Dried the Bitter Tear

The man at the bus stop looked normal; jeans, t-shirt, nice leather jacket, understated.  He just looked like he had been cut out and superimposed on the scene, slightly crooked, with a black edge around him.   I had to walk past him to take my place in the line.  He smelled good.  I never made eye contact with anyone if I could help it.  It was a long ride to work and I didn’t like to talk to people.  But I looked at him as I passed.  I couldn’t help it; he drew the eye.

He wasn’t very good looking, or tall, or thin or anything noticeable.  Just a normal man, a little tense.  When the bus came, I went to my usual spot, about halfway down.  I sat next to the window, headphones in, book on my lap, office skirt pulled tight around my knees.  He was a few seats back, but I could feel him like a spider on the back of my neck.  I rolled my shoulders and huddled around my book. 

The bus jerked away from the kerb and he sat beside me.  A wave of sensation washed over me.  His mouth moved.  I pulled the headphones from my ears. 

‘Help me.’

He wanted money.  I always kept a twenty in my coat pocket in case I got mugged.  I didn’t want him near me.  He made me feel odd.  I pulled out the bill and held it out.  He didn’t look at it. 

‘Help me.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I...my wife is dying.’

‘Do you need an ambulance?’

‘I just need you to help me.  You’re the only one who can.’

I looked around.  The other passengers were chatting to their friends or buried in iPods and newspapers.  I tried to stand but he grabbed my arm and his fingers bit into me.  I opened my mouth to scream but he spoke into the tiny space.

‘Please.  Please don’t.  I need your help.  I...there is no other way.’

His face was close to mine.  I saw that he would have been good looking under different circumstances.  He looked exhausted.  Worse, he looked hopeful.  Desperately so. 

‘What can I possibly do?’

‘Come with me.’

‘No way.  Let me up or this time I will scream.’

‘I can’t explain.  You just have to come with me.  It won’t take long.’

I dragged his hand away from me and stood up.  I forced my way past his knees and he didn’t try to stop me.  I walked up the bus and sat in the seat behind the driver.  The man didn’t come after me, but I was aware of him.  When the driver pulled in at my stop, I walked as fast as I could towards my building.  I looked back when I got to the door.  He was standing on the sidewalk staring at me, hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.  I went inside.   If he was still there later, I was calling the cops. 

I could see the street from my office, but I kept my gaze averted all morning.  The tension gave me a headache.  Before lunch I asked for the afternoon off.  I didn’t want to leave the building after dark.  When I stepped outside with the lunch crowd, I scanned the street before leaving the safety of the doorway.  He was nowhere to be seen.  I caught the bus and breathed again when I saw he wasn’t on it.  I exited the bus keeping close to a pair of chatting middle aged women.  I got into my building and upstairs without seeing him. 

He barrelled into me from behind when I was unlocking my door, clamping his hand over my mouth.  He shoved me through the door and threw me onto my couch, winding me.  He sat beside me and covered my mouth again. 

‘Keep your mouth shut or I’ll hurt you.’

I kept my mouth shut, thinking of the baseball bat I kept next to my bed.  I didn’t like guns but I had a swing that would hurt him if I could get to the bat.  He took his hand away from my mouth and when I didn’t scream, he reached into his coat. 

When he took out the hypodermic, I made a bolt for the bedroom.  I had my hand on the bat before he reached me.  He knocked me back onto the bed and held me down with his body.  I saw the desire on his face and tried to kick him off.  

He leaned down and put his mouth close to my ear. 

‘I love you,’ he whispered.  I bit him in the neck.  He cried out and rolled off me but didn’t let go.  He dragged me to the end of the bed and pulled a few scarves from my dresser drawer.  I fought hard but he gagged me and tied me to the metal foot of the bed.  He was panting when he finished.  I kicked at him when he approached me with the needle but he looked so desperate that I think he didn’t even feel it.  I stopped fighting when he tried to put the needle into me.  I was afraid it would break off inside me.  He filled it with blood and took it out, capping it and putting it into his pocket with great care.  He put a piece of cotton on my arm and stuck it down with a strip of white tape. 

