It was ten times ten years since the day when the oasis ran red with blood, and an exquisite woman sat in a red silk tent out on the white shining sands. She was a realist, for all her transcendent beauty, and she knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that this was the last sunset she would ever see.

Fayruzi, named for her remarkable turquoise eyes, stared unseeingly out at the cruel whiteness of the sands and carefully considered her options. She was surrounded by the various means by which she could take her life, and all that remained for her was to choose the one she found least repugnant. There was poison, there were sharp blades, there was even a tiny decorative pistol taken from some long-forgotten ajnabi who had fallen foul of the desert, and there were the sands themselves. The killing sands. The unforgiving mistress of every creature that ran, crawled, swam or flew on her breast.

But wait. Do I hear you ask why such loveliness would choose to die? Of course she did not so choose, it was simply her ill luck to be the jewel of the zenana in a year when sacrifice was called for to propitiate the god and in remembrance of those whose blood stained the waters of the oasis all those years ago. It had been an easy choice for her husband, having no love for women, to give that which another man might have prized beyond his own life as his gift to the pitiless sands.

Fayruzi studied her own white hands and thought about the last possible choice: to simply do nothing. To sit and watch the moon on the face of the desert and await the coming of the dawn and the death priests in their blood-red robes. To await those who would slit her nose before dragging her by the hair to the oasis where they would stone her to death.

She sighed. Just once. And determined to await moonrise before making any decision.

As the moon lifted over the dunes, turning white to silver, Fayruzi lifted the pistol in one pale hand. It would, she reasoned, be the least painful and degrading way to meet her end.

She thought herself fantasising when the sound of hoofbeats came to her ear, and hallucinating when she saw a tall, black horse coming across the sand towards her. Unthinking she stood, and walked out onto the sand to meet her fate. The rider of the horse reached down a hand and she grasped it in both of hers, making a graceful leap onto the saddle in front of the burnous clad figure.

He smiled down at her and she saw his eyes were as black and lightless as the night sky.

As the bedou wheeled his horse and galloped back from whence he had come, it would have been apparent, had there been anyone left behind to see, that the horse left no footprints in the soft shifting sand.

It was ten times ten, and one more, years since the day when the oasis ran red. It was dawn, and the red tent once more stood on the white sand where the desert wind ruffled its silken walls. This year there was no sacrifice but the priests still came as tradition demanded.

The chief among them bent his head and entered the empty tent, except it wasn’t empty. An exquisite woman sat on a pile of cushions in the centre of the floor. She had a babe at her breast.

The old priest felt his heart leap into his throat as he recognised Fayruzi.
“Lady,” he said respectfully.
She turned her face to him, and he saw her eyes – as black and lightless as a desert night.

©️jane jago

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

Brother and sister.
Supposed to be there for each other. Family. Closer than friends.
But Adam and I missed the memo.
We fought even as toddlers. Sibling rivalry on steroids.
He trashed my farm set so I trashed his comic collection. He mocked me at school so I spread rumours about him.
Until dad died in a crash. Somehow we grew up overnight. Mum needed us both and that brought us together.
Before, we’d turned our backs on each other. But dad’s death taught us what really mattered – who really mattered.
Now we stand back to back against the world.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider the use of treats…

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Whatever the fashion I’d tell my mum
And she’d get out her trusty machine
She’d run something up at the speed of a gun
Make a dress that she never had seen
But mum’s been gone a long old time
Her empty chair is cold
Her sewing machine no longer shines
And her little girl is old

©️jj 2024

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

It was a dull day in August and the heat was of such an oppressive character that even the normally sanguine Doctor Bearson was a little inclined to snap. Homes, of course, was fretted beyond measure – both by the lack of intellectual stimulation and by the disappearance of the kazoo with which he was wont to while away the hours of boredom.

In an effort to cheer his porcine chum, Bearson challenged him to a game of Bar Billiards, which Homes promptly lost – setting in motion a foetid sulk and the ignition of a pipe whose effulgences were so noxious as to render him almost invisible as he hunched in his wing chair swearing sulphurously in Serbo-Croat.

Bearson himself was close to despair when an urgent rap upon the oaken panels of the front door heralded the arrival of the telegraph rabbit with a buff envelope in one paw. 

By the time Bearson had paid the rabbit his carrot, Homes had so far exerted himself as to knock the dottle from his pipe and scramble out of a chair that had been constructed for a person of a much larger stature.

Bearson handed him the envelope, which he slit with a grimy and nicotine blemished trotter. He read the contents and his countenance shifted from self-pitying childishness to acute intelligence.

“I say, Bearson,” he ejaculated, “this is a bit more like it.  Cast your eyes over this communication and see what it reveals to you.”

Bearson picked up the single sheet of flimsy paper.

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

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.

Saddle up your ears Yummies and Daddies. Granny has wisdom to impart.

And before you pull your mouth into the shape of a cat’s arsehole you might just take a moment to think about which of us has grandsons who come and take her to the pub most Saturday nights.

So then, given that somewhere in the back of that cesspool of middle-class inspirational quotes that you laughingly call a brain you want to raise reasonable human beings who actually like you, shut up and listen.

