Nanonovels

2007-06-05T14:07:00.000+01:00

Contents

nanonovel η12
the man who looked like someone

nanonovel η13
stocking face

nanonovel η1
the find

nanonovel η2
disinfected youth

nanonovel η4
holiday home

nanonovel η6
animal magic

nanonovel η8
stuck story

nanonovel η9
you! yes, you!

nanonovel η10
commata

nanonovel η11
seize the day

:home hub:
:stories less short:
:product magazine:

Stocking Face

2007-05-18T15:21:00.000+01:00

Once, when I was small, my father pulled a stocking over his face. He was pretending to be a burglar of the kind we'd seen on the telly – the kind who pull stockings over their faces and disguise themselves so completely that they can get away with anything.
I didn't think a stocking would be a good disguise. They looked so flimsy and transparent. I thought anyone would be able to recognise a burglar so stupid as to wear a stocking and imagine he could go about unrecognised.
So my father offered to show how a stocking worked. He found an odd one belonging to my mother. It was beige and lifeless, like a long old dribble, without her leg inside.
My father stretched the stocking out and began to pull it over his head. First he dragged it over his hair, then down to his brow and across his eyes. It stuck on his ears and had to be wrenched, then covered his nose, and his mouth, and his chin, until there was a stocking-covered father-face and a soft wriggling stocking-foot like a tassel at the top of his head.
Something terrible had happened. The stocking had melted my father. His nose was crushed flat and boneless. His eyes were wiped shut. His mouth was smeared down his chin, lips stiff and pale.
Then the mouth spoke with a muffled, laughing father-voice that said 'boo' and 'woooo' and other scary, jokey words that reminded me of words I was meant to laugh at.
He was still in there somewhere, hidden beneath the monster-skin, still laughing and talking, without the slightest awareness of the danger he was in, with this skin stretched all around his face. I didn't know how to warn him.
And suddenly, as I watched, the monster consumed him and he was gone, vanished inside this smearing, stretching horror which leered and lurched, had eaten his quiet voice and was using it for its own 'boos' and 'wooos' with a terrible sickly enjoyment.
I can't remember the rest. I think I turned and ran. We got him back soon after, but he has never been quite the same.

The Man Who Looked Like Someone

2007-05-18T15:03:00.000+01:00

He was a man at the airport in Krakow. He stood with all the others in a wintry queue and was in no way remarkable, except that he looked like someone I knew.

He had the same height, the same build, the same brownish hair, the same chin – a straight, strong chin with a hint of evening scratch. He lifted his case and edged through the sliding door and onto the bus. He lifted like someone I knew.

It was dark. Red lights took off and landed. White ones floated by. We held onto hangstraps. His fingers were as long as the old, familiar fingers, his calm the same calm. I looked up at his chin and its shadow, and recognised his slow, saved smile. It was all I could do not to lean across and nudge him in the ribs.

Du! I would say. Was machst Du so? in a tone of familiarity that would be correct and expected.

Dies und jenes, he’d say. This and that. Und Du?

I decided against it. He might have felt our resemblance to people we knew was only superficial.

And yet I knew his chin as well as he knew it himself, and I knew exactly how it would feel to touch it.

Seize the Day

2004-12-15T13:21:00.000Z

a nanonovel

A self-help article in a Sunday supplement advised Gordon to seize the day, so he did.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The day he chose was a particularly slippery specimen, well lubricated with a strange-smelling unguent. When he tried grasping it firmly, it slithered through his hands and landed on the floor. There it lay, writhing gently.

He had time on his hands. He wiped them on his trousers and tried again. Next he tried to seize it from behind, by creeping up on it from a crouching position. However, by then it had cottoned on to his intentions, and wriggled away under the sideboard, where it was coated in tufts of dust.
Camouflage was the next option. Inspired by the Scottish play, he borrowed a tall, gangly rubber plant from next door and used it to hide his tall, gangly frame as he inched his way into the room.

