Search Results for 'aren'

The door snapped open and made a hole on the wall. Sophie entered shaking plane tickets she brandished like a Viking trophy. She paused, looked at the wall and said :
“Oops! Sorry for that. I don’t know my strength since that Doctor experimented on me. I never asked for that,” she added trying to put on a sorry face, but her shining eyes betrayed her mercilessly.

“Well, what about those plane tickets ?” asked Miss Bossy. “I don’t recall validating the expense.” She kept her lips tight and didn’t say for you but thought it very hard.

“You didn’t need to, someone sent them to me. Apparently they want me to investigate the China doll production and are sending me to…” she paused and looked at the destination. Her excited look faded away so fast that Ricardo and Miss Bossy looked at each other from the corner of their eyes. It was hard to maintain, but not impossible if you practiced yoga regularly.

“What?” asked Ricardo, a tad irritated by the interruption.

“Well, I thought they were sending me to China, but apparently they are sending me to
Finland to investigate the Suomenlinna Toy Museum… about their china dolls… Someone can take my place if they want,” said old Sophie.

Miss Bossy took the letter and read it quickly as only a boss can do.

“They specifically ask for you. I’m sorry, dear old Sophie, but we can’t spare our resources at the moment, you’ll have to go alone,” she offered her best bossy smile face ever. Her aunt Marcella would have been proud of her.

Maeve had left only taking with her the wrapping of the package and had been glad to leave Shawn Paul with its content, especially when she had seen what it was.

The mysterious thing was heavy, brown and looked a tad like a dry turd. It could hold in Shawn Paul’s hand and it seemed shaped to fit in his closed fist, but the young man hesitated to keep it too long because of the way it looked.
A note from his mother accompanied it. Who else could have sent a parcel this way? he thought, meaning not through the post office and delivered by a decrepit old man.
So the thing had been put on top of a pile of his latest scribblings, which was on top of his not so latest scribblings. Before putting it there, he almost saw the interest of a clean desktop or table, but it got lost in the immediacy of the moment and the tiredness caused by his recent fever.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what this marvellous object is.” the note started. Shawn Paul looked at the thing. It looked like a turd more than ever on all that white paper, so he made his yuck face. What he was wondering was rather why did she send me anything? She lives in an apartment on the upper floor. She could have brought it herself.

“I found it in a car boot sale,” she continued, her sharp and melodious voice chirping in her son’s head while he read the rest. “I met that old man, Patrick, who will deliver it to you. He’s a dear nice fellow never frugal with his words, and he told me it had been given to him by an Inuit shaman. It’s a fossil bone of the inner ear of a whale when they escaped Lemuria. Can you imagine that? Apparently it will help you develop your psychic abilities. You know how I’ve always known you had such a great potential in that area…”

Shawn Paul snorted and put down the paper. There was no use keeping up reading. His mother and her crazy ideas. He looked at the pile of papers.
It’ll do for a nice paperweight, he thought.

But Granola had not lost a crumble of what the mother had told in the rest of the note. She was lurking at the inner bone and she wondered if she could make herself heard if she merged with it.

“Finnley, how on earth did you manage to insert yourself in the kitchen and do the dishes while I was standing here twittering about doctors and whatnot. And here you are and the dishes are done but when I started my comment, I swear they were still on the bench.”
Liz peered at Finnley suspiciously.
“Do you have magical properties you aren’t sharing with us?” she asked.

Shawn Paul couldn’t help but listen when he heard Maeve’s voice. Was she at Lucinda’s again? He ventured outside his apartment with his unopened packet in his hands in order to have a clearer idea of what they were talking about.
Not him apparently. They were talking about dolls and spies. He felt a bit jealous that other peoples had such beautiful stories to tell and he struggled so much to even write a few lines. Fortunately he always had a small notebook and a pen in his pockets. He scribbled down a few notes, trying to be fast and concise. He looked at his writing. It would be hard to read afterwards.
He paused after writing the uncle’s name. Was it uncle Fungus? And the tarty spy in the fishnet, was it a photograph? And what about the bugs, was it an infestation? Too much information. It was hard to follow the story and write while holding the packet.

He realised they had stopped speaking and Lucinda was closing the door. He suddenly panicked. What if Maeve found him there, listening?
The time it took him to think about all that could happen was enough for Maeve to meet him were he stood the packet in his hands.

“Hi she said. You got a packet ?”
“Yes,” he answered, his mind almost blank. What could he possibly say. He was more of the writer kind, he needed time to think about his dialogues in advance. But, was it an inspiration from beyond he had something to say and justify his presence.
“Someone just dropped this at my door and I was trying to see if I could catch them. There’s no address.” He turned the packet as if to confirm it.
“There’s something written on the corner,” said Maeve. “It looks like an old newspaper cut.
“Oh! You’re right,” said Shawn Paul.
She looked closer.
“What a coincidence,” said Maeve, looking slightly shocked.
Shaw Paul brought the packet closer to his face. It smelled like granola cookies. On the paperclip there was an add for a trip to Australia with the address of a decrepit Inn somewhere in the wops. There was a photo of an old woman standing in front of the Inn, and Shawn Paul swore he saw her wink at him. The smell of granola cookies was stronger and made him hungry.
He was not sure anymore he would be able to write his story that day.

