Chapter 2

There once was a Dragon

Chapter 2

By Graham

Gisele visibly winced as she opened the door to the George and Pillage. Mull of Kintyre, number one for a month now, was showing no signs of going away. She had initially been grateful that Wings had at least displaced that appalling offering from Abba, but the thought of this sentimental trash popping up every two minutes over the whole of the Christmas period filled her with dread.

She spotted Mary Trencher picking her way through the busy tables, no doubt half-asphyxiating everyone in her path, smelling like a schizophrenic fruit tree with her over-use of Pavlova Payot. Head down, rooting in her handbag for coins, she was most likely heading for the jukebox and Gisele was having none of it. Ignoring Ted who had dutifully come to the bar to take her order, and nearly knocking a tray of cherry-adorned Babychams out of Alf Butcher’s already unsteady hands, she swiftly changed tack. The dismayed Mary lifted her head to find Gisele already pushing coins into the machine and repeatedly punching one of the buttons.

‘Fifteen,’ was Gisele’s triumphant answer to Mary’s unspoken question. ‘And there’ll be more to come later.’

Ted, making a fairly safe assumption, already had the dark pint on the counter, shamrock neatly etched into its creamy top, as Gisele took her regular stool. Her face took on the closest approximation to a smile she seemed to be able to manage as her chosen song’s intro kicked in for its first play, but as the her recently deceased idol’s distinctive voice hit her senses, she could feel the sting: ‘Babe, you’re getting closer... The lights are goin’ dim’. A salty droplet spoilt Ted’s artistry before Elvis could complete the third line: ' The sound of your breathin’.'

Born Sally Bails, Gisele re-christened herself when she first arrived in the village fifteen years previously, adding the surname Egelmann for good measure. She was never sure where the fascination, near obsession, with everything Swiss came from, but she had decided that if she had to spend the next chunk of her life in a godforsaken little place like Chustlewick, then it would be under her terms, and she would be known the way she wanted to be known.

If the villagers were not unduly concerned with the incongruity of an apparently Bavarian name being attached to someone with a strong North Yorkshire accent, it was perhaps because they were struggling to a greater extent to take to this strange woman's appearance and behaviour. Gisele always wore her mousey-brown hair pulled so tightly back that her deep green eyes seemed to permanently in a state of surprise. Finishing up in two tightly braided buns, one just above and behind each ear, seemed to place her in a decade so far back that even the Chustlewickians seemed modern by comparison.

It wasn't so much that her behaviour was specifically bad, she didn't actually do anything that could be construed as nasty or evil or anything like that, but she certainly did seem to lack any social skills. The extent to which this was true, and the extent to which this was universally perceived, was exemplified in the impact that she had had on the once thriving, small guest house cum hotel that she occupied and ran.

Reg Bails gave his daughter, and only child, Sally the keys to Chustle House on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. He didn't actually use the words, 'now take these and piss off,' but the sentiment was there. His wife, Sally's mother, had departed via a cheap softwood box just a few months earlier, and this was his chance to regain the peace and the solitude that he had yearned for since first getting hitched to 'that shriveled old hag' twenty-five years earlier. He had come into the deeds for the guesthouse through a series of thoroughly suspect deals and wasn't sure what to do with it. Circumstances meant that he was not able to sell it, at least not for a good many years, and there was no way he was moving to what he considered the back of beyond.

Reg figured that if his daughter could at least keep the thing in good enough condition to ensure it was still standing by the time he could 'legally' sell it, then she would have been some use to him at last: if no ornament. Sally, now Gisele, moved in to a thriving and popular holiday choice, and systematically reduced it to a last-resort stopover within a few short years. Whereas the diary was once full on every day of the week for at least ten months of the year, there was now rarely anyone staying other than Monday to Thursday nights.

This restricted operation sort of suited Gisele. She just had to sling the sheets into the washing machine each Friday morning, give the place a quick run round with the Hoover, and she was done until Monday evening when she had to reluctantly open the door to this week's 'losers'. Long having fallen off the holiday destination favourites listing, her clientele was now limited to third-rate salesmen and businessmen, not wanting to pay the higher rates in the nearby town or industrial areas, who came by habit. Their persistence in continuing to use her establishment was hardly due to having expectations of a warm and friendly welcome, but it was cheap. And furthermore, Gisele was not adverse to writing out a receipt for a couple of pounds over the price charged, which meant that her lodgers were able to recoup enough from their expense claim to pay for their drinks at the George and Pillage, and sometimes a lot more.

