Maria scuttled off, returning a few minutes later to find the skylights open and the aquarium filled with calm, clear, fresh air. Tia Benita and Magnus Thorssen, who had returned to his thin severe self, stood in quiet conversation. Maria breathed in the vague scent of ozone and grinned at her aunt.
“Thanks, Tia Benita. You sorted that thing good.”
“Not without help, chile. Not without help. You done proper. I been proud of you.”
Maria felt the blush start at her neck. Magnus laughed, but it was a kindly sound.
“It has been an odd sort of an afternoon,” he spoke in his normal precise tones, with nothing about him seeming to connect to the giant berserker he had become when face to face with the dark creature.
Maria was a little saddened by the return of the dry, cold scientist, and more than a little surprised when he took her hand and raised it to his lips. Startled, she looked up into his eyes to see them as blue as the sea and warm with approval. When he let go of her hand, he sighed.
“I am just discovering ,” he said carefully, “that we are not always precisely what we seem. Not even myself.”
“Least of all yourself, Doctor Thorssen.”
“I think we have seen too much this day for Doctor Thorssen to be appropriate. My name is Magnus.”
Maria chewed that one over in her mind for a moment, then thought ‘what the hell’.
She dropped him half an ironic curtsey. “Pleased to meet you Magnus.”
Tia Benita laughed, richly amused by a joke neither Maria nor Magnus could see. She waved one large hand at her train of trainees who dispersed at a gallop, before shaking hands with Magnus and kissing Maria on both cheeks. She looked at the tall Swede in some disapproval.
“You need to get some meat on them there bones.”
Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind her but the smell of the sea.
Magnus smiled down at Maria and offered a hand. She put her own hand in his and they left the building together. Neither spoke until they were walking down the dusty little road that led to the beach. Magnus opened and shut his mouth a bit and it came to Maria that he was actually shy. That made her feel braver.
“I could use a big drink and a bowl of gumbo.”
“I also. But the places I have found to eat are not very…”
“You just come with me.”
She felt a little like a bustling tugboat with a tall ship in tow, but he followed obediently.
Benny’s Bar was hidden from the eyes of the day trippers and holidaymakers, and it had obviously passed Magnus by too. He looked a bit out of place among the compact little island men and their broad-beamed women, but he sat where Maria pointed and when she put a bowl of steaming gumbo and a can of Red Stripe in front of him he grinned like a schoolboy and set to.
Maria felt somehow comforted by his enthusiasm for the homely things she could offer. Just maybe he wasn’t such a stuffed shirt after all – even when he wasn’t waving a war axe and talking old Norse.
A lot of food and a good dollop of rum later they were walking along a deserted stretch of beach with a pink moon hanging in the navy blue sky above them.
“I think we must talk about today,” Magnus said abruptly. “About what I became in my anger.”
Maria understood that he was deeply disturbed by the thought that a Viking berserker hid inside his dryly intellectual exterior. She looked at the hard lines of his face in the moonlight.
“You ain’t the only one surprised yourself. I never made no muppet before. And I shouldn’t know how. I guess we both done what was needful.” He still looked doubtful and she sought to reassure him. “I rather liked your Viking.”
“You did. You were not disgusted?”
“No. Though I do wonder what you are doing here with me.”
Magnus didn’t answer and Maria thought she’d blown it, so she stared down at their two sets of feet in the white sand. His were long and bony and almost as pale as the sand while her own were square and brown and plumply fleshed. He followed the direction of her gaze.
“We do not match well. And yet we walk together in harmony.”
“Only because you shorten your stride to let me keep up.”
He touched her face and she found herself all but drowned in the icy blueness of his eyes. She flinched, suddenly afraid of the attraction she felt to one so far above her in status and wealth. He felt her involuntary movement, but put it down to another reason altogether.
“I know I am pale and soberly unexciting. Even with the berserker lurking under the skin. I know this and I think myself to be a poor mate for you. But I would try if you will have me.”
Maria didn’t know what to say, but she knew this was her only chance if she wanted this man in her life so she pulled on his hand and brought him to a halt.
“Oh man,” she whispered, “I ain’t never wanted nothing like I want you.”
And, as it turned out, that was enough. The laughing devils were back in his eyes and he tumbled her to the soft sand kissing her for the first time – while his hands…
A long time later he put a palm on either side of her face “ek elska þik (I love you)”, he said.
Not so far away a plump mambo woman showed her gold teeth in a happy grin.
“And done,” she said.
In the very centre of the aquarium a huge orange cephalopod smiled an octopus smile before settling in his seaweedy bed.