Before she left, thankful to get back to her own pristine apartment, Maeve told Lucinda the story of the dolls.

“It’s a long story,” she warned and Lucinda smiled encouragingly.

“My father’s brother, Uncle Fergus, fell out with my father many years ago. I don’t know what it was about.”

Maeve took a sip of her licorice and peppermint tea.

“I just know that one day, Uncle Fergus turned up on his Harley Davidson and there was a huge fight. Father was shouting and Mother was crying. And Father shouted ‘Don’t ever darken our doors again!’

She shuddered. “It was awful.”

“I am all ears,” said Lucinda.

“They aren’t that bad,” said Maeve looking at her thoughtfully. “And your hair covers them nicely.”

Her hand flew to her mouth as she realised what Lucinda meant.

“Oh gosh, I am sorry, I see what you mean … Well anyway, I didn’t see Uncle Fergus for many years and I was sorry about that because he would always bring me a gift from his overseas travels — he went to the most exotic places — and then one day he turned up at my apartment out of the blue. He was most peculiar, looking over his shoulder the whole time and he even made me come out on the street to talk ‘in case there were bugs’.”

“Bugs? Oh, like the things spies use. Wow,” said Lucinda. “Did he have mental health problems or something?”

“I wondered that at the time. I mean Uncle Fergus was always endearingly loony. But this time he was just … just scared. And there WAS someone following him. I saw her. And she was clearly a spy. She was wearing a black wig and and fishnet tights and thought we couldn’t see her hiding behind a lamp post.”

Maeve rolled her eyes.

“I mean, how cliche can you get. Anyway, Uncle Fergus gave me a big hug, like an Uncle would, and whispered an address in my ear where I would find a satchel and he said that inside I would find 12 keys and 12 addresses. He knew I made dolls and he said it would be a perfect way to send the keys to the addresses, inside a doll. ‘Important people are depending on you’ he said.”

Maeve shrugged.

“So I did it. I sent the last one a month ago to an address in Australia. An Inn somewhere in the wops.”

“Techromancers shouldn’t be in bathrooms. Like murderers, they don’t belong there,” said Finnley, surreptitiously wiping the tears from her eyes.
“You aren’t being very surreptitious and I do detest it when you get emotional, Finnley. It is unsettling. Nor are you being helpful in your explanation of techromancer. Godfrey! Where are you?”

Liz felt someone tug at her almost transparent pink silk gown. She tried to ignore it as she worked hard to recall the young woman’s name, she had it on the tip of her tongue.

The tug got stronger and Liz feared that whomever was doing it they were going to tore her silk veil. She turned around, her irritation colouring her high cheekbones with a nice tint of pink and gasped.
“What I do with the spiders,” asked a small woman with dark skin and wearing a rainbow sari. “They’re so big big, and SOOOO hungry. They’re going to eat the guests only.”

Liz shook her head, seeing the curls of her newly acquired blond wig bounce about her face. She looked at the cocktail. What did Roberto said was in those? she wondered.

“What spiders?” she asked. The maid pointed behind Liz with her chin. When Liz looked she almost dropped her glass. A swarm of colourful giant jumping spiders were running and jumping near the swimming pool, frightening the human guests, while Roberto was riding one of them in his sparkling cowboy costume, laughing like a teenager.
“So?” asked the maid insistently. “What I do?”
Liz was confused.
“Why are they here?” she asked, “I don’t understand. Where’s Godfrey?”

“They are the daughters and sons of Narani from the giant spiders island,” said a man with a beard in a WWII uniform. A ghost dog barked silently at his feet.

“Of course,” Liz said. But it was too much for her and she gulped, all at once, the remaining fifteen jewels of condensed information floating in her cocktail. She shoved the glass in the maid’s hands and said: “Bring me another,” before she collapsed under the afflux of so much knowledge.

When Lucinda called her friend, Shawn Paul felt it was time to go back home. He wasn’t sure if it was his natural shyness, that he had already seen and talk to so many new people today, or if it was the fear of the unknown. What would he tell a stranger? What would she think of him, his outfit and his scarf? All that made it too much at that moment to meet someone new. So he looked at his phone and pretexted something had come up. They agreed to meet at the reception at the French embassy and he left.

Shawn Paul was walking crossing streets on autopilot, lost in his thoughts about the adventures of the day, when a crazy honking that sounded like an elephant fart brought him back to reality in front a bakery. He realised too late that he had forgotten his granola cookies on the table. But he shrugged and smiled when a little yellow butterfly flew by and landed momentarily on the rear light of a red car. He stopped and wondered how such a light creature could live in a city like this. It took off and fluttered around into the general direction of a public garden nearby where children played under the kind presence of their parents.