But as she sat over her quickly diminishing pint at the bar, taking in the Fifth consecutive play of Way Down, she was fretting over the guest due to arrive tomorrow. Quite how she had allowed this to happen she wasn't sure, but she had a stranger arriving on Christmas Eve, and he was due to stay until New Year's Day. The man had been uncommonly persistent when he had phoned. She had done her best to put him off, but to no avail, and in the end, somehow, she had capitulated. Maybe, just maybe, it was his name that had intrigued her: Hlasek.

'Pint of Red Barrel please Ted, and a Britvic orange for Bella.' The voice, so familiar, and so warm, was uncomfortably close to Gisel's ear. But the bar was full, and Brett had probably had little choice of where he could push his way in.

Brett Charles was hardly likely to have made the choice to stand so close to Gisele easily. It was nearly three years ago that he had ended up in her bed. New Year's Eve, and they had both had too much to drink, especially him. He had woken up to a sight he had not expected, and would never have wished for. With her hair out of its persistent buns, falling over her shoulder and across her breast, she admittedly didn't look as severe as he was used to seeing her, but this was not his woman of choice. He had crept out of the room, taking care not to make any noise that could waken her, and hid in his flat until the second of January.

For her part, Gisele thought she was in love. Accepting that Brett wasn't, and that she had no cause to be, was no easy task for the woman that the villagers had long dubbed 'The Dragon', and it became no easier when, twelve months later, Bella Thompson became Mrs. Charles.

Gisele had trouble even looking at the beautiful brunette, especially since... But she couldn't help herself just now, and her gaze was drawn back into the body of the pub. There she was in all of her distended glory. Gisele could not help but wonder at the transformation of the model-like figure into this, still highly attractive, woman who looked liked she had a beach ball shoved up her dress.

And then it happened. A thought shot, unasked for, into her head. A thought so shocking, even to her, that she nearly choked on her Guinness, inadvertently spraying Brett's immaculate floral shirt: 

'I'll get even with you. Maybe not directly, but certainly through that as yet unborn brat of yours'.

End of chapter

There once was a Dragon.

Chapter One.

In the far distance lay a particularly spiky part of Switzerland, where there stood a magnificent mountain. This mountain was so huge that it wore the clouds around its shoulders like a scarf, and it's peak was like a nose on a face forever pointed upwards at the icy stars.

Part way down this mountain was a cave. It sat dark and forbidding like an empty eye socket, just above the tops of the clouds. No one had vet been there, partly because most didn't know it existed, and partly because those that did know couldn't scale the thousand feet of sheer cliff face to get to it.

There was no other way.

But if someone had indeed made the effort, they would have found themselves standing in a dark cavern that opened up wide behind its entrance. They'd have marvelled at the smooth, almost glassy, walls. And if they'd stood very still and quiet, the blood would have run cold in their veins because they would have heard not one but two things. There would be the steady and resonant plip plop of water dripping for ever into puddles that never filled, and there would have been something else. A regular breathing noise, with an impossibly long cycle. A thirty second long noise that whistled sibilantly from the dark cave depths, followed by a shorter wheeze, but a wheeze way down in the bass notes.

It would have taken this adventurer no more than a minute to turn and run, like the wind, towards the edge of the cave, whereupon one can only hope he would have had the presence of mind to lower himself down the cliff face in an orderly manner, rather than simply jumping into the void.

But of course, this never happened. It's mere conjecture, because no one had ever been there. No human anyway.

One bleak day in early Spring, the sound of the breathing in the cave started to change. It became less deep. And shorter, mimicking the quickening pace of the sound of the dripping water. And eventually it became irregular and was punctuated by an occasional grunting sound.

Sixenz, as he'd been named, although he didn't know that yet, was very young. He lay curled in a corner, with the point of his fiery red tail stabbed deep into a rock nearby, so it didn't flail about in his dreams, and cut him.

This was only his thirty fifth year in this world. Equivalent to a mere toddler in human terms. But he was already as aware of the world as any adult human. His parents had prided him with this cave shortly after his birth and then left him there, as Dragons do.

