“I must be brief. By which I mean, to the point, or as some say, succinct. There is no sugarcoating this issue. No, how does one term it, beating around the bush. Being concise is of the utmost importance. Of this, there can be no dispute. I shall tell it as it is, plain and simple. To embellish would be to waste time, and time is a commodity one must cherish. I shall shock and disturb with my unerring bluntness. I shall hit the nail straight upon its head. My mind is focused. My intent is as unwavering as a sharpened, cutting edge, dagger-like. The words I have chosen are plucked from a pantheon of such for this one specific purpose. Oh yes, my young friend, you shall see how direct I shall become. You will see.”
“See what?”
“The details I must impart, of course. For they are of a delicate nature, thus this exacting conversation. To see it is to believe it, but to be told it, well… it must be indisputable. You see, my attentive, well-meaning fellow, he’s gone to meet his maker.”
“He’s what?”
“He’s defunct, lost, gone, departed, irrefutably non-existent.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You do! How so?”
“Shall I be brief?”
“Please, I should appreciate your not withholding those same indelicacies that I have not withheld from you. I would want it no other way. There is no other way. So, yes, you must be brief. In fact, I demand it.”
“I shot him.”
“Oh.”
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Her eyes were the colour of the open sea, transitioning from calm to storm, rippling in sargasso blue, almost indigo, deep and dark, yet tepid. This changed as she changed. Her demeanour ignited. The calm still of the soul she hid so well rippled into being. Those waters that were her eyes pulsed a cerulean mirage. She brooded. I gulped.
Seconds became minutes became more, or so it seemed, and the storm she’d often threatened whirled a maelstrom of frothing cobalt. Hurricane winds tore at her kelp fields for lashes. All the energies of all the seas manifested as a single violent ocean. She churned. I feared.
The abyssal depths had nothing on her, as she exploded in ultramarine, a devastating tsunami. The tears poured forth not from sorrow, but absolute rage. Her world was my world, one of liquid purification. She laughed as I wept, as I fell, as I dreamed a torrent of lies.
I awoke to a strange sensation of bobbing, and her calm again cyan orbs.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
“I know,” she breezed and leant in closer.
She pressed. I dipped beneath the waves. The blue faded to something darker.
The drowning didn’t kill me, just the reality of my foolishness: Her eyes had never been blue, but as black as her cold, dead heart.
The End
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
I am very pleased to have had my short story ‘Moonscapes and Melancholy‘ published today by Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Those who know me will know I don’t make a big song and dance about such things, though I should, but this journal is a real beauty. I would encourage anyone who writes short prose, fiction and poetry to head over there and take a look at what they require.
The feather weighed more than my soul, but less than my heart. That had to be true, didn’t it? I carried my soul around daily and never felt it once. You wouldn’t have known it was there. My heart, however, now that weighed tonnes. It often plunged through my torso like a sinking treasure chest to nestle in the oceanic depths of my gut. Sometimes, my heart even pounded like a fist against my ribcage, bruising and battering. The thing dragged me down when I sat and resisted me when I stood. My soul did none of these things. Yes, the feather in my hand was more like my soul than my heart. That’s why I took the former with me when I left the latter behind.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
I keep my soul in a suitcase tucked under the bed, where spare blankets and duvets abide. This is a safe, quiet place where no one else goes. There’s no danger here, only sanctuary.
I keep my soul in a suitcase shoved deep under the bed where monsters gather at night. I hear it crying when the rains cease falling and the moon stops hanging its head. The sound is a constant these days.
I keep my soul in a suitcase hidden deep under the bed, amongst other such discarded junk. I have no use for it any more, never did. Perhaps one day I shall stumble across it, undo the case’s rusting catches, and unpack what’s left. Then again…
I keep my soul in a suitcase too deep under my bed, where dust motes gather and spiders make webs. There’s no means to reach it, as my back hurts and old age has ruined me. No, really, it’s true. I hope it’s doing well, though, and it will remember me when I’m gone.
There’s a soul in a suitcase left under a bed. There are others, too, but they don’t converse.
She frowned in that way little children do, with that absolute certainty that she and not them were correct. Her brows creased to Norwegian fjords so severely as to threaten to crack her porcelain features. Her eyes narrowed. The crème de la crème, out came her tongue to blow a raspberry to wet the world. She ran.
“Come back, stranger!” roared the little boy.
Kara bolted back into the trees from which she’d emerged to a whiplashed face and thorn-tugged clothes. The boy had no such issues, for he was smaller than she. He proved faster, too.
The little boy had her by the ponytail before she’d exited the hawthorn bush. He tugged. She wailed.
There was a scuffle, a curse regarding the football shirt the little boy wore, one returned with interest about her red wellington boots — how she wished she’d worn trainers, he’d have never caught her then. And only when the two staggered from the bush and fell in the long grass did the idyllic summer return.
It was several minutes before the boy rose to his elbows and offered the first words of a truce. “You’re the strangest girl I’ve ever met.”
“My name’s Kara,” she hissed. “And I’m not.”
“Robbie,” he replied. “And you are so.”
Robbie was unsure whether the wellington that hit him square on the jaw was called Kara or the girl who tossed it? He imagined he ought to have known, but the stars in his head prevented any confirmation. So much so, that Robbie collapsed back into the grass with a thud. There, he remained.
Kara waited an appropriate amount of time before retrieving her boot; it slipped back into place with a schlep. She gave her new nemesis a kick, then a pinch to his bare arm, both to no reaction. “Hey-ho,” she mused.
