#FridayFlash - Buying Time

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Image by iotdfi.

Walther stood outside the door of Madame Toubert's Emporium, a pawn shop in the depths of the Underground City. From the street, the shop looked like any other; three golden balls hung above the door, and both treasures and trash filled the windows. He shivered and pushed open the door.

A bell jangled, disturbing the funereal atmosphere of the shop. An antique calendar hanging opposite the door proclaimed it to be Monday 19th, though it neglected to mention the month. An old woman dozed behind the counter, and a fat ginger cat beside the till threw him a dirty look. He ignored them both and made his way towards the black door in the far wall. The paint peeled from the wood in elegant curls, and he sought a clear patch of door. He knocked, two quick, sharp knocks followed by two raps. The door swung inward, and a young woman peered out of the shadows within, her yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.

"Yes?"

"I'm here to see, ahem, Count Clock." Walther lowered his voice at the mention of the name, darting glances over his shoulder. The young woman rolled her eyes and gestured for him to step forward.

The door closed behind him, and a cold hand found his in the darkness. Walther guessed it was the young woman, and she led him along a corridor. He bumped into another door at the other end, and she shoved him through the next doorway into a dimly lit room.

Tall candelabras were spaced around the room, their candles burning blue. A silver carriage clock sat on a small mahogany table at the far end of the room. Two men in black frock coats stood either side, hands clasped before them, heads bowed as if in prayer. Reverance hung heavy in the air, and a bead of sweat burst forth at Walther's temple. Perhaps his request wouldn't be granted - or worse, they would ask too much in return.

Another young woman, similar to the first but with electric blue eyes instead of yellow, appeared at his elbow.

"You are here to see Count Clock." She didn't ask, merely stated it.

"That's right."

"It is almost the hour. Be patient, and he will appear."

Walther realised the two men had broken their stances and now stared at him. He knew the Tempus brothers by their reputation alone, and he knew they came armed with knives and truncheons. Still, it wasn't the brothers that he feared. The two young women were clearly Fey, and if they wished it, he wouldn't leave this room alive. Worse still was the Count himself.

The clock chimed the hour, and two small doors at the top of the clock opened. Two silver figures slid out onto a platform, performing an elaborate dance of stilted clockwork moves. Another bead of sweat broke out, this time at the back of Walther's neck. It slipped down beneath his collar, tracing an icy path down his back.

"It would appear we have a petitioner!" A tiny voice rang out in the room, and Walther realised the taller of the two figures on the clock was now pointing at him. He made a small bow in reply.

"And what can we do for you?" The figure beckoned him closer. Walther hesitated, until the woman with electric blue eyes shoved him forwards. He stumbled towards the clock, and lowered himself onto one knee to put himself at eye level with the Count.

"I need more time."

"Don't we all?"

"Sssh, dear. What do you need more time for?" The shorter figure, a woman in an elaborate ballgown, spoke this time.

"My daughter is to be married, and I want to give her a good dowry, but I'm a little short. I only need another couple of weeks to give me time to earn the money to give her."

"How sweet!" exclaimed the Countess.

"Why did you not earn this money sooner?" asked the Count, ignoring his wife.

"I did, sir, but my son fell ill, and I had to pay for medicine. I do not earn enough to make any real savings, sir." Walther bit his lip to stifle a sob.

"What do you do, dear?" asked the Countess.

"I'm a shoemaker, ma'am."

"A noble trade indeed!" said the Countess, clasping her hands together. At her side, the Count rolled his tiny silver eyes.

"I am not sure..." said the Count. Walther's stomach lurched.

"A word, dear?" The Countess pulled the Count to one side. Walther could not hear their low voices, but he marvelled at the craftsmanship of the silver figures as they gesticulated wildly. A few moments passed, and the Count returned to the front of the platform.

"It would appear, Mr Peckwith, that my wife has taken a shine to you and your petition. I will grant you the two weeks that you request as extra time. In return, I would like you to make a pair of shoes fit for a Countess."