Jane Jago

Kerenza straightened the pillows behind great gran, thinking as she did so how frail was the old lady’s body but how alive were her twinkling blue eyes.
Once the bed was comfortable, Kerenza sat in the bedside chair and smiled.
The old lady patted her hand. ‘It’s nice to see your dimples again, child. Wouldn’t be because your father is off up to London on parliamentary business would it?’
Kerenza blushed. ‘Please Great Gran, don’t make me be thinking undutiful thoughts.’
‘I don’t think it’s my fault that your father is a humourless dullard. Or maybe it is.’
‘He’s not so bad. And mother knows how to manage him.’
‘She does at that.’
The quiet that fell in the room was companionable and, as always when she had leisure, Kerenza looked with great pleasure at the painting that shone like a jewel on the wall above the applewood fire that warmed the room and scented the air.
‘You love my picture, don’t you?’
‘I do Great Gran, and I have often wondered…’ Kerenza let her voice tail off aware that she may have overstepped the mark.
But Great Gran just laughed. ‘That’s a picture of the good ship Nightjar, she was a privateer engaged in ‘free trading’ along this very coast. Your great grandfather had the picture painted for me on our tenth wedding anniversary. Only that doesn’t explain why I love it so much does it? Would you like to hear the story?’
Kerenza nodded mutely and took the old lady’s wrinkled hand in hers.
‘I couldn’t have been much older than you when I first came to these parts. My grandmother was thought to be dying, and my father counted me the least essential part of his household so he sent me to Chegwidden to bear her company in her last days. And, of course, to ensure that nobody was poaching on his inheritance. Granny was frail, but kindly, and I think I knew the first happiness in my life behind the granite walls of her house.’
She stopped speaking and her jaw worked in such a way that Kerenza thought she might be about to cry. When Great Gran got herself together, she squeezed Kerenza’s fingers and smiled a misty smile.
‘I hadn’t been here but a week when I came to know the two men around whom my life was to revolve. I was walking the dogs when I all but fell into the hands of Ludovic StMartin, who was the captain of the Nightjar.’ She smiled reminiscently and her eyes danced as if at some deliciously naughty memory. ‘He was a handsome devil, and didn’t he know it. Thought to steal a kiss, and maybe bring me to heel with his charm. I smacked his face and kicked his shins for him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or spank me. While he was making his mind up I ran away. Which piqued his interest enough so that he invited himself to dinner the next night – brought Granny some lace from Valenciennes, a pipe of brandy, and a bolt of midnight blue velvet. I ignored him. And then the chase was on. All summer he hunted me like a deerhound after a hart. But I didn’t want to know.’
Kerenza was fascinated enough to still her normally busy tongue. Instead of her usual babble of chatter she sat mouse-still and listened.
‘In the meantime I met your great grandfather. He was a little older than me and was quietly mourning the death of his young wife in childbirth. We became fast friends and his was the ear into which I poured my innermost thoughts. He became my dearest friend I all the world. As for Ludovic I think I might just have carried in disliking him had he not had the misfortune to catch a bullet in his right shoulder. The dogs and I found him faint from loss of blood and in very real danger of being caught by the revenue. To this day I don’t know why I decided to save him. But I did. Somehow I got him across the saddle of my mare and brought him to the relative safety of Granny’s house, where I nursed him back to health. And fell in love with him. I think he loved me too – or at least he said he did. Granny knew he was in my room but we never spoke of it until the night he was well enough to leave. ‘Be careful, child,’ she said, ‘the world is unlikely to give you a happy ending if you choose to follow Ludovic’. I remember thinking that he and I would make our own happy ending but I was wrong.’
A slow tear ran down the old lady’s papery cheek and Kerenza began to feel guilty for wanting to know the story of the beloved picture.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she whispered.
‘I think I do. And there’s little more really to tell. The Nightjar slipped up the river to meet a rowing boat bringing her captain back to his quarterdeck. As she rode the tide out to sea, a revenue cutter caught up with her in the roads and blew her out of the water. I have heard it said that the explosion was heard from as far away as Plymouth. I thought my life was over too. Although fate had other ideas.
‘It was a sunset as bright as the one in the picture when your great grandfather came to find me where I sat on the cliff top. He proposed to me a marriage of friendship and I accepted. By the time my own father arrived, brought down from London by the rumour his daughter was consorting with a smuggler, our betrothal was a matter of fact – and the daughter Papa was going to discipline with a horsewhip was about to marry the richest man in Cornwall.’
Great Gran settled back amongst her pillows and it seemed to Kerenza that she was a long way from her bedchamber and a lot of years away from the ninety-three years she owned to now. But just when Great Gran appeared to be drifting into sleep she squeezed Karenza’s hand.
‘I often think,’ she said quietly, ‘that I can see Ludovic on the deck of his ship and I fancy that one day he will call my name and I’ll go with him to wherever he may be.’
Kerenza gently patted the thin hand that rested in hers and she was rewarded by the genteel sound of snoring as the old lady drifted off to sleep.
It was to be Great Gran’s last sleep. In the morning they found her peacefully departed with her hands tenderly clasped together and a soft smile on her lips.
It wasn’t until she had finished helping her mother to gently prepare Great Gran for her final resting place that Kerenza looked over to the picture. It still showed a sunset but the Nightjar was gone…

