Sometimes we walk the edges of reality…

The scene looked more solid now, as if it had come into focus, there was a stall selling candyfloss just opposite and two children with balloons bobbing on strings ran past, groups of teens and families. There was something strange about them, most of the young men had longer hair, the girls wore a lot of ethnic look clothing and they all seemed to favour jeans with flared boot-cut legs. 
“Come.”
Jess glanced at Annis who was reinforcing her request by taking hold of Jessica’s hand and pulling on it.
“I’m not sure it’s a good – “
“Come!” Annis was frowning now. “Show you.”
Reluctant to leave the relative sense of security this enclosed place gave her, Jess found herself gripping the hand of the child quite tightly. She was not able to avoid a gasp as the huge felines slid out of the door ahead of them. Annis paused in the doorway and looked back.
“You not talk, the Old One hears you. Not hear me.”
“What is this Old One?”
Jessica recalled the cold feeling she had felt before when Annis had made her hide with the cats. Even their warmth had not stopped her shivering. 
“Old One is ancient – is Blood Eater. Come.”
Jess still resisted the tugging hand.
“Blood eater? You mean blood drinker? Like a vampire?’
And that was what Annis had called Roald. For some reason the idea fitted with him well.
“No,” Annis said, almost crossly, she was getting impatient as if driven by some urgency. “Blood Eater. It eats you.” Either the girl had no real idea of what she was saying or she lacked the vocabulary to say what she wanted, because she pulled again at Jessica’s hand. “Now come, not talk.”
Jessica gave in and followed the girl, her mind full of Bram Stoker and HP Lovecraft. It was not a very comforting state of mind to be in as they left the sanctuary of the small cabin Annis had made her home. 
This time there was no twisted tangle to clamber over, this time there was a ladder and the space above their heads was filled with looping rails, not lit up like the rest of the rides and booths around them. Annis led the way to a gated barrier and produced a key from somewhere to open it so they could get through. There was a sign on the outside of the gate which declared the roller-coaster closed for… Jessica would have read more about it, but Annis was pulling her hand again, finger to lips to remind her not to talk.
It was a dream, of course. She had fallen asleep in the car, in the carpark and was dreaming all this. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. It just felt real. But then Jess had lucid dreams sometimes, like the one where she was naked on the clifftop and –
“Jessica! Jess!”
Roald. She could not see him but his voice was close by. It did not sound like an: ‘I’ve just spotted you’ attention grabbing shout, more of a call in the hope that she might hear and answer. 
“Jessica! I know you are going to be frightened, but it’s alright. I can protect you. Come to me, my princess, I’ll keep you safe.”
It was strange though, that his voice carried over the noise of the fairground music, the sirens that wailed about the start and end of the rides, the thunder of the machinery itself and the cheerful shrieks of the crowd. But despite the noise, his voice sounded clear to her. Almost as if she was wearing an earpiece. Then he was there. Right in front of her and she froze.

Part 9 of Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook will be here next week…

Things that make us go poop…

Granny and the ‘ladies’ darts team of The Dog and Trumpet alphabetically collate their collective contempt for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

P is for Posh Words, or what Desperate Danielle of the darts team defines as ‘La-di-da diction’.

We all know people who use posh words for everyday things.

You know who I mean, the kind of person who invites their pals over for drinks of an evening and calls it a ‘soirée’ or for a coffee in the morning and offer you a ‘latte’. They don’t have a bedroom like the rest of us mortals they have a ‘boudoir’ and they don’t eat chips, it’s ‘pommes frites’.

They have everything ‘au gratin’ when they usually just mean it’s got cheese on it and then eat it ‘al fresco’ rather than outside.

Seeing a pattern here? I am.

Call it something in French or Italian and you posh it up beautifully.

So if you’ll excuse me I’m talking my chien to il parco for a pisciare and a merde!

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

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

Jane Jago

Down to earth advice straight from the mouth of the mystic’s moggy!

Whilst reclining on the motheaten velvet of a window seat in the sun, one idly tuned into the conversation between the wispy female human one owns and a thin male dressed as if it were some sort of a bloodsucker or nightcrawler.
“Of course, the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats,” he said, as his narrow hands fiddled with the fringes on the table cover.
One pricked up one’s ears, and her muddledness nodded.
“They did indeed, and felines are so in tune with the moon and the stars.”
Which is, of course, arrant nonsense.
“Is he psychic?”
Wispy laughed, a sound she sees as tinkling bells, but one that grates on feline ears. “She is, indeed.”
He seemed to lose interest then, suddenly leaning forward and staring into the myopic pallor of her eyes.
“Why does nobody understand my poetry?” His previously carefully modulated voice degenerated into a childish whine and he flapped his hands like the wings of a demented butterfly.
The wisps of handprinted cheesecloth that serve one’s particular human as garments waved and undulated as his breath disturbed the air around her skinny frame. One wondered, briefly, if the young fool might attack her, but for all her fey ways she is adept at handling bruised egos and she there-there’d and patted him back to some semblance of adult behaviour.
While she stroked his over-inflated ego I regarded him in some hauteur. It seemed to me as if they were both missing the point of this interview— the fitting of a sadly deluded human for a better and more useful life. As I turned widdershins thrice and settled back to sleep it came to me that the phrase he would find most useful in his lifelong career would be ‘do you want fries with that?’

Ailuros the Mystic’s Mog predicts she will be offering more advice sometime in the future!

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

It was not so easy to train Jake. There was no two ways about it he was just very slow on the uptake. He’d stand there, head cocked looking a bit bemused, as if he knew there was something being asked of him but he was not quite sure what.
Meg spent the best part of two years working on training him and by the end of that time he’d pretty much grasped the meaning of ‘walkies’, ‘go pee in the garden’, ‘bed time’ ‘dinner time’ and a few other key phrases.
But Meg persisted because she loved her human.

