about the electric carving knife? It’s like a tiny chainsaw!”

“… Actually, that does sound like fun.”

“You could pretend to be a miniature lumberjack!”

“Okay, let’s not get carried away.”

Another week, and this time, we’re off to Subway. This one wrote itself, and is probably odd, but I was happy with the tone.

More Friday Flashes on the Friday Flash site.

Don’wanna

Steve and Yam were having a Subway. After the Subway, they were probably going to hit the pub. After a few equalising pints, maybe a game of pool, then home. It was six o’clock on a Thursday.

“What did y’think of the girl serving?” said Steve, jabbing his thumb at the sandwich area.

“Alright,” said Yam. He’d stared at her so hard whilst queuing for his dinner, he didn’t need to look round again.

“Better than alright,” Steve decided he did need another look, “I reckon.”

And then she looked up at him, and Steve quickly went back to looking at the sub.

“Maybe,” said Yam, pretending he hadn’t noticed that.Before either of them could finish their mouthful and speak again, the door slid open and a kid stormed in. Well, a young person, in a beanie hat and a big jacket. There were a few other people in the sandwich shop, and all of them turned around to look at the kid, including Steve and Yam.

He looked like he was talking to himself at first, pretty angrily, and the entire sandwich-buying public inspected his body as one, until they satisfied themselves that he was wearing a handsfree kit. But even though he had someone to talk to, he was getting weirdly agitated. “I don’t want to,” he’d say, before waiting a few seconds, then saying “No, you ain’t listening, I don’t want to! I just don’t!”

He got into the short line for a sandwich, insisting more of the same. He looked up briefly to say: “Yeah, footlong wheat bread, ham, no salad,” then went straight back to protesting down his in-line mike.

Not once did his eyes linger on the hotness of the girl behind the counter, Steve and Yam noticed that and exchanged glances.

“For fuck’s sake, I said I don’t want to, how many fucking times?”

He handed over his money for the sandwich, without looking up or saying anything, taking the change with a nod.

“Look, I seriously don’t want to, okay?”

The kid took a tall plastic table, a few across from Steve and Yam. They both watched him for a while, as he trotted out his unwillingness a few more times, but they eventually decided it was safe to turn their eyes back to each other.

“So, what do y’think?” said Steve. “Psycho?

”“Maybe someone wants him to go to Lloyds on the high street?” offered Yam.

“True facts, mate. That place is a shithole,” agreed Steve, who once slipped over on a wine puddle there and kicked his then-girlfriend in the crotch very hard.

“Or he just doesn’t wanna go back to whoever’s at home.” Yam pondered.

Steve slapped Yam around the head. “Come on, he’s too young for that.”

Yam glared at him, then back at the girl behind the counter. Then at the kid again.

“Look, please, I really don’t want to, can’t you just leave it?” His voice had dropped very quiet, Yam had to strain to catch that last one.

Yam took another look at Steve, then sucked the last few drops out of his drink. “Yeah, do you want to head down the pub? If we don’t get down there now, some prick will probably swipe our table.”

“Sure you don’t want to swoop in and give that kid a cuddle?”

“Sure I’m sure.” Yam said, and he really didn’t want to. They left Subway, and he beat Steve 4-2 at pool, then feel a bit better. He made sure to drink enough to put him to sleep.

SEQUEL UPDATE: Well, sorta. Fellow Friday Flash writer Kath Kerr has written her take on the other side of the kid’s phone conversation.

Always interesting to see someone else’s take, and also, does this count as my first fanfiction? Pretty cool either way, check it out.

This actually started as a nice Easter story about rebirth and stuff, although it seems to have changed since then. Never mind, at least it still has some mild science-fiction.

As ever, more Friday stories available on the FridayFlash website, and if you’ve enjoyed this piece, why not read my comedy-detective serial, which has a lot more jokes.

Wake Me

Anna was expecting drops of moisture inside the tube, but it was dry as a bone. Not that she’d ever touched a real skeleton, and soon she wouldn’t be able to feel her own. Or would she?

“So,” she finally muttered to Liam, “I guess this is it.”

“Yeah.” He was hanging back at the door, watching the tube nervously, as if he thought it would freeze him too if he came near. “I guess.”

“Come in, Liam.”

He glanced at the doorframe, as if checking for traps, and finally stepped towards her. There were six of the glass pillars in the room, four occupied and one open for Anna. The final tube was dead, not humming or lit up. Everything in here was so clean, and why? She’d be frozen solid, surely germs wouldn’t affect her?

After all, if cryo-stored people could still get sicker, why was she doing any of this?

Liam had finally reached her now, having made a two metre walk last as long as possible. And she duly collapsed into him, despite promising herself she wouldn’t make a scene – maybe she should’ve let him stay over there after all. Now she’d just embarrass herself in front of the six CCTV cameras.

“It’ll be fine,” he nodded. “They’ll find a cure and wake you up. The guy says it’s only a year or two away.”

She nodded her head against his shoulder without saying anything. Finally, she pulled away. Apparently she was going to compensate for the dry cryogenic freezing tube by moistening her own face. “And you can get me out of here whenever they’re ready.”

Liam sighed. “What if it takes longer than they think and I’m old?”

He looked really stricken by this possibility, so much she just laughed. “You’ll be able to show off your much younger girlfriend to the other wrinklies, it’ll be fine.”

“Mm.” He didn’t laugh.

And neither of them had time to say anything else, before the intercom on the wall binged a sharp noise, then hissed out a message: “Miss Parnes, please enter unit #3432E.”

