365 Ficlets - Day #326 ~ "Tech Duty"

“What do you mean you’re not on Twitter?”

David was staring at me, slack-jawed and wide-eyed as he finished the above question. His reaction was as if I’ve just told him that I don’t enjoy having a woman blow me, or that even though I’m a meat eater I think that bacon is crap. The thing is that it’s a no-brainer to me; I don’t need to broadcast my every thought every moment that I thought it. Sure I’m working in “Web” and I blog, and I’m on Facebook, or Farcebook as I like to call it, but why is it beyond belief that I don’t have a Twitter account?

David got himself together and tried again;

“I mean how do you stay in touch with everything, man?”

This was not the first time I’d heard this, and I already had a stock answer;

“What did you do before Aprl 2007? Were you in a desert of solitude without any sense of human connection? Seriously?”

He didn’t get it, he went on for about another hour, so guess what? Yeah, I have a Twitter account now. Now the only thing left to do is to work out what the Hell to do with it?

365 Ficlets - Day #325 ~ "Sleepless Nights and Loving Mornings"

I ran my fingertip along her shoulders and slid my other hand around her waist, pulling her gently against me, letting her know that I was there. She laid a hand on top of mine and gently squeezed it as she relaxed back into my embrace. She turned her head a little and whispered;

“Hello, Baby. Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

I rolled my palm over her shoulder, cupping it and massaging it softly as I let her know that I was happy to be awake by starting to lay kisses around the nape of her neck.

“I see. You’re quite happy to be awake then?”

She asked the question in such a way that I had a distinct impression that she was playfully raising an eyebrow, but there was no brush off there; I could tell that as I felt her other hand gently running up the inside of my thigh.

“I love you, Baby. Take me to bed, or lose me forever.”

We laughed together; it had been such a long time since one of us had quoted the movie that had brought us together all those years before. I scooped her up in my arms, and carried her back to bed.

365 Ficlets - Day #324 ~ "Home Invasion"

“Wake up.”

Fran was shaking me hard, her hands gripping tightly onto my shoulders. I clawed my way out of my sleeping state. Just as I was about to ask her what in the Hell was wrong with her she clamped her hand over my mouth and whispered in my ear;

“Listen. Do you hear that?”

I strained to hear whatever it was that she wanted me to hear, but the silence was all I could detect. I was about to tell her she was crazy, that it was just the wind, or the cat, when I did hear something. Someone or something knocked over something breakable, because there was an almighty crash from downstairs; something glass or china broke against the floor. The fear that ran through me at that moment was electric; someone unwelcome was in our house. Our son was sleeping down the hall from us, and the stairs separated us from him, so my thoughts immediately turned to his safety. I turned over and whispered to Fran;

“Wait here for me; I’m going to go and get James before he makes any noise.”

She nodded and I slipped quietly out of bed.

365 Ficlets - Day #323 ~ "Back to the Bay"

“And what is the purpose of your stay, Sir?”

I smile at the immigration official;

“Some business, some vacation. You know how it goes.”

They nod and smile back, then hand my passport back to me and I'm in. Even someone like me, with no nefarious thoughts, with money in their pocket and with no plans to out stay their welcome, entering the United States can be a nerve-wracking business. Still now that I had passed the test I could make my way into the City and focus on the meetings that were the genuine justification for flying half way around the world, and even with that pressure hanging over my head, that was a relief.

I headed across the bridge from the terminal to the BART station and having bought myself a ticket waited on the platform for my high speed ride into the heart of downtown. London could learn a lot from San Francisco on this front. This was my second visit in just over a year and I was still impressed by how simply, efficiently and cheaply the airport is connected to the main part of the City.

365 Ficlets - Day #322 ~ "Travelling Blues"

“Hello there.”