Gordon got close. Oh, so close! He reached out with both hands to seize the uncooperative day and shake it into submission. But as soon as his fingers met its slimy nub, it sprayed a jet of stinging fluid into his eyes, which temporarily blinded him.

He gave up at that point, and decided to wait for a dry day instead.

Sadly, luck wasn’t on Gordon’s side.

Night fell, and landed on his head. He never rose again.

Commata

2004-11-30T16:02:00.000Z

There was once a man who spoke in inverted commas.

He couldn’t remember exactly how it had come about. They had infected his speech sometime near the end of the 20th century.

They began by infiltrating his use of the word hello. He found he could no longer say hello without encasing it in a touch of punctuation. “Hello”, he’d say, when he walked into a room. He found it easier than the naked alternative.

At first, the inverted commas were quite faint - just breathy little whispers, reminiscent of sighs.

Gradually, they started appearing round whole phrases: “how are you?” and “have a nice day” and “your life is safe with us” - for he was in insurance sales.

He rather liked them. He felt they implied a soupçon of je ne sais quoi, or certainly something French that made him sound more intellectual. They suggested, perhaps, that he knew more than he was letting on, and was cleverly hinting at layers of meaning beneath the surface banality of his speech.

Other people, anxious to appear in the know, never challenged him. They even became infected, and began speaking the same way.

“Pleased to meet you,” they’d say, and “you, too,” and “not today, Mr Josephine” - for that was his name.

For a while, he found it slightly disconcerting, but soon realised that with everyone being multi-layered and intellectual together, a touch of unease was only natural. He never realised that they only spoke that way around him.

The inverted commas gradually grew louder. Now, well into the 21st century, they’ve become so prominent that they threaten to drown out the words themselves.

For Mr Josephine, this has become a problem. Whenever he goes into the chemists to buy “aspirins”, he is sold condoms. When he goes to the doctor and complains of “bunions”, he is given a rectal examination.

He hasn’t sold a life insurance policy in months. “Your life is safe with us” now sounds like the kind of threat made by a staring madman in a scary movie. If he followed up with

bwa-haa-haa-haaaa-haaaaaaaaaaa

and lifted a kitchen knife, no one would be surprised in the slightest.

Poor Mr Josephine. He told his wife he loved her, and she shot him in the leg.

You! Yes, You!

2004-11-29T13:40:00.000Z

a nanonovel

You! Yes, you! The one reading this story! The one with (forgive me) the slightly sleep-deprived eyes and cynical expression.

I’ve great news for you. Tremendous news.

You’ve been searching. Am I right? Searching for answers. I thought so. You have that hunted look.

No need to go into the questions here. They aren’t important. You know what they are. The ones you wake up to, sweating in the night. The ones that nudge you every step of the thankless way. The ones buried deep in your root canals.

Well, I’ve found the answers. The big, beautiful answers you’ve been seeking all these years.

Once you see them, everything will fall into place: your life, your relationships, your aching uncertainties, your unformed yearnings, your where and whyfores, your do and dyefores, your aimless rattling in a too-big world.

But I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Just click here.

Animal Magic

2004-11-28T20:57:00.000Z

a nanonovel

‘It’s not that I don’t like humans,’ said the puppy. ‘It’s just that they have this terrible tendency to anthropomorphise. Just because I have large brown eyes and a dim expression doesn’t give them the right to conclude I bestow my unconditional affection on every Tom, Dick and Harry that kicks me in the nuts. On the contrary — I’m actually a bit of a hard bastard.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said the lamb, ruminating assertively. ‘But let’s face it. Have eyelashes, will be patronised.’

‘But why can’t they just accept us as we really are?’ said the puppy. ‘Take me, for instance — a whiffy, fawning, incontinent opportunist. Love me, love my leg-tango. Now that would be true affection.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said a nearby midge. ‘You think you’ve got problems? My heart bleeds.’

Stuck Story

2004-11-28T20:46:00.000Z

a nanonovel

Once upon a time, one chilly morning in August, there was a HELP small boy with a large head and (accordingly) hat who lived HELP ME in a forgotten village in central Bavaria called HEEELLLLPPP Edelholz-Rohlingen.

