October 31st: Hallowe’en with the Zaa’

Day 31 - the final day - of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Hallowe’en with the Zaa’

Bruce squared his shoulders.

It was lovely, the way the Zaa' tried to make Earth ambassadors feel at home, but their interpretations of human culture could be surprising. The Christmas banquet which served tiny presents with sprouts and gravy had been odd. The Easter party decorations had been nightmarish.

It was mutual, of course. Parisian diplomats had faithfully recreated a historic "Zaa' Hoo" celebration, once, not realising that anything less than wild innovation was the greatest insult.

Bruce walked in. He could handle apple-witches, and mutant tarantulas, but he really wished they hadn't made all the jack-o-lanterns out of kittens.

---

Whew! It’s the final day of October, so this is the last of my drabbles (for the time being).

Thank you very much to everyone who’s read along with me. Some days it has definitely been a struggle to get a story out, and knowing you were out there is what’s kept me at it.

October 30th: A Desert End

Day 30 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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A Desert End

To remain with the desert, a feast in the hot dunes. That's what Athan always wanted. Yet his wife would hear none of it: a box, she said. A box of polished wood and velvet, to shut Athan up for eternity.

"Ma'am, Athan would have..."

"I'm not having him torn apart by those vile things."

On the outskirts of camp, smelling death, the expectant ghouls shuffled their feet in the sand.

He made sure the box was weighted correctly. He attended the funeral she held.

Then, under the new moon, he allowed the ghouls to bear his best friend away.

---

It’s definitely spooky season, so I thought it was time to visit ghouls. From everyone’s favourite website, I have learned that ghouls sometimes have origins in the desert. There’s a particularly lovely bit of Islamic lore which says ghouls are devils who tried to fly to the heavens but were burned by comets.

Anyway, today’s drabble is not based on “real” tradition in any sense. I just liked the idea of ghouls being viewed in a slightly more positive light (at least by some).

October 29th: Cabbages

Day 29 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Cabbages

"I need you there, with the cabbages. Promise?"

"I will. Trust me."

It's not that difficult. It's not far across town. Cabbages are everywhere, you can buy them in Tesco for 80p.

So, getting them over to her...

Wait. What? Why am I buying cabbages?

I look around. Dark, with the occasional red LED. Typical budget hotel room.

Thank goodness. Just a dream. What on earth was that about?

It's only later in the day that - in broad daylight, sitting in Costa - I remember about the cabbages.

She needed them. It was important. And I promised.

Where is she now?

---

I am someone who wakes up quite slowly. My dreams often give way only reluctantly to “rational” “daylight” thinking.

It does worry me that, sometimes, I have stood up people in the Dreamworld.

October 28th: Crying

Day 28 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Crying

After months we were ready. Complete refurbishment; updated displays; rooms furnished and dressed for the 1940s. One of the original evacuees came along to the opening event and spoke, quavering, into the mic. The people here had been kind, she said, but the kids hated it and cried for their families.

Afterwards, guests drifted away and we began to tidy up. The boss told me to check all the lights were out upstairs.

I scurried to the till.

"Russ can check, I'll cash up."

The evacuee's eyes snapped open. As I passed, she whispered.

"You still hear them, don't you?"

---

Today, among other things, I went on a tour of Ramsgate Tunnels. Which I highly recommend, should you be in the area. The Tunnels were planned and built, well in advance of the Blitz, for use as air raid shelters.

Given that they’re full of abandoned, WW2-era objects, the Tunnels seemed surprisingly un-haunted.

In the daytime, anyway.

October 27th: Reformation

Day 27 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Reformation

We worked so hard. Late nights, long trips away. We loved it, but we weren't making any money. Nicky missed his boyfriend, and H wondered about heading home to Australia.

So we called it a day. One last show. Done.

And we began our new lives. I had kids. So did Nicky. H started another band.

It was the sensible choice, we said. Look how happy we are.

Then that venue, the one we loved, mailed about their special event. Would we?

Yes. Fuck, yes.

And we're onstage, guitars in hands. The crowd roars and we remember how it felt.

---

I'm in a Travelodge, in an obscure town on the very edge of England. Tonight, in a tiny venue, I watched one of my favourite bands. They split up in 2016.

Was it like this? I don't know.

October 26th: Hibernacle

Day 26 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Hibernacle

The light spilled golden over the windowsill and into the wet street. Every day, he walked a little slower as he passed the corner house. It looked warm, cosy, friendly; everything his own flat was not.

In late December, they put candles in the windows. And a glossy wreath on the red front door. The sleet caught in his eyelashes as he stood outside, wondering if the hallway really did smell of coffee and home-made cake.