Oh God, she's grinning in that way; you know what I mean, the way that your scary aunty did when you were a child. It's been a constant stream of them, horny fifty-something widows and divorcées, ever since I boarded the boat. I really am starting to wish I'd listened to my friends who had warned me about the dangers of holidaying alone, on a cruise liner. Don't misunderstand, if I was less than fifteen years younger than any of them then I would be happy of the attention, but not only am I still in a place where I want my lovers to at least be capable of having children, but I am on holiday alone not to find a replacement for my last one, but to simply get away and forget. Still, I am not able to simply ignore her or anyone else; we are on this relatively small ship together for ten days after all, though thankfully four of them were done;

“Hello. Taking the air?”

She nodded and sat down next to me, unbidden.

“I'll be honest, I saw you head this way after dinner and I wanted to talk to you.”

My heart sank, the last conversation that had gone this way – after lunch – had been very depressing.

365 Ficlets - Day #321 ~ "Torture"

Hot, too hot. Mouth dry, throat hurts. Eyes open? No, too bright.

“Are you ready to tell us what we wnat to know, Mr. Devlin?”

That voice… Who is that?

“Your current level of discomfort is not the end of the road. There is more to come if you don’t give us the information that we want.”

Have to focus. Is that the one who was called Ignatius by the tall one? Yes, the voice of Ignatius, I recognise him.

“Mr. Devlin?”

Open eyes; slowly. So bright in here. Can’t see him, must be a PA system. Sit up, straight back. Show him strength; resolve. Try to speak;

“N… Noh.”

Throat so dry, can barely make a sound.

“Would you like a drink, Mr. Devlin?”

This is how they start. I say yes to anything and then I might say yes to more things. Have to fight the temptation, but so thirsty.

“How can that hurt, Mr. Devlin? Surely you can accept a glass of water?”

“No th… No thankyou.”

365 Ficlets - Day #320 ~ "The Cut of Memory's Knife"

“What are you doing here, Vic?”

Her smile sent a shiver through Paul, he remembered the time long ago when he would wake up to that smile. Having been put back out into the field, Paul had been given no information on his handler beyond the protocol and the eight meeting places. When he had picked up the location instruction he had wondered if it would be Harrison again; the last time in London it had been Harrison, but he had never thought it might be Victoria.

“Hello Paul. How’ve you been?”

Paul shrugged, still reeling internally while trying to come across as at least professional.

“You weren’t told it was going to be me, were you?”

“No, but it’s fine. I’m fine. How have you been Vic?”

She smiled again, and then suddenly she was all business;

“Well, we want you to infiltrate a new group working in and around Southwark. Their activities have started to become a little too out in the open, and we need to understand what their wider objectives are, so that we can plan the correct approach to frustrate their plans.”

365 Ficlets - Day #319 ~ "Queen's Walk"

The lights on HMS Belfast were like searchlights, illuminating imagined enemies or intruders, rather than being placed by design to showcase her odd, fading beauty. Paul looked out across the river, towards Tower Bridge; he took another pull on his hipflask, now only half full with the cheap whisky he had taken from Grant's flat. “For the cold.” he told himself, but was it really?

He heard footsteps approaching, but in a move planned to suggest nothing but impeccable cool he continued to count the lights on the buildings on the North Bank, and refused to turn and acknowledge the approaching stranger. The footsteps stopped close by. He heard a low, gentle cough and then in a soft genderless voice;

“Excuse me, but do you know the way to Borough Market at all?”

It was his contact, and so Paul paused for a moment to frame his practised answer and then turned;

“I am afraid not, I am just visiting from Baltimore.”

He spoke as he raised his eyes, only realising that it was Victoria as he finished the protocol sentence.

365 Ficlets - Day #318 ~ "Dark Night by the Fire"

The polished wood feels good in my hands. It’s funny the things that put us at ease, they are so rarely the same from person to person. In fact there are no other people in my life that feel even comfortable with firearms, let alone comforted by them.

Please don’t misunderstand, I am not a violent person, and I certainly do not relish the idea of shooting someone, but I have done just that in my past, just as many soldiers have. I suppose that the frightening truth is that if you spend long enough in the field you come to see it as the status quo, and ridiculous as it may seem to anyone else I am sitting here by my open fire, practically cradling my fathers twelve bore and thinking of the past.