© jane jago

In the time I’ve lived on this earth it seems to me that shopping has come full circle. 

When I was a girl my sainted mother (a woman of humour, kindness and a very hard hand when applied to the back of the leg) ordered her groceries and had them delivered – by a man who wrote next week’s order (with a stub of pencil and painful slowness) in a dog-eared book.

These days, of course, the man who scarfed ginger snaps like there was no tomorrow has been replaced by a robotic female but the principle is the same.

Almost.

The difference?

The grocer with his brilliantined hair and nicotine stained fingers generally brought precisely what Mum ordered. And if there was a slight deviation the replacement item was very close to the original that had been ordered and was usually reduced in price by a penny or two in compensation.

So what happened in the intervening fifty years?

We all got conditioned to the hell of the supermarket and the joys of the trolley whose only mission in life was to career sideways across the car park like a drunken juggernaut. Thus it was that we mostly looked with some relief towards online orders.

And how we were disappointed. How we tried to order our modest needs – only to be thwarted by sudden death of websites, ridiculous delivery slots, and the replacement for goods that had become unavailable between the order and the fulfilment of same with random crap from the returns cupboard.

We are sorry we have run out of Cornish butter, we have replaced your order of that product with a jar of nappy rash cream. Or. We are sorry we have run out of bananas, we have replaced your order of that product with a pair of flip flops (size 3). Or…

I could go on…

So we drifted back to the weekly trolley dash and the amusement of choosing our own bruised apples.

But then.

Horror of horrors. The supermarket was declared a place of lurking plague, and we deserted in our thousands once again. 

Online we went. Whether through the offices of a creepy talking box or the efforts of our fingers. Only to find. No delivery slots available until 2023. Limits on what we could buy. 

The screams could be heard as far as the empty beer garden outside the Dog and Scrotum where the landlord sat alone drinking Old Stumpblaster and wishing he had sold up last summer.

But I digress.

Shopping online? I don’t fu**ing think so.

Me and Gyp fire up the Micra and make our stately way to the emporium. 

Gyp minds the car.

I shop.

Bottoms up!

