I despicable
Fighting hourly temptation
Scratching succubus

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

“Well, you know what they say, don’t you pet? What don’t kill you, will make you stronger.”

Jess felt her teeth clench together 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?”

Jess 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, then she knew 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 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 Jess’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. They made her a saint, but that was later. 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 unbraid 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’.

Jess 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.’ You must understand back then there was no idea of ‘Anglo-Saxon’, they were different peoples, different cultures.”

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 history lesson 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 like pearls, but shaped in ridged spirals.”

In the dream she had seen something glowing under her uniform blouse, shining through it 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. They were shaped like ammonites. When they made Hild a saint that was her symbol, you see.”

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 makes what happened to me 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.”

He stopped on the way back up the hill to the car. Asking her to wait as he dived into a tourist shop, full of costlier craft items. She studied the window but could not see what had caught his eye. When he came out, he pushed a small flat box into her hand.

“Just something to remember today by,” he said. Then leaned forward to kiss her, lightly, one hand running up over the curve of her breast, lingering as he whispered: “You look beautiful naked.”

She was so stunned that she had frozen, her whole body stiff, paralysed. Just as it had been when she had woken up to find herself in hospital. So she didn’t say a word as he turned his broad back away and strode off into the crowds of tourists, lost to sight the moment he did so.

 

Sitting drinking coffee poured from her aunt’s ceramic samovar, it seemed a lifetime ago.

“You know the young man I mean, don’t you pet? He came to one of my rune workshops? You went out with him a couple of months ago – he seemed such a nice young man.”

“I don’t think they got along, Susan,” her uncle said, frowning.

“No. We didn’t have much in common,” Jess said quickly.

“Oh, that’s such a shame.” Her aunt sounded almost as if she really meant it. “He was at the workshop again yesterday, I told him he should be the one teaching it, he’s very good. I invited him over for dinner.”

Jess felt her hands lose all their strength and the tiny coffee cup slipped through her fingers to shatter on the polished wood of the floor. It was suddenly hard to breathe as if something was stifling her. Then her uncle was there, helping her up, helping her to escape to the sanctuary of her own room, knowing what she needed, so leaving her alone after a brief hug.

“Don’t fuss over the girl so much, Dave. She’s not a piece of china. And get something to clear that up, good thing it was mostly empty. I’d never get the stains out of the curtains…”

Her aunt’s voice receded as the door to the lounge closed.

She sat there for a moment, on the edge of her bed, resisting the temptation to bury under the duvet, to hide. Then she started to pack.

 

From ‘Maybe’ by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago. To receive your free copy, either subscribe to the blog by email or request a copy by leaving your email in our Contact Box. That also signs you up to receive any newsletters we might get around to putting out one-day too!

Good morrow bambini mea.

It is oneself, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. Author, teacher, bon viveur, and all-round example to the uncultured youth that surrounds one’s sainted head. Famed for the classic example of science fiction excellence ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’.

One is displeased aujourd’hui.
The climate displeases.
One’s maternal parent displeases.
And the taste of bile in one’s throat displeases even more.

One’s pater, it seems, is about to withdraw one’s allowance. Deeming, as his latest paramour declaims in tones of purest East Ham, that “thirty-whatever is fucking old enough for the useless twat to have a job and start supporting himself”. One’s mater, of course, finds the whole thing funny in the extreme. To quote her dulcet tones “I haven’t laughed so much since granny got her tits caught in the mangle.”

Such crudeness displeases almost beyond measure, and on many a night one has wet one’s pillow with tears of frustration and shame. But one shall survive. And the vulgarity of one’s progenitors brings one neatly to the topic of today’s lesson.

Lesson 29: The Write Euphemism

In the quest for literary perfection there are two parallel, but divergent, routes upon which one may set one’s delicate tootsies.

One may, if that is the limit of one’s creativity, embrace the route of sordid realism, whereupon every wart and wrinkle is described with anatomical precision. The road where a delicate sexual encounter may be described as a f**k. The dark alleyway along which bodily functions are both described and enjoyed. The foetid pit of filth and fecundity into which the crassly uncaring author pushes his anti-heroic characters with the sole aim of discerning whether they sink, swim, or come up smelling of hyacinths.