On Christmas Eve, after midnight, he slipped down the side-road, settled against the wall, and waited for the joy to soak into his bones.

---

Today, courtesy of an episode of The Allusionist (featuring Susie Dent, no less), I learned the word hibernacle. It is a word for winter quarters, or a place where an animal hibernates.

Have I mentioned how fond I am of the Allusionist?

October 25th: Even When Asleep

Day 25 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Content note for murder and abuse.

Here is today’s drabble…

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Even When Asleep

She stubbed her toe and winced, first in pain, and then at the noise she'd made.

She froze, shaking.

He didn't wake. He lay, head thrown back. Confident.

A vein pulsed in his neck. There were knives, in the kitchen.

A quick slice. Blood everywhere, a body to hide.

A little cut. Him, awake, in a rage, with a knife close by.

A jagged gash. A tale of an intruder no-one would believe.

A single stab. Prison for the rest of her life.

She slumped. He was right, of course he was. Perfectly safe; perfectly in control. Even when asleep.

---

I suspect that, if something is pulsing in someone’s neck, it’s an artery. Let’s leave aside for the moment the idea that it is an alien, or an inner self struggling to get out. Scientifically speaking, I think it’s an artery, not a vein.

But somehow, if you refer to an artery in ordinary prose, it just sounds weird.

October 24th: No, We Do Not Have An Electronic Library Catalogue

Day 24 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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No, We Do Not Have An Electronic Library Catalogue

Bethany braced herself. It was, after all, the finest legal library in the country.

"Mr Silcrow?"

He inclined his head, on his thin neck. "Pilcrow."

"I'm sorry..."

"What do you need?"

Bethany reeled off the case number.

Pilcrow closed his eyes. Silcrow shuffled over, and in slow, whispery sentences they recalled the relevant volume was in Rack 37.

Silcrow (or was it Pilcrow?) offered to escort her.

"No, no. Thank you. I'm fine."

The book - in Rack 37, of course - had a rude comment about Pilcrow scrawled in the margin. At least this one wasn't in long-faded, watery copperplate handwriting.

---

Yesterday, someone asked me what the name of the punctuation mark § was. And I thought ooh, ooh, I know that one, it’s a section mark. What I did not know is that it is also called a silcrow, and that its friend ¶, the paragraph mark, is called a pilcrow.

At which point my librarians, Pilcrow and Silcrow, quietly ushered themselves in. Unfortunately, I had rather more to say about them that would actually fit in a drabble (you can probably tell!)

October 23rd: The Fortune Teller

Day 23 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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The Fortune Teller

"Will I meet him?"

I half-closed my eyes. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But in the next couple of weeks. An older man, someone with a taste for travel."

"At last." She flushed, delight crinkling her eyes as she stared into her tea-cup.

I smiled enigmatically, and she paid, and went dancing down the hallway.

She checked the boxes, the ones that left her personal data open to everyone. All those habits, and secret desires, and searches, all streaming off her phone and into our data models.

It's all in the small print. But somehow everyone prefers to blame the tea-leaves.

---

Despite my best efforts, the verb that has stuck for the act of creating a drabble is “to dribble”. As in: oh dear, it’s eleven o’clock already, I really must go and dribble a drabble.

Unfortunately, I also sing this to the tune of Snuzzle a Wuzzle, which was a jingle from a 1980s advert for a brand of weird hybrid cuddly animals (like “Eleroo” - part elephant, part kangaroo). 80s kids stuff was quite strange.

Even worse, I can’t even find the Snuzzle a Wuzzle jingle I remember. I can find other jingles for Wuzzles… but not that one.

Go on, admit it. You’re curious now. Here you go…

October 22nd: Ptolemy's Data Analysis

Day 22 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Ptolemy's Data Analysis

"Do we have the projections for the coming year?"

The meeting looked expectant. Shaun sighed, and put up his presentation.

He talked through his assumptions and methodology, explained the variance and the error bars, showed the raw data. He was aware that no-one was listening. They wanted a slide with a single, easy-to-understand curve and he was sick of explaining that the world just wasn't like that.

Ah, well. They wanted simple. He hit the button to run the animation.

Outliers faded away, key points glowed gold, and a beautiful outline flowed around them.

"I call this one Galloping Reindeer."

---

As someone who sometimes has to present data at work, I feel for Shaun. I really do.

October 21st: Culverted

Day 21 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Culverted

The rain sluices down, sheeting off awnings and barreling through gutters. Drains, overfull, spill over roads and something wakes up. It swirls, and eddies, and begins to rise, slick and cold.

