Tag Archives: loss

Fantasy, General Fiction

Ipsy

The first time Tim saw Ipsy was when he was a young boy. Down by the river that ran past his stepfather’s house, he had looked up from trying to tickle fish in the cool water, and Ipsy had been standing there with his wild hair sticking out at all angles and grinning madly.

“I’m Ipsy, Timmy. Come on, I know where treasure is hidden,” Ipsy had said, grinning, and ran off into the woods without looking back. Tim had chased after him laughing; the fish, the river, and what was in the old, dark house all forgotten.

Colours had looked different for Tim around Ipsy, the wind had carried music and the shadows’ secrets suddenly had not seemed so dark. The Sun had danced in the sky, the Stars’ ballroom had been the Moon’s tapestry while the woods had become their kingdom. Indeed, Ipsy and Tim had run as free as the beasts, screaming, laughing and playing. They had chased butterflies and faeries, discovered forgotten gods, and even–after an epic quest–found a magical sword. They had drunk wine made of moonlight, supped on starlight, and danced madly in a magical clearing beneath the moonlight of another sky. With Timmy’s wits, Ipsy’s bravery, and their magical sword, they had embarked on great quests and vanquished the wicked while protecting the innocent, and, only once, in its lair, they had fought a big, old, mean Dragon…

Indeed, terrified and cowering in fear, Tim had watched Ipsy slay the fiery, roaring Dragon.

“Don’t worry, Timmy,” Ipsy said, covered in the Dragon’s blood and grinning madly, his eyes twinkling with an unseen light, “ You are safe now. The old beast deserved it.“

Tim was shaking and Ipsy grabbed him and hugged him tightly. That was how all the dragon’s blood had gotten onto him, he was sure. Ipys was the strong one. Tim had been too scared to do anything and had only watched as Ipsy slew the dragon.

“You trust me, Timmy?” Ipsy asked, a shadow flickering across his face, to which Tim nodded and gritted his teeth–they both knew what was coming, “Good. I can’t go where you are going, but I will always be here. Always. Come find me in the woods, Timmy. Come find me where we danced in that moonlit clearing.“

Tim remembered how blue the police’s lights had been, flashing rhythmically. Like awful, screaming little moons as they closed him in cold iron and drove him away from the magical kingdom and Ipsy.

***

Each morning, the guards would let the inmates out into the yard. Some would cluster in gangs or mill around, smoking those nasty illicit cigarettes that seemed to permeate penitentiaries. Others would gym but Old Timmy–as he was now known–did not like the touch of iron. His sixty-odd years of incarceration had more than enough cold iron for him.

No, he liked to walk around the yard to the far side where some flowers grew on the other side of the fence. Lillies and primroses sprung up there around the smallest sliver of a stream that trickled by. It vaguely reminded him of the old river back home but that had been so, so long and he was not sure he could remember it quite right anymore. Maybe he had made that up too?

And then, one morning, he hobbled through the milling inmates–they all ignored the bent, crazy Old Timmy–and reached the fence by his flowers when he saw the wild hair and wide grin of Ipsy standing there. Ipsy had not aged a day!

“It is time to come home, Timmy,” Ipsy said, his face full of concern, longing and sadness, “Come home.“

Timmy shook his head and blinked. He had often wondered if he had imagined Ipsy? Had he imagined their adventures? They had told him that he had and, after sixty-odd years, he had started to believe them. But here, standing before him in the full morning light was the wild-haired, grinning mischievous Ipsy.

“B-but I can’t, Ipsy,” Timmy said, his decades of facade cracking and tears starting to trickle down his face, “I really want to, Ipsy. I really, really want to, but I can’t get out here. They won’t let me, Ipsy. They never let me, Ipsy–“

Ipsy stepped over the flowers and came up close to the fence–but was careful not to touch the iron–and Timmy saw the sadness in his eyes. So much sadness! It was oceans of hurt and pain, washing through time and into the great pool of emotion that lies below the ground. He hurt, and he hurt that his friend hurt, and the trickle of tears on Old Timmy’s face began to flood into a river that fed that vast, dark body of water.

“It’s alright, Timmy,” Ipsy said, mischief dancing on the corner of his tearful eyes and a grin creeping back onto his face, “This is one last adventure for you. They’ll let you this time. Come find me in the woods, Timmy, come find me where we danced in that moonlit clearing.“

***

“How’d whats-a-name get out then?” the investigating Officer said, rifling through the pile of papers on his desk. The Warden in front of him shifted uncomfortably and wrung his hands a little.