It took Shawn Paul twenty minutes to go back home. He felt tired enough to take a nap before getting dressed to the Party. In the stairs he met with Maeve and her pekinese.

“Hi.” They said at the same time with the same awkwardness. Maeve’s dog was sniffing out his shoes, making Shawn Paul self conscious of himself. He feared a moment she might think he had a sloppy hygiene.
“Come Fabio.” Maeve said. “Sorry for that. Dogs…”

Shawn Paul smiled in an attempt to hide his embarrassment, and each of them went in their own direction.

Shawn Paul arrived late at the reception because he spent too much time deciding on which scarf would match his new deep purple velvet jacket. The others were already inside and drinking, their body moving more or less in rhythm with the music.

“Your dress suits you so well,” said Shawn Paul bending closer to her hear and making an effort to talk louder. A smile blossomed on her face at the compliment, contrasting with a lingering nostalgia in her eyes. She was wearing one of those black body fit dress which gave her silhouette all the contours they needed to pop out in a flattering way.

“You missed the speech of the ambassador,” she said with a wink. “Nothing memorable, it’s the same every year.”

Jerk was standing on the side, wearing a suit like one would wear camouflage clothing. He seemed to deeply wonder what he was doing there. Shawn Paul, who was wondering the same, addressed the man a sympathising smile. A moment of connection happened and went away. Jerk took a sip of his glass of champagne and Lucinda put a flute in Shawn Paul’s hand.

She took his other arm and said : “Come. There is something I want to show you!”

Shawn-Paul lived in a studio apartment, crammed with bookshelves full of books and trinkets that he gathered during his many walks around the city while looking for inspiration. He hadn’t read all of the books, but he always had the intention to do it one day. One day easily became two and three, and so many.
Someone with OCD could dust date the different purchases by measuring the thickness of the layer of dust on the books.

That day, Shawn-Paul was drinking a hot chocolate at his computer on the small desk where some books lied open or closed on top of each others. The top one’s cover claimed in bold red letters “NARRATIVE COACHING, The Definitive Guide to Bring New Stories to Life”. Shawn-Paul had bought it thinking it was a coaching book for writers but it apparently aimed at teaching coaches to tell good stories. The book had proved interesting and especially another occasion to enrich his knowledge about the world or in one word procrastinate.

Shawn-Paul took a sip of the hot chocolate, which was now more lukewarm than hot and felt the impulsion to open his browser and watch a video about narrative coaching on U-stub. That’s when it all went wrong and myriads of ads popped up and covered the screen and his newly bought writer software were the first word of his novel still waited to appear.

At first, he panicked and his sudden movements back and fro almost broke the fragile equilibrium of the desk clutter. But then he shrugged, took his phone to call his friend Jeremiad for help and remembered how that went last time when he had to listen to his friend’s imaginary problems, just like imaginary friends but worse. He put the phone back in the clutter and looked at the last ad. A girl with sensuous cherry red lips winking at him with a packet of granola cookies spinning around her head.

Unaware of what was happening, Shawn-Paul felt hungry and considered his lukewarm chocolate. He smiled as he thought he could make another one and enjoy dipping some cookies in it.
He went to the kitchen and foraged through the clutter of dirty dishes and empty cookie packets. There were none left. The effect of hunger on Shawn-Paul was square grumpiness. Not round, not rectangular. Square. And it didn’t fit the curves of his stomach.

Shawn-Paul put his writer’s jacket and cap on, added a wool scarf because he had a sensitive throat, and it looked cool on him and he winked at his reflection on the mirror hanging on the main door.
He left, unaware of the smile of the granola girl.

“Where does that music come from?” asked Liz baffled that someone could play such unLiz music while she was there.
Godfrey and Finnley looked at each others rolling eyes and gulped another glass of tonic.
“Well, why. It’s Roberto,” said Godfrey. “He came to me the other day with an old VHS he had found in the cellar. Apparently an old French gym program called Gym Tonic with two girls hopping and stretching for one hour.”
“I didn’t even know we had a cellar here,” said Liz. More treasures to find, she thought, her eyes glittering.
“I recognise that look of yours,” said Finnley, “Don’t even think about it. You’ll come back and scatter spiderwebs and dust all around and I’ll have to find someone to clean your mess. Take another tonic.” Finnley handed a glass to Liz and Godfrey looked, one eyebrow raised dramatically, at her other hand hidden behind her back. It held a small vial that looked empty.

“They don’t make you see things that aren’t there, you know, Finnley. They enhance your awareness of the normally concealed from view. Finnley? Finnley! Where are you?” Liz cried in exasperation.

That sunny day would be remembered as the day the doline shook and trembled.

The geckoes fell from their rock, cutting all communication between the inhabitants of the hidden world. The vibrations coming from leperchauns know where had swiftly spread into the walls down to the deepest cracks