due to be published in Silverfish New Writing No.7 (short story teaser)

The Good Lieutenant

The all-pervasive storm’s last few water droplets drip through the jungle canopy. Like diminutive mirrors, they refract and reflect their surroundings, dispersing themselves through leaves and branches, brushing arboreal orchids and finally gracing the curvaceous pots of Malaya’s Nepenthes alata (pitcher plants).

The rain has ceased its thunderous downpour, and the jungle’s heat begins to offer up a beguiling mist, obscuring pathways and veiling traps for the unwary.

Birds again begin to sing - monkeys to cavort and the human occupants to go about their tasks and responsibilities.

The wet subsides - small insects embark on their multifarious tasks.

Ants locate sustenance and organise to carry their loads.

Bees and hornets seek nectar hustling too and fro, gathering and building for the collective good of their respective communities.

Below the verdant, labyrinthine, forests of 1950s tropical South East Asia, the humid noon-day sun beats down on banana leaves near a rural mine manager’s bungalow. This colonial structure now doubles as the neighbourhood anti-communist Federation of Malaya Police officer’s billet.

The 1930s red brick built, single storey unit, now houses both mine manager Ian Ogilvy, and the newly posted Police Lieutenant on anti-terrorist duties - Lieutenant Reginald Lyndon Gold.

Reggie Gold is the sixth police lieutenant billeted at the mine house since ‘The Emergency’ began, and Ian was getting a little battle weary having to adapt to each of the new temperaments. Though, the truth to be told, this latest chap seemed ok – a down-to-earth sort of bloke who took his job seriously and doted on his wife and children back in Blighty.

Across the world in the British motherland, it is November, 1951. Churchill’s second Conservative government has been in office a month. The long exhaustion of the Second World War had dissipated three years earlier, changing the known world beyond all recognition.

Families decimated by warfare are still struggling to hold their heads above a financial deluge. Men-folk ravaged by armed conflict have returned to the British Isles, no longer themselves.

Many never returned.

The British Empire has shrunken to the British Commonwealth, with previous colonies eager to disassociate themselves from the motherland.

One by one the adjunct countries seek independence through the political process, or other means.

Britain is recovering from rationing and shortages brought about by a war economy - trying to boost the general morale with the Festival of Britain - which finally closed its doors on the 30^th September, 1951.

Overcrowding and air pollution plague London, urging central government to build new towns to dissipate a populace devastated by war-time aerial bombardment, and decreasing health due to the prolonged inhalation of coal smoke.

In Suffolk’s county town – Ipswich, the desiccated brown leaves continue to fall, easing its inhabitants from autumn into chilling winter.

Nights have become crisper and morning frosts sharper. Woollen winter coats are drawn over inner jackets, and boots have gradually replaced shoes. Days have become shorter as the nights lengthen. A longing for imaginary summer sun begins. Slowly, insipiently, the yearning for sunshine urges the populace to consider summer holidays, and where, when, they should satiate their growing lust for the sun.

In a red brick end terrace ‘two up two down’ house on the outskirts of Ipswich - Suffolk’s county town, Joan and her two boys sleep peaceful, though a little cold. The youngest, John, at seven months cannot really recall his father, while the eldest - two year old Mark is just old enough to begin missing his presence.

As they have no choice in the matter, they sleep oblivious of the dangers their father is exposed to daily.

A clear sky will usher in a frost later, leaving tiny white shards of ice decorating winter grass. In the morning Joan will go about her chores as she has done these last few years, and in those few odd moments of idleness fret over her missing husband.

In the cool morning Joan will listen to BBC Light Radio for news, this is her routine. In the front parlour the family’s dark brown bakelite wireless stands on a 1930’s wooden sideboard, bedecked with a lace runner. Next to it stands a slightly stained black and white photograph, in a thin, bevelled, wooden frame, of a smart young man in uniform. It is partially hidden by the last of the garden’s fresh russet chrysanthemums, gracing a clouding glass vase.

published in Silverfish New Writing No 5 (short story teaser)

the Orchid Wife

The day's heat, soaring to previously unheard of heights for a Malaysian October, had increasingly given way to humid storm clouds. Incandescent streaks of forked lightning were swiftly followed by deafening cracks of thunder, as if mischievous stagehands battled behind a Chinese Opera. Outside the caged kitten mewed in chorus with a puppy's terrified yelps, appending vibrant theatrical effects to the fluctuations of Devi's anxious heart.

Now married twenty-eight years, she had resided in her house, in Butterworth, since the wedding reception. The growing clutter, gathered by an increasingly obsessive husband, threatened to consume the entire house. The walls badly needed painting. The toilet pipe needed fixing - water gushed onto the floor every time the handle was flushed, and piles of ancient newspapers were obstacles that constantly impeded visitors' progress. Some years ago she had planned to divide the single storey house into an upper and lower level, but her husband, for reasons unknown, forbade her to execute the already drawn up plans.

Devi had forsaken a law career in favour of her arranged marriage to Chandran. One day her ageing father had presented her with a fait accompli, marry Chandran - a man fourteen years her senior, with good prospects, or wait and maybe never find such a good match again. She had little choice but to comply with her father's wishes. Her father was not a man to nay-say. As eldest daughter Devi was compelled to marry first, for custom demanded that her sisters would be unable to wed if she did not. Or, at the very least, society would view Devi as suspect, were one of her sisters to be betrothed before she. Devi may be considered unmarriageable in that eventuality. From the time of her father’s request, it would appear her fate was sealed.