If the shrink assigned to help with my re-entry into civilian life saw me here without the context of my true feelings I’m sure that he would immediately assume that I am contemplating suicide, but the weapon is not loaded. I don’t have ammunition in the house, it really is just that it is a touchstone to times gone by.

365 Ficlets - Day #317 ~ "Train Dream"

The lights of Oxford were streaming past the train window as I awoke from an odd dream. The particulars of the dream were already lost to me, but I am left with a definite sense that I was frightened and confused. Judging from the looks of surprise on the faces of the two people sitting opposite me I had shuddered awake in some odd fashion, and I was left feeling incredibly self conscious.

The train was nearly back at Reading, so I started to put away the laptop and check my pockets, trying to remember eveything with the dim cloud of this unremembered dream.

The older chap across the table looked up at me;

“Are you ok there?”

I nodded, my embarassment rising, trying to break eye contact with him rather than acknowledge my odd outburst that had piqued his interest.

“It’s just that you were muttering a name under your breath. I mean, who is Deirdra?”

Suddenly the dream came rushing back to my mind, and I was lost in the dark calling out ‘Deirdra! Deirdra’, and I could smell the distinct odour of fresh blood nearby.

365 Ficlets - Day #316 ~ "Riding the Rails"

As I pass down the aisle, lurching from side to side as the train shudders and jolts on every join in the track I dispense a litany of 'sorry' and 'terribly sorry' and 'oh do excuse me' to the various people whose seats I bump into or whose newspapers I snag as I pass by.

When I finally reach the train's buffet, after three carriages of offences against the peace and tranquility of my fellow passengers, I am greeted by a smiling face that already I can tell is softening me up for a disappointment.

“Could I have a coffee, please?”

The smile broadens, and the eyes widen in an almost undetectable act of supplication;

“I'm sorry, sir, but we are not currently able to serve any hot beverages.”

For a moment I consider launching into a comical rant about the fact that there is no one on the planet who uses the word beverage apart from the people who work in transport-centric catering, but in the end the poor woman's visible anxiety encourages me to forbear. I nod and turn on my heel, plunging back into the morass of the three carriages between there and my seat.

365 Ficlets - Day #315 ~ "Weirdo"

“Sorry, did you just say that you don’t like pizza?”

She nodded, a mischievious glint in her eyes and a crafty smile on her face; she knew that this was going to mark her out for special attention.

Daniel stopped for a moment, marshalling his wit, and meeting the gaze of his audience, each of them in turn, preparing them for what was to come.

“You actually have the gall to claim that you don’t really like pizza? I must say that I applaud your honesty and bravery in this company, madam! Even so, despite my quite genuine respect, I must say that as the indigenous master of the great flat food it is my sacred duty to challenge your position, and indeed show you the very grave nature of your error.”

The room errupted in peals of laughter and pockets of impromptu applause, and Daniel rose to his feet, and bowed deeply before starting to speak once more;

“Since the dawn of time, or at least since the nineteen-sixties, people of taste and learning from across this sceptred isle have known the joy of pizza in their lives.

365 Ficlets - Day #314 ~ "New Frontiers"

“Put out your hand!”

The brand was glowing white hot; I didn’t need to put out my hand to feel the heat coming from it. I reached down within myself, searching for the resolve to endure, and endure without showing weakness. Slowly I pushed my hand forward and uncurled my fingers, willing myself to accept the pain that was shortly to follow.

I finished preparing myself for the moment when thought and reality would collide and I would find out the hard way whether or not I was right to be fascinated by the idea of marking my body with super heated metal, then nodded to him that I was ready.

There are no adequate words for the pain of a white hot brand searing its way into the palm of your hand. In the moment it happened I can actually say that I felt no pain, but the brand has to be held in place for a little more than 5 seconds in order to achieve a clean scar from the relief on the tip. I have never experienced such a long five seconds; the last four were so painful. Still it did not disappoint as an experience.

365 Ficlets - Day #313 ~ "Bar Heist"

“Buy me a drink”

I had not even seen her sit down; I was staring into my beer, minding my own business, trying to work out how to get out of my contract. No one believes me now, but meeting women had not even been on my mind when I left work and headed straight to Dane’s.