Like many public announcements, it was sitting right on the line between human and automated robot, Anna cocked her head for a moment as she thought about which it was. There had been a quiver of annoyance in there which betrayed it as a real guy, she suspected, a bored jobsworth watching the CCTV, rolling his eyes and muttering at her to stop making small talk with her boyfriend and get in the damn tube.

“Okay, I guess it’s time to chill.” She gestured at the tube and forced out a smile, without making any movement towards it.

“Yeah.” Liam glared at a camera, seeming angrier than she was with the snotty nature of that announcement, but rightly didn’t waste their last few minutes together bitching about it. He was a practical guy, and she liked that. After all, she was being pretty sensible right now herself.

And it wasn’t really their last minutes together, after all, because she’d wake up.

“What if I just miss you?” Liam’s eyes slid back onto her. “How long do I wait for that?”

“They can’t re-freeze me,” she sighed, “so a while.”

“Yeah.”

The intercom binged again, but before it could utter a single passive-aggressive syllable, Liam looked straight into the camera above his head and told it to “kindly fuck off”. She almost didn’t jump on him and kiss him, until she remembered she might not get to do it again for a decade or two.

Then again, she thought, as she pulled away from him, that decade wouldn’t seem like any time at all to her. What a horrible selfish thought.

“Love you,” she added, mostly because she meant it and not just to compensate for that.

“Love you too,” he nodded back, with a amusingly inadequate small wave. And then, deciding that was a good note to finish on, she finally stepped inside the strange, dry glass tube.

She might feel a slight shock, apparently, as the cold took effect. The door hummed shut, and she suddenly realised something.

“Liam,” she said, pressing herself against the near-soundproof glass, “wake me, okay? Eventually, before it’s too late, even if they don’t cure… I don’t want…”

And then the cold came and Anna’s mind jumped out of her skin.

Time for some horror creatures this week! Maybe because Being Human has just finished, maybe I just felt like it.

As ever, see more Friday stories on the Friday Flash site.

Fall Of The Vampire

My friend Joel said he was a vampire, but in order to get his fix without taking anyone’s life, he would just fish tampons and that kinda shite out of bins, then squeeze them into his mouth.

Said this was his gift, his curse, much like going to parties and showing off to gothic teenagers. He did sharpen two of his teeth with a metal file though, so that’s dedication to the cause, I suppose.

I mean, I still suspect he just did the thing with the tampons because he liked it. As gestures of sacrifice go, I’ve seen better. I myself am a zombie, but have discovered I can get perfectly good meat from the supermarket. They even have home delivery, so I don’t need to expose my rotting carcass to the people outside.

But am I a zombie, or do I just pick my scabs a lot?

I’d test it, but I’ve not got the guts. Much like I can’t bring myself to actually keep Joel away from his used feminine hygiene products. Truth be told, you can get by without being a crazed killer, as long as you’re not a huge gothic poser.

Or a werewolf. Those guys are screwed. I’m so tired. You don’t realise how little energy you have once you’re dead. I had no choice but to quit my shitty job and unplug the phone.

No, this isn’t about the band Placebo – although, true story, their lead singer Brian Molko received a doctorate from Goldsmiths the same year as I got my MA. Sadly, I wasn’t at his graduation.

Anyway, new Friday story below. If you wanna vote for Hobson & Choi on Jukepop today, you can now sign in with Facebook instead of needing to actually register there.

On with the story. More available on the FridayFlash website if you so desire.

Placebo

“Doctor, how’s it going? Good, cool, me too.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit awkward, I know. It’s like, we barely know each other, and I’m meant to tell you all my deepest secrets. Don’t you have a couch I can lie down on or anything?”

“Bet you get that all the time, huh?”

“Hah, yeah. Why did I seek therapy? I guess… Well, it’s hard to know where to start, isn’t it?”

“Okay, so, a few years ago, I was reading a paper on the placebo effect, you know the one? You give someone sick a fake pill, tell them it’s medicine, and their condition often improves?”

“I mean, I’m not sure it would work with cancer and AIDS or whatever, but you know, the common cold, broken legs, depression, I could see that.”

“Shit, you’d better not give me any placebos. I mean, I’ll be expecting it now anyway, so it won’t work.”

“Right, anyway. Not too long after that, my wife died. My daughter was three, and she was really torn up about it. I mean, truth be told, I was almost hoping she wouldn’t know what was happening, but unfortunately she was up with it and she totally fell apart. Crying, breaking stuff, refusing to come near me. I blame television.”

“So I started writing her these letters from her Mum. Beyond the grave type shit, told her it was our secret that she’d gotten in touch and she wasn’t to tell anyone and… weirdly, she’s been fine, not told anyone either.”

“Yeah, I have found I really enjoy writing the letters too. Maybe it’s been a bit like therapy, eh doc? I’d better not tell anyone or you’ll be out of a job.”

“So anyway. She’s five now, going to school soon, I’m terrified she’s going to mention her letters from the dead to some other kid and the whole placebo’s going to wear the fuck off. Don’t suppose you have any suggestions?”

“Well, other than that one.”

“Yeah. You know, I was going to try and end the whole thing in character, or whatever, hope she’s able to deal with her Mum disappearing better now she’s a bit older. So I started writing the goodbye letter and I just can’t get through it, it’s just…”

“Urgh. I can never tell whether I’m saying goodbye to my wife again or my little girl, but turns out, it’s pretty shit either way. Who knew, right?”

“Don’t suppose you have any idea what I can say, do ya? Any pointers? If you’ve got a pre-written example around, that’d be pretty handy too.”

“Do it myself? Christ. What the hell am I paying you for?”