A Burned Tree

Tags

Burned tree, fiction, flash, loss, Love, Memories, nostalgia, short story, story, Tree, writing

The tree is burned out now; a charred and hollow shell which somehow still stands against the wind and rain, but a reminder that once it had been ours. The scars we left upon it are mostly gone now either scratched or scorched away, but, if I look closely and for long enough, I can still make them out, the initials carved so long ago. I can still picture those days, dredge them from the furthest recesses of memory, remember them as if they had been only yesterday. Days when the Sun hung like a medal, golden and resplendent in the sky; days we felt would never end when the Sun would refuse to set. We ran then as if each day were an adventure, a gift waiting to be unwrapped, pulsing with promise and dreams.

Dark days came, days when gunmetal clouds did their best to shadow and usurp our futures, but somehow we always found the Sun within us, and the strength to see them off. We had each other and that gave us strength enough to hold things together. Together we took on everything that the world had to throw at us, and always emerged with a smile on our faces. Sometimes battered, sometimes bruised, we always knew that we would rise again, unbroken and with music in our hearts.

We had met in childhood and even in those early days we could sense the vines wrapping themselves  around our ankles, tying us together with an invisible yet unbreakable bond. It was the kind of friendship only read about in books or seen in films or on television – a superhero and his sidekick, or partners in crime or detection – the kind of friendship that was both attracting to an outsider yet had the scent of the unbelievable always hanging over it; a kind of ‘too good to be true’ aura, but to us it meant the world.

It was something that we never really talked about, this sense of love that had grown between us. It had become an unwritten chapter in our story, but, at the same time, the one that contained the glue that held us together, the one that defined who we were. It was never a physical love – what existed between us transcended that – ours was more like an altruistic and nurturing bond, a co-dependent relationship made up of two individuals who, independently, were strong, but together a unified force on a different plane. At least for me, reflecting now on the burned out tree in front of me, that is exactly how it was, and there is nothing in our history that would make me question it.

Nothing, of course, stays the same. Despite our wishes and our best intentions, change is inevitable. At the precise moment when everything both in and around one’s life seems settled and to have found its place change emerges from its resting place like a slowly waking dragon. It stretches itself out, flexes its wings and inhales deeply preparing itself to burn away the carpet which has grown beneath our feet. I am not, of course, decrying change – without it none of us would ever move forward, and the challenges thrown down make us, and have made us, who we are, but there are times when, just for once, the dragon might be better served by taking a slightly longer nap.

Like everybody else we grew up and then grew older. Time moved inexorably onwards without care or regard for the past, never once looking back on itself. People, places and events came into our lives; some stayed some left to be quickly forgotten. A few left their mark. There were things that touched us both whilst others brushed against one rather than the other, yet, despite everything, one thing remained a constant: our friendship. It felt as if nothing would ever really change between us, even when we fell both in and out of relationships. Time and the weather wore away at everything around us – faces and places could not withstand the force of nature and progress, but, for me, what we were was always the one thing that I could always hold on to.

And then, on a night when I had struggled to find rest, the storm hit. It was as if I had not even fallen asleep when the dark rumbled echoed through the house and shook me awake. I felt as if I had been grasped by the shoulders and was being shaken roughly, as if being warned of some terrible fate which was heading my way. Outside I could hear the rain lashing against my roof and windows. A fretful wind was pounding the fences, trees and bushes that surrounded my house as if it were trying to destroy the barriers I had erected to keep the outside world at bay. I found myself standing by my bedroom window gazing out over the roofs and towards the fields beyond them. Without warning the sky was ripped apart as a fork of lightning exploded through the darkness, lighting the shadowed landscape below it as if it were day. 

I knew then that everything had changed.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

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Night Bus

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Bus, death, fiction, Flas fiction, flash, loss, Love, night, short stories, story, thoughts, writing

I sat on the bus, watching the night-lit streets as they passed by like frozen, shrouded memories. The juddering, stop-start motion seemed to bring an uneasy comfort to my body, detached as it was from my consciousness. Other vehicles, heading in the opposite direction, appeared and then disappeared as if they were on some mythic quest, their headlights dull and dim below my position on the top deck of the bus, illuminating nothing but the first few steps on a journey without end. For a moment it seemed as if only they knew the direction in which to move in order to find some salvation, some respite from the pain, and yet I knew, contained within each metal box, was nothing more than one more lonely figure hoping beyond all hope that something, some miracle, would appear to snap them out of their coma.