‘I’m going now.  I’ll untie one of your hands so you can get free when I’m gone.  I’m sorry I had to hurt you.’

He untied one of the scarves.  He looked at me for a long moment and then leaned over and kissed me on the top of my head. 

‘See you soon, my darling.’

He walked into the room and smiled.  He held up the syringe full of blood and I let out a breath that was half a sob.  He sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand, careful not to pull against any of the tubes. 
 

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘I had to fight for it.’
 

‘Was I terrible?’
 

‘No, my darling, you were perfect and you will be again.’
 

I touched the years-old scar on his neck where I had bitten him.  When he put the needle in my arm, I felt the rush of colour and life flood into my body.  My own blood, my only hope. 
 

A cure from the past.  

Time and Grief, by William Leslie Bowles

O Time! Who know’st a lenient hand to lay
Softest on sorrow’s wound, and slowly thence
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)
The faint pang stealest unperceived away;
On thee I rest my only hope at last,
And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear
That flows in vain o’er all my soul held dear,
I may look back on every sorrow past,
And meet life’s peaceful evening with a smile:
As some lone bird, at day’s departing hour,
Sings in the sun beam, of the transient shower
Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:-
Yet ah! How much must this poor heart endure,
Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

Eye of the Needle II

‘You’re Finn.’

He laughed, a great shout of joy, and wrapped me in his arms.  I breathed in the wild scent of him and felt his generous love burning away the years-old chill inside me, the ache left by my mother’s leaving, the anxiety of choosing the right path in life.  All I could feel was the gleeful destruction of the old way and the verdant burst of new life, both strange and familiar. 

He held me away from him.  I clutched his arms in a sudden rush of vertigo.  We were standing at the edge of a wide, rough river.  The Eye of the Needle was buried under white water and a great plain stretched away on the far side of it.  The river formed a border between the plain and a thick forest.  Finn must have felt me tremble because he pulled me close again and cupped my face with his hands.  I only half knew him but I could feel the old love flowering inside me.  His eyes were kind, but he looked different, stronger.

‘You’re home,’ he said and kissed me, his hand slipping under my hair.  He rubbed his thumb against my ear lobe and the comfort of that lost touch brought complete recognition.  I kissed him back, feeling helpless.  He trembled and I felt my power over him.  The two feelings were all wrapped up in loving him. 

When he pulled away, his eyes were dark. 

‘We have to go.  We’ve stayed too long. It’s not safe here.’

He took my hand and started for the forest.  I threw a look over my shoulder and saw the horizon at the far edge of the plain darken with the forces of the enemy.  I didn’t know who they were, but I twined our hands tighter together and ran with him. 

Eye of the Needle

Brian asked for love lost or found or somewhere in between...Wild Celtic asked for something fairy tale-ish. This is the start of the fairy tale, to be continued.

The first time I saw him, I fell from the ledge with nothing below me but fifty feet of air ending in broken rocks.  

~

I was very sick as a child and almost died.  My mother left me and Dad when she couldn’t take anymore.  Dad took care of me and after a long time, I got better.  He homeschooled me and did a good job.  I could have gone to college a couple of years ago but he said I should wait until I’m eighteen to get the most out of the experience.  I think he meant boys but that’s the only thing we don’t really talk about.  
 
So, instead of going to college early, I learned how to climb.  It was healthy mind, healthy body in our house, especially with the memory of my illness.  Dad had a big project at the lab so he wasn’t home much and I liked being outdoors.  I always left him a note before leaving; back later, Aoife.  He trusted me.  We were pretty close. 
 
I was fit but it took about a year to build the endurance and mental strength for me to feel confident within the type of climbs I could enjoy.  I didn’t want to be competitive about it.  It just settled my mind to concentrate on finding the holds and using my body with the rock on the way to the top.  I liked to stand on the very edge and look out.  It made me feel like I could fly. 
 