E.M. Swift-Hook

A selection of rhymes by Jane Jago, made age appropriate for those for whom their second childhood is just around the corner…

I Had a Little Igloo

I had a little igloo
I built it in the snow,
It was warm and cozy
though the temperature was low,
The neighbours came to visit me
they brought their children too,
Who threw me out into the snow
and stole my small igloo.

You can find this, and other whimsical takes of life in On The Throne? a little book of contemplation from Jane Jago.

I used to live in that cold world
Never comfort knew
No luck for the skinny girl
Until I met you
Now I sleep in blankets warm
Far from icy fog
Sheltered from the pain of storm
No longer a street dog

©️jj 2024

Sometimes we walk the edges of reality…

They ate in an atmosphere of surprising companionship and Annis was surprised to see that humans could be mannerly and tidy in their eating habits. Jessica finished her bowl of soup and her share of the flat bread.
“Where do you get…”
“I trade.”
Jessica twined her fingers together and Annis picked up her nervous confusion.
“Not worry. Ask.”
“I’ve been here hours, and by my reckoning it should be morning by now. Why is it still dark?”
“Night is long here…”
“And what is your name? And what was that thing? And why do the cats obey you? And why is the vampire following me? And what are you doing here? And why did you help me? And…”
Annis waited until she finally wound down before showing her teeth in a grin. The female was less passive and stupid than she had seemed, this was good.
“I one question. Then tell.”
“What question?”
“Why you lie?”
“What do you mean?”
“You say not know what boys do. You know. You fear.”
One single tear rolled down Jessica’s cheek.
“You’re right. I do know. It happened to me before. And it broke me. Inside. And outside too.”
Annis looked into the tear-drenched eyes and felt an emotion she didn’t understand. We might call it empathy or pity. She put out a hand and patted Jessica’s arm gently.
“I name Annis. Been here always. Me and cats.”
She was about to say more when the sound of hurdy-gurdy music split the air. Music from a hundred directions, followed by the sounds of laughter and the smell of oil and burnt sugar. Jessica cringed, and Annis took her hand.
“Come see.”
Annis pulled open the rough wooden shutters and the two women stood shoulder to shoulder looking down on the fairground as it must once have been. It was a world of flashing lights and pressing bodies. The sense of excitement was so strong you could almost taste it, as the punters were drawn in by the magic of the fairground at night.
“Look,” Annis pointed and Jessica could see Roald walking among the shades with a puzzled expression on his handsome face.

CHAPTER THREE: JESSICA

It was when Annis opened the shutters and let in the night that Jessica finally began to realise that this was not anything ordinary. Up to that point, the unreality of it had left her cushioned to the strangeness, and she had heard the girl speak of vampires, blood eaters and old ones, but not really felt it was real. Even the huge felines, part of her was convinced were just large dogs she was misperceiving in the dimness.
But then the shutters were open and the night marched in, a grotesque danse macabre of vision in which Roald stood out like a three-dimensional solid against a painted background. The people were there, but not there.
Jessica closed her eyes and counted silently to ten, then opened them again. The insubstantial crowd still jostled its way through the park and Roald had vanished from view. She looked at the girl – the child, Annis and for a moment thought how like the scene outside she seemed. Then the strange dark eyes shifted their gaze to look at her and the illusion vanished.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore are we?” Jessica said, pushing a smile onto her face. That was met with a slight frown, as if Jess had used a foreign language.
“Shelley’s,” the girl insisted.
She seemed a very literal child. Jess wondered if she might have Asperger’s or something similar. It was the kind of mundane thought her mind always came up with when faced with something too difficult. Like the day she had been told her parents were both dead. She had heard the words, then looked at the shoes the policewoman had worn and wondered why there was mud on the side of one of them. Catching herself in the act this time, Jess looked back out of the window and tried to take in what she was really seeing.

Part 8 of Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook will be here next week…

Things that make us go poop…

Granny and the ‘ladies’ darts team of The Dog and Trumpet alphabetically collate their collective contempt for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

O is for Operation Valentine’s Day and, yes, you need to treat this like a military mission if you don’t want to wind up in the reject pile!

St Valentine’s Day…

Ah, that bitchfest in the name of lerv. That commercialisation of affection. That show the world how perfect your relationship is. That Gw***** P*****w of festivals.

In case you hadn’t guessed, Granny really don’t approve.

When I was a gel, your boyfriend sent you a card he had bought in Woolworths and probably forgot to take the price ticket off of. You showed it to your mum and your best friend and put it in a box with all your souvenirs. End of. And if nobody sent, well only you and your mum  and your best friend knew. No real harm done – unless your best friend was a bitch.

Nowadays nothing is that simple. Today you have to Instagram the card, the flowers, the jewels, the wine, the food, the guy, the naughty underwear…

Stop it. For the love of sanity. Do. Not. Do. It.

But. Given that it will occur and every halfwit on the planet will be posting the biggest lie they can concoct… 

Take notes and check your mission board, here’s the plan.

Buy yourself a bouquet of something pretty. Photograph it. Post it on all your social media with no explanation.

When somebody is rude enough to ask simply say the flowers were from your greatest admirer. Truth. And. Sorted…

Advice for chaps. If you are from the side of the room with dangly bits and facial hair the advice to you is:

Do. Not. Forget.

Your life may depend on it… also a large present, a romantic meal for two, and a suitably soppy card can result in the sort of sexual favours you have only dreamed of.

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

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

Jane Jago