All stories

And there it was, dead at sixty-three: husband to Marie, father to Sue and Paul, grandfather of six, peacefully surrounded by his loved ones.

Goodbye Norman.

Candy harrumphed, and again for good measure. She wasn’t going to the funeral.

‘Honestly! That man. These days he would’ve been locked up!’

John bore this tirade with his usual weary smile, waiting for her to soften, put a hand on his shoulder and once more the two of them back in time nearly forty years. The year was nineteen eighty-two, a time of big hair and even bigger phones.

They met on the subway, John with his hand stretched out as he stepped past the still twitching prone form of his best friend. Candy’s blazing eyes softening at his easy smile, and it broke all the tension when she reached to shake his hand and nearly zapped him with the cattle prod too.

Oh, Norman.

In another time he would have been a gunslinger, or a knife fighter. So blazing fast this guy, you wouldn’t credit it, not with such a goofy looking big boned oaf kind of a fellow. He could flick out his hand, palm a buttock, and then, no matter how fast she might turn, stand there the picture of perfect innocence.

It was nineteen eighty-two and that fateful day he was on his second favourite subway pastime: the lascivious eating of a chocolate éclair. He liked to stand close and make eye contact and then out with the tongue, flick it lovingly across the chocolate topping then down to make love to the nub of cream at the end. Think that awkward moment when the boa constrictor happens to lock eyes with the terrified goat mid journey to the next life. You can’t look away. All you can do is stare in horror at what’s taking place.

Enter: Candy.

She was not in a good mood. It had been rather a trying journey, two sleeper trains, a seven-hour layover, and now the subway. Her father had lectured her at considerable length about the men who would try and get fresh with her. For her protection he had provided an electric prod designed for use with small breed cattle. This thing was the size of a portable telephone but she dutifully placed it in her purse, humouring her dad as he advised that if any fellas should get fresh, give it to them, right in the junk.

Candy well up for that; God, the cloying nature of their small town, but in all those hundreds of miles, nope, not a hint of freshness.

Too much time riding the subway with Norman, that’s why John copped a feel. No excuse of course, led astray he was, but it was John who blinked to find his right-hand palm full of female flesh already gone taut in horror, fingertips nestled snuggly in the gusset valley.

Candy was fast but John was faster. She whirled around, face snarling.

Oh, Norman.

Why choose that moment to break from the éclair?

Oh, cream in the éclair.

Why choose that moment to shed the blob that caused Norman to reach out his tongue in such a sensuous sweep of whipped cream preservation?

Goodbye, Norman.

True blue buddy, even if you didn’t know it.

“Well, this is my confession.” Katie held up a plastic box with half an aerial sticking out of the top and wires poking out of the bottom.

“This is what happens when you let your 11 year son experiment,” she shook her head as she held it up.

“My dad worked for a telecoms company back in the 80’s and this is actually one of the first mobile phones.”

David shuffled in his chair. No matter how many times he did this, sitting down having drugs pumped into him was the worst. But what was the alternative?

“Josh took it apart and now I have to tell Jake he’s got nothing to take to school tomorrow for his show and tell.” Katie threw the broken phone into her lap.

“My little confession is about the time I lived on a farm.” David and Katie looked at Margaret.

“Behind my father’s back one day I sneaked off to the barn with a local boy. I won’t go into details, but hours later, there were shouts and screams from the pig pen,” Margaret exclaimed.

“My mum and dad ran out and after a minute or so, I decided to follow them. They were both trying to hold down one of the pigs who was choking. Dad screamed at me to help by holding his hind legs. Dad managed to open his mouth and after hearing the most horrible squealing and snorting, something shot out of its mouth.”

“A condom?!” Katie giggled.

David shook his head. These women were annoying on times, but they were also his closest friends right now and the only people who understood what he was going through.

Margaret flushed red and turned to David who looked at her questioningly.

“Okay. I know you women won’t leave me alone until I say something,” he said grumpily.

He sat for a moment and Margaret and Katie waited for something interesting. David looked up at the ceiling and then around the room. The walls had been painted with a cheery yellow and colourful pictures placed around the room in an attempt at brightening up the bleak treatment room.

“There’s one thing I really, really want right now,” David closed his eyes. He was obviously thinking of something juicy.

“I confess that I want a really, really gooey, fancy dessert,” David opened his eyes and looked at both ladies.

“What?” Katie was disappointed.

Margaret paused and gave it some thought.

“Ooh, yeah. A crispy, crunchy, sugary top … and then dipping into a silky custard,” Margaret closed her eyes.

“Mine is a vanilla panecotta with raspberries drizzled all over,” David had a satisfying smile on his face.

“When this is over, no matter how tired we are, I think we should treat ourselves.” Margaret looked at Katie.

“Hell, yeah,” Katie nodded.

A nurse walked in, interrupting their conversation.