On the day I saw him, I hadn’t even intended climbing.  It was just a beautiful day so I set out for a long walk, carrying lunch and water in my little backpack.  I walked without thinking but noting my direction all the same.  When I came to the Eye of the Needle, I felt like it was my destination all along.  I drank some water and looked at the entrance to the valley, a narrow gap broken in an outcrop of rock that gave the Eye its name. 
 
I stepped through the Eye, feeling a chill as the sun was blotted out by the shelf of stone above me.  I emerged in the valley and took in the view.  The ancient river had cut a narrow section through the rock, leaving a sunny, tree-filled haven behind.  The river itself had been reduced to a stream, fast running and clear.  It was just deep enough for small fish to thrive.  I took a step forward and startled a heron fishing along the edge of the stony beach.  It took off, grey and ponderous, the deep sound of its big wings very loud in the gallery of rock.  It scared me and I laughed at myself. 
 
I made my way to the stream and found a mossy bank to sit on.  Across the water, the wall of stone looked interesting.  I thought I might manage it.  Leaning back, I saw that the top was about seventy feet up and looked like it might be flat.  I stood up and found a place in the stream with a stepping stone.  I spent a few minutes assessing the wall and choosing a path. 
 
Then I started to climb.  It was an easy enough climb even in the wrong shoes.  I was about twenty feet from the top and reaching for a good place to jam my fingers when I saw him.  First, there was the rock and then there was him.  I missed my hold and my shoes were no good for grip.  I fell.  I saw shock register on his face and his hand came out towards me.  I see it sometimes still, missing me, as I fall away from him.  
 
But he didn’t miss.  He grabbed my t-shirt at the chest and yanked me back.  He pulled me against him and put his arm around my back.  I couldn’t tell what was holding him, but he was holding me.  His eyes were dark blue and he had a couple of freckles hiding in his tanned skin.  He looked angry but when I let out the breath I had been holding, he smiled at me.  He turned me to face the rock and I took hold.  He smiled again and was gone.  It was like he became part of the stone.  I closed my eyes and centred myself, breathing slowly.  When I opened my eyes, there was no sign of him.  I concentrated on climbing without thinking.  When I got to the top, I sat on the grass.  I felt something like a shiver and knew without looking that he was sitting beside me. 
 
‘Thank you,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the view of the valley.
 
He didn’t answer, so I looked at him.
 
‘How were you holding on to the wall?’
 
‘It’s easy for me.’  His voice was pleasant, accented but clear. 
 
‘How..how did you get up here?  You were beside me and then..you weren’t.’
 
He shrugged and smiled.  I wanted to hear his voice again.  ‘What’s your name?’ 
 
He took my hand and stroked the back of it. 
 
‘Don’t you know me Aoife?  I’ve been waiting so long for you.’  He put my hand against his chest.  I could feel his heart beating, too fast.  I knew I should pull away.   I knew he was crazy, or I was.  But I didn’t pull away.  Instead I looked into his eyes and heard my voice say something I couldn’t have known. 
 
‘You’re Finn.’

The Deepest Hour

Blame Robyn for this one.  

The nights were never fully quiet.  Even the nurses’ soft soled shoes seemed loud in the rarefied atmosphere of the hospital in the small hours.  The ward was on the other side of the building from the accident and emergency, but I could still hear the sirens in the distance.

I was never a good sleeper.  Night after night, I lay and listened to the snores and sleeping moans of my fellows in the ward.  The room was too hot and filled with the smell of sick men.  I lay there, in the deepest hour of the night, taking involuntary deep breaths, trying to get enough air into my lungs, wiping sweat out of my eyes.  A nurse glanced into the ward and saw me awake.  She disappeared for a minute and returned with a jug of cold water.  I drank a little and when she was gone, dipped my hand into the jug and swiped the water across my face.  It was cold enough to make me gasp and I felt a little better when I lay back down.  The old man to my left struggled onto his side and gave a heavy sigh.  I waited for him to take his next breath and was on the point of pressing the bell for the nurse when he finally hitched it in.  

