All stories

“It is hot today. Yes. No wind. I have been thinking. That we should talk. No, look, don’t say anything just let me speak. I didn’t think I could see you today, but i’m here. And that should count for something. I think. I hope. But I should start with i’m sorry. Yesterday was hot. Too hot. And i was drinking as usual. And it makes me do stupid things. Sorry. Last night was not stupid. That’s not what I meant. Look shall i start again?

I have always respected you, and what you do. I thought my job was lonely, with nothing but sheep to keep me company. But I can't even begin to imagine what it’s like for you. So much responsibility, so much entrusted to your keeping and yet you are so restricted as to what you can do. But you have been my rock, my guide, my confidant, always there for me. Someone to speak to. No judgement, no comments about why im wearing a stupid tunic in this day and age. Just quiet support and strength. I guess I couldn't have asked for more. And maybe I took advantage of that. I don’t know if you wanted last night. If it even meant anything to you. If you really even felt anything. But the truth is it happened. And we can’t go back from that. And I'm not sorry, not really. I mean I've wanted this for so long.

I’ve brought you another scarf. I figured you’d need one after what I did to your old one. Call it an olive branch if you will. Look at that, it looks good on you, brings out the gold in your...hair.

Last night. When I felt you in me last night, it was like I was absorbing all your wooden strength. I felt complete. Stronger. Safer. Your protection ran through me, just as i had imagined it would. Each splinter has stayed with me.

Sure others might mock. But is it so strange this love? Do people not love their mobile phones more than their husbands or wives. Has mankind not always idolised and worshippped money above all else. These imaterial, material things. But what we have is of the earth. Literally. Our love goes deep. It tastes of the soil, the trees, the plants, of whether worn wood and straw. It smells of windswept days and endless rainy nights. What is so wrong about that, when compared to all else mankind has loved.

I know that you are not mine, I know that. I know Farmer James has a reason to warn me off his land. But I cannot stay away from you. From us. As the birds flee from you, yet always come back to your crops. That is as i am. I wonder if you could run, would you run to me? Would you hold me in your arms as you did last night. Or is that moment gone now for ever. A ploughed field, never to be resown. I don’t want an answer. Just stand straight. Continue your watch and look for my return with maybe, hopefully joy in your soul.

Pale streaks of light begin to creep into the sky, snuffing out the stars one by one, until it changes from velvet black to soft, deep navy.

Emma’s breath comes in thick, white clouds as she laces her running shoes. It is her favourite time of day; when the world belongs entirely to her, because no-one else has bothered to wake up and claim it.

Last night’s gin still swims in her head and she tastes it at the back of her throat, but an hour alone with the road and the dawn will set her right.

Her breath comes fast and hard at first, but soon her feet find their rhythm on the tarmac and she slips into that liminal space between thoughts.

Scenes from Henry’s party flash in her head; Sarah crying again, all mascara streaks and scarecrow hair, Alec trying, and failing, to stop her drinking anymore. Henry shepherding his drunken guests from his bedroom back down to the kitchen.

Emma, mainlining gin and fighting Lucy for the Singstar mic.

Feet pounding on the pavement she smiles as her head begins to clear. As last night drains from the sky, Emma lets herself think about Anthony. He had been there of course.

She’d watched him watching her for a while, their familiar dance. She’d be angry, he’d be reasonable; charming, contrite. Armed with excuses and peace offerings and those big sad eyes, he’d begin and she’d let herself be talked around. Again.

And they’d leave together. It was as predictable as Sarah’s hysteria.

But not last night.

Emma’s smile broadens. Something had clicked and suddenly those sheepish glances were not winning, but just a little pathetic, a little desperate. He had begun and she had responded with amused indifference, letting a little disgust play at the corners of her lips.

He hadn’t liked that.

Good.

A thin sweat prickles over Emma’s skin as she runs, measured breaths, the metronome beat of her running shoes. The elastic of her sports bra digging into her skin, the slow heat beginning to build.

