It was getting towards spring and the gnomes watched with mild interest as the biggers came out of the brick place and started their annual frantic scrabble in the soil.
“Why’d they do that stuff?” Camille was watching a female bigger on her hands and knees in a puddle poking what looked like flower bulbs into holes is the cold sodden earth.
“Do what?”
“Kill flowers. I mean, surely they know Mother is still cold and dormant. And that female is planting them bulbs downside up.”
Bertha looked over her spectacles. “It’s a bigger Camille, they truly don’t know nothing.”

Jane Jago

Because life happens…

It isn’t as if we can tell
When life isn’t going to go well
So being prepared
Means you need not be scared
Cos you’ll still find your heaven in hell

E.M. Swift-Hook

…for a moment the silence was blissful. Then the screaming started…
Writing team Leo and Mike Johnson have their day disturbed when a body turns up near their house.

The policewoman turned her attention to Mike and Leo.
‘Look. You don’t have to let the girls stay here. We can take them to the station. We just weren’t about to let them go with that lot.’ Leo looked down into Mike’s face. She shrugged and grinned.
‘You all can stay here if you want. Do you got stuff in the minibus?’
‘We have.’ The younger, and less chunky, WPC sprinted, returning with a grinning Constable and a dozen rucksacks.
‘That woman don’t half swear for a vicar.’ The oldest girl spoke up quite sadly. ‘She isn’t a proper vicar. They just give themselves titles so they seem legit.’
‘Bastards’ the Constable effaced himself.
Mike looked at the dozen wan faces. ‘It is’ she said brightly ‘a good job we have plenty of rooms. How would a proper hot shower and a rest in a decent bed grab you lot? But you’ll have to do three to bed.’
The girls nodded eagerly and Ro took them upstairs. She returned to the kitchen some twenty minutes later.
‘All showered and tucked up. I’m off to see Mum now. You want I should come back in later?’
‘If you can.’
She nodded and gave a half salute before ambling out of the back door.
‘She’s a big girl’ the chunky WPC grinned. ‘At first I thought she was a fatty like me. But she ain’t. She’s just solid muscle.’
‘She is’ Mike grinned. ‘My dad used to call her the bull terrier.’ Then she got up and left the room.
‘Oops. Something I said?’
‘No. It’s talking about her Dad. He has dementia. For the last twelve months he hasn’t really known who he is, or who she is, or much of anything much. But physically he’s as strong as a horse. Could go on years.’
‘Shit’ the younger policewoman said with some feeling. ‘My Gran’s got Alzheimers, but we were never close. I’m guessing Mrs Johnson and her father were.’
‘Oh yeah. To the extent that I sometimes felt excluded. But don’t you be telling Mike that little gem.’
He followed his wife, but wasn’t long. He came back with a rueful grin. ‘I’ve been told off for abandoning you. Rude it was. So. Having disposed the kids to rest, what do you two want to do?’
‘I suspect Chrissie has her kindle in the car. And I’d just like to sit in your garden in the shade.’
It was getting on for four hours later when the first set of flustered parents arrived. Leo showed them to his study, where a large, calm policeman waited to talk to them, and rooted out their daughter. They were behind closed doors for almost an hour, and before they left both parents sought out Leo and Mike to thank them for their kindness. Mike smiled her weary smile and Leo spread bonhomie. After that, parents arrived in very quick succession, and there was even a bit of a queue to see the police.

When the last parental car had pulled out of the drive and the police had also gone, Mike leaned on Leo.
‘So. What the fuck do we make of that?’
‘Honestly? There’s a lot not to like. On a lot of levels.’
‘Isn’t there just. Only upside is the teenagers gave me a whole Bogg and Scrat column. One we can use whenever.’
He hugged her briefly. ‘You OK now?’
‘Yeah. I think all the sound and fury helped.’
He peered down into her face. ‘You look better. Was yesterday particularly bad?’
‘Was. He was on a crying jag.’
‘And I didn’t even ask. I am a selfish bastard.
‘You are. But I knew that when I married you.’ Then she grinned. ‘Maybe you wanna cook me a steak in reparation? There’s a couple pieces of fillet in the fridge.’

From Shall we gather at the river? a hard hitting murder mystery thriller by Jane Jago which is available for 0.99.

… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

ahde (noun) – marsupial with a very short memory

blubbly (noun) – the colour of belly button fluff

borwn (verb) – to drone on endlessly about one’s prostate, or the bowls club, or any of the other preoccupations of men of a certain age

cahmring (noun) – cock ring for mechanical beloved

desret (noun) – what’s left on the sweet trolley by the time it gets to your table 

dulcking (noun) – monarch with little personal charm 

fukle (verb) – to play folk music on a home-constructed instrument 

grmmra (noun) – ancient language akin to Ogham with very strict linguistic rules

liek (noun) – floppy vegetable, used a lot in BDSM

mayrt (noun) – type of country dance heavily reliant on pink sweaty farmers wearing big boots and very little else

muthaflic (exclamation) – word from bowdlerised swearing thesaurus beloved of yummy mummies

nomral (adjective) – small, pink and plasticy 

omifok (exclamation) – see muthaflic

practive (adverb) of motion crabwise but very fast

qwen (noun) – specialist stick with beer tops nailed to it, used only in the performance of the infamous stick and sharpened clogs dance

syutable (noun) – surface on which fortune teller lays out tarot cards

talkign (verb) – moving mouth but making meaningless noises

tochis (noun) – stuff found between unwashed toes

uncommen (noun/adjective combo) – uncouth males

vrgni (noun) – goat of indeterminate years and such evil temper that no human has ever been able to get close enough to even attempt a guess at gender

winnim (group noun) – the ladies of the WI after ‘bring in your homemade hooch’ night

znorin’ – (verb) what the winnim are likely to be doing well into the morning after BYHMH night 

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

A second of shocked quiet followed the destruction of Big Bigger’s greenhouse. Then the biggers ran from the house with wide eyes and open mouths, and three chastened nomes crawled out of the burning wreckage.
By the time they reached cover, Brenda was waiting for them.
She had discarded her knobkerrie, but her fists were sufficiently solid to hand out a painful and lasting lesson.
“When I said nobody makes no po-cheen, I meant you three eejits too. Capiche?”
“Yes ma’am,” the terrible trio chorused.
It is a matter of record that Oisin never played his fiddly-diddly again.

©jj 2022

What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted…

The other four people in the briefing room could have had ‘Specialist Data Nerd’ stamped on their faces and it would not have made that fact any more obvious than it already was. These were the elite of the Coalition Security Force – masters of the virtual universe – no doubt self-labelling as crime-fighting heroes to a man and woman. But then they knew they were the most effective fighters of crime in the service, with clear-up rates that made the rest of the CSF look like slouches and shirkers. Armed with their forensic accounting suites, specialist link-predictive policing packages, and anti-hacking inoculation protocols, they could identify, isolate and neutralise almost any link-based fraudster or financial criminal. Usually, they had their perpetrator fingered within moments of the crime, sometimes even before the crime was committed, but if not they could always fearlessly hunt the evildoers down in the information jungles of the Coalition link networks, then analyse them into submission.
Very. Scary. People.
Not.
In his experience, they were never happy when asked to dirty their hands to provide reports on the sort of research their more reality-oriented colleagues might require: things about the messy side of life with real blood, real violence, real emotions. It was only when someone very senior was holding a briefing these people were ever in evidence. Had Jecks not been running this, there would have been a single junior techie, remote linking poor quality information packages someone had knocked together on their lunch break. But with the head of the CSF involved, every department manager had made it a point to turn up in person just to be seen.
Even so, they were all looking put upon and focused more on their own screens than on what was happening in the room, glancing up now and then as if worried they might have missed the start of the briefing, then ploughing their attention back into their virtual worlds. Clearly, as far as they were concerned, there were much better uses for their valuable time. And they were probably right. No doubt they should be off tagging some new virus or breaching a criminal firewall in the depths of the underlink networks. But, instead, because this was Jecks’ personal show, they were having to be here in the flesh, parading themselves so they could give whatever briefing this was some skeleton of fact. Presumably, Jecks himself was bringing the flesh to hang on it, but if so the only people here to be briefed so far were himself and…
He looked at the woman sitting beside him again, a mix of dread and certainty spawning in his guts. He closed his eyes for a moment, consciously banishing the notion as far from his thoughts as he could send it, then opened them again to find it had not gone away, any more than she had. He had been wrong about such things before. He would have to hope he was wrong this time too.
She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked up accusingly, just as though he had invaded her personal space.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He deadpanned.
“Halkom Dugsdall.”
“You a ‘Hal’ or a ‘Kom’?”
“I have no investment in either. Co-workers can call me what they like.”
She frowned at that.
“And your friends call you?”
His friends called him Grim — had done since he was in education, something to do with his natural facial expression, even his sisters called him that nowadays. It was so ingrained that it was how he self-identified, much more so than with his birth name. But, as he was not liking the idea of adding this woman to his link list, he said: “Maybe one day you’ll find out.”
She didn’t seem fazed by his response, just looked as if she had filed something in an internal folder somewhere for future reference.
“Cista Tyran.”
She said it like he should know the name. He didn’t, so he just nodded and said nothing. She looked away after a few moments and was back in her screens again.
Grim was beginning to feel like he was the only person sitting there with no virtual place to go.
Even Jecks was linked out to something. He kept frowning at the door and then scowling back into his screens with impatience — waiting for someone else to arrive and becoming increasingly irritated by the delay. But that wasn’t so surprising. Grim doubted anyone ever kept Jecks waiting. Even the fleshpots at the peaks of politico-corporate power in Central must get a chill down the spine when they had any dealings with him. After all, this was the man who could dethrone any of them. Everyone had some dirty laundry, and Jecks was the man who could find it and throw it into the public washer.