Buildings rose up on either side of me now; giant monoliths, some pale and dark, devoid of life, tired and waiting for release, others still humming under the electric glow which gave them purpose. Their eyes stared out without seeing through the dark, and were gone again, lost to me as I moved steadily on. Their facades hung momentarily in my mind like all the faces of people I had met in my life, before fading into a sea of ashen memories. The night around me seemed to tighten its grip as, like an abandoned vessel, we sailed on.

To both the right and to the left of me roads sprouted off from the main artery down which I was travelling. They sparkled and twinkled with the hope of the newborn before even their lights were swallowed by the darkness into which, it seemed, the whole world had fallen. I shuddered as the bus lurched around a corner: not from the cold – I had long since become immune to that – but from the impending realisation that we were, at last, nearing my stop, my final destination.

And then everything was quiet, but for the pounding in my chest and the pulsing in my head. What if I were to remain on the bus? Would it eject me when it reached its destination, its point of termination, or would it show a glimmer of empathy, offer up a hand and cradle me to its heart? After all, my brain reminded me, what point was there to alighting, to leaving the bus to continue without me, if you were no longer there to welcome me home?

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

Fifteen Minutes

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creative, fiction, Fifteen minutes, flash, flash fiction, short stories, stories, writing

A short phone call, or an even briefer text was all she needed to know that she was wanted; to affirm her existence. A shower and a quick drink – an intake of alcohol to loosen lips and deaden the senses – was all the preparation that was required. Perhaps a comb dragged through the hair; perhaps a quick spray of scent; maybe even new underwear. Nothing more was necessary.

He would come and then come again before the long hand had swept fifteen discarded minutes from the floor as if they were flakes of dead skin. Words were never more than pleasantries, never more than perfunctory. They hung between she and him like an embarrassment, squirming as if they had some other place to be; as if they wanted to be used for some purpose other than merely to fill the brief gaps between hands and flesh.

They moved clumsily, aggressively, drifting in and out of sync with one another until an uneasy climax planted a full stop between them. There was a moment’s silence, as each felt the other would pass comment: but neither ever did.

He would collect the clothes that he, in his urgency, had strewn on the bed, couch, chair or floor. Slipping on his shoes he would watch her briefly as she lay, or dressed, or stared, and then stand.

He closed the door behind him: he, on one side, breathing heavily, either in tiredness or disappointment, she, on the other, sated and hollow in equal measure.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

Catching Flies

Tags

Communication, creative, fiction, flash, Love, short stories, story, writing

She moved like a veil in the breeze, delicate and fragile,whispering her love between the clouds as they passed like strangers on the shore. Wisps of her hair, now chestnut, now russet, brushed the silent air, painting it with rainbow hues that scattered their love like angel feathers. Behind the cobweb curtains I shuddered, afraid of catching something that I could never hope to hold; something far beyond any expectations I may have held. I shivered, my fear the cold against the warmth that swarmed around my like an excited army of bees, hungry to feed on the sweet nectar which seeped from her every pore. Stolen glances were always enough: enough to shroud the fear of loss, of letting go what could never be held; enough to feed a dream in which to live, a fortress which I could build and rebuild as I chose, strengthened by a look or an over-heard word.

She floated, dancing on water, drifting ethereal from plane to plane, never resting for too long in any one place. Her voice, the words she spoke, swirled across the land like a nurturing blanket, and I knew that wherever they landed new life would emerge – beauty in the wake of vacuum. Her words touched my ears, kissing them gently like a dying friend, and that was enough.

If only I had known that they had been all for me.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

Coffee and Friends

Tags

Change, creative, fiction, flash, flash fiction, Friends, Prose, short story, stories, writing

I had always believed that the city would never change; that it would remain a constant in life, a place to which I could return again and again, knowing that it would hold the footprint of my life forever. Yet now, as I sat in the coffee shop, itself now merely a child of an international chain which offered identikit refreshment regardless of location, I realised that I knew nothing of my surroundings. Monolithic buildings had risen and now towered above the remnants of a much older city, a city which seemed to hide its face as if in shame. Giant mirrored panes reflected sunlight, cars, buses and pedestrians alike. Leather-clad riders wove their motorbikes deftly through the traffic, their deliveries already cooling in their carriers, their reflections appearing, distorted and twisting in the glass, before vanishing from sight. The facade of the station stared out across the city streets, its advertising hoardings boring holes into passers-by as if they had some life-changing message to impart. I tried to think back, to remember the city of my youth, the city in which I had learned to become a man, the city that would forever be my home, but I could not connect my memories to the vision before me. The street names flooded back, each one triggering a recollection, a remembrance, and, yes, none of them had changed, but none was truly the same. It was as if, during my absence, the entire city had undergone massive cosmetic surgery: the creases and wrinkles that informed my memory had been smoothed out, erased, as if I had never been here before.