The creep in the goblin mask assumes she hasn’t seen him, but she clocks him straight away behind the concrete slabs under the bridge, watching.

Emma is used to arseholes and perverts on her runs; that’s why mum gave her the taser. It’s illegal of course, but she feels safer with it. Usually she can just shrug off the catcalls and stares, but this guy is different. He means to frighten.

Her route takes her through the dark underpass by the museum. She could change it, but some of last night’s defiance still clings to her. Maybe a little of the gin too, if she’s honest.

She doubles back on herself and watches him enter the underpass

She enjoys his confusion for a moment; his stained grey sweatshirt, his bin bag, bulging with god knows what and, as she slips the taser out of her running belt, Emma lets a little of that disgust play around her lips again. The expression that made Anthony so furious would enrage this guy, she is sure of it.

Good

Emma moves silently towards him laughing to herself as he tries to figure out where he lost her. He’s come prepared, she sees, electrical tape, hacksaw, plastic wrap.

And there in the halflight, in the death throes of the dawn, Emma goes to work.

It is her favourite time of day.

Max was lying on the bed in their holiday let. Alongside him was an almost empty bottle of whiskey. In all truth, it had been mostly empty before he started drinking, product of a year’s timid sipping, but he liked the look of it: down to the dregs, just like this so-called marriage.

He was not drunk. He was not going to get drunk. They had guests arriving early the next day for all three of the cottages. There were animals that needed tending, bills that needed paying, and all this before he got in his car and hit the road for work yet again. But it was fun to play with the bottle between his hands, to hold it up to the light and squint through the liquid gold. To imagine the glass shatter as it crushed the bridge of Taylor’s nose.

He had paid for that fucking nose. And the tits. Those same fucking tits she whored out to the help, and God knows who else. What was worse? Shagging the young shepherd who helped with the animals, or knocking off some local big shot councillor who lived two farms over? At least the shepherd was young, full of vim and vigour, with no trace of a middle-aged spread. She whored herself for beauty and taut muscles; no shame in a man nearly sixty not being able to compete with that.

But the joke was on her anyway. Slumming it with some shepherd who dressed like scarecrow.

Taylor was in the house with the kids but her voice was here with Max in his head, saying that the kind might dress like a scarecrow, but he screwed like a lion.

Max did not get drunk but he did neck the contents of the bottle and let merciful sleep take him.

He was woken at six in the morning by Alison. She was sitting on the end of the bed, pouting at him with her arms folded.

She said, ‘Not talking to you,’ and very pointedly looked away.

Max lay on the bed saying nothing. He was looking at her tumbling blond locks, and he was thinking of the matching blond curls of her brother.

She looked at him. She deepened her scowl.

‘You didn’t read me my story. You were home, and you didn’t do my story.’

Max did not answer. Before he shaved the remainder of his hair at forty-five it had been salt and pepper, and Taylor was one hundred percent genuine bottle blond.

But the fucking shepherd.

‘I want my story,’ Alison said.

‘Didn’t your mother read you a story?’

Alison scoffed. ‘Mummy’s rubbish. She always stops to look at her phone. I want a Daddy story.’

Max shook his head. He wanted to say that Daddy wasn’t here right now. He wanted to tell her she should walk down to the village. Where the shepherd lived was easy to find, take the second right after the pub that was now named The Olive Branch.

Alison’s face had dropped into sadness. She made her eyes round and big.

She said, ‘Pwease…’

Max began to smile. ‘I have a story…’

Alison’s face split into a delighted grin, and she clapped her hands together.

‘It’s not a happy story,’ Max said. ‘It’s about the shepherd who cried wolf. It doesn’t end well for him.’

When Lee awoke he had no idea where he was or how he’d got there.

His head….hurt. His right arm….hurt. His right leg hurt really badly. He couldn’t see out of one eye.

He tried to stand up but couldn’t , sharp rocks were digging into him from below and the heat dissolved his resolve like dry acid.