“Not much longer now guys,” she walked over to David and checked his monitor. “You’ll be finished first David,” she smiled down at him.

David looked at Margaret and Katie. “I’ll head straight to the patisserie and keep us some seats,” he smiled. “And over our desserts I’ll tell you my REAL confession.”

“Hey! I’ve Just caught you looking, haven’t I?” said the small man in the black leather jacket and grey turtleneck.

“That’s ok. Come and take a closer look.” He continued, ushering me closer.

“Do you like what I’ve done to my wife?”

I stood there speechless!

“I finally got to do it!” the man said, oblivious to my ever more widening eyes.

“It took me ages to execute her to my satisfaction! Took several attempts, before I was happy with the final result.” he said smiling broadly.

”Well it would, wouldn’t it, when it means so much to you” he continued.

“It’s such a personal statement! I really had a love-hate relationship with it, took me several attempts to execute her properly”.

I was dumbstruck. could thing of nothing I could say.

“I started very roughly to begin with” he gestured, flailing his arms about like a demented banshee. “as if I was in a murderous frenzy…” he laughed.

“…but I slowed down when it came to the details. Took immense pleasure in the artistry; the marking of the skin; the carving out of the eyes!” His voice lowering almost to a whisper.

“I must confess…” he leaned in to me so closely, I could feel the his breath across my face.

“…I damaged several tools in the process. Completely ruined two chisels!” he continued sounding quite incandescent.

I stood there motionless, feeling paralysed, unable to move a muscle. My mind whirling at the thought of what he had done to the thing that was in front of me.

“Do you like the way she is posed?” he asked, bringing me back to the present.

“I wasn’t sure whether she looks right” he continued, not waiting for an answer.

“I didn’t want her just floating around in mid-air, so to speak. She needed posing properly! After all, I didn’t want her just hanging there like a piece of meat in a butcher’s window, I’m not Francis Bacon am I!” he guffawed.

“You see, I originally did it for my own personal pleasure…” His monologue continued oblivious now to my presence.

“…but once I’d finished the job, I was so pleased with the result that I thought it needed to be on display, for others to see. I wanted it to be thought provoking, or challenging. Not quite Norman Bates’ Mother…” he laughed, “…but a talking point nonetheless”. I just continued standing there, not knowing what I could say.

“Obviously, my wife wasn’t’ best pleased when I came up with the idea…” He continued his monologue.

“…but by the time I was finished, I don’t think she objected. Well, she couldn’t say much anyway!” he chortled.

“But you should have heard the Mother-in-law, when she saw what I had done!” he laughed again.

“She squealed like a convulsing Pig. Really!” His face began to contort with laughter as he continued describing the old woman’s reactions.

“It sounded like a ringtone from an old 80s mobile phone!” he chortled.

He lent in closer still to me, whispering…

“To be honest, I think she’s a bit upset about it. She doesn’t think this sort of thing is respectable”.

“Oh where are my manners!” he suddenly cried out.

“I haven’t offered you anything further to eat. Do you fancy dessert? They’re just bringing some out now.” He looked over my shoulder at the melee of activity suddenly occurring a few yards away from us.

I shook my head declining his offer.

“No?… then let me get you some more bubbly?” he said, looking around for the tray of drinks.

“Well, I suppose I should go and mingle a bit”. he continued, as he started walking away.

“After all that’s what an exhibition opening is all about”.

It was not the ending I planned. Starla wept next to the heaving, convulsing body. Her blood red eyes, drained of life watching the life drain.

-

Starla was 54/39 depending on if you asked her doctor or her director. A shining star and leading light of Richmond’s Starlight Players. Fresh from West End fame (chorus, Bernadette, June 1990-July 1990) she had gained notoriety for her eccentricities and occasional on stage breakdowns.

There was the season she stabbed one of the Assistant Stage Managers to prove there was an issue with the prop knife. Followed by the rhyming couplet season, which happened for no particular reason. Then there was the time she shaved her head for charity (it turned out to be a wig). And last season had seen the arrival of Damocles the Wessex Saddleback. Pristine, beautiful, diamond collared Damocles. Who snuffled and grunted through rehearsals, eating anything left around including the 80s mobile phone that had been hand made by the same unfortunate ASM from the ‘puncture incident’.

I had suffered through her tantrums, her insufferable excess, the fabricated tales of her wild past relayed endlessly, the scheming and fixing of peoples lives and loves, the glorification of downfalls, but Damocles, the swine, was a step too far.

My mother who made me call her Miss Starla and stepped over my only two lines. Who called Damocles her darling babe. Washed him daily. Oiled his back. Scrubbed his trotters and teeth. Whilst I fetched her coffee, picked up her prescriptions and dropped her off round the block so no knew she was a ‘mother’, she fed him fancy desserts, combed his tail and told the world of their love.