That was almost twenty five years ago. And as baby Dragons do, he'd learned to kill and eat and survive, as baby Dragons do. Far below him lay a thickly wooded forest. And when the clouds decided to sink to earth, as they sometimes did, and the forest there lay deeply swathed in fog, Sixenz would slither forward in his cave and peer down at the fog that lay like an undulating, gossamer blanket over the world.

He knew that his food lay there somewhere. A rogue deer that had strayed from the herd. Or a bleating foal, whose mother would bleat and squeak and huff great clouds of steam into the air as she ran about helplessly watching Sixenz crush her child alive with his huge, beak like jaws.

This was to be one of those days. As Sixenz stirred slowly, the sides of the tunnel that he saw as he opened his eyes shimmered in reflected sunlight, for here up above the clouds, the sun always shone. He'd been asleep for nine long months, and he was hungry.

In the usual way, he heaved and squirmed his way down the tunnel towards the dazzling cave entrance, the spines on his back grating into the groove that ran the length of the cave, worn into the rock by thousands of Dragons before him, going back to a time before mankind.

He reached the edge and, eyes narrowed against the bright light, he gazed down below. There lay the fog. Like a slow motion river in languid, silky flow across the gentle, hidden hills.

Sixenz longed to stretch his wings, which hadn't unfurled in more than nine months. He didn't look up. He didn't need to as he knew there was no one up higher then he was. Dragons ruled this world, although the world didn't realise it. So he just looked down, to make sure all was safe before he launched himself from the cave mouth, and shot like an arrow downwards, eight hundred feet to the fog wherein he slipped and vanished silently.

The forest was still and grey. Monotone shades from pale grey like bloodless skin, to dark shadows within shadows. All creatures stayed still and waiting for sun.

Leaves on trees were deathly still and dripped gently. Except some, that quivered momentarily as though something had passed that way, disturbing the tense air.

A lone stag stood still as a statue, his antlers gleaming wet and his dark eyes watching. But he didn't see enough. For him, the air moved suddenly, a blur to his right and the agony as his rig cage was crushed between two halves of a hooked beak three times his length.

Sixenz had enjoyed the hunt. It was good to feel the cold pressure of the wind under his wings again. And the taste of warm blood brought him alive. Concluded his slumber. The fragile body of the deer collapsed in his mouth.

And then he looked up. Stood not thirty feet away was a man. Watching him. Stood stock still like a statue, eyes wide. Stillness returned to the forest for a full half a minute, as each looked at the other.

Sixenz saw a man stood there in the wood. But something happened to him then. Then at that point, he grew up and became what he was meant to be. Sixenz wasn't like any other Dragon. In fact, he wasn't like any other creature in the world, this one or any of the others. Sixenz came to realise this within the first five seconds of having seen the man.

Sixenz realised with a shock that he could remember his past life, in every detail. All in one moment, he not only acquired this knowledge of a different world in a different form, but he also acquired the ability to process it. All at once. And a mere babe-in-arms Dragon, barely out of the nest, suddenly faced a world with the comprehension of a human man some seventeen times his age, in human-dragon years.

Actually, now Sixenz had seen enough, he saw that it wasn't a man, it was a woman.

But what Sixenz saw in front of him was no longer a beast called a woman. What he saw was both what he saw normally, as a Dragon, plus what the woman saw. As a woman and also as a Dragon with warm blood running down its iron hard chin, and warm blood curdling in the other.

Ten seconds had passed.

The woman turned to run and started to scream. Sixenz saw prey and death simultaneously. Sixenz understood the world in a much wider sense. He, in a moment, came to understand the perspective of everyone and every thing. And he knew that he had once been a woman. He lived the life of a human female, before he was born as a Dragon.

As the woman turned and ran headlong away into the disinterested fog, Sixenz reflected. He remembered hating his/her life. He remembered a life of angst, and doubt, and anger at the powerlessness.

He remembered a life of servitude and cleaning and being quietly but obviously afraid of her next lodger. She had to run this hotel and so she going to have to face down these threats with threat.

In the woods, Sixenz lay, dead deer in his jaws. In another world that's supposed to be past us, a lonely soul lived her life imagining herself defending herself, and never doing anything else.