This, mes estudas, is not our way. It cannot be our way. It eschews the beauty of language and embraces the visceral. Should this be your inclination, why then one washes one’s hand of you. Should you wish to join the ranks of those penning ‘kitchen sink’ (pah! sewer more descriptively) fiction then avaunt ye. One will have thee no more in one’s tribe. The children of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV shall never sink to vulgarity. One’s daughters shall never develop three chins and a heaving dewlap of belly fat. One’s sons shall never bake in the tropical sun for so long that their skinny bodies resemble some wrinkled denizen of the reptile house in a low-rent zoological park. Oh no, mes estudas, we shall be beauteous until the day we tread sedately to Saint Peter’s golden gate. And in order to retain our beauty, we shall eschew all that is coarse, elemental and unlovely.

Here, then, is where the euphemism is your friend above all others. The gentle euphemism, that courteous suggestor whose orchidaceous syllables allow us to infer the crude, the ugly, the sexual, and the painful whilst protecting the delicate sensibilities of both artist and admirer.

We shall not speak of drunkenness – rather let our persons feel tiredness and emotion exacerbated by the intake of glorious nectar.

We shall not speak of the bodily functions of the bottom – rather infer that time spent in contemplation eases the pangs of the inner man.

We shall not enumerate the vulgar grunting of the joining of man and woman – rather shall we speak of the tenderest of caresses, and of the female lady garden and of the male’s fleshy sword.

Let our pens not dwell on the reproductive organs at all if that is possible – instead speak of sweet peaks and masculine heat.

We shall not speak of death – rather should we gently suggest a walk to the side of one’s maker.

We shall not enumerate pain – rather allude only to discomfort bravely borne.

We shall never speak of physical ugliness – no, let those who are plain of visage and ungraceful of form remain undescribed wherever possible and where description is unavoidable let ugliness be veiled under such kindly words as homely, honest-faced, strongly built, and even, dare one suggest, the damning of little physical beauty.

Indeed my children, consider my words of wisdom with care and never be swayed from following the primrose path of euphemistic glory. Let others dwell on the ugly and misshapen while we rise above such crudeness in our flying boat with the wings of the whitest swan and the beauty of a golden twilight.

Study your euphemisms, whilst your teacher goes fort in the vain attempt to detach his female parent from the public bar in the Beagle and Bumhole in sufficient time to converse with her own parent who is now our sole source of financial support.

Au revoir. Etudez bon

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

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Eric Klein is the author of the science fiction novel The One: A Cruise Through the Solar System and books on cyber-security.

Question one: What was the most difficult piece of research you did for this book?

Actually, the most difficult part of the research was stopping. It was so much fun finding and connecting the various pieces together. But the hardest part was digging up details about chelation therapy for heavy metals. Turns out that eating cilantro has been found to help reduce some heavy metals in the body, and this translated to some of the dishes served in restaurants on Mars.

Question two: If you could name a space mission to explore beyond the edges of our galaxy, what would you call it? And why?

Well, avoiding the various silly names. I would name it Minerva, after the Greek Goddess of Learning. I expect out initial forays out of our solar system and galaxy will first be to learn what is out there while later missions may be exploration, colonization, or even military. But I must admit, I was tempted with boldly going with Enterprise.

Question three: If you were given the chance of a one-way ticket to a colony on Mars would you go?

When the Mars One project came out with a chance to win such a one-way ticket, I was tempted to put in my name. But as much as I would love to be part of such a project, I have too much here on Earth to give up. Now if it was a round trip tourist ticket I would be first in line (something out to Jupiter or Saturn, and back, would be even better).

Eric Klein in his own words:
I have been dreaming of space ever since being woken up to watch the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing at three in the morning. The fact that as a three-year-old I demanded to be woken up (or that my parents actually did wake me) was not a surprise. You see I was watching the Original Star Trek TV series in color from the 9th episode because they had the audacity of starting to air the series before I was born. (Trivia fact: I was born on the day of the original airing of the episode Miri). I credit my love for all things Shakespearean to starting with the many references in Star Trek. A hint to these origins can be found by my use of the play Hamlet in space, similar to that used in the Star Trek episode ‘The Conscience of the King’ in my first novel.