I sipped my Americano slowly, its bitter tang already lost to me, and wondered what had happened to plain coffee and the corner cafes which served beverages unencumbered by exotic language. Names began to form themselves in my mind, drifting slowly into my consciousness, begging for recognition, and, for each in turn, I formed an image of what I believed their physical forms had looked like. My accuracy in this task lay somewhere hidden in the depths of a memory which I was beginning more and more to doubt. I was, of course, secure in the knowledge that these people, these characters, had, at some point, come into my life. Some, perhaps, had stayed a while, may even have fallen beneath the blanket term of ‘friendship’, others would have been acquaintances, interlopers who came and went, leaving nothing but the shadow of their name. I had imagined each as being inexorably connected to the city, as if their very existence relied on that of the city. What, I wondered, would have become of them as the city as the city underwent its rejuvenation? Perhaps they had been absorbed into the very essence of the city, become part of its fabric. I imagined their eyes, eyes that I was unable to picture as physical objects, staring at me from the walls that surrounded me, eating their way into the heart of me. I could feel their presence gnawing at me, unearthing more and more names that had lain buried within me for years.

One name seeped forwards to the front of my brain, chalking its outline into my consciousness. It belong to one of those people who had had the distinction of falling into the category universally defined as ‘friend’. I had grown up with this friend throughout the now distant days of our schooling, and our friendship had endured the days of change when school life ended and the threat of adulthood reared its head. It was true that we had followed different pathways – he had plunged headlong into a world of employment and responsibility whilst I had sought to avoid such ties by attending the city university. We continued to drink at our usual haunts and waste our free hours with the same distractions that we had grown up with: it was as if we were children of the city and it, as any dutiful parent would have done, was holding our hands as we grew. And then I completed my years at the university, my now qualified status hanging from me like an anchor rather than wings, and the door opened up on my future career. At the same time another town came calling, your name on its lips, and you were gone.

Eight years. Eight years out of a lifetime. Eight years during which it had seemed unthinkable that we would ever not be friends; not criticise our local teams; not put the political world to rights; not drink away the long summer nights. And yet eight years disappears beneath the days as they pass by building walls behind which we can no longer witness the change that creeps silently all around us. Before I had even realised it, as life guided me along pathways that I could never have predicted, pathways that monopolised my hours, years had passed by and what we had once shared became nothing more than distant memories: memories that I could no longer trust. Memories that, for all I now knew, may be no more than figments of my imagination. Before long the city had shaken me off too and, under the guise of ‘career development’ my life led me to different cities, all of whom welcomed me like a prodigal son. Roots were cut and roads forgotten.

And now, as I drained my second Americano and watched the reflections of passing strangers appear and disappear in the mirrored glass, I wondered how much of my own life existed only as mere reflections in the lives of others. The faces that had drifted through my life had been no different to my own: they had come and gone in a constant state of change and I, who had thought that somethings would never change, had been wrong.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

A Farewell

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creative, fiction, flash, flash fiction, Honesty, loss, short stories, story, thoughts, writing

I thought of you then, on the day that I left, knowing, despite the words, that we would never meet again. I thought of you as I sat in the darkness, as the Sun dipped like a dying friend beyond the horizon for what might as well have been the last time. I knew that I, like the errant Sun, would rise again, but that neither of us would ever be quite the same: the Sun would burn fractionally less brightly, its gaseous source ever so slightly diminished, and I, with less reason to rise than before, would begin to become a shadow of myself. I thought of you and the words that we had shared wondering if you had ever truly understood my meaning. Had you thought of me as a friend or merely an acquaintance, and had I ever truly understood what lay behind your eyes? I thought of how close I felt that we had become, our shoulders brushing against one another as we shared a joke, our laughter spreading its roots between us connecting us forever, or so I had imagined. But did you leave me behind along with all the other artefacts of work when you closed the door behind you and returned to your home?