Everyone down at the local village pub, busiest on Fridays, thought she was a right old dragon.

David.

Ripples in the lake

Chapter 3

David

Geoff was in mid curse when the his mobile rang. He'd been wrestling with the brakes on an ancient Mercedes for the past hour, had bruised and bleeding knuckles, and was sorely conscious of the daft old bugger who's car it was, hovering in the background convinced that he knew a better way to get the disc brakes off. What Colonel bloody Smythe or whatever he was failed to comprehend was just how rusty his beloved banger was. Probably had the same perspective on his shriveled wife who sat huddled in the waiting room trying to make sense of her husband's last outburst. In fact everyone in the waiting room was trying to do the same.

Twelve long years Geoff had worked in this garage. And he's learned to expect stress from elderly men and their precious cars. How this old thing was still going was beyond him. Could have been a lovely car if it'd been looked after. But blind faith had clearly played a larger part in its life.

He needed a break, and the ringing phone gave him an excuse. Downing tools, he reached into his overalls, extracted the phone, and headed across the stained concrete floor of the workshop, towards the sheeting rain outside. He'd decided he hated old people. The whole bloody minded, pompous, self righteous, idiotic lot of them. A fag break and a chinwag with a mate would help to ease his mood.

It was Norma. Not necessarily bad though.

'Hi'.

Pause.

'You're kidding me.'

Pause.

At that moment, a big drop of water parted company with the edge of the roof, to which it had been clinging apparently waiting for Geoff to stand just where he was, and so managed to pass precisely through the end of his cigarette, on it's way to the ground, extinguishing the fag in mid flight. Slightly bent by the experience, the cigarette drooped slowly as water crept up it's length. Soggy and useless.

In one of those rich moments, resplendent with quiet insight and profound understanding of the brevity of life, Geoff stood and looked at the pouring rain, and the wet, shiny roofs, and the greyness of everything about him and knew that somewhere back down the line, he must have done something really terrible.

'Yes, I'm still here. When are they getting here?'

He loved his mother according to some filial code of duty which precluded him, according to an inbuilt sense of justice, from admitting that he couldn't stand her. And later that afternoon, she'd be here. Mad Violet. With her stupid hats and her inbuilt resistance to logic or reason. The last time she'd invaded his adult life, apart from having poured olive oil into the washing machine instead of washing liquid, she'd brought him and Norma a present of a stuffed duck. Not of the edible variety but... a stuffed duck, for putting on the mantelpiece he supposed. It had long since ended up where dead ducks ought to be. With other dead stuff.

And what made matters worse was that she was bringing her two accomplices. Audrey and Wilf. Her best friends. Geoff had only met Audrey once, and that had been too often. She was slightly stooped, and walked with a limp, and had this way of peering up at him with her head cocked slightly to one side, smiling grimly in a way designed to make him know he was just plain wrong. And that was that. A 'shut up you young fool and listen' kind of way. Stupid old hippy.

As for Wilf, if there was any justice in life, he'd be running a geriatric gay bar in Patpong. Not that he'd be capable of actually running anything. Geoff could only assume that Wilf's attachment to his mother and Audrey satisfied some innate sexual subordinate fantasy. The fawning little weevil was deeply suspect. Definitely not male. Some sort of genetic mistake.

Thus it was that Geoff spent the ten seconds following the answering of his phone. A lot had happened. His fag had been annihilated, he'd seen life for what it really was, and he came to realise that the next twenty four hours had to be seen as penance for misdeeds in a previous life.

Norma had offered no sympathy. Prior to ringing off, she'd simply told him not be so nasty about his own mother. So now he felt even worse. Discovered.

Then Colonel bloody Smythe Empire When-I-Was-Young Dickhead returned Geoff's attention to matters in hand, bellowing something about G clamps and brake fluid. The daft old duffer was standing next to his car, which was raised up on the ramp, and was offering his opinion on how the job should really be done. He wasn't legally allowed to stand there and Geoff, fuelled slightly by a growing sense of irritation at the complete lack of control he had over his life, shouted rather too loudly that The Colonel should bloody well get back into the waiting room and shut up until the job was done. Surprisingly, this seemed to work and the Colonel, feathers clearly ruffled, humphed and marched back to join his apprehensive wife, and the other amused onlookers.