Walther froze. He hadn't expected the Count to agree - but he hadn't given much of a thought to what he might be asked to supply.

"For your wife?"

"Yes. When your two weeks are over, one of my associates will bring her to you for measurements."

The clock chimed and the two figures withdrew inside their respective doors. The Tempus brothers snorted, and Walther realised they'd been holding their breath. The blue-eyed Fey slipped a token into his hand, and pulled him towards the door. The yellow-eyed woman waited in the corridor, and led him back towards the pawn shop.

"You get what you wanted?" she asked as she opened the door into the shop.

Walther nodded.

"Make the most of it - and whatever they asked for, get it right."

The door closed behind him, and he struggled to adjust to the lights of the shop. He glanced at the calendar on his way out.

It now read Monday 5th.

This is another story set in my Underground City. If you'd like to read more stories in this setting, you can find them here.

#BookReview - The Diviners

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The Diviners was one of those books I stumbled across by accident, recommended in a blog post I don't fully remember. I downloaded a sample to my Kindle, flew through the first couple of chapters, and couldn't stop myself from buying the full book. It was a snip at £2.99!

The Diviners is set in the roaring Twenties, and principally features aspiring flapper Evie O'Neill, sent to stay with her Uncle Will in New York after an 'incident' in her Ohio hometown. The incident involves her clairvoyant abilities to read the secrets of others in items they own. She's not alone - while in New York, she encounters others with secret powers, including a boy who can will invisibility, a healer who has lost his faith, a boy with ESP, and a girl very much connected with fire.

New York is just as exciting as Evie hopes it will be - if not too exciting. She arrives just as a serial killer is beginning a spree that will wend its way around town, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Involved in the case through her uncle's consulting duties with the police, Evie begins to believe that her gift could be the key that unlocks the killer's identity - although this particular killer is not exactly one to whom bars and concrete will form much of a prison.

I don't normally like books that head hop but in the case of The Diviners, it's pretty essential to delivering the plot. The interwoven strands, following each of our Diviners as they struggle to either hide or reconnect with their power, work together so well that the book becomes difficult to put down. I often found myself cross that I'd have to stop reading, or miss my Metro stop on the way to work. I'd never really read anything set in the 1920s before but I found the writing authentic, and the characters intensely likeable. I don't normally like the loud, brash girl who is desperate to be centre of attention, but Evie managed to charm me all the same - she does things for herself, not to suit someone else.

The Diviners is also an example of a paranormal romance which is heavy on paranormal and light on romance - for those of us who just want to read about ghosts and supernatural powers, this is an ideal read. Sure, there's romance, but it doesn't dominate the plot to the exclusion of all else. I have to admit, as much as Sam and Jericho are proposed as potential romantic leads, I actually found Memphis the most attractive male of all, particularly through his devotion to his little brother.

While the ending wraps up incredibly neatly, there's also the suggestion that there is more to come, that the events of this book will be small potatoes compared with what will come later. I understand this is the first of a series, though, and I for one cannot wait for the next installment. Beautifully written, gripping, and full of suspense, The Diviners comes highly recommended by me.

Five blunt pencils!

#FridayFlash - Psychic

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Image by fliku

People always think it must be so great to be psychic - oh, imagine the things you could know, the ways to make money that you could find. You'd be a god, surely?

How I wish I could agree with them. Imagine looking into the eyes of your beloved and knowing the love affair was entirely one-sided, that you'd be discarded the moment their true love came along. Picture yourself working your fingers to the bone while knowing your boss thought no more of you than he did of the dying plant on his desk. See yourself in shop after shop, being pleasant and polite to those who serve you, all while knowing your shoes or hairstyle would become fodder for gossip the moment you'd left. How about your friends? Do you really think they care for you?