Number one. The name. Do. Not. Saddle. The. Poor. Little. Git. With. A. Stupid. Name. Nobody deserves to be called Avocado, Pinot Grigio, Venice, Perpendicular, or any other meaningless collection of syllables you think may be ‘different’. Kids don’t want to be different. It’s bad enough that you bring them to school on a tandem without labelling them as wankers as well. Give the poor little sod a sensible name and stop being precious.

Number two. Social media. Stop posting pictures of your kids. It’s unkind. It’s boring. And those pictures will follow them throughout their lives. What may be cute when you are three is just fucking embarrassing when you’re forty.

Number three. The birthday party. Do not make strange brown poo-textured food.  Do not think it would be cute to lead an expedition into the woods to find the Bear (a poorly disguised Daddy). And do not put rice cakes and miso in the party bags. Take them to MaccyD’s (other fast food outlets are available) and buy party bags from your local cheapo shop. 

And if your little treasure is invited to a party Do Not, send him or her with a list of the things they are not allowed to eat. Accept that they will chow down on something foully synthetic. It isn’t every day so get over it.

Number four. Friends. You cannot choose your children’s mates for them. They don’t want to be friends with four vegetarians and a refugee. The want to be best mates with the big bully so he don’t bully them, and they really, really like the kid with nits who swears like a stormtrooper. Get used to it.

And finally. If their little friend comes to tea (or supper if you are a poncey bitch), do sausages and chips with tomato ketchup. No. Not quinoa and tofu salad with brown pitta (aka warm cardboard). Sausages (can be veggie at a pinch), and chips. Bury your prejudices for the sake of your kid not getting the crap kicked out of them tomorrow at school… 

There you have it. Attempt not to embarrass your brats any more than you can help. After all you’ll be old and incontinent one day and you really don’t want your ass wiped with a pan scourer.

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

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Jane Jago

This was not a pregnant pause. The sense of expectation was something altogether more profound and powerful. For most watching, it was like the moment when a giant firework screams upwards into the midnight sky at New Year, drawing every eye and inspiring the mind to speculate upon what exciting and marvellous spectacle of explosive beauty could follow in the moments to come.

There was a preternatural hush. The unsound of every breath held in anticipation, and for a few scant seconds, time was suspended into tableau. From forth movement, activity and life there was birthed a stillness which transformed the instant to a photograph captured by the camera of every eye present. Something wonderful was about to happen, a culmination and catharsis which was both long expected and yet in the moment surprising.

Standing alone in the middle of this captivated audience I felt only clammy nausea. The cold, sickening churning of dread in my stomach, seemed to drop like lead as if I was in a high-speed lift going down fast. This was akin to standing before the darkened radar screen of an air traffic control room and watching two points of light merge into one, flaring more brilliant, the second before it blinked out forever.

But, as everyone else there present, in that moment I only had eyes for Roxanne.

She looked ethereal in profile, like an antique watercolour. Her hair the living copper shades that Titian craved, her face damask, skin with the softened radiance of fine porcelain or bone china. I could not see her eyes, they were not fixed on me, but I knew they would be as compelling as the sea, the colour of the Mediterranean, neither blue nor green but some special tone that ascended beyond those both and was all her own.

She wore white, a symbol of purity, innocence – and sacrifice. For a moment, when the red fell against it in a liquid splash of violent colour, I felt as if a blade had slid into my own throat and I couldn’t breathe from the pain.

Then she spoke and time returned.

Roxanne was smiling. People sighed, words broke the mirror of silence and there was even clapping as she lifted her hand to show the ring and cup the ruby pendant her fiance had just slipped around her neck,  so she could see it better. In seconds she was surrounded by a thicket of family – mostly female – and friends – exclusively female.

The sea of well-wishers, oblivious to my presence, washed around me like an incoming tide and my isolation deepened. It took me a while to realise that I was still breathing, that the world was still turning and that the painful constriction in my throat and the cold knot in my stomach were invisible to everyone.  I became aware that for someone in that moment the centre of the universe was not Roxanne. Someone was watching me.

I did not need to shift my vision very far. He was close, very close, to where Roxanne was holding her impromptu court. Her fiance. His lips were addressing words to her fawning father whose broad back was towards me, but his chilling blue gaze rested on me.

They held no trace of triumph, no gloating superiority – in fact, no real emotion at all. All they contained was the cold dispassion of menace – a statement not a threat. This was not a battle lost, a campaign defeated. This was the end of the war. I had lost everything and had no hope. Life itself was without meaning. I was nothing now and despair settled into me, it’s vulture’s beak ripping the soul-flesh from my heart. Then, abruptly, the ice blue eyes shifted away from me and, dismissed, I turned, left the room and walked out of my own life.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

He’d been planning it for weeks, deciding what to cook and choosing a day she would be visiting anyway. It was their regular Friday evening wind down for the weekend, chilling with a box set and a bottle of wine. Usually, it was ‘order in pizza’ day, but today it’d be special – his meal, candles, flowers and the ring, of course.

He was just discovering that flower arranging was a lot harder than it looked, when the phone rang. 

“I need to tell you I’m seeing someone else…”

He put a ready meal in the microwave and ate it alone.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider the talented rider…

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