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.

One greets the assembled disciples.

Should it be that you are a lost soul, who has recently slipped into the back of the class in the hope of improving your limited literary endeavours, allow me to introduce myself. I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, fondly referred to as IVy by my chums. The acclaimed author of that prodigiously enchanting science fantasy work ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ which has been removed from the shelves on a temporary basis so it can return and be lauded as it truly deserves.

The end of summer is upon us and as harvests are gathered in I am once more returned to my writing room to reap the rich harvest of a summer gleaning inspiration from the very lap of the Muses in their homeland. Thus I was less than delighted to be disturbed whilst revisiting the profound passages of my previous literary highlights and admiring the lavish style, the graceful similes, the elegant turns of phrase and the superlative use of descriptive ornamentation.

It was, of course, my maternal parent who was well into her second admixture of Benedictine and Calvados. I knew that because the sickly smell of honeyed apples hung on her breath as she stuck her face into mine, muttering: “Why did I do it? What was I doing? How did I ever do something to deserve this?” Then, fuelled by alcohol and the disappointment she feels in her own sad little existence, she trailed off into a long-winded monologue in which I was unflatteringly compared to a chocolate teapot, a leadless pencil and other random objects.

Once I was again mercifully alone, the door bolted to avoid any further distractions, I realised Mumsie had unwittingly pointed out an area of English grammar that I have been remiss in bringing to the attention of my pupils. The ‘doing’ words.

How to Write Right  –  The Write Verb

Right class! Today we shall explore one of the backbones of any sentence. Indeed, that without which it is not a sentence at all.

Verbs are words which inform us of action. You all knew that of course, so I shall skip over asking for a show of hands and cut to the chase: how to choose the right verb for your sentence.

The important message I need you to take from today’s lesson is that any sentence can be instantly improved if you consider varying the verb. Truly. It can. Allow me to demonstrate briefly:

The stars shone.

Nothing wrong with that at all. It tells the reader the simple fact and they will absorb it and move on. But oh what a wasted opportunity! Instead of having the reader merely register the idea of the stars being there, doing what we all know stars do, you could have informed their imaginations with your creative genius (however small that might be) and awed them by your command of the depth of beauty in the language. Thus, thusly:

The stars blazed.
The stars lustred.
The stars scintillated.
The stars effervesced.
The stars coruscated.
You, by now, begin to assimilate the idea.

Thusly, my innocents, do not ‘walk’ but ‘promenade’. Never merely ‘jump’ when you can ‘frolic’. And remember, dear disciple mine, any noun can be enverbed to add to your treasure trove of possibilities:

The handsome young man entabled his firm buttocks, peachifying my day by his very beauty. (Voila mes crudités, deux pour le prix d’un)

And thus have we indeed ‘done’ the doing words.

Now go and try some out.

Until we next…

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Sometimes we walk the very edges of reality…