Someone across the ward coughed and made a gagging noise.  I turned my head to the right and let my arm hang out over the edge to cool.  The man on my right was new and the curtain was drawn between us.  I stared at the faded stripes of the material and tried to think of something bland and peaceful that might help me rest.  Instead, my tireless mind replayed the flash of lights and the sound of grinding metal and I felt clammy cold despite the muggy air. 

The curtain between us moved as if caught by a breeze.  I felt a static charge build and rise the short hairs on my arm, where it hung over the edge of the narrow bed.  The movement behind the curtain disturbed a discarded chocolate wrapper that the cleaner had missed.  It almost floated along the smooth floor, turning a small circle.  I watched the wrapper spin to a halt and caught the next movement of the curtain out of the corner of my eye.  It bulged out in a solid lump and I looked down, expecting white nurse shoes.  There weren’t any.  Then I heard a noise that wasn’t part of the normal night sounds.  It was low and quiet, but distinct.  It sounded like a child sucking on a soother, rhythmic and vacant.  There was nothing especially sinister about the sound, but at once, I felt like the night was pressing down on me.  It seemed hard to even move.  Adrenalin rushed around my body and then drained away, leaving me feeling flat and weak.  The bulge in the curtain shifted and the sound was like dry hands rubbing together.  It moved down the stripes of the curtain and the material bellied out before falling flat. 

There was a vacuum in the sounds of the night.  I counted off five Mississippi before I heard the dry-hand scrape under a bed across the ward.  I turned my head enough to see the hump that represented the man opposite.  He moaned slightly and then I watched his shape grow smaller under the covers.  When the sounds stopped, I tried to pull myself up in the bed as I had done earlier to take a drink, but my leaden legs felt weighted down. 

I tried to call out, but my tongue felt swollen and my throat closed in panic.  I could feel my heart pounding a jerky beat in all my pulse points.  I wanted to get to my chair, but I had a craven fear of putting my legs out over the bed.  If something touched them, I wouldn’t feel it.  I began to get the idea that there was already something touching them, holding me down.  I kicked out but the idea didn’t create movement in my stubborn legs. 

I heard the scratchy sound cross the floor.  When it reached the old man next to me, he took a deep breath and this time when he let it out, he didn’t take another one.  There was a pause, followed by the crackly sound of movement in my direction. 

Then I saw its hands grip the side of my bed.  It gave a grunt of effort and the fingers bit into the mattress.  The skin was the colour of old bruises, the nails long and yellow.  I saw the top of its head appear, hairless and covered in pulsing veins, like leeches full of blood.  I flung myself sideways and crashed onto the floor.  The impact knocked the trapped scream from my lungs and I started to crawl for the corridor.  I heard it come after me.  I couldn’t feel it touch me, but it was suddenly harder to move.  I saw a nurse’s legs appear at the door and then saw the floor approach fast. 

When I came to, my head was pounding and a nurse was waiting with a pill.  She murmured about bad dreams, not sleeping and a sad night on the ward.  I was afraid to confess what I thought I had seen so I agreed with her, taking my pill as I took all the pills given to me.  She rewarded me with a smile before going back to her brightly lit station where no one ever died. 

I shoved back the covers and pushed down my pajama bottoms.  I had to roll a little and look over my shoulder to examine myself, but then I saw a bite clearly.  I couldn’t feel it, but it made me sick just looking at it.  It had open lips like a fish’s mouth and the meat inside was raw.  I put my hand out towards the bell to call the nurse back but before I reached it, I heard the sound. 
 

The hurried brush of dry skin against the underside of my bed.

The Fall Of Light

My friend Kid in the Front Row asked for a story featuring bacon, a Jack Lemmon poster and crazy hamsters.  All right, Kid, here you go!