Now let things take a darker turn. Imagine hearing the murderous thoughts of the man behind you in the street. You head into an all night off licence you would not normally frequent and hear his frustration as he continues his path outside to seek other prey. You should feel gratitude for your gift, knowing that were it not for your abilities, you'd probably be lying in an alley, your life ebbing out into the gutter, but your thoughts stray back to your lover. The lover who harbours no emotion for you, despite his protestations.

You would pay almost any price for ignorance. Even your life.

Ghost Signs

Tweet I've long been fascinated by the so-called "ghost sign", those advertisements making pronouncements for products or places long since lost to the vagaries of time and fashion. The services they advertise no longer exist but through a bizarre quirk of preservation, the signs remain. There are an abundance of them in London, often high up on gable ends, out of the way but not out of mind, while they can be found across America, France, and even further afield.

Paul McIlroy, via Wikimedia Commons

This particular sign from Dunfermline, Scotland, advertises Angus Campbell Ltd, 'for all motor cycles, scooters & three wheelers', on the side of a building now occupied by a secondhand store of some description. The shop frontage has clearly changed with the times, with new signs being added when the business changed hands, but the original proprietor remains present, seemingly haunting the property through the perpetuation of his name, painted on the gable end. The lettering recalls the typographic choices of the 1930s, and while the scooter and the three wheeler are vehicular choices of the 1950s and 1970s, it's difficult to really 'date' the sign properly. What strikes me is that the name has not been painted over, or covered with something else.

I found this one in Newcastle, inside the Baltic 39 studios on High Bridge. A quick search on Google reveals that T. A. Hall & Sons Ltd used to occupy the Grade II listed building at 31-39 High Bridge, until the former printing warehouse was converted into a public gallery and studio space, operated by the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. The interior of the building might be swathed in Baltic's black and concrete staircases, but the walls remain the white tiles of the warehouse, with this sign the final testament to the building's former use. Strictly speaking, the term 'ghost sign' refers to adverts that had been painted directly onto the brickwork of a building, but I think this sign should be included in such a category, being as it is painted directly onto the tiles, and advertising the presence of a company who is no longer there.

I think my real fascination with ghost signs lies in their tangibility, their recording of something that no longer exists. Just as photographs or movies can capture the likenesses of people, preserving them for posterity, so the ghost sign reminds of us products or stores that more than likely existed before the days of Google and Yell.com, when a visible advert in a prominent place, such as the front or side of a building, was the best way to alert passersby to your presence, or products. The introduction of the billboard in the 1950s rendered such signs obsolete, yet they still exist - the switch from brick to glass or concrete as construction material of choice surely added to their demise, too.

Considering the ease with which a digital footprint can be erased, or at least misdirected, the continuing presence of these ghost signs is both comforting, and disquieting. They bring ghosts among us, a quiet testament to days gone by, reminding us perhaps of simpler times, while intruding upon a visual culture that has no place for hand-painted adverts on brick. They're particularly poignant in the paradox of their existence - the point of an advert is to tell us about something, but when that 'something' no longer exists, what use do we have of the advert? In addition, some of the signs now appear divorced from their context, as the world changes around them. Without their purpose, is their meaning now obscured, or do they retain a purpose, albeit a new one?

Often advertising mundane products, or homegrown businesses, the ghost sign is a monument to those who have gone before, and a fascinating glimpse into a world that all the websites in existence can never truly recreate.

#FridayFlash - The Numbers

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Elijah sat on the platform at Ealing Common, cheap ballpoint in one hand, small wirebound notebook in the other. Every day, he'd turn to a fresh page in time to see new equations appear, and he'd steal fragments of time throughout the day until the equations were solved. Though he'd never tell anyone, the numbers spoke to him. They told him stories. The completed equations even sang him lullabies when his brain felt too full and sleep eluded him. He kept the notebook with him at all times, solving equations in snatched moments between tasks. The compulsion to solve the equations neutralised any curiosity he might have felt about what the equations were for, where they came from, or what might happen if he didn't solve them.

At the same time across the Atlantic, Benny huddled behind a dumpster in Hell's Kitchen, solving a sudoku from a discarded copy of The Post. He'd wrapped himself in newspapers every night for as long as he could remember, but he only noticed the number puzzles a month before. The first time he did the puzzle, a man gave him a dollar for finishing it, and every day, as soon as he finished his puzzle, he found a coin in the street, or a kind passerby gave him some food. He didn't think the puzzles and his new luck were connected but he wasn't going to risk losing it, not now. He scrawled his final digit into the box, a misshapen number 9, and waited for dinner.

In the early Italian sunshine, Marco sat at a table in a Venetian piazza, scrawling equations on a napkin. Sometimes the numbers twisted and turned, leading him on a merry dance through a whole pile of napkins and onto the tablecloth, but today they were behaving themselves, and were slotting into place all over the thin paper. Or were they? Thunder rumbled around the sky as he stared at his equation. He knew it was wrong, but how? Another rumble erupted into a sky rapidly sliding from blue to slate grey. Marco stared at the numbers and swore loudly; he'd written a 3 where there should have been a 4. He corrected the mistake as the waitress brought his brunch. He continued to work on the numbers as the sky lightened.

Seconds ticked, digits flashed on trading floors, hearts beat at around 70 beats per minute, and the numbers continued to spin the universe in the right direction.

#FridayFlash - Ships in the Night

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Image by the_franz

The invisible man slipped onto buses and rode around the city without ever paying a fare. He sneaked into hotels and slept in empty rooms, and dined on leftovers in expensive restaurants. He saw films for free, and used book stores as private libraries. Alarm systems ignored him as he made no movements to detect. Yet despite his life of liberty, he was lonely. No one saw him, no one talked to him, and because no one knew if he was there or not, no one missed him.

The invisible girl slept in an abandoned house near the glassworks, and ate scraps foraged from bins around the city. She walked everywhere just to be among people, always mindful that to them, she was not there. She sometimes spent time in the hospital, reading to the blind, comforted that her words helped them through the day. She never took anything without being sure that she could repay her debt to the world in some way.

They spent their lives pursuing opposing pastimes, one in luxury and the other in squalor, yet each always dreamed they would one day find another of their kind. One wintry Thursday afternoon, they passed each other in the street. The invisible man left his hotel bound for another, and the invisible girl hurried to her next reading. They passed within a gnat's whisker of each other, unable to see what was not there.

#FridayFlash - Remembering

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Faraday James sat in the chair by the window, staring out at the street. How quiet it seemed, how empty. Men were missing and families mourned, keeping all but the lonely indoors. He could see the appeal in it - inside, in the comfort of one's own living room, the rest of the world was forgotten, along with its death on an industrial scale.

By midnight, Faraday knew that no comfort would be derived from pretending his England was not fractured. He moved from the chair to the sofa, and lay down. As he did each night, he counted his limbs, before counting himself lucky. Many of the men he photographed came home having left parts of themselves in the killing fields of France and Belgium, if they came home at all. What was a little shell shock in comparison? He mentally slapped himself, commanding his silent tears to stop. Men didn't cry.

A framed photograph of men in a trench hung beside the door. Taken in December 1914, the photo showed Germans and Englishmen standing side by side, festive smiles on their faces as they beamed with the confidence of men who thought the war couldn't continue. He'd won awards for his images, but their medals were sent to bereaved families. Would it all be remembered, in a century's time? Would another conflict, perhaps even bigger, overshadow their losses? Would names like Ypres and the Somme be remembered, or would they fade into history, taking their ghosts with them?

Faraday knew that some ghosts shouldn't be forgotten, capable as they were of returning, bringing a fresh hell with them. He knew sleep would continue to elude him, so he got up, saluting the soldiers as he passed. He went to the bureau to sort through his photographs, the ones not yet published. Faraday would do everything he could to keep these ghosts alive, to ensure they were remembered, if only to stop another, even greater, war from swallowing up the world.