You can find Eric on Goodreads, Twitter or his own Website.

We return to Helium for some free time. The group split. Some wanted to go shopping; some went looking for a local geologist that one of them went to school with; others just went looking for lunch.
I see Dodge walking down the street with a bunch of people. As they pass I can hear her say, “A person is defined by his actions, not their memory.”
Interested in lunch ourselves, we go down a street of food vendors. Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Moroccan, or Thai; each has a window of green herbs. Displays announce proudly and clearly the use of cilantro, fresh coriander, and Chinese or Mexican parsley in the dishes – all the same herb, but under different names. Stopping outside a Moroccan restaurant I ask the proprietor why such a fascination for this one herb.
“You must be tourists. Here on Mars, most people worry a little about the chance of the heavy metals in the soil getting into the food. We all know that the scientists say that the plants don’t absorb these metals and they are safe, but there were times when they told us that tobacco was harmless and salt was causing heart disease; then they ‘discovered’ they were wrong. So we eat cilantro. There was a study that showed it was found to remove mercury, lead and other heavy metals from the tissue of the body via chelating them out of the body. Even though each individual meal is safe, most of us try to prevent a buildup by eating a good amount of cilantro each day. Better to be safe than sorry when they revise their findings.”
Thanking him, we decide to enter his restaurant for lunch. As we sit down, he puts out lots of little plates of salads, including a tomato and cucumber one, and another made from radishes. The best is an artichoke salad with garlic, spices and preserved lemon. All are full of flavour – and cilantro.
The restaurateur says, “With the lower air pressure here, we have to modify some of the original recipes so that the flavour will come through.” The yak tangia is wonderful with dried fruit and a slightly sweet sauce. Fay has the fish balls, and the sauce is full of cilantro. After the meal we are offered sweet mint tea and Kaab el ghzal – crescent-shaped cookies filled with almond paste and cinnamon. Absolutely wonderful.
Taking the maglev back to the spaceport, we enter the security area and find two TSA agents hand-searching Dodge. While they are working, we are waved on to other agents, who quickly scan and pass us for returning to the ship. They are still working on Dodge and her day bag when we enter the transfer tube.
Letting out a deep breath, I release the tension I had not even realised I was feeling. It was comforting to be back on the ship. In only two weeks it had become ‘home’ and a safe refuge from edgy security teams.

The One: A Cruise Through the Solar System is the debut novel from Eric Klein.

 

 

Another wedding. Another spectacularly unbecoming dress. Another day of pitying looks for the spinster cousin. Another waste of precious days off work. Jennifer sighed and stared unseeing at her reflection. The hairdresser finished twisting a garland of artificial poppies in her hair and she smiled her thanks. He smiled back and leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“At least you have the colouring to take poppies. Makes the other two look like anaemic chickens.”
She rewarded him with a glimpse of her dimples and he sashayed off grinning.
Then it was time to don the dreadful dress. It hung on her slim body with all the pizzazz of a dishrag, and neither of the other unfortunates looked any better. The younger one managed a conspiratorial grimace before the bride’s mother lined them up and looked them over with a gimlet eye. She nodded, albeit somewhat grimly, and stumped off.

The bridesmaids followed the tiny, exquisitely clad, bride up the aisle to where a stolid looking young man (with prospects – and the beginnings of a paunch) awaited her.

Jennifer’s age conferred on her the dubious status of ‘chief bridesmaid’ and would also normally have meant she was expected to schmooze the best man. However, on this occasion it was made very clear to her that the elder, and sourer, of her two peers had first dibs there. Which was one small bonus in a day chock-full of horrors.

The reception. A marquee on the lawn of the bride’s mother’s house, catered by a company Jennifer privately dubbed Bodgitt and Screwham caterers.

She elected not to eat the prawn cocktail.

Fifteen minutes later she had reason to bless her own cynicism. That was when the first person started to vomit. Although that scarcely describes what happened. The bride’s father stood up, turned to face the wall and pebbledashed the tent.