At first I tried small things, slipping bacon into his food bowl, turning the temperature up on his electric blanket. But he never batted an adorable eyelash. I paused a long time before I put the slug pellets in his food. Just a few to make him sick. Maybe he’d loose his shine after a bit of Porcine vomit.

It was production week and the storm was in full flow in Act 1 of The Tempest, the wind raged, thunder roared, lighting flashed. The cry of “A plague upon this howling! they are louder than the weather of our office” cried out, but the wind howling did not end on cue. In fact it got louder and louder. That was when Damocles frothing at the mouth, howling and squealing crashed into a bucket of fake blood and fell convulsing to the floor. Starla screaming bloody murder rushed to his side. I watched aghast at the horrifying scene unfolding in front of me. Fake blood soaked hands frantically searching for a wound, whilst poor poisoned, wild eyed Damocles writhed and howled.

-

I walked away unable to watch. I tried to stop myself from wondering if Mother had ever gotten that dirty for me before. And that was when I saw his food bowl. Untouched by hand nor snout. I realised at that moment that if he hadn’t eaten it, I hadn’t poisoned him, which means it was something else.

I turned back to the scenes of Carrie style horror flashing around me and it struck me. The lights. He was having an epileptic fit. I raced to the wall and pulled the plug, plunging the room into darkness. People were running panicking by this point, cries of another stabbing rang out. I watched in the dim glow of the emergency exit signs, as a blood drenched Sharon in her too revealing for her real age Miranda dress, soothed and calmed him.

“The jewel in my dower, I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you,

Nor can imagination form a shape

Besides yourself to like of.”

After a while he fell quiet. Just a gentle grunt and snuffle in her lap. I confess it was the only time she ever moved me to tears on stage.

Chapter seventeen

After I escaped from the convent with the communion wine and all the gold I could bundle under my wimple I knew it would be wise to lay low for a while. And so it was several weeks before I found myself at the Convulsing Pig again.

I kept a low profile; just ordered a whisky at the bar, tried to relax and took in the show. There was a new girl dancing tonight and she was good. Not as good as Juliette, whose backside was like two halves of a round, ripe ripe peach just begging to be prised apart, but graceful nonetheless, in that willowy way of tall, slender girls.

Tonight’s routine seemed to involve some girls dancing dressed as fancy desserts as others ‘ate’ layers of cream lace and raspberry ruffles from their bodies until nothing was left but some carefully placed cherry garnishes. Delicious! The Convulsing Pig always delivered the goods.

The new girl moved with a sort of equine delicacy, a suggestion of fragility that was irresistible.

But don’t be fooled. These girls might seem like delicate, innocent flowers, but they have mouths on them like sailors and knickers like a fisherman’s hanky. They know what they’re about. And so do I.

I waded through the crowds of cocaine snorting yuppies, talking loudly on their phones, flashing their cash like they meant something here. I made a beeline for the new girl.

I saw she was still wearing her headdress from the show - some kind of Bakewell monstrosity that covered her face. She was standing with her back to me, her spine curving invitingly towards me, presenting a small pert backside in an insubstantial cherry thong.

I couldn’t resist. I reached out my hand and lightly cupped one petite buttock and casually took a sip of my whisky. I felt her clench in surprise, but she turned slowly, coolly to face me. I smiled.

But I was not prepared for what I saw. There, beneath the fronds of white taffeta icing was a face I knew very well indeed.

“Sister Mary Beth!” I stuttered “what are you doing here?”

“Hello “-Sister Hildegaard-”. Surprised to see me?”

I didn’t know what to say. How had she found me? How had she escaped from the locked broom cupboard? How had she explained her missing robes and wimple to the other sisters?

My mind whirled and before I could speak she had whipped out a pair of handcuffs and chained my wrist to her slender ankle.

She strode calmly through the bar, forcing me to follow in a hunched, limping stagger as I desperately tried to keep my balance. Not one person stopped her..

When we reached the door I felt the blast of icy December air breathing through the door. Slowly, never breaking eye contact, she pulled out a switchblade hidden in her thong and cut every item of clothing from my body, before dragging me outside and fastening me, naked, shivering and exposed to the canal railing.

“Now” she said, smiling triumphantly “let’s see how you get yourself out of this one, Sister…”

As he sat there, choking on his overpriced apricot galette, it struck Julia just how pig-like her once handsome third husband had become. He was clawing his throat, the harsh grey bristles which he refused to shave off standing on end like a toilet brush. Urgh. ‘Help!’ Ronald gagged, reaching into his briefcase for his Mitsubishi 8000, and falling off his chair as he did so. Julia stood over him, looking down as he shook like a Kunekune having a seizure, and asked him, rhetorically, ‘what did you expect? You spend more time doing lines in the office or drinking old fashioneds with those wankers you work with than you do with me, how could I not find someone else? He might be your son, but he treats me like a woman! He knows what I want, what I need, and he can still give it to me!’. With that she stormed out of the fancy French restaurant, and out onto the howling rain. She told herself it was rain pouring down her cheeks, but the saltiness as it touched her lips couldn’t be denied. She stumbled blindly, into the road, just as the moped cornered too fast.