From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Because life happens…

Growing older is not such a curse
The alternative’s certainly worse
So do all you might
To take some delight
Afore you get to ride in a hearse

E.M. Swift-Hook

A hundred stories of a hundred words from the combined quills of Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

What’s In A Name?

Rex had been through several homes so he had no great expectations when he was chosen at the pound that this one would be any different. The woman who had stared at him in his run with an intense look and had not seemed that pleased to take him. She wore hard heels that tapped along the floor and didn’t say anything as she put him into the car and drove home.
The man who sat alone in the garden looked very sad, until he saw Rex. Then he smiled.
“Charlie? My Charlie!”
Rex decided he liked his new name.

emsh

Sick as a Human

It was a breathlessly hot day, and the feral dogs were mostly gathered in the shade of an olive grove. Big Denzil watched his mate pick her way between the sleeping forms. He greeted her.
“Do you walk well, mother of my pups?”
“I do,” then she flattened her ears to indicate amusement. “One’s eldest male pup is feeling less well though.”
“Tell on, my beloved.”
“He and Three-Toes found a dead fish down by the cistern. A long dead fish. Three-Toes’ dam warned them.”
“But they knew better?”
“They did. And they were as sick as humans…”

jj

You can snag the book here to enjoy the other ninety-eight…

The veggible garden had fallen silent, and the more optimistic nomes thought the poteen incident might be dying a natural death. Brenda and Granny were less sanguine, and when the moles reported seeing flames and smelling smoke they felt certain some catastrophe was in the immediate offing.
It was coming towards sundown when Brenda felt earth movement through her feet.
“Heads down nomes,” she bellowed and threw herself flat onto the turf.
She was just in time as the ground heaved and distorted before the sound of an explosion rent the air and the greenhouse was consumed by a fireball.

©jj 2022

Roguing Thieves is a previously unpublished Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

So home was now an underground lair on a nameless, tempest ravaged dust world.
And although she knew that all she touched was soaked with the blood of freetraders, Pan found it surprisingly easy to push that away and focus on the work she was expected to do.
The hard part, the really hard part, was sleeping with her betrayer as if nothing had changed between them.
At first someone shadowed her all the time, checking what she had been doing. They were being careful despite accepting her as one of their own. Usually it was Tolin or Daiyu who would at least chat a bit. Sometimes it was the silent Goldie, who Pan was beginning to believe might be mute. Once, about a cycle in, it was even Dekker himself who came to check some upgrade work she had been doing on his ‘girl’ the systems interceptor.
“How you settling in?” he asked, slipping into the copilot seat as she was running the final link interface checks. She glanced at him, those brutalised eyes belying the friendly smile.
“So-so.” It was an honest answer.
“I’d have left you and Tols out there running for us if I could’ve. The work you two had going was awesome. Finest runners ever. But…” He gestured to the ship then lifted a finger and circled it to indicate the underground hanger and the habitation attached to it. “This place needs nursing along. Randja said it needed a lot of babying to keep the old tech up and running.”
Pan finished the last check and set the system live, watching for anything to suggest she might have made a mistake. But the upgrade was installed well within the tolerance of the smart-assist AI to compensate for any clumsiness or oversight on her part.
She sat back in the pilot’s seat and turned it slightly to face in towards Dekker’s chair.
“Then Randja was talking bollocks,” she said. “I think he just didn’t want to be out there in that dangerous galaxy – the one that eventually killed him. He wanted to be safe here while you and the others were out there doing the dirty stuff. Ready to take his cut when the time came. The systems they put in here were built with more back ups and fail safes than you can imagine and constructed to last.”
She had his attention now and his eyes had taken on a feral look. They were so dark she could see herself reflected in them.
“You saying Randja was lying to me?”
She gave that a few moments consideration before replying.
“Being a little creative with the truth maybe. Of course this all needs maintenance, but he had tech mechs doing most of that. You don’t need someone sitting here watching it all the time.”
Dekker grinned.
“That’s good news. We badly need a runner out there and to tell you the truth before you hitched up with him, Tols was flailing around most of the time. The two of you together, though. Sweet.” He leaned forward and ran a hand up Pan’s thigh. “Very sweet.”
He caught the slap with the same hand, well before it reached his face. Pan cursed herself silently as something primitive and ugly stirred in the depths of Dekker’s gaze. He released her wrist as if it burned him and sat back, the grin gone.
“I just lost a bet. Daiyu said you were Tols’ and his alone. Guess she was right after all.” He pushed himself to his feet. “If, as you say, this place could get by without you for half a cycle or so, I think you two lovebirds should spread your wings and hunt us up some trade.”

There will be more Roguing Thieves next Sunday…