Geoff had two hours in which to fix this damn car before his mother and her maddening cohorts arrived, expecting the exhaust to be repaired on their clapped out car. And it was already five o'clock. And they were intending to stay the night.

------------------

'Dahling!'

'Muvver'.

'You remember Audrey and Wilf don't you?'

'Of course he does you stupid woman. It wasn't that long ago.' said Audrey.

'Yes it was.' said Wilf.

'It doesn't matter...' said Vi '...how long ago it was. I'm asking him if he remembers you.'

'That was when you brought the duck.' said Wilf. Feeling brave for once. 'Yonks ago.'

'Err, yep.' Mumbled Geoff. 'What's the matter with this van then?'

'Brought the duck?' said Vi. For heavens sake, finish the sentence. What are you on about?'

'I told you you shouldn't have brought it.' Said Audrey, petulantly. 'You never listen.'

'It was green.' proclaimed Wilf. Quietly though. Everyone looked at him, and he looked at his feet. There was a long pause whilst everyone reflected on the conversation thus far.

'The van..?' ventured Geoff.

'Oh it's making the most awful noise.' said Audrey, welcoming the change of subject. 'I don't know what it is. It's exhausted or something. And Vi doesn't know either. It's the rain. Probably.'

'I do indeed know. Don't you speak for me Audrey Sidebotham. I know what it is. It's the eggzorst. Wilf said.'

Wilf had slunk away by now, and was standing just where Geoff had stood, smoking a pipe. Geoff suddenly felt a kind of sympathy for him. A little man stood silhouetted against the brighter grey outside, overwhelmed by just about everyone one and everything. His pipe smoke appeared to his right, quivered momentarily. shifted this way and that with the air currents, and then faded away.

Geoff wasn't normally prone to these moments of reflection, where time stood still and everything came into focus. But this was the second such moment this afternoon.

An hour later, he'd repaired the exhaust on the van and reluctantly agreed that his unwelcome guests should follow him back to his home and his waiting wife, as the streets grew shinier in the wet, lamplit gloom and all the normal people rushed past him on their way home from work.

'You're driving.'

'It's Wilf's turn'.

Wilf looked at Geoff without expression. Knocked his pipe against his trouser leg, glanced again at the rain, and moved to take his designated place. The red tail lights of Geoff's car, clear one moment, became smeared and blurred until the wipers danced their dance, and then blurred again in time to the never ending conversation beside him.

 

Ripples in the Lake Chapter 2

Ripples in the Lake

Chapter 2

By Graham

‘Well, I must say I don’t relish going out in that.’ Audrey’s nose, pressed hard against the window, had scribbled a skewed figure eight across it; an unintended legacy left in the thick condensation.

‘Really? How do you expect to get to the van then? Psychic transportation?’

‘Why is it, Vi, that your sarcasm is so particularly sharp first thing in the mornings?’

‘Practice.’

Vi dropped her single, battered old suitcase down besides Audrey’s matched set of three. She took Audrey’s place at the window and strained to see through the ragged smudge.

‘It's atrocious. I can hardly see across the car park. Mind you, I can see cars parked both sides of the van. And close. Wilf won’t like that.’

‘I thought you were driving today.’

‘I’m not getting us out of that parking space. He put it in there, he can extract it.’

‘You are a bundle of fun this morning Violet.’

‘Yes, well…’

‘Disappointing night?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?

‘Nothing.’ Audrey turned away to hide a wicked little smile. ‘I didn’t see you or Wilf for breakfast this morning.’

‘I had breakfast.’ Vi’s response was snappy. Audrey was unsurprised at how easy it was to hook the wiry little woman. ‘I was down before you.’

‘And Wilf?’ She was pushing now, being deliberately mischievous.

‘Wilf? Why should I know when he came down? His room’s not even on the same…’ She trailed off as the penny dropped. ‘Oh, that’s disgusting.’

‘I don’t see why,’ Audrey was really enjoying herself now, ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘I like porridge, but I don’t want it my bed.’

Audrey would have kept up the game, but she had spotted the head waitress coming out of the dining room.

‘Excuse me. Do you happen to know if our friend has been down to breakfast?