One morning, his mother, Augusta — a large, friendly woman with a face like a mutton pie — decided that it was time for him to start CAN YOU HEAR ME??? making his own way in life, and sent him out to find a IS ANYONE THERE??? job. She packed him a Currywurst and a presliced packet of Pumpernickel, and PLEEASE HELP ME pushed him out the door, pointing him in the general direction of Rundschweißnähte, the nearest large town.

Being only four or HELLOOOOO! so, he soon fell into bad company, raising all sorts of CAN YOOU HEEEAR MEEE? questions about his mother’s fitness as a parent and the adequacy of the local LET ME OUT!! social services. He was soon frequenting seedy LET ME OUT! PLEEEASE! bars and making friends with go-go dancers, who were mostly kindhearted YES! YOU!! and left him alone, preferring to I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! target a wealthier clientele.

On account of his large head and (accordingly) hat, he HEEEELLLLPP came in for a lot of unwanted attention from PLEEEEAASE HEEELLP MEEEE! I’M STUCK IN HERE!! I CAN’T GET OUT!!!

I don’t know who you are, but this is getting a little ridiculous. I’ll continue the story when things have quietened down.

Holiday Home

2004-11-28T09:15:00.000Z

a nanonovel

We came back home after a fortnight away on holiday in Whitley Bay. Even though we’d not been far – not much over fifty miles, in fact – the house looked entirely different on our return.

We noticed the effect as soon as we entered the hall. The colours had changed, for a start. The carpet was brighter than before. The living room suite was a zingier shade of burgundy. The objects on the sideboard – the photos, the faux-stone water feature – were drawing attention to themselves in an unaccustomed, startling way. The kitchen sparkled; even the grimy mosaic-patterned lino gleamed like a walkway of small gems.

It was as if someone had fiddled with the colour and contrast knobs in every room of the house. Everything, from the dust on the upstairs banister to the scuffmarks on the downstairs skirting, had suddenly come alive.

We couldn’t put our finger on it for a while. We were disappointed when everything returned to its normal dullness after a couple of days. Then we realised, quite suddenly, that the dullness was us.

Our fortnight away had given the house the chance to wake up, restore its batteries, rediscover its vim, and live a little. Separated from our grey, dreary predictability and mind-crushingly boring routines, it had experienced something of a liberation. In other words, it had had a holiday, too.

We decided to go away more often after that. We didn’t want to cramp its style.

Disinfected Youth

2004-11-28T09:14:00.000Z

a nanonovel

It had come to that time in Alex’s life when Dettol was the only recourse.

Taking a lump of cottonwool from his mother’s washbag, he tipped the bottle and swabbed his body from head to toe, taking special care with the bendy, folding bits.

He combed his hair into an unusually neat side parting. Then he plugged his ears, nose and other breaches, and dressed in a long, white gown, eschewing underwear for greater comfort.

Then he lay down, for what seemed like an eternity.

The Find

2004-11-28T09:11:00.000Z

a nanonovel

The other day, quite suddenly, I found my voice. It was lying on a cistern in a public toilet in Hexham. Luckily, it was clearly labelled with my name.

The moment came as something of a surprise. I had been looking for it for more than twenty years, without success. I wondered how it got there. Had someone left it by mistake? Had someone else been using it? It was in far from pristine condition. In fact, it looked a bit unsavoury — though that may have been a reflection of the surroundings. Certainly, the odour disappeared quite soon afterwards.

I didn’t like the look of it, all mottle-green and shapeless. I didn’t know where it had been. Still, I had been searching for a long time, so I put it into my backpack and carried it home, choosing the darkest alleyways to avoid any tangles with the police. I suspected I’d be able to use it for some purpose or another.

Now, I’m pinning my hopes on finding something to say. Then I’ll have the complete set.

Animal Magic

2004-06-22T18:51:00.000+01:00