Anyway I looked over, and unashamedly checked her out; after all she had just commanded me to buy her a drink. It seemed only fair. She reminded me of a young Janeane Garofalo; her sleeve tattoos left me wondering whether or not they continued under her crop-top. Now you can say it was low that I decided I liked the look of her, and so I was sold on buying her a drink, but it was more than her look. Her look was important for sure, but the gall to sit down next to a stranger and demand a drink added to the way she looked and with her overall demeanour as well, she was compelling.

I waved the barman over;

“Yeah, can I get another beer and whatever she’s having, please, man.”

He looked over at her and raised an eyebrow;

“Black Jack on the rocks.”

365 Ficlets - Day #312 ~ "Mission Improbable"

The air is cold out in the street; it cuts into my face as I walk out. No one back home ever believes me when I tell them that it gets cold in The Mission. everyone back home in England thinks that California is like the SoCal beaches in Baywatch, but the Bay Area is not the OC. March in San Francisco is cold by most Californian standards, and windy evenings on 24th make leaving Carlos’s less appealing, but I have to get home.

Since Lottie moved out I have been staying later at Carlos’s, or The Phoenix, and it’s starting to show at the office. Being the ‘token Brit’ means that the State Department are ever present, their agenda unambiguous. If ever I was a candidate for “Visa Loss” then it was in the last three weeks. Greg is a cool guy, he knows I’m hurting. Still, I have to stop turning up at the office hung-over, unwashed and in dirty clothes.

As I head off down 24th towards my place, opposite the Francis Fountain Diner, I pull my jacket closed and almost walk right by her; she’s stood under a street lamp.

365 Ficlets - Day #311 ~ "Dancing to Nothing"

“What the Hell is going on in there?”

I was pointing into the tent, where getting on for five hundred people were dancing, in the half-light, to absolutely nothing.

A stereotypically dismissive teenage boy tutted under his breath and shook his head before saying;

“You never seen a silent disco before?”

This was the first time that I was made to feel old during my visit to Guilfest, but I am sorry to say that it was not the last. My companion - who shall remain nameless at her own request - indicated that she was in no way interested in discovering the secrets of the silent disco, so we agreed to meet later on and I wandered into the sea of silent dancers.

There are no words to describe how odd it is to see a large group of people dancing to unheard music, and clearly not the same music, in a large tent. Every now and again one sees someone dancing to their iPod, but nearly five hundred people dancing to headphones? It’s just odd, there is no other way to put it. I put some headphones on and fell into the groove.

365 Ficlets - Day #310 ~ "Cruel to be Kind"

I looked up from my coffee as he spoke to me;

“Are you going to stir that forever, Keiron?”

I smiled at him and shook my head slowly. He deserved answers, I knew that, but I was so conflicted. I tapped the spoon on the edge of the thick espresso cup, two short taps as I always did, and then the quiet clatter as I let it drop on the saucer. I pulled a cigarette out of his pack, lit it, knocked back half of the sweet, dark coffee and then tried to look him in the eye.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Paul. Do you want to hear that I love you? Do you want me to promise to come out, for me to tell you that we have a future together? Are lies what you came here for?”

His face is all the punishment I will ever need, the pain and indignation in his eyes and the tears starting to run down his cheeks are all knives to my heart, but it is better this way.

“So it was all pillow talk? You meant none of it?”

I shook my head and dropped my gaze, to show him shame and hide my own pain. He needed to hate me; I owed him that.

365 Ficlets - Day #309 ~ "Strangers on a Train"

“Is this seat taken?”

I looked up from my book to see a flustered looking woman, loaded down with bags. She had that slightly desperate look on her face, you know the one that seems to beg for the seat. Luckily it was not my brother’s seat so I offered it up.

“No, not at all. Please…”

She visibly relaxed then struggled to put her bags up on the overhead rack. After a lot of huffing and puffing she managed to get all but her handbag up on the rack and then she slumped down into the seat with more relief than one often sees over a seat on a train.