“Well, you know what they say, don’t you pet? What don’t kill you, will make you stronger.”
Jessica felt her teeth dig into her tongue with the effort of not snapping back. It was one of those glib sayings people trotted out every time they realised there was harm done they couldn’t heal. She wanted to snarl that what didn’t kill you could just as easily leave you broken and bloody, weakened and vulnerable and much less strong than you were before. It could also leave you changed as well as damaged, struggling to know who this stranger was that you had become—the one who jumped at shadows and whose heart started racing when a car engine started up.
It was not a good look for a woman who had once been decorated for valour.
She forced a smile and did not cringe at the hand pat that went with the words of wisdom, delivered from the place of someone whose worst nightmares were about being caught on Scarborough seafront without her make-up on.
“Your aunt means well, Jess.”
The voice came from the door of the lounge, which was being pushed open. There was a smell of fresh coffee as Uncle David carried in a tray with a samovar and tiny cups.
“Oh don’t be so daft, Dave. She knows I mean well, don’t you pet?”
Jessica nodded and managed a half-smile, then busied herself moving the newspaper, and a couple of magazines about horoscopes and tarot cards, from the table in front of the paisley-patterned settee. Her uncle set the tray down with care then served the coffee as he always did—strong, black and sweet.
His eyes were not patronising when he looked at her. But then he had fought at Goose Green and brought home his own ghosts to roost in the rafters of the perfect life his wife devised for them both. No children of their own, but then they had Jess.
“So are you off to Whitby again to see that young man?” Aunt Susan peered over both the top of her cup and her bifocals.
For a moment, just hearing someone naming the place sent a shiver through Jessica’s spine, and her imagination bridged the miles to place her on top of the cliffs, screaming gulls wheeling overhead, the wind that never slept and Roald, the image of a modern-day Viking, hair blowing over his face, shoulders half-hunched in a fleece, face animated, telling her the history of the ruined abbey as if he had been there at the time.
“It was all started by a woman—Hild. She was an amazing woman and not one you would want to cross. A princess of sorts. And for all she was an abbess eventually, she didn’t decide to become a nun until she was in her thirties and she’d done one heck of a lot of living by then.’ He paused and made a really broad gesture with one arm as if including the ruins and all the headland where they stood. “She loved this place. Would stand up on the cliffs, by the beacon that was here then and look out over the sea, and upbraid her hair so the wind could play with it. And, you know, when she established that first abbey it was nothing like you would think of a monastery today. It was more like a community—both men and women.”
It was easy to picture Hilda in her Saxon dress, facing out over the waves. Jessica thought of that actress she’d seen playing Rowena in ‘Ivanhoe’.
“No,” Roald sounded almost angry, “Hild was of Anglic blood—not Saxon. The ones Pope Gregory famously spoke about when he saw some being sold as slaves: ‘Non Angli, sed angeli‘.
Jessica looked at him, her mouth very slightly agape. He did that a lot. It was very unsettling.
“Non angerlee—what?”
Roald grinned and gave an exaggerated mock wince, as if her pronunciation caused him pain.
“Non Angli, sed angeli—’These are not Angles, they are angels.’ “
She had still been on crutches then and he had helped her back to the car park soon after then they had found a small pub in Robin Hood Bay, where they could look out of the window over the tumble of cottages and tourist shops. Picture postcard stuff, except the sky had been an obstinate slate-grey all afternoon.
“So what has this to do with anything?” she asked at last, when the small talk dried up over their beer.
“Your dream,” he said, “the one you keep having about a glowing necklace of strange pearls.”
Jess nodded, she had told him of it when he asked her if she ever remembered her dreams.
“I’m not sure they were pearls, just the kind of odd light they gave off made them seem like it. They were pearls shaped in ridged spirals.”
In the dream she had seen something glowing under her uniform blouse, shining and everyone staring until she had run away and been standing on a cliff edge, then ripping open her blouse to see the strange necklace lying there on her naked breasts. The image came into her mind clear as a photograph and she heard Roald draw a small, sharp breath, which brought her back to the pub.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, his expression slipping into an odd smile, “that’s the one.”
For some reason, she felt uncomfortable and looked out of the window to escape the moment.
“It’s only been since the—the accident,” I’ve never had that kind of dream before.”
Standing naked on the cliff-edge, her hair so long it ran the full length of her back and blew out around her, sparking with energy, and feeling so whole, so complete—so powerful.
“I know.”
The way he said it, made her blush. She started pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the crutches.
“I need to get back—I promised I’d take my aunt to the talk on astrology. She loves all that kind of stuff.’
Roald rose too.
“And you don’t?”
“I never used to,” she admitted, as he helped her ease back into her coat.
“And now?”
She tried to shrug, but it was not so easy with the crutches.
“Maybe, believing in fate helps make this all seem less meaningless. Maybe it helps make sense of the senseless. Even if all I’m doing is seeing patterns in the stars by joining the dots with random lines.”

Click here to snag your copy and keep reading Maybe a novella of supernatural horror by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook which is available now.