I thought of you and wondered whether I had been too obscure, too subtle in my words and looks, for you to see me. And what exactly had I felt? Was this a connection that I felt that I had needed or something that had burst upon me unexpectedly and had opened a new door which whispered quietly for me to go through? Perhaps the moment had come for me, after a life of living at a comfortable distance from the edge, to finally take a chance, a risk. But, of course, caution is a powerful bedfellow, and, by the time I had recognised the chance, if had closed its eye for ever.

I thought of you then and wondered if you had ever lain alone in the dark beneath the Summer’s heat: I wondered if, like me, you had lost yourself to imagination; and I wondered if you had ever found yourself with your hand between your legs, wishing its fingers were mine.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2019

 

Episodes

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creative, Creative writing, faith, fiction, flash, flash fiction, short stories, stories, Vignette, writing

     It was at that moment that I realised that my life had been no more than a series of episodes: some linked by connections which only presented themselves with hindsight, when events had long since lost their relevance, others disparate, fleeting, scudding past like clouds in the sky; yet more presenting themselves like movie scenes, half-remembered but titleless.

      And it was to these movie scenes that I had clung, as if they would somehow, miraculously and with the wisdom to time, meld themselves into a story that I was able to follow, to understand, even.

     Yet they came and went with the regularity of Japanese trains, each proferring a new horizon, a sense of purpose to which I was a mere distant observer. Landscapes flashed by me, tantalisingly close yet constantly beyond my grasp: I witnessed every imaginable situation, every conceivable outcome, but always, as they sank below my horizon, I was left with nothing more than a hollow sense of detachment; of impotence.

     The camera rolled and then stopped, rolled and then stopped again, as if responding to silent cries of ‘cut!’. And through each scene I played the role of an extra, watching and waiting. Watching and always waiting.

The Awakening

Tags

Awakening, Communication, creative, dream, fiction, isolation, Philosophy, Prose, short stories, thoughts, writing

     A wash of faces hovered above me like a crudely painted ceiling fresco. Eyes, some filled with hope, others relief, bore into me like burrowing beetles. Beyond them an antiseptic ocean of white stretched as far as my own eyes could see; but I was prone, lying like a whale slowly exhaling its last on a beach the colour of gold.

     There were voices; voices which swirled over me like bees returning to the hive, heavy with nectar. Their sweet words bounced between my ears futile in their attempt to make sense of themselves. The sounds meant nothing to me, and neither did the tones which were targeted in my direction. Did the faces expect a response? Part of me guessed that they did, but I could not fathom the reason.

     The expectation behind the staring eyes was palpable, and even my forgotten, deadened senses could taste it. As for why, well, I could find no explanation. I looked back up at the waves as they crashed and dispersed before my eyes and realised, at last, that not one of them meant anything to me.

Dale Street

Tags

creative, fiction, nostalgia, short stories, short story, story, writing

A bit long, perhaps, but I hope you’ll stick with it (and enjoy!)         

          Only once did I go back. For only one moment did I find my mind swamped with nostalgia and feel its frond-like fingers clutching and clawing at me, trying to choke my future from me. It was only once, merely one, brief moment, one solitary idea which grabbed my thoughts, imploring, pleading, persuading them to take a different pathway; speaking softly in sweet, seductive tones of unfulfilled desires, aspirations unachieved, yet still within reach of my out-stretched hands – of opportunities whose doorways still remained ajar. It was one solitary moment in time, one glimpse of a half-forgotten time, which, in my madness, I allowed to place temptation on my lips; one moment, but still one which I felt inexplicably compelled to follow. Only once did I go back to Dale Street, to see the place where I was born.

          The street looked as it always had done; worn, tired asphalt stretching endlessly before me, dead, grey paving slabs broken, raised and uneven, failing in their ceaseless battle to fight back the weeds which pushed insistently up through the cracks which ran between them. The weeds, it seemed, were the only thing fresh and different in an aspect that otherwise remained forever static. I walked onwards, letting my feet take lead me on a once familiar journey. I walked past doors that I remembered and those which I had never seen before, although I knew that they must have always been there. Gaping windows watched my journey with disinterest as I moved along the pavement, the heels of my black, recently polished shoes clicking gently as they struck the concrete. I imagined the sound echoing through walls, connecting with pasts that hung unobserved in the air deep within the houses, resonating with memories which had long anticipated my return.