It is weary. Weary and sick of pipes, and sewers, and narrow, restricted ways that keep it secret.

PC Bradley stares ahead, rain hammerimg relentlessly on his regulation hood. When the figure looms out of the darkness, he calls to it.

"Sorry, mate, road's closed. Flooding."

When the figure doesn't slow, he shouts again. It surges.

Mark Bradley opens his mouth, and the dark tide washes straight over him.

---

I've been out in that London today for an event which was… wet. Very wet. Although given the havoc wind and rain is wreaking across Britain, “wet” feels like a very minor problem.

On days like today, I remember the number of “forgotten”, “subterranean” rivers that used to wind their own merry way across London.

October 20th: No Deal

Day 20 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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No Deal

"So did you go through with it?"

"Yeah."

"Really? Crossroads at midnight, the whole thing?"

"Yeah."

"And? What happened? Did he show up?"

"Yeah."

"No way! Did you try to make him the offer, like you said?"

"Yeah."

"Come on, Billy! Tell me the story! Are you the greatest guitarist in the world now?"

"He turned me down."

"He what?"

"He wouldn't take the deal. Said I was too late."

"What?"

"My family always said that my dad sold my soul for a crate of whisky when I was three years old. I thought it was a metaphor. It wasn't."

---

Today I learned about the 21 grams experiment, in which a doctor set out to weigh people at the point of death and determine the weight of the soul. (Spoilers: modern-day scientists don’t have much truck with his methodology, or his results.)

But it made me wonder: how would you know whether you had a soul or not?

October 19th: Rampion

Day 19 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Rampion

He stole vegetables from the garden - for his wife, who so longed for them - but the witch caught him. And when the baby was born, the witch claimed the child and named her Rampion after the vegetables her mother had craved.

When Rampion was twelve, the witch forced her into a tower, and bricked up the door. And called up to her:

"Rampion, let down your hair!"

And Rampion stared from the window, wild-eyed, and said "are you mental? hair just doesn't grow like that!"

The witch stared in confusion, and Rampion went back to jury-rigging a ladder from floorboards.

---

Did you know that (at least, according to Wikipedia) Campanula rapunculus - known as Rapunzel, and after which the fairy-tale princess is probably named - is also known as Rampion?

Possibly I am biased. I grew up hearing tales about Rapunzel, in her tower, with her long golden hair, and always thought she sounded… well, I don’t wish to victim-blame here, but I always thought she sounded a bit wet. I’m pretty sure that someone called Rampion would not stand for that nonsense. Rampion sounds like someone who would get shit done.

Apparently, (and again, according to Wikipedia, bless it, where would we be without it), rapunzel/rampion was grown “for its leaves, which were used like spinach, and its parsnip-like root, which was used like a radish”. As someone who loves radishes and hates parsnips, I have questions. Has anyone ever eaten campanula rapunculus?

October 18th: Lines

Day 18 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Lines

Stephen slumped against the desk. His back ached, but he felt restless. He could still taste blood in his mouth.

Mr McGwigan swaggered in. Stephen had to swallow hard to keep a sound like a snarl inside himself.

"Ah, Stephen. So good of you to grace my classroom with your person. Now if you could just learn self-control..."

This time, he snarled. Mr McGwigan bared yellowing teeth, until he stopped.

"The usual, Stephen."

Stephen picked up his pen.

I must not turn into a shower of bats during calculus.

I must not turn into a shower of bats during calculus.

---

My friend Jen sporadically accuses me of turning into a shower of bats. I am, of course, delighted by this.

October 17th: An Avalanche of Serial Killers

Day 17 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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An Avalanche of Serial Killers

The bookshop was run on a shoestring. Broken-down shelving units nobody else wanted, and more racks improvised from cardboard boxes. The mugs were chipped, and the coffee was instant, but we all loved working there.

Overnight, something gave way. Something in True Crime.

It slipped, then everything went down like dominoes.

In the morning, we couldn't get the door to the back room open, not with any amount of shoving.

Through the tiny gap, Dahmer's eyes stared up from a faux-torn book-jacket.

"I appreciate this isn't the worst thing you've done," I told him, "but bloody hell. On a Saturday."

---

This morning, I had a brief conversation on Mastodon with the editor of a magazine. (Inner Worlds… which looks like it’s going to be great. Consider supporting them if you'd like more short speculative fiction in your life! Or submit a story to them if that's your thing, you’ve got until the end of the month!)

Anyway, in the course of the conversation Sarah, Inner Worlds’ editor, used the phrase an avalanche of serial killers.

And now here we are.

October 16th: Man's Best Friend

Day 16 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Today’s drabble again has a content warning for death/dying.