The smell of the bacon burning woke Jack up. The sunlight making slatted shapes on the wall was in the wrong place. Jack’s model airplanes slowly turned on the breeze from the window, flying in trapped circles with the dust motes. Even though the smell of the bacon burning was horrible, his stomach growled.

He sat up.

‘Mom?

There was no answer. Jack threw back the sheet and stood on the bed, holding his pyjamas with one hand. He walked to the end of the bed and measured the distance to the door. As always, he tried to build up his energy to explode across the dangerous space near the end of the bed where cold hands or tentacles could wrap around his ankles. He jumped and waited when he landed for the sound of his mother downstairs. The thump of his landing usually generated a shout from the kitchen. Silence.
He opened his bedroom door and looked up. He saw a hamster’s feet and belly pass over the top of his door. The hamster tubes ran all through the house. His mom didn’t know how many there were now, because they were breeding in there. In the strange silence of the house, the noise of their feet racing through the tubes was creepy. He hated the hamsters. He was old enough to know that his dad had hated them too.

He stepped out into the hall. Even though he knew they were all contained in the tubes and hutches, he still watched where he walked. Sometimes the tubes came apart at one spot or another and some of them escaped.

The smell of burning was stronger out here. He hurried down to the kitchen. The room was full of smoke. He opened the back door and turned off the cooker and went back into the hall to wait. He was standing there for a few minutes, listening to the hamsters scurrying over the walls before it came to him that his mother might be lying on the floor, sick or knocked out by the smoke.

He opened the door again. The room had cleared enough to show him the whole area. She wasn’t there but her bag and keys were on the counter. He looked out the window over the sink. The car was in the driveway where she had left it last night, one wheel on the grass. Beyond it, the tiny road led away into the trees.

She never cooked breakfast anymore, even on Sundays, not now there was just the two of them. Jack opened the fridge. There were eggs, sausages and milk. He stared at them and then at the still smoking bacon, blackened in the pan. Fear, up to now only a flicker in his stomach, blazed up and he yelled for her.

The silence was total. The shout had made the hamsters freeze. When they started moving again, it seemed like the walls were breathing.

Jack hitched his pyjamas higher and ran into every room in the house, afraid to call her, searching in silence. He approached her bedroom last and slowly. He wasn’t allowed in there unless she called him in. He put his hand on the door and pushed it in. There was a funny smell, like aftershave and rust.

The door opened onto darkness, made deeper by one slash of light falling across the tumbled bed. The cream bedspread, caught in that fall of light, was red, like a bloody wound on pale skin. Jack backed away and felt something soft under his foot. He screamed and fell against the railing of the stairs, almost missing it. He felt the empty air pull at him and clung to the rail. A hamster ran for the darkness of the bedroom.

Jack ran downstairs, his bare feet trying to trip over themselves. He went into the sitting room and leapt onto the sofa, pulling his knees up to his chin. The television was on with the sound muted, familiar images playing.

When his dad was still around, Jack used to lie awake listening to them fighting. His mom would turn up the sound of those old movies she liked but Jack always felt the vibration of the fight, even if he couldn’t hear the words. Hours of darkness passed in the company of black and white voices from the TV.

He hugged his knees tighter. His mother’s favourite looked down at him from a framed poster. Jack was named for him because The Apartment was her all time favourite movie. Jack sat there looking at the poster for a long time but no one came. There was only the silence where his mother had been and the sound of the hamsters running.

Time Is A River

Readers, my good friends Angie and Bendigo asked for particular types of story.    I've combined them below. 



Berkeley cast the line, flicking from the wrist as he knew his father had taught him. He focused his mind on the small things; the creak of his wrist, the whirr of the line feeding out, the ripples bracketing the float, the lap of the water against the boat’s flanks. Years of training and education allowed him to focus this way. Nothing could get in the way now.

He hadn’t fished in the fifty years since his father died, but his muscles remembered the rhythm of it. He set himself comfortably on the little seat and hooked his arm around the rod. The boat drifted but his mind did not. He watched the water skaters on the surface and did not think of the process he was attempting. He drifted with the flow of the river back towards that which he had forgotten and which he desired to know.