          The air that swept me along was warm, tempered only by a softly whispering breeze – a perfect summer’s day – which spoke to me in hushed tones of distant pasts. I could feel the sensitivity of its fingers stretching out towards me like electric wires, their fibrous tendrils crackling, urgently trying to close the gap between the past and the present, desperate to bring themselves close enough to bridge the gap and to complete the connection. I walked alone, aware of the life beginning to rise once more within me, past neatly tended gardens, low built, red-brick walls and alley-ways which stretched away from me like lost children exploring newer and newer connections of their own, making memories which would be unique to them.

          The footpath fell away, almost without warning, opening out into a wider stretch of tarmac which was scattered liberally with cars – passers-through, people who had no connection to me, although of this I could not be sure – visitors; customers. From within the newsagent’s shop, which stood, as it had for generations, as a Mecca for the child with loose change to spend, money that had, at all costs, to be spent, I heard voices. I heard the voice of a boy, a voice that resonated with me. It was a high voice, its young pitch clean; happy, perhaps, but laden too with more than a hint of pleading. The woman’s voice was older, static and unmoving, and as familiar as the boy’s. The denial was final, unequivocal, and even without looking I could see myself in the scene – the turning of a shoulder became the turning of a back and a blocking of ways. The tone dropped lower to an insistent, menacing hiss, and the joy of youth was instantly diminished. One figure moved towards the door, steadily and with conviction. For a moment the second, younger figure was still, as if it were tied to the object of its desire. The boy waited in silence, but the force of his will was not sufficient to sway either his mother or the things that were the focus of his stare: nothing moved. Then, as if responding to the inaudible shrill of a dog whistle, he turned, his reluctance and disappointment hanging like a black clock from his shoulder.

          Outside the grocer’s shop I saw a face that I thought I recognised from many years before. Briefly I was returned to a time that I thought that I had lost many years ago. Once again I was submerged in my teenage years, wrapped in youth and futures that I dreamed were real. I was in a time when options and opportunities were myriad, and I had no inkling, no concept of the fact that it would be me myself who would be the block to my own ambitions and be the one who stood in my way. For now all futures were possible, the table was full, and all I had to do was to select the meal that would fulfil me, and sate my needs. I felt a glow rise within me, filling my aching eyes, and with hope I moved forward. I recognised the girl, and as she turned around she looked into my tired eyes.  By the time my feet had taken me nearer to her, however, my focus had been restored, and as we crossed one another’s paths, we passed as strangers. Words like daughter, niece and grandchild fell from my mind onto my lips and then died, tumbling unspoken to the floor.

          I passed beneath the black-arched bridge which bore the weight of heavy trains as they too took treasures away from the town that had been my home. Its grime and graffiti stained bricks echoed with the sound of dogs as they barked their warnings. For a while I paused, half expecting the rumble of great metal wheels on tracks to awaken something that had been asleep for too long, but no sounds came from above me. And then I was in daylight once more, following Dale Street as it led downwards, its decline more severe than I had remembered. I crossed the gurgling stream, watching it as it continued its endless struggled against the broken undergrowth, discarded rubbish, plastic bags, road traffic cones and abandoned tyres. It bubbled words up towards me, and as they broke the surface of the water, they spoke to me; harsh words and tender lies, ignored advice and disregarded orders, words that I craved to hear, and those that I had never asked to be aired. My ears were ringing and, as I looked both back at the road along which I had walked, and forward to where it was leading, I realised that they had never told me which way it was that I had to go.

          A small group of men walked past me, talking of trivia, filling their motion with empty words as if by doing this their time would bear greater meaning. In their eyes I recognised the expressions of boys, boys who had been forced to spend too long in the same place; boys for whom the novelty of the new had worn out its welcome. And now they were men, men who had lived beyond the point of leaving; men who lived in resignation and acceptance, trapped by themselves, yet within whom still lived the child who they could not quieten. I turned my eyes away and, in my own movement, realised that I had gone unnoticed by them. My voice wanted to roar, to make my presence known. I wanted the street to acknowledge my return and to be aware of my existence. I wanted the town to recognise the son who had come back to it. I wanted the Dale Street of my memories, my clouded, rose-tinted, faded, romanticised memories to take me back.

          But my roar was nothing more than a whisper which floated gently into the air above me and then disappeared without notice over the town that I called home.

Random Ramblings (2)

Tags

Communication, creative, fiction, flash fiction, writing

A few lines on the importance of punctuation…and listening.

You said, “Please, don’t go.”

I turned and walked away, my world shattered.

My ears heard, “Please don’t. Go.”