“Thanks.”

Her smile was delightful, and I realised that her voice was not what I had been used to hearing for the past few weeks, since we had been in the States.

“No problem. You’re British, right?”

She smiled and nodded;

“Yes, yes I am. I’m from a little place called Manchester, and not the one in New Hampshire, I’m from the original one.”

I consciously dropped my faux mid-Atlantic;

“Me too, me an’ our Kid, ‘e’ll be back wit’bevvies any minute.”

I love the memory of her face.

365 Ficlets - Day #308 ~ "Oops-a-Birthday!"

It had got to that time of night. The music loud, the drinks many; at least one person had seen an ex and cried or stormed off. Now the bar is just a little bit uneven where once the floors had been flat and the walls straight.

There is no justice in the world, but the simple truth is that this is the moment when the person that you most want to impress in the world walks into the place looking for a late drink and some friendly faces, and that is what happened to me.

Jessica was the coolest girl in college. I and almost every other guy in our year had been staring at her from across rooms, and the bars in town that would let us in on lunchtimes. Of course not a single one of us had ever had the nerve to talk to her. Now here she was, next to me at the bar, on my birthday, remembering my name, and of course I was dribbling drunk.

“Heya, Jess… You look fantast-t-tic!”

She smiled. I wasn’t sober enough to see it, but she actually did that smile, you know, the ‘Oh my God’ smile. I know because someone took a photo.

365 Ficlets - Day #307 ~ "Daemon Days"

“I am here? Why aren’t you here?”

Nothing. Of course there is nothing there, at least nothing that is visible to the mundane senses. I look again at the empty corner of the room to which I had directed my comment, straining to look with my heart instead of my eyes.

Now I can sense what you may be thinking;

“Is he describing the moment at which he finally lost his grip on reality?”

Well, I have to admit that the thought has crossed my mind, but in the end I have decided to embrace the connection I have started to feel about an attendant source of inspiration. It was an idea I had heard from a bright and compelling writer whose take on creativity really spoke to me, and so I have tried to find the good grace to allow for the possibility that my creativity is if not entirely from without my being, that it is at least enhanced and perfected by an unknowable external force.

“I need your help, now more than ever”, I said to the corner, “you know this is what you’re here for.”

Just as I was about to give up, it was there.

365 Ficlets - Day #306 ~ "Questions..."

“Look at me… Please!”

She raised her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes filled with fear and pain.

“I’m not going to hurt you, well that is to say I’m not going to attack you with my fists or my feet. What I have to say may hurt you, but I no longer care about that, at least not as much as my own sanity.”

She sobbed slightly, lifting her trembling had to her lips and looking for all the world as though she wanted to protest, but could not frame the words.

“I have stopped waiting for you to give me real answers. I don’t know if you think that you are protecting me or yourself or maybe both of us, but I need to hear the truth from you and then you need to hear the truth from me, so just be honest with me. You did not really love me, did you?”

Her face was suddenly awash with tears and between the sobs there was a refrain of;

“But I did, I did.”

I fixed my eyes on her, locking our gaze together, waited for her to pause and simply slid the verbal knife home;

“Then why did you leave? How could you do that to us?”

365 Ficlets - Day #305 ~ "Strangers on a Train"

I can only see the side of her face, and yet for some reason I am completely drawn to her. I can’t stop looking at her. She is two rows ahead of me, fussing her bag and then gently brushing a stray red hair back over her ear, the beauty of her white skin and the soft suggestion of freckles on her temple…

How do I get from this point to actually connecting with this woman? I am so drawn to her that I am not even thinking about her naked, or thinking about what it would be like to kiss her or touch her. I am thinking about talking to her, I am imagining how her voice will sound, how her eyes will move and focus in conversation.

She is reading a briefing document; is she a civil servant, or a political aide? I imagine her briefing an MP or brainstorming in a think tank; she has that air of gravitas without seeming anything but exciting.

I fantasise about offering her my card, saying that I never normally approach strangers, but if she would consider posing for me I would love to show her my vision of her beauty.