Five years ago two slightly deranged women with a mutual love of books – both reading them and writing them – got together to create a blog that offered a daily short read. Maybe something thoughtful, something funny or something action-filled. We aimed to promote the work of others too and entertain any who had a moment to drop by and read.

For five years we have provided two pieces on the blog every day – one very short maybe a limerick or a drabble and the other a longer read – an extract or flash fiction or humorous piece. We were young, enthusiastic and full of grand dreams!

Two out of three of those remain (you can decide which two for yourself), and we’re hoping the blog will still be here in five years’ time so we can celebrate a 10th birthday. But we’ve decided to scale back to just one piece a day ongoing so we can put more time and attention into our writing projects. These pieces will include the same sort of things as before and maybe some different stuff – non-fiction, opinions and comments. We are very open to suggestions if anyone has something they would like to see here. Also, we plan to feature work from other authors so if you have something you’d like to contribute please feel to send it our way.

Every birthday so far we have had a competition. This year we’re doing something a bit different. We’re asking you to tell us in the comments here (or you can email or send carrier pigeons) what post or series of posts on the blog you have most enjoyed over the years. Your prize will be that we will revisit that and repost it, especially for you!

Oh – and what is a birthday without gifts?

You can pick up The First Dai and Julia Omnibus free for five days as a thank you from us to you for following the blog. And we have published our supernatural horror Maybe which is available on preorder right now for release tomorrow.

Thanks for your attention for the last five years and here’s to the next!

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

The picnic basket and cooler were on board, Pa looked around.

“Everybody ready?”

The boys yelled but Ma groaned.

“What’s up hun?”

“I reckon this baby is comin’ right now.”

Pa floored it and the truck bounced along the rutted track, finally drawing up outside Grandma’s house. By now, Ma was white and sweating. Grandma come out and smiled.

“You leave Franny here and take the boys to the picnic.”

It was evening when they got back to Grandma’s. Ma sat in bed with a pink-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“Boys,” she said, “come and meet your sister Liberty.”