“I-I am… We are not sure, Sir,” the Warden replied, “We have checked all the surveillance and all our records. Even his cellmate does not know, Sir. Old Timmy was basically harmless too; oldest geyser in the block for some murder he did decades ago. Kept to himself. Never got in trouble. Perhaps it was the medical diagnosis that inspired this action–you know, see the world one last time?–but we don’t really know anything else…”

The Warden finished lamely, his sentence trailing off. The Officer nodded without looking up and wrote on some of the papers, and time stretched out into an awkward silence as the Officer read further.

“So why–and how–did the old man make it all the way back to his old stepfather’s house in the middle of nowhere? This was the stepfather he murdered, right? Why go back to those woods? I’d really like to know that last part.”

The Warden shrugged and shook his head dumbly, “Old Timmy wasn’t, ah, all right up there, Sir. We reckoned he was mad and, you know, crazy does what crazy does.”

***

Late that night–hours and an official report later–the Officer was sitting alone in his office with his single desk lamp on. The Department was largely empty this time of night too. The official report has been concluded, his superior had signed off on it, the Warden had seemed relieved, and the world had swept it all into the folds of bureaucracy.

But he could not shake a feeling. A strange, surprising feeling.

All alone in his dimly lit office, he sat staring at the picture of the clearing in the woods where Timmy’s body had been found. The grass was stunningly green in that clearing and a weird ring of mushrooms circled Timmy’s corpse.

There were no signs of recent trauma, but Old Timmy had had terminal cancer, so his death had been ruled quite simply that. No one had any clue how he had escaped prison nor how he had gotten to the other side of the country without being seen but, well, no harm had been done and he was dead from cancer. The bureaucrats liked these neat endings and so, without much fuss, the case-file had been filed and the world had moved one.

No one cared about one old, dead, escaped, crazy convict.

But, in that dimly lit room, alone in the vast, empty Department, the Officer sat staring at the picture the crime-scene photographer had taken of Old Timmy’s face: he was smiling. Forever captured in time, Old Timmy’s face held a peaceful, contented smile with a light that made the Officer’s inside ache. It made him ache with an ancient, hollow hurt that he had forgotten was there, and he could not help feeling strangely jealous–

With a jolt, the Officer realized he was jealous of Old Timmy and he did not know why?

Fantasy, General Fiction, Romance

Long Road

The old car did not have a radio in it. Its growling engine was so loud that he was not sure he would have been able to hear any music anyway. Instead, he leaned back in his cracking leather chair and watched the world slide by, tree after tree.

Outside the wilderness stretched for miles. Rugged mountains poked through endless pine trees broken only by the weathered, old road he was following. Mist swirled through the air pierced only occasionally by the Sun and endless sky far above.

He felt like a voyeur, peering at one of Mother Natures’s untouched places. Despite the growling car engine and the crunch of its tyres on the old, weathered road, he felt like he had to be quiet. If he spoke, he might break the spell.

Soft mist slept in the valleys serrated by rolling, rugged pines. He would disappear into these gullies as the road dipped down. It was like he briefly disappeared into another world where sight ended, closed by the sudden thick mist around him. Even the sound of the vehicle was dampened down there. But then the road rose from the valley and he would break out of the mist into the cold, crisp morning.

This would go on again and again as he drove along miles and miles of that old road.

Eventually, he came to a fork in the road. No other cars and not a living soul had crossed his path for hundreds–perhaps thousands–of miles out here. So he brought the car to a growling stop in the middle of the road. He let it idle while he decided what direction to drive.

He thought of what existed a world away from this mystical wilderness. He thought of the beings that he loved and that had loved him. He remembered the wooden, slightly run-down cabin he had grown up in and how his mother smelt. He remembered the pine trees and the cold winter months. He remembered the girl that lived in the big city he had studied at. He remembered the final time he had seen his parents. He thought of all his demons and the evil that lurked in all men’s hearts. He thought of the loneliness of one soul and the warmth of friendship. He thought of loyalty and loss. He thought of the beauty of peace and the nastiness that drove the world forward.

He had no answers, only thoughts. But, just perhaps, that was alright all the way out here. Perhaps that was the answer.