After that it felt as if all hell had been let loose. Jennifer found herself working alongside a tall man with a neatly trimmed auburn beard and exquisite hands.

Three hours later and the last of the really ill people was hospitalised, while the rest were being given rehydration fluid and made comfortable in the house. Jenny sighed and sat down plump on the floor. Her co-worker sat at her side.
“I don’t know about you,” he said carefully, “but I’m bloody starved”.
Which is how the two of them sneaked off to a local steakhouse and shared an enormous steak and a mountain of chips.

Six months later.

Another wedding. No dresses though, and no bridesmaids. Nurse practitioner Jennifer Wells and her tall, auburn haired husband were in the Bahamas on their honeymoon before any of the female cousins even knew there was a wedding on the horizon.

Very late that night she raised a glass of champagne. “Here’s to Bodgitt and Screwham,” she said before her husband’s beautiful and clever hands robbed her of the power of thought.

©️ jane jago 2018

Oh can you tell me mother dear what is that in the sky
‘Tis nothing but the soldiers blue no need for you to cry
But mother dear the noise is harsh the clanging and the guns
It is, but when you are a man you’ll love that noise, my son
May I sleep then mother dear as they overfly
Oh yes, I’ll sing a lullaby as the tanks fly by
The rusted hulks that filled the sky held no more power of dread
He nestled on his mother’s breast and a sky tank shot them dead

©️Jane Jago 2018

People seem to like the idea of having free reads every day so much that the Working Title Blog is moving onto Facebook as well!

Working Title on Facebook is a place to share and find out about free reads – poetry, short fiction, essays, blog posts, free books, whatever.

We also welcome discussion topics, both serious and silly. Chat about what you are reading. Seek opinions and advice.

Be intellectual, be silly, but above all be kind.

We only ask that you steer clear of politics and religion and that you are considerate of the feelings of others.

Pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of your favourite poison and enjoy.

See you there soon!

 

 

The city lights, alluring stars that cast a glamour
Drawing in, like moths to flame, to city clamour
The restless young, in search of something so bright and grand
Romantic dreams of sweet success and a life unplanned.
Like froth on waves of rising hope and cappuccinos
The bright light sears their souls and draws them into shadows.

And here the old do stalk, eyes dulled, charred by shining lies
Their lost humanity sunk too deep to hear the cries
As all about the city predators swoop and dart
Whilst coiled serpent-like in the belly of each heart
The fervour of one passion still feeds them and burns bright:
Lust for power and money matter more than human rights.

E.M. Swift-Hook

“Louwina, I – I can’t live without you,” Woul stuttered, his eyes holding an acre of desolation and his sharp fangs glinting in the moonlight as his six-pack flexed in his distress.

She backed away from the head of the shifter clan, eyes wide in disbelief. Why was he being so mean to her? She knew at sixteen she was nothing special with her stick like body and bulgy breasts. Her hair was never exactly fashionable as it set her distressingly even featured face in a halo of golden curls.

She backed into the tall, muscular figure of Girald, the new boy in town who all the popular girls yearned to date.

“No, Louwina, your secret heritage calls to me. We are meant for each other,” he said, looking down lovingly into her eyes, sprinkles of fairydust falling like dandruff from his hair.

“My – what?”

“Well, you know how your parents both vanished mysteriously on the day of the eclipse and how your granny has that weird book engraved with the words ‘My Family’s Book of Ultra-Secret Witchcraft’?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything, she never lets me read it.”

The gorgeous hunks looked at her with longing and desire, adoration clear on both faces.

“You are the Chosen One and my chosen one,” Woul murmured, smirking.

“You are my chosen one too,” Girald echoed, his eyes sparkling in the starlight.

Louwina stood stunned by the revelation. She was the Chosen One? So that explained why everyone at school hated her and why her life had been so miserable so far. And now she had to choose between these two, equally gorgeous, half-naked eighteen year olds, who made her feel all warm and tingly in places she had never thought much about before.

But which one?

Louwina rolled her eyes.

How was she meant to choose between a Vampire Weresheep and a Fae Weregiraffe?

E.M. Swift-Hook