Minutes later, an ambulance howled through the night, pulling up outside the restaurant and sending a tidal wave of brackish road river over the waiting waitress. ‘he’s inside’, she said, ‘but I think he’s OK now, our bartender knew the Heimlich. Maybe you should deal with these two first’ indicating at the two tangled bodies in the street. Julia’s leg was bent at an awkward angle under her body, her left arm obscured under the trashed moped, and blood flowed steadily from a wound on her temple, mingling with the rain and making the whole scene, if possible, even more macabre. The moped driver was somewhat better off, he was sitting up at least, but seemed unable to stand, and his right arm looked horribly mangled.

The paramedic ran to Julia, ‘pulse is weak, get the stretcher’, he called to his colleague, and in a blur of damp professionalism her prone frame was transferred from the rainy street to the dry ambulance in moments. The second bed was quickly populated with the moped driver, and the paramedic, in an attempt to reduce costs to the overstretched NHS, suggested that the choking victim inside be placed in the spare seat to be taken to the hospital.

-

11 minutes later, and the ambulance arrives at the hospital. The doors open and a large, sweaty man stumbles out, eyes wild, shirt covered in blood and partially masticated apricot galette, he looks around furtively before disappearing into the night. As the doctors rushed to the back of the ambulance, the front door opened, and the driver tumbled into the street, blood pouring from an open wound in his throat. Opening the back doors, a gruesome sight was revealed: one paramedic, throat also slit, one motorcyclist, smothered with his pillow, and a woman, mouth stuffed with gauze and vomit, eyes wide, wild and empty, with the words ‘he’s shagging your daughter’ scrawled across her bedsheet.

Do cheats prosper? Certainly, 30 years on Lee did not feel prosperous.

He remembered the musty, fusty, almost Victorian, central office of Green and Co., Kentish Town, where he’d been a Flash Harry, Jack-The-Lad office boy. He remembered making progress with Old Mr Green, the owner manager and with Samantha, the pretty blonde in finance.

Old Mr Green had made an exasperated speech to Lee concerning his son, Young Mr Green, who was supposed to be a Sales Executive but “walks round with a great big telephone always on his ear and no interest in the schmattah business at all! Compared to him, you’re like my own son!”

Then Kelvin Sunderland had walked in and threatened to take Lee’s rightful future away.

Kelvin was not chubby with a pink face, he’d been to university. Samantha preferred his easy charm to Lee’s aggressive banter, Old Mr Green was impressed by his “chutzpah” apparently and told him he was like a son too.

Kelvin was promoted to data clerk, looking at sales numbers sent in from local branches.

Old Mr Green was always worried that the worsening figures would lead him to an early grave. When he felt that way he shouted and threatened everyone. So Lee, alongside some other staff, had taken to doctoring takings, especially from the Nuneaton Branch, while the company slipped into serious trouble.

On the day Old Mr Green found out the real situation, Kelvin was on leave. The boss screamed blue murder. Whoever was responsible would pay with his job. Lee went to see him and told him Kelvin had fixed the figures.

The next morning Kelvin was sacked by blistering tirade in front of the whole office. Lee felt a short-lived sense of triumph.

Within three years of this incident Green and Co. went bust and Lee was made redundant. Samantha went off with Young Mr Green who became something in the city. Old Mr Green retired to shout at his nemesis Alan Sugar on telly, “Computer conschmuter it will never catch on!”

Lee drifted from job to job never getting promoted and married Fay, who was no Samantha.

Kelvin meanwhile became a famous radio Deejay and can still be widely heard to this day.

xxxx

During the last bank holiday, beer in hand, Lee heard Kelvin presenting the popular “True Confessions” segment of his show on Radio 2. He decided to phone in, thinking that If Kelvin really was a good egg he’d laugh it off and Lee could get rid of the guilt he felt regarding the deejay.

“Thanks for that Sheila, I’m sure we can forgive that Croque-en-bouche based incident! Next on the line is Lee from Essex, who apparently has a confession involving me!” Said Kelvin cheerily.

“Hi, do you remember when we both worked at Green and co?” Lee asked hesitamtly.

“Was that the office where I was sacked for no reason?” responded Kelvin. His surprised tone was a warning light, Lee hesitated and then….. hung up, feeling stupid and ashamed.

What could he say when Kelvin challenged him about his actions?

“Dunno what happened to him,” continued Kelvin, in a seemless display of professionalism “Now, I’ve got Ross in Flintshire with a confession about a convulsing pig.”

And Lee was stuck with the millstone of sin.