Far above, the Sun slipped over its zenith and slid towards the jagged horizon, criss-crossed with mountains and pine trees. He barely noticed time passing. The air still felt cool and wet. A pine and dirt smell permeated this air, and the fragrance only intensified as a soft, scotch mist began to fall as the afternoon stretched out.

But still, he sat at the crossroad deciding which path to take.

Did it matter which path he chose? Would the world change at all? Would his loss ever ease? Where were the wolves? Where was the wild? Where was his friend?

Eventually, his grip on the steering wheel tightened, he put the car in gear and pulled off. He was going down the path that he was always going to be going down. He was always going to choose this path. It was the old familiar path, but he had never driven it for this reason before.

It was late at night by the time he reached the old, run-down log cabin. Far above, unpolluted by city lights and human noise, the jewel-encrusted cosmos displayed itself. Swirling, endless galaxies and stars twinkling dramatically in their silence as they gazed down on this small, insignificant world.

They were the silent witnesses as Mother Nature was the stage.

He turned the car’s engine off and it stuttered and ground to silence. The door creaked open and he stepped out, crunching the gravel ground below his boot.

“I am going to miss you.”

It was the first words he had said all day. Or forever? Definitely for hundreds of miles. Time moved differently out here, or through the fog of his thoughts. The words seemed to echo in his ears, but it may not have been the sound that echoed, but the memories.

“I am going to miss you,” he said again, embracing his voice as he walked around the back of the car and popped the boot, “But I cannot go where you are going now.”

In the car’s boot was a shovel and an old, blue blanket covering something. The something looked like a curled up, unmoving form. It was dead still. It was small enough to be a child, or a best friend. He reached down and gently pulled the blanket back, revealing the body of an old sheepdog.

“I am going to miss you, my old friend,” he said, tears coming to his eyes as he bent into the boot to gently scoop the body of his old pet out, “But, at least, out here you will have lots of space to run around in. You remember this place? There is so much space, so much more than our little house in the noisy city. There are wolves and there is wilderness for you, my friend. Wolves and wilderness…”

And, far above, the cosmos and its countless stars and galaxies silently peered down. Tears streamed down his face, as he buried his childhood dog behind his childhood home at the end of the long road.

Fantasy, Horror & Dark Fiction, Romance

Court of the Sunflower King

The Sunflower King sat on his cold throne of petals brooding. The shadows in his Court were growing long and the Sun was nearly set. Everyone was gone. They were always gone. He thought he could smell the kitchens firing and hear the clink of glasses being set out in the garden. In an age long gone, he had married a beautiful Sidhe princess under the maple and the Midsummer Sun. Her throne now sat empty next to him. But, once a year on the Midsummer night, she appeared by him again.

“My dear, how the time has flown. What have we left to do?”

He closed his eyes tight shut for a moment, but then turned and looked at the throne next to him. She–his Queen Cereus–was sitting there as beautiful as the day he had married her. Suddenly the Court was full of people, bustle, sound and light again.

“Yes, my love, the time has flown. We have the banquet to attend.”

The real curse was not that she was taken from him nor that she reappeared once a year making it impossible for him to let go of her. No, the real curse was that if he told her about the curse, she would never come back. The fragile spell that brought her back to his Court once a year would shatter and the darkness that had cursed her would take her forever. And he would be forever alone sitting in his empty throne.

“Banquet? I do not recall a banquet, my dear?” Queen Cereus asked frowning. She shivered involuntarily but did not seem to notice.

The Sunflower King smiled and reached out and squeezed her hand–it had been a year since he had touched her! “It is a surprise, my love, a surprise just for you.” It always was.

***

“What a beautiful Sunrise, my dear,” Queen Cereus said, her head nestled in the Sunflower King’s shoulder. They were sitting atop the highest spire’s peak overlooking the grand entrance of the Sun. The blood red sky was breaking into other colours as a golden fire began to touch the horizon.

“Yes, my love, what a beautiful night,” the Sunflower King breathed, his arms suddenly empty.

He was alone at the peak of the highest spire in his castle overlooking his Kingdom. Queen Cereus was gone and would be gone for another year. His Court would be empty again.

He let his arm drop to his side and he sat in silence and watched as the ball of glowing fire burnt the start of the next year into the sky. It would be a long, lonely year again.

***

The Sunflower King could not remember how long this had gone on for, but over the years he began a conversation. Each annual appearance of his Queen when his Court was full and they held a banquet, he would try to get her to remember.