He had been over and over the memories on the edge of the last fishing trip countless times, in leisure, in therapy, in frustration. He had become interested in time during his efforts to recapture it. As a scientist, he had hidden his obsession but never escaped its grip. Einstein’s theory that time was like a river had the taste of synchronicity for him. He knew his father had always taken him fishing. He knew that chunks of his life had been torn from him on one of the fishing trips. So much of what happened seemed to be tied to the river. Now that he was nearing the end of his career, the moment seemed propitious.

He drifted with the flow of the river. He had walked its banks for years, seeking the memories that eluded him. If he could reach what he had lost, reach it by releasing his mind to follow the river into the past, then maybe he could rest at last.

Now, although he turned his mind away, he noted that the banks were different. The path was a track worn by people walking and not laid neatly out as a tourist trail. At the curve where he would have expected a new house, there were only trees. He drifted on, his back to the bow of the boat and the flow of the river, the rod held loosely, the line trailing.

He knew that the loss of his father so early had to have affected him. Counsellors had told him. Women had told him. He knew that they should have been right. In his heart, though, it was the loss of the time, the loss of the memory that affected him. He was eight when his father died and in the fifty years since, the itch of the missing was still with him. He had been scratching at it so long that it had become an agony. He could barely remember his father’s face, but the hole, the vacuum in his mind, was a greater torment to him, he who had spent his life in pursuit of knowledge.

Something pulled at the line but he didn’t move the rod. It didn’t bite again and he felt no weight on the line. The boat drifted in the middle of the stream.

He remembered watching the woman who said she was his mother, so anxious about him, cleaning and crying and telling him stories about his life. After a while, he remembered almost all of it. But not the fishing trips. Not the last one, ever.

He felt the boat curl around another bend in the river, bringing him closer to the past. He heard the voices, at first too distant to be recognised. The timbre of the man’s voice echoed in his mind and he remembered the smell of his father, so close, remembered the bristle of his moustache.

The other voice was high and full of unshed tears. His throat tightened. The voices, one deep, one high, came closer and the boat bumped against something and stopped. Berkeley turned and saw the island. It divided the stream of the river and, although tiny, was covered in trees. He knew that there was a clearing at the centre. He put the rod in the bottom of the boat and stepped out.

The voices stopped but then he heard a sound that he knew. The rattle of keys in a pocket as trousers were dropped. He walked on through the trees and into the clearing.

The man was sitting on a tree stump, his trousers down, his big hand on the back of the child’s head. Berkeley’s throat muscles contracted and a sound escaped him, half curse, half sob. They turned to look at him, a frozen and dreadful tableau. The boy’s face was wet with tears.

Berkeley didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t. He lunged across the small clearing, fury tasting like blood in his mouth. He swept the child aside and fell on the father. The struggle was vicious, frenzied. The child sat where he had fallen and stared in silence. When it was over, Berkeley stood up and looked at the blood on his hands, looked at the crumpled body at his feet. He turned to the boy and tried to speak to him, but there was nothing he could say. The boy’s face was waxy, his eyes blank. Berkeley carried him back to the boat and rowed him to the side. With the boat trying to escape from under him, he put the boy on the river bank, being careful not to step out himself.

There was nothing else to do. He left the boy there, knowing that he would be found soon. He brought the boat back to the centre of the river and set his mind on his life and his work. He started to row and, in time, made his way home.

Dear Readers

Would you like to be involved more in The Clean White Page?

If I were the piped piper of stories, what music would you like to hear?  For example, Angie recently asked for a camping story, so I wrote The Tigers Come At Night.  I'll be writing a something-under-the-bed story for Robyn. Perhaps you might like a continuation of an existing story?  I have lots of tales waiting in the wings, but I want to know what you guys would like.  Put your requests in the comments.  I warn you, you may not get what you expect!