365 Ficlets - Day #304 ~ "It's your birthday..."

“Do you want to go to the movies later?”

Carrie’s voice drifting in from the bathroom woke me from a light sleep, the kind of Sunday morning snooze that every working person spends their weekday mornings dreaming about.

“Yeah, that would be cool. What do you want to go see?”

She wandered back into the bedroom, her body still covered in tiny water drops, her hair tousled and wet, and suddenly I was not listening any more.

“You wanted to see that comic book movie, the one that the whole of fandom is either scared of seeing or is creaming themselves about. I saw the trailer on the Apple website and I have to be honest I quite fancy it.”

I tried to concentrate. I mean here she was just standing about naked, which I loved, but it wasn’t like her, and she was suggesting that we go and watch the kind of movie that normally she ribs me about even wanting to see. For a moment I wondered if it was my birthday.

“Yeah, I’d love to see that with you, baby, thanks.”

She climbed onto the bed with a very wicked smile on her face.

365 Ficlets - Day #303 ~ "Afterthought..."

If only it had been like the movies; that is what those of us who made it out of there were left with. In the movies, as often as not, there are less survivors, so it might seem strange to hear me say that, but that’s the thing that no one gets. Extreme as it may sound, I spend a lot of my time wishing that I had not survived, mired in survivor guilt as my shrink calls it.

I mean I can be doing something as mundane as buying fuel for my car when I have a flash of memory and all I am left with is guilt at having not helped this person, or having run away from that encounter, or just incredulity that the people I watched die had not been able to take in the most simple information that would have saved their lives.

Zombies are not hard to kill, not when you get down to it. All that they want to do is to grab onto you and bite and eventually eat you, so as long as you keep your distance from their low-speed shambling bodies and deal out head shots that they don’t even understand to defend, then you are home free.

365 Ficlets - Day #302 ~ "Message in a Prism"

The sunlight caught on the chess piece, the faceted crystal creating an odd irregular prism. She looked at the centre of the piece, scanning it for the hidden message that she was certain Ged had left. Turning it slowly between her thumb and forefinger, she tried to find the correct angle to unlock the crystal, as she was trained to do so many years before.

So engrossed was she, she did not hear Yuri enter the room, she did not know to conceal the chess piece and her efforts until it was too late.

“What are you doing Anna?”

She started, and instinctively attempted to palm the chess piece, drawing too much attention to it;

“Yuri, you startled me! Isn’t the sunlight beautiful this afternoon?”

He smiled;

“Indeed, my dear. Come, tell me what you have in your hand, sister?”

Her shoulders fell, she knew that he had detected her poor legerdemain. She also knew that Yuri had never been schooled as she was, would never understand the truth. She rose trying to drop the piece into the pleats of her dress without him noticing.

365 Ficlets - Day #301 ~ "Underground"

The sunlight coming through the street level vents looked for all the world like ladders up out of the tunnel as I wandered along the disused tracks. A few people had warned me that there might be homeless people down here that would not take kindly to an interloper from the surface world, and might move from displeasure to hostility once they realised that my cameras might buy them some food or whisky. Even so I had not seen anyone for about forty minutes and I was starting to think that I had found a real treasure, that there was a good chance I could persuade Sophie to model down here for me.

I started to look for landmarks that I might be able to use to remember places and things that I wanted to use as backdrops; this piece of graffitti, that broken column. I never heard him coming, I was so engrossed in my work.

“Sir, put the camera on the ground and get down on your knees with your hands on top of your head.”

I flashed a look over my shoulder and was amazed to see a cop with his weapon leveled at my back.

365 Ficlets - Day #300 ~ "Morning Run"

The sun had only been up for an hour or so, but already the sand felt warm beneath his feet. The quiet lagoon was indeed paradise, just as she had said it would be. The waves were barely lapping at the beach, even though he could see much heavier breakers out beyond the reef, and the copse of palm and other smaller trees on the western border of the lagoon was an effective windbreak from what was at least a fresh force four.