He could not tell her that she was cursed. He remembered the witches curse clearly. But, he could get her to remember this for herself.

“Do you remember where you were yesterday?” he would inquire between mouthfuls of nectar wine while the Court musicians played.

“Oh, my dear, I-I was here with you,” the Queen would reply, each time elaborating just a little more as something inside her began to get dislodged, “Didn’t we have a banquet too? We have too many banquets, my dear, we should do something else in the evening, don’t you think?”

Each year each time, he got just a little more of an answer from her.  But then, the Sun rose, she left and the Court, draped in shadows and loneliness, was empty for another year. He would spend his time waiting, watching the sunrises and sunsets on his own again while planning how to get her to remember. Nothing else existed.

***

“Do you remember where you were yesterday?” he asked, holding her hand tightly as they both sipped their nectar wine. The Court was full and the musicians were playing a particularly soft, dreamy piece of music.

“Oh, my dear, I was here with you,” the Queen answered, yet more convincingly, and then she turned her head and looked directly at him, “No… No, you weren’t, my dear. Where were you yesterday?”

This was a new line of conversation. He had never gone down this road before. Gazing at him with her beautiful eyes wide open, she involuntarily shivered again.

“My love, I was right here sitting on my throne and waiting for you in our Court,” he said slowly and deliberately.

“No, my dear, you weren’t. I was in the Court and talking to the Elders. They were saying–” the Queen tilted her head to the side like she was trying really hard to remember and her eyes moistened, “They were saying that I should consider remarrying because you were gone and not coming back. I don’t want to remarry, my dear, I love you. I love you so much.”

The Sunflower King was confused. This was not what he had expected. The curse had obviously confused her.

“But, my love, I am not gone. You–you are–” he paused, he could not bring himself to say it or risk breaking the enchantment, “I sit all year long in the empty Court and I only get to see you once on the midsummer night’s full moon.”

The Queen’s face wrinkled in confusion. Or was it sorrow? Her eyes were wet and the Sunflower King suddenly had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“But, my dear, it is not midsummer night’s full moon tonight,” she pointed up and suddenly the Sunflower King saw it, “it is All-Hallow’s Eve on Samhain. You are the Sun while I am the Moon. You are the Day while I am the Night. And, you can speak with the living while I can speak with the dead on such a magical night like this…”

The Queen let her voice trail out. She was looking intently at him and, in fact, the whole Court had grown quiet. Even the musicians had stopped and everyone was looking at the Sunflower King. Slowly he began to remember and realise.

He remembered how beautiful his Queen was on the day of their wedding. But he also remembered how the wicked witch had appeared in their midst and he had struck out with his blade to defend his love.

Then he realised why his Court was always so empty. Why his Court was always in shadows and his sunrises and sunsets were always alone.

“I-I am dead,” the Sunflower King breathed, suddenly hearing the echoey sound of his voice from the grave.

“Yes, my love,” Queen Cereus said, looking at the pale apparition of her former husband before her, its light flickered and she saw its face contort in pain, a tear rolled down her cheek, “Yes, my love, you died defending me, but you need to move on and go to the Summerlands. I will find you there. My love will guide me.”

For the last time, the Sunflower King looked at his Queen Cereus. A single ghostly tear ran down his face and disappeared. He began to speak, but his image was fading fast and all the Queen heard through her own tears was:

“I miss you, my love. I just miss you so much…”

Romance

Heart Graffiti

When she was fifteen, a boy in her class kissed her. He had brown hair. They snuck around the bottom of the sports fields and kissed. The boy smelt like the cafeteria pie that he had eaten earlier, but she did not mind. It was naughty, and she liked it. The bell rang, and they ran back to class to tell all their friends about their secret.

In the later years, she would not only forget much of the detail of this moment, but she would embellish it for effect.

***

After his parents died, he moved in with his grandparents. They lived elsewhere, so he had to change schools and friends. He cried a lot in those days.

His grandparents were nice, but also doddery old people. Their pension had been damaged in the recession, so both of them had part-time jobs to make ends meet. The housekeeper came to tidy things up occasionally, but mostly there was no one around.

After school, he had to either hang around an empty school ground or walk for miles to get home. It was while walking home that he got to know someone who he should not have. What he thought was a friend touched him where he did not want to be touched. It made him uncomfortable and embarrassed all at the same time, but he did not know what to do.