Lightning accented an enlargement of Devi's deceased father's photograph, hanging opposite her on the greying wall. The ceremonial ash, faint but still visible, on the dusty glass over the figure's forehead, indicated that she still remembered, and revered him. As the thunder cracked again Devi recalled the early years of her marriage to Chandran, the beatings and his overbearing dominance of her. She remembered running home to her father and the urge she had to see Chandran again. Deep within her a segment of her soul recalled the almost addictive nature of her relationship to him, and her inability to break free from his almost Rasputin like, mesmerising, effect upon her. Several times her brothers extracted her from Chandran's house, only for her to long for him and return within days. It was an anxious attachment she couldn't explain, but it was the force that kept her with him through the years, despite his treatment of her.

Rain exploded into the now muddy letrite path outside the house, shooting particles of wet red earth onto the front patio and beating a tattoo on the asbestos corrugations of the orchid lean-too. Even the electric ceiling fan was briefly hushed by the cacophony, brought about by the torrential downpour. During the storm's infrequent silences, nude house-lizards tut, tut, tut, tuted their growing disapproval, trying to fill the vacuum. Scents of the lush, green, garden vegetation permeated into the house, along with the heavy scent of Devi’s orchids – her one joy in life, and sometimes the only safe haven during a domestic storm. These natural odours mixed with the fragrances of freshly cooked fish curry, rice and fried vegetables. Chandran insisted that his dinner be ready when he arrived from his office, on Penang Island. He had left instructions on what to cook, how to cook it, and when it was to be prepared. Devi dare not disappoint him. She knew what repercussions there would be. On one occasion Chandran had even locked Devi in the bathroom all night, when she had displeased him. On another, after arriving home late from work, he had hurled the Luke warm food across the room – the now dry stains of mingled spices and food debris were still to be seen on the living room wall. "Hot has to be hot, cold has to be cold!" he had yelled at her.

Mat Rempit (short story teaser)

Brrrrrrrrrrrooom.

Brrrrrrrrrrrooom.

Brrrraaam, Brrrraaam.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop

brrrrrrrrrrrooom

brrrrrrrrrrrooom

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop

Brrrraaam, Brrrraaam, Brrrraaam

Each forceful twist of the motor-bike’s black rubberised throttle demonstrated the boy-teen’s power over his machine, his transient youthful rebellion blatant in each twist – unashamedly parading his mascot manhood.

The sleek 70c.c. yellow and black two-stroke machine emitted wrenched explosions as the tiny engine screeched inner-city life, rearing and bucking as it reached to the moon and wheelied along the saffron lit Kuala Lumpur city street.

The machine’s suspended front wheel momentarily ceased its spin, remaining stationary for some seconds as the bike’s rider shifted his weight along the black plastic seat, forcing the fore-end of his machine into the air - the power wheel at the rear taking the full brunt of this rider’s bravado.

Unable to sustain this delicate state of equilibrium the rider eased forward allowing the bike’s front wheel to resume contact with the tarmac. The rider-machine cyborg entity, having achieved full traction, sped for all it was worth to a rapturous, bursting, ecstatic cheer from a young crowd of rapt on-lookers along the darkened city street, mottled as it was with pools of yellow lamp light.

Other riders, equally as young, equally as daring, plunged to and from the darkness into the glow of Asian city street lamps. The tropical night flashed red, blue, yellow, green and black as machine followed machine - dynamic explosions of mechanised human activity - cartoon figures against a Manga backdrop – a bizarre scene from cyberpunk Manga Anime.

Adrenalin high teen-girls jumped up and down screaming with uncontrolled delight, clapping thin, soft youthful hands as boy-racer after boy-racer sped around Merdeka Square, the cooling night air and masking darkness adding to the shivering thrill. The acrid stench of two-stroke engines filled air and lungs with potent fumes so oil-thick as to choke the unwary.

Brrraaap, brrraaap - The boys revved their punished engines louder and louder, deafening the nearby audience, evidently glorying in the explosive noises emanating from their strained engines.

Brrraaap, brrraaap, harsher and harsher the boys forced screeching metallic cacophonies from their rasping machines, maniacally shouting into the black Kuala Lumpur night, screaming defiance to the world at large.

Not ten, not twenty, nor even hundred, but five hundred riders emerged for this maddening motor cycle melee. A pandemonium of din-making two-stroke motor-cycles emerged; these effluent vehicles favoured for their ability to scream the rider’s youthful angst, boasting an (ephemeral) revolution to the controlling, grey, Malaysian populace.

A drop, two drops, three drops then the full deluge of Malaysian night rain began hitting the city streets. Riders scrambled for shelter, some sped off into the night not to be seen again at this meet, others, perhaps slower than their counterparts, stood and soon dripped with the warm rain as it permeated their hair, their clothes and their bravado.

The rain washed out the (mat rempit) motor-cycle gathering, clearing and cleansing the streets ready for the Monday commuter morning.