Here is today’s drabble…

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Man’s Best Friend

From the corridor, Bill's voice was quiet but still audible.

"I'm dying, Hinny. I'm scared. I'm so glad you're here."

The nurses exchanged whispers.

"Hinny?"

"Childhood pet, I think. Might've been a dog?"

Bill's hand fluttered over a small hollow in the duvet.

Richard nodded to his colleague. "I'll sit with him."

He slipped into the room, and stayed until Bill didn't need him any more.

When the mortuary guys had left, a faint depression remained in the covers.

"C'mon, Hinny, it's time to go. You've been a good boy." Rich paused before stripping the bed. "Such a good boy."

---

I finished today’s drabble, and carefully edited it down to 100 words in my software of choice. Which is emacs, a weird kitchen-sink of a text program which does a bewildering array of things including counting words.

Counting words is, it turns out, something it does extremely badly. In particular, I’ve just learned that it considers any word with an apostrophe to be two words. Today, my inital “100 word” story turned out only to have 90 words in it when counted by more… conventional means.

As someone who has used emacs for everything for around thirty years, I am mildly staggered by this.

October 15th: Small Boats

Day 15 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble…

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Small Boats

Halfway down the second bottle, there was a ferocious bang outside. Yet another one. I tried to ignore it, but ten minutes later I was out wading through the woodland.

It was the usual: scattered metalwork; tiny outbreaks of fire easily snuffed among the damp trees; dead bodies. Two men, in frock coats and straight trousers, their arms tightly round each other.

We can't catch all the operators. They travel back to hang around by the Wapping steps, touting their flimsy zinc-sided machines as safe, and offering desperate couples a chance to skip forwards to a safer time. Profiteering bastards.

---

It’s a little late this evening, so this is an idea off the emergency ideas list.

The Victorians invented capitalism. They’d be doing this if they could.

October 14th: I Know You're Out There Somewhere

Day 14 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge! Here is today’s drabble:

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I Know You’re Out There Somewhere

I'm running late, taking stairs two at a time and legging it through Soho. I'm giving my name on the door, and heading down the dark stairs. I'm grabbing a beer and chatting to strangers.
The stage lights come on, blood red and white; hooded figures and inverted neon crucifixes as the guitarist smashes across the stage.
And I want to reach that eighteen year old, sitting at home listening to pirated Pixies tapes and reading Gibson, crushed by an oppressive relationship and hopelessly dreaming of a future she can't articulate.
And I want to tell her: you'll get there.

---

This evening, I’ve been down in the red-and-black, history-soaked atmosphere of the 100 Club, listening to The Frank & Walters (or, as my friend Landmine insists on styling them, The Frankenwalters).

This story isn’t about that gig. It’s about a gig some years ago, when St Agnes played the Borderline. And I suddenly realised I had turned into everything that my teenage self longed to be.

October 13th: Poor Esme

Day 13 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge!

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Poor Esme

There was only one photograph of my mother's youngest sister. Among the family groups, the little girl's portrait had a heavy, ugly frame. "Poor Esme," granny always said when she looked at it. Esme was never mentioned, otherwise, and I guessed she died young.

Eventually, I asked granny whether she was superstitious about fairies taking Esme.

"What?" she said. "Fairies? Do they steal children?"

"Never mind, granny. I just wondered about the iron frame."

"Oh, Lord love you. That's not to keep the fairies out." She chuckled as she set it back on the piano. "That's to keep her in."

---

As noted previously, I am re-using last year’s #drabbletober pictures. I don’t actually remember where I found that rather lovely crop of mushrooms (or toadstools). I’m pretty sure there are fairies living in them, though.

October 12th: Cleared

Day 12 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge!

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Cleared

Hello! Come in, do take a seat. Nine-thirty? Excellent.

Yes, please come through. Leave your belongings here, they'll be quite safe.

Oh, no. There's no electrode cap, of course not. What do you think this is, the twentieth century? Ha, yeah, I know.

Yes, just there. A little to the left? Comfortable?

Great. Hold still.

That's it, please remember to collect your things.

For our own quality control, a few questions...

Do you feel any guilt? remorse? We have video footage of the event if you need to verify your emotions.

None at all?

Excellent.

Thank you for your custom.

---

I thought it was time for something a bit more sci-fi. Because sci-fi is definitely not horror, right?

Vaguely terrifying post-script: someone described, recently, a conversation they’d had with their kid. It concerned something that had happened in the 80s, or "as my kids call it, the late 1900s”. Apparently the twentieth century was quite a long time ago. I don’t really understand how this occurred.