No one found out, but people come and go, and life moves on. He kept rounding his memories of this part of his life down until they reached fractions of the original. He knew his abuse was not his own fault and, sometimes, in the quiet, long hours of the night, he wondered how it may have affected him. But, most of the time, he spent not thinking about it.

Thus, in later years, he would forget much of the detail of these moments, and let the noise of his life drown out the rest of them.

***

As she went through school, she called a couple of boys by the title ‘boyfriend’. But her first real one was in college. They met accidentally, dated haphazardly and then she intentionally lost her virginity to him.

He had dark hair, a quick laugh and an accute way of thinking about things. She did not quite know why she was attracted to him, but she felt comfortable around him.

Young love is difficult. Changes happen so fast at that age and, within two years, they had drifted apart as the fighting grew worse. He was getting into different things than her and she was becoming more interested in her career in finance and her friends and clubs.

Years later, she would rarely speak about the first boy she slept with and, even then, it would only be in noting it as a fact with little elaboration. There would be no embellishing of this part of the story. The details were only for her and she held them dear inside her heart.

***

He had ended up only just scraping through school, but that left his college options rather limited. Besides his grandparents had both passed away and there was nothing left in their estate for him. Instead, he moved to the big city down by the coast and began working in a restaurant.

While waiting tables there, he met her. She was different to the rest. At first, he had thought she was hot, but then he got to know her and thought she was cool. And then they slept together for the first time–his first, not hers–and he no longer questioned why he liked her. He just did.

They would stay up long after their shifts had ended and split a bottle of cheap wine. She smoked cigarettes and he tried to, but they would laugh and cry and talk and fuck.

And then she changed her mind, and he was alone again.

It did not matter. He had shared something with someone. He had been honest. It had felt good. Although he would never really talk about this, it had given him hope that he could be close to others and his wall had begun to crack.

***

She dated a boy with blonde hair who surfed and then she saw one with dark hair who played in a band. She finished college, went to work in a bank and slept with another one she met at a club after a few cocktails and whisky sours. She could not remember his name, but he had the bluest eyes and was gone the next morning.

None of these stuck with her and, like small stones being flung into a large pond, they barely rippled her heart. Sometimes she would feel like crying or a sad scene in a movie would make her unexpectedly cry. She did not exactly know why, but she felt sad. She felt alone.

Her job was not bad and she lived comfortably in a good house in a nice neighbourhood.

She did not notice it, but she began to drift through life. She went to more clubs than restaurants, and she began to drink more whisky sours than cocktails.

***

He left the restaurant and started his own. He put a bar into it but still made good food. He managed to move into his own house and his banker kept telling him how well he was doing.

He felt proud. The darkness around his youth was a fragmented memory from another age. His confidence led him forward now. He could date and did so with a couple of women. They were all beautiful and he was amazed that they even looked at him, let alone spent time with him. He slept with some of them and some of them even stayed longer than that with him.

But nothing stuck. At first, this was not a problem. He had built a good life, his restro-bar–as he called it–was doing well, he lived well and he was happier than he had ever been. But, nothing stuck, and that began to bother him. There felt like there was a distance between him and everyone else.

The real tragedy, he sometimes chided himself, was that he had no one to share all these wonderful things with.

Just before close late one night, she wandered in. The diners at all tables had left, the kitchen was closed and only a couple patrons were sitting at the bar finishing their drinks when she walked into his restro-bar.

***

Late one night, alone and drunk, she had wandered into a new bar in another part of town. Some hours and drinks later, she had fallen into his bed. The next morning she had woken up and felt different. He had smiled at her, brought her coffee and spent the morning asking her about her life.

She had not told him about the first kiss or boyfriend, nor had she told him about her fancy job. Rather, she found herself telling him about her loneliness and how she would cry sometimes. He had cried with her then, telling her of the dirty darkness in his childhood and the distance he felt around his heart.

He had hugged her and told her that everything would be alright. She had hugged him and kissed him deeply. The rain had begun to fall softly outside and they had both fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

It was then she had known that this one was different. It was then that she knew that all the nicks, cuts and scars across her heart had found a match and they were meant to be together.

***

It was then that he had known that she was the one. For the first time in his life, he did not regret anything that had happened to him. It was all important; each and every experience. After all, it had all been the map graffitied on his grubby heart that had led him to her, and for that he was thankful.