‘Her name?’ She was already scanning the list in her hand.

‘Him, it’s a him. Mister Garforth.’

‘No, I don’t think…’ There was a pause as she finished checking. ‘Well he has not been checked off. And breakfast is finished now. I’m afraid he has missed it.’

‘Oh he won’t like that.’ Vi sounded genuinely concerned. ‘He gets grumpy if he doesn’t get his breakfast.’

‘Ah,’ The young woman spotted a note on her sheet, ‘he seems to have –‘

 ‘Oh my God.’ Audrey was back at the window. ‘Quick! Help! Quick. Oh please, quick!’

‘What’s up with you?’

‘Stolen. It’s being stolen. The van.’

‘Stolen?’ Vi’s concern was now focused on Audrey.

‘Stolen?’ echoed the waitress.

Audrey rushed over to the next window, stumbling over something soft and squishy in her panic. Something between a squawk and a howl snarled up to join Audrey’s shrieks in breaking the previous serenity of the lobby. A black blob catapulted out from under her left foot and careered into Vi’s suitcase, knocking it over. She had woken the hotel cat.

‘It’s gone.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Vi. ‘Poor thing. Cats don’t like being stamped on.’

‘Not the bloody cat, the van. Quick, get the police. It’s gone. Out the gates and down the road. We’ve lost out van.’

‘This young lady will ring them for us, won’t you…’ Vi turned to find the waitress no longer at hand. More interested in the fate of the cat than guests’ vehicles, she was disappearing into the kitchens, desperately trying to catch up with the bolting feline.

‘Use your mobile. Have you got your mobile?’

‘Will it work here?’

‘What do you mean, will it work here?’ Audrey was incredulous. ‘We’re half way to Exeter, not Moscow or somewhere. Of course it will work.’

‘What’s the number then?’

‘What’s the number? What’s the ruddy number? Are you being deliberately stupid? It’s nine, nine, nine of course.’

‘Well, at home it is, yes. But I don’t know what the code is here do I?’

Audrey, usually so placid, was beginning to lose patience. ‘There is no code you wizened little elf.’

‘There is no need to start getting abusive.’

‘Give me that phone.’ Audrey snatched the instrument out of Vi’s hand as she withdrew it from her handbag. ‘There is a penalty for obstructing the police you know.’

‘I’m not obstructing the police. There’s no police here.’

‘That’s what I’m on about. There’s no police here, because you keep prevaricating.’ Audrey punched hard three times on the rubbery nine key.

‘I don’t think you’re going to get the police on that.’

‘I keep telling you Vi, it doesn’t matter what county you use it in.’

No I don’t mean that. That’s my calculator.’

There was a brief moment of complete silence as Audrey took in this information. She was just contemplating whether to ram the calculator back into Vi’s handbag or throw it to the floor and give it the ‘cat’ treatment with her foot when the outside door was pushed sharply open.

Wilf’s entrance was dramatically accompanied by a loud clap of thunder. He stood, half drenched, with rain dripping off his sodden fedora. ‘Good morning,’ he said cheerily, ‘van’s outside.’

‘But… but…’ Audrey’s voice was uncommonly weak. ‘Did you… have you…?’

‘She said the van had been stolen. Said it was driven off down the road.’

‘Oh no,’ Wilf said, ‘I think she must be confused.’

‘She’s more than confused. She’s bloody mental. Called me a wizend dwarf or something.’

‘Elf actually,’ offered Audrey in her newly shrunken voice.

‘You’re not helping yourself.’

‘It was raining, so I thought I would bring the van to the door for you ladies. I’ll give you a hand with your luggage, mine’s in already.’

‘But… why drive off like that? I saw you go out the gate.’

‘Mmmm. Well, you know what I’m like about reversing. Going out one gate and in the other gave me the easiest angle for the front door. Clever eh?’

‘But…’ Poor Audrey was really struggling to put a solid sentence together now. ‘But, you… you haven’t had any breakfast. And now... well, they’re…

‘I had it my room.’

‘Ha,’ said Vi, now quite jubilant.

‘Really treated myself. Went back to bed and ate it while I watched the telly.’

‘In bed?’ Audrey could barely more than whisper.

‘Yes. It was great. I had porridge.’

End of chapter

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