Robbie remained as recumbent as an overfed sloth.
“Why did you leave him, love?”
“Why not?”
“But it sounds like he’s hurt.”
“So what? He started it.”
“It sounded very much like you did. It’s not normal to blow raspberries at someone who was just walking past.”
“Raspberry,” corrected Kara.
Her mum rolled her eyes. “Come on, you’ll have to show me where you left him. I want to make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s not okay.”
Her mum pulled the same frown Kara had.
“How’d you know?”
“The same way I knew he was going to call me names.” Her eyes widened to raging suns. “I’m strange!”
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
Grinning, she toasted his death, then smashed the bottle over his head.
They locked her away, called her mad. She was mad, but not without reason.
Seventeen years later, and release. She went straight to his grave and did a jig. The police were waiting. They each shook her hand.
Ours was an unusual romance, one bordering on desperate, teetering on brave. Whether squawking like crows or cooing like doves, we loved and hated with equal passion. She was the black rose with thorns so barbed as to puncture, and I was the unwitting gardener who cultivated its cruelty.
Corrine was a hateful woman until one got to know her. She discouraged this by using a wide variety of scowls, sneers, and shakes of the head. If one got close, she stepped closer, sudden and sharp. If one spoke over her, woe betide them. The darkness in her eyes steered all in the required direction, drove the rest away. All except me, that was. I couldn’t run. My pride wouldn’t allow it. We grew close. Some might have claimed us entangled.
We took a tour of Europe by train, The Orient Express. You may have heard of it. Despite the indisputable luxury this vehicle offered, Corrine bellyached non-stop. At first, I agreed with her, employing appeasement. Soon, I grew as disenchanted as she, not with the train trip, but Corrine herself. Despite her unrivalled beauty, her exquisite lines, hair to die for and eyes to drown in, there was only so much one could take. I had taken enough.
I stepped from the train as we crossed a viaduct. Dramatic, but true. I had, of course, threatened to leave first. “If you don’t stop! I’m warning you! I’ll do it! Don’t tempt me!” Etcetera, etcetera.
“Promises, promises,” her always reply. She’d blow smoke from her cigarillo right into my eyes, as if us trapped in a Parisian haze. The urge to scream became unbearable. So, I did. I’m unsure when I stopped?
So, as mentioned, I leapt from the train whilst my strength remained, my will still intact, and most of all, whilst Corrine was, as we say in polite circles, momentarily indisposed.
I hit the water as her scream shattered the landscape, sending boulders crashing and birds flooding into the sky.
The question came after thrashing my way to the riverbank, where I lay like a floundering fish until the moon rose high and stars blinked a welcome: Why? Why would a woman who so discouraged interaction, actively oppose it, be bothered? In the greater scheme of things, what difference did my escaping her make? Here was the key.
Schemes are like flower bulbs planted so deep as to go forgotten. Only when they burst unexpectedly from the cold, hard earth into rainbows of unexpected colours do they become apparent. I was her colour, and she the darkness that buried me.
We met again quite by accident at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan. I had taken a liking to this country so unlike my own, where a shrug meant more than a novel and kindnesses were only ever a handshake away.
Turandot: Opening night. The performers were so close as to sing in my ear.
I don’t know why I turned, looked up, stared. Why I held her gaze when I should have slipped down in my seat, or better still, run. She was older then, her raven hair now closer to lead. She wore black, trimmed in lace, as an Italian widow might. Her face was as pale as snow.
As the music played, she mouthed something at first unreadable in the fragmented light. At first, but not by the end: You killed me.
Curiosity forced me up there to that empty stall. Curiosity or madness? Getting even never came into it. She had gone. Only a solitary black rose left snuggled in a seat proved her ever there. This, I took.
London, and home.
The rose remained un-withered, as fresh as if picked that very morning. This, I planted in my garden.
When I awoke the next day to Big Ben’s incessant chimes, breakfast was on the table. I had no servants? The windows were thrown open, the curtains flung back and a stench of decay permeated the atmosphere. Confounded, I wandered outside. The rose was gone.
Corrine’s fingers slipped around my throat like a noose.
“I always wanted to visit London,” she breathed. “So kind of you to bring me.”
We argue daily. Life is not good. Yet in my heart of hearts I know this, I missed her misery, her melancholy ways, and she missed mine. For what is life without the threat of death to keep the world in balance. No, seriously! I need to know?
“There’s sharks in the river!” screamed Ray.
Our elders set out to kill them, men and women. No one returned.
The army tried next. They dynamited everything, then drained the river. There wasn’t a shark or a villager in sight.
“I lied,” confessed Ray.
“So did our parents,” I replied.
She made sweeping changes, everything from burning the curtains to killing the cat. The outside faired no better. She had the garden walls knocked down, the fountain plugged, even the old willow tree hacked to pieces. She did all this with a smile on her face and an unwaveringly airy disposition. Next, came me.
She made sure I saw everything, every last detail. She stood there bold as brass, hands on her hips and announced in a voice so sick as to be sweet exactly who she was, this woman who’d bought it all, my business, my home, myself.
“I’m your half-sister,” she purred.
“Half-sister!”
“Uh-huh. The worst half.”
Father had never said a word, and now he never would, after all, she’d disposed of him first. Apparently, it hurt less than the cat, and on the plus side, saved me a job.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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