He groaned and through his good eye saw an olive branch above him framed by a sky which was the deep intense blue of the Mediterranean. The sun was in the middle of it, burning a hole into his forehead.

The knot of his Adam’s apple felt like wire wool in his throat and the floaters in his eyes circled like vultures.

With enormous effort he managed to raise his bloodied, burning shoulder and rest on his good arm. When the blue and the blinding white and the dull green colours had stopped spinning he was able to look in front of him and see a barren landscape with windmills in the distance. In the foreground stood a dark figure bearing a scythe. It was not a scarecrow.

“Death!” Lee whispered through the wire wool.

Death reached forward and bestowed upon Lee the strength to stand then turned and motioned for Lee to follow upon what he presumed was his “final journey”. Together they crossed the stony field, stumbling ever upwards towards the sky. Death placed Lee’s hand upon the scythe to steady him and pointed at the horizon. Lee was at peace, soon to be delivered from this life of sin and pain.

At last, after a lifetime of rocks that cut his flip-flopped feet, Death led Lee to his final resting place. The shaded hut from which none returned. He sat upon on a stool and he ate a last meal of cheese, bread, olives and honey whilst drinking delicious water from a pouch of hide.

Then slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lee’s feverish visions began to relent and he realised that Death bore the form of an ageing Greek Shepherd with bad teeth. His scythe was now a crook with a nobbly end. Most prosaically of all, the thought began to occur to Lee that he wasn’t actually dead. In fact he was beginning to feel a bit better.

Death pointed at himself and said “Antonis” and smiled a yellow smile. “Antonis” said Lee. Lee then pointed to himself and said “Lee”. “Lee” repeated Antonis.

Antonis ripped a part of his own shirt and tied it over Lee’s wound and made a present of his second best crook and water canteen. After a few minutes further recuperation they walked to a path and Antonis pointed Lee towards a well-worn path from which he could see Mykonos Town a kilometre down the hill.

Lee hugged Antonis like a brother and limped away.

Then he returned slowly to his hotel where his friends were still sleeping off the effects of last night’s even wilder than usual party.

Lee has never returned to Mykonos since, but he keeps the crook and the water canteen as both a souvenir and a reminder of the day that Death came to save him.

For a moment all was well. He was floating at the upper edge of the stratosphere where the blue sky fades to black, looking at the curve of the earth. Somehow he could see himself down below, a pinprick on the map of fields, trees, rivers and villages. The atmosphere gently cradled him in a soundless cushion. Then all of a sudden, he telescoped down with a rush, through the clouds and into his own head.

He first became aware of his ear being extraordinarily cold. He opened his left eye and could see only brown.

“I am Dave” he thought to himself. He was indeed Dave – Dave Shepherd. So far, so good.

Next he opened his right eye and stared at the brown. This staring caused him to blink and as he did so a lightning storm seared his brain. It felt to Dave that his head was oozing through tiny razor edged fissures of bone. Simultaneously he became aware of jagged pains in his legs and hips, as though he was lying on rocks. The brown came into focus and differentiated itself into tiny grains, lumps of soil and….rocks.

Dave slowly put his hand up to his head. “MY HAIR. WHERE’s MY HAIR? MY HAIRS GONE!”

His hand butted up against a wooden object and Dave slowly turned his head to see what it was. He had to do it in tiny increments so that his brain did not hammer against the inside of his skull.

Looking up Dave saw some dirty patched legs with straw coming out of the knees. He decided he would sit up and spent the next 25 years, it seemed, slowly positioning himself an inch at a time. Once in a more upright position Dave could see the entirety of the field in which he had slept. It sloped off towards a small coppice. In the distance were some sheep studded hills over which the new sun was breaching. A delightful pastoral scene silently appreciated by Dave until the entire contents of his stomach made a Vesuvial egress onto his already soiled clothing.

“I don’t remember having red onions”

The fragments of Dave’s consciousness were rapidly joining now to reveal a scene of dire circumstances. He was alone in a field having spent the night there following his stag do. He had no hair and was covered in vomit, he was freezing cold, probably dying and not anywhere that he could identify. He was getting married at two o’clock.