©️Jane Jago

It didn’t take long for things to get arranged to Benita’s satisfaction.
With a portal to who knew where open and a ring of chanting acolytes around it, Benita signalled to Maria and grasped Magnus by his thin hand. Maria pulled the mask over her face and dropped gently into the tank. It creeped her out bit when the giant cephalopod crept out of his bed and wrapped his tentacles gently around her body. She had seldom been so thankful for a wetsuit in her life, but she steeled herself to pat the creature on one of his sinewy ‘arms’. He made a small mewing noise and Maria felt pity for him.
“It’s okay, boy. Tia Benita is here. She gonna send dat bad magic right back where it belong.”
She made the thought as strong and positive as she could, and the creature relaxed a little.
The first awareness of anything happening came with a strange vibration in the water, it was disturbingly just off-kilter enough that the human mind couldn’t catch the rhythm. It made Maria feel nauseated and Big Orange cringed as he curled himself tighter around her. Maria found herself stroking him as if he was a crying child.
“You hushabye now. Tia Benita not gonna let no bad happen to you.”
The vibration stopped, and even through the water Maria could hear the mambo singing in her strong contralto voice. As she sang, bits and pieces of something floated to the top of the pool, where the bravest of the maintenance guys appeared to be collecting them in a piece of fine white cloth. The water around Maria and Big Orange started to heat up, but Tia Benita was having none of that and she spoke a word of so much power that the panes of glass in the roof high above the octopus tank rang like bells.
Maria was beginning to think this was going to be a straightforward clearance job when the sand in the bottom of the tank started to move. It circled on itself like a maelstrom of yellow particles, and then it became a pillar of spiralling sand. When it reached the surface of the water a creature shouldered itself out of the whirlpool to stand on the surface of the water.
“Hey, mambo woman,” it called derisively, “you think you big enough to content with PaPa himself.”
“You ain’t no PaPa. Fact you ain’t even a pup. You gonna go back aisy or do I gonna hafta send you.”
The creature on the water swelled indignantly. Once again, Maria felt heat, but it was quickly quenched. And then a very strange thing happened. Big orange grasped her in his tentacles and rose to the surface right beside the hulking figure that must have been the soul of the muppet that the strange crew threw into the water. The dark thing looked at the huge octopus out of deep-set red eyes.
“This ain’t your fight sea monster.”
Big Orange swelled his chest and began to sing, with Tia Benita and her acolytes joining in immediately. As the song swelled Magnus stepped forward.
“By the spirit of my Viking ancestors I bid you return from whence you came. Lest all of Valhal come forth and punish thee for thy transgression.”
The creature made as if to sneer, but even as it curled its lip the skinny director swelled to an immensity to match the dark soul. The northman’s shoulders were like those of an ox and his huge hands swung a war axe as if it was no more than a blade of grass. His piercing blue gaze bored into the red depths of the eyes of his adversary and he laughed a deep and booming laugh.
“Leave now, little draugr (demon). Leave and fight another day or meet dauða bræðrumaður (death bringer) here and now.”
The dark thing licked it’s lips with a thick, red tongue. “I will leave. But I was summoned and I am owed a life.”
Tia Benita laughed, although it was the sort of a sound that bodes ill for somebody. She crooked a finger and almost at once the air thickened while the sound of cursing bounced off the water like waves of foul-smelling bodily fluid.
The dark thing rolled back its lips in an approximation of a smile, before eying Maria in a fashion she found disturbing. She wasn’t Benita’s niece for nothing, though. She raised her hands and concentrated briefly. The muppet that appeared in her hands was a tiny, perfect version of the dark creature. The summoning snarled at Maria and the muppet grew hot in her fingers.
“Stop that,” she said firmly, and showed it the hat pin she held in her other hand. The muppet cooled. “Behave yourself and you shall take this with you. Anger me and I will keep my hand about your heart forever.”
Magnus laughed deep in his chest. “We may want to talk when all this is over.”
“We may,” Maria replied primly.
Whatever they may have been going to say next was interrupted by the arrival of a woman Maria recognised as being the one who dropped the simulacrum into the water. Big Orange made a sound that would have been a snarl in a creature that possessed that sort of a throat. The woman saw who had summoned her and made to move on Tia Benita with her hands clawed. She didn’t get to within twenty feet, however, because the dark entity reached across and grasped her by the throat.
“How dare you touch me Giglamel. I made you,” she hissed, “and I can unmake you just as easy”.
“I think not. I think you stole me. Dragged me screaming from the place where I belong. Enslaved me. Held my soul in a pot.” The creature shook her like she was a rag. “Now you owe me.”
It bent and rolled back its lips before biting the fat woman’s neck. Maria could see its throat work as it swallowed the blood that would bind the woman to its will. After a moment it lifted its head and let the woman go. She ran, but she would now go only where the creature allowed her to.
It laughed harshly, showing bloodstained teeth, before bowing and holding a hand out to Maria. She shook her head.
“Oh no, my friend. Not until you are actually leaving.”
It made a grab. But Maria was watching for the move and stepped back. The dark entity snarled and snaked its hand towards her unprotected throat. But she stabbed its groping hand with the hatpin. It screamed, high and thin, and brought its injured hand to its mouth, before beginning to spin widdershins. Faster and faster and faster it spun and when it slowly descended into the vortex Maria threw the muppet in after it.
For a few seconds disembodied and guttural laughter filled the air then it was gone, and the atmosphere felt fresh and clean again.
Big Orange uncurled himself from around Maria’s body and slowly descended to the bottom of his pool. Tia Benita smiled at her niece.
“Well done chile. You go get outta that suit while I seals up the portal.”

Jane Jago

There will be more from Big Orange and the Mambo Woman next Sunday…

Summer is a-coming in
So quickly now go you
Down the pub to down a beer
And drink a pint or two
Love that brew!

You now chase the beer with rum
And after hours too
Get it as they call last orders
Got to love that brew!

More beer, more beer,
Get in a pint or two,
Ne’er cease to drink that brew!

E.M. Swift-Hook