He took another mouthful of water from the canteen and then bent down to slip his feet into the running shoes, gently batting any little bits of sand away. He enjoyed the ritual of even little things and putting on his trainers was no different; these were the last few habit-formed things he would do before he would indulge in another daily habit.

Feet safely ensconced he took one more slug of water, placed the can on the ground and walked down to the wet sand. Once there he picked a spot to run to on the eastern side of the lagoon and began to put one foot in front of the other; to run.

365 Ficlets - Day #299 ~ "First Duty"

The pine needles under my knee feel slightly scratchy, but I have been schooled repeatedly that I must not flinch until I am spoken to, and I must not lift my eyes until my presence has been acknowledged. It is the first time I have been given the honour of carrying news to the throne, and along side the swell of pride in my bosom there are nerves aplenty.

“Rise and approach good messanger, we would hear what news you bring to our ear.”

I look up and see the Night King, resplendent in his finery upon a throne of wood and bone. He is everything that I have been told he will seem to be; authoritative and beautiful. I am awestruck and though my moment’s pause is appropriate, it is in no way calculated. Slowly and carefully I rise to my feet and slowly approach the throne, and the King gestures to a seat by his left hand where it is clear that I should sit. I take my seat and he leans close to me so that I may whisper my message into his ear.

“My lord, the words of the forest are in my keeping for your ear alone…”

365 Ficlets - Day #298 ~ "Cruising for a Hit"

“Excuse me, but can you tell me where I would find Kings of Leon, please?”

I thought about telling her that I was not a member of staff, but she was fairly clearly somebody’s Mum, rather than a fan, and I didn’t have the heart to throw her on the questionable mercies of the actual staff. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit attracted to her as well.

“Er, yeah sure. Just come this way and I can point them out to you.”

She smiled and relaxed, she seemed relieved to be led to the Rock section of the store.

“So, are you a fan?”

I asked as we weaved in and out of other browsing customers. She smiled and laughed nervously;

“No, I’m more a Girls Aloud and a bit of Aleesha perhaps. No this is my punishment for getting myself a younger man. It’s his birthday and I wanted to get him something he really wants, which was fine until I had to walk into a record shop.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself on the inside as this admission trickled out of her; my good deed for the day was not going to be rewarded with a phone number.

365 Ficlets - Day #297 ~ "We Could be Heroes..."

“Hi. Listen, I know that this looks bad, and you have every right to call the Police or just run like Hell, but I didn’t believe your assistant that you had seen my request for an appointment to meet with you, and well…”

I was aware that if I kept talking I could well be accused of trying to do too much; that tailing off and not belabouring the point might indeed serve me better than sounding too desperate.

It’s not often that one of your literary heroes catches you shinning over their garden wall on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but I had been getting desperate. As a solution, having worked out roughly where DeLacey was living, I had spent Friday evening buying drinks in the village pub until the actual location of his house was shaken loose. Now here I was, on my knees in the camelia bed, gesturing a little wildly with a notebook and hoping that perhaps the greatest novelist of my lifetime was going to be amused or at least curious rather than angry.

“Get up, young man. Would you like a cup of tea perhaps?”

365 Ficlets - Day #296 ~ "Moondancer"

The cold clear water of the brook feels good in my hands, clean and fresh in my mouth. It is a fine night, here in the high country under the moon and stars, far away from the sights and sounds of man. Even the hikers whose camp I can see below the waterfall are enjoying the wilderness with a sense of respect. I can see no litter and their food has been properly secured off the ground and away from the camp. They are sitting around their fire with a guitar and heavy blankets, singing quiet songs and from the smell of things enjoying a joint.

I watch them for a while, drinking until my thirst is slaked. I remember being tied to their world, and a pang of jealousy does strike at my heart. Even with the life of wonder I now lead I miss the simplicity of a normal human life - Starbucks, Chipotle, The Movies, videogames and the internet. Still, I have my night’s work ahead of me, no time left to linger. I say a brief prayer to the Owls “watch over these innocent souls” and disappear into the woods, unseen, unheard.