Dave checked his pockets, which were of course empty - phone, wallet, everything gone. Dave turned slowly onto his knees and then hoisted himself up until he was eye to eye with the scarecrow. Big blue buttons gazed at him and saw deep into his soul and he was found wanting.

In the distance Dave heard a car engine. As he turned, walking tentatively across the field was his best man looking sheepish, carrying the international symbol of reconciliation, a McMuffin and coke.

“I’m going to kill him” whispered Dave to the scarecrow, who knew better but said nothing.

The scarecrow feeds me its black eyes. Yellow stalks of teeth gnash through the tendons in my neck. Curled bones grip my shoulders as I thrash in attempted escape. Purple pulp squirts from my veins and runs down the straw chin of my assailant.

Let me back up. To the day before the dawn. To the beginning of this nightmare.

I was walking home from League City Middle School, a shithole of a single building stuck in the cow pastures of southeast Texas. Slick mud and cow shit marked my trail.

It was 4 p.m. on a wet November day. The sun threatened to disappear behind a thick mist. My thin, tattered jacket did nothing to protect me from the cold. I buried my head into my collar and daydreamed of sunny days at the beach with my family, my dad next to me, extending an olive branch for his perpetual absence in my life. We were together on this beach and it’s what I’ve always wanted from this miserable teenaged boy’s life. But so far, it’s been nothing but loneliness and acne.

My daydream was broken up by a giant squish and then the suctional pop of my shoe as it plunged into a wet cow turd. I lost my balance as my shoe popped off and my sock soaked deep into the earth, my foot wet and my mind bitter. I screamed toward the sky for my bad fortune and wished to be struck dead by lightning. I retrieved my shoe and slipped it back onto my soggy foot and then stomped away, head down and fuming.

I must have daydreamed longer than I thought, because when I looked up from my misery, I was no longer on the trail. I’d wondered through a broken barbed wire fence and into a large pasture. I was about to turn back to the trail when I noticed the most peculiar thing: a scarecrow. We don’t have scarecrows in southeast Texas. There aren’t any cornfields here. Just fat, lazy cows. I needed to investigate this, no matter the weather or time or my ill temper.

The scarecrow was partially hidden by a large oak tree, its branches snaking out from the squat trunk like tentacles. I approached it cautiously, jumping at the squawk of a crow standing guard atop a wooden fencepost near the tree. It flew off when I approached, large black wings shepherding in a death I could not foresee.

The scarecrow was propped up by a large wooden post with rusted barbed wire wrapped around its emaciated body. Its eyes were sunken black holes and its skin a tattered and dried straw stuffed burlap sack. Its mouth was a gaping, miserable looking maw and I imagined a silent and eternal scream escaping this monstrosity. I took a step back, intending to flee this cursed place, when I tripped over a root and fell promptly to the ground, striking my head hard against the earth. Blackness.

When I awoke, head pounding, my body felt chilled, as if I’d been outside for hours. I scanned the sky, with only my right eye, as my left was swollen shut, and noticed the sunlight was breaking over the eastern sky. Dawn. Indeed, I must have been out cold all night. I wondered if my family would have missed me and called for a search party.

I felt a sharp pain in my left arm and grabbed it, expecting a broken bone. What I found was much worse. The scarecrow was next to me, gnawing at my elbow, its hands a horrifying yellowish bone. How I hadn’t noticed it before I can only imagine was due to the injury to my head and my left eye swollen shut, for now I could see it clearly and as it feasted on my body.

And that brings us to the present moment, the black eyes of the scarecrow gleefully pulling me in, the yellow stalks of sharp teeth sinking into my skin, the blood from my body forever running. My final wish, my final daydream, is again that of a perfect summer day at the beach, surrounded by my family, father next to me, holding me, keeping me safe.

Nobody comes running when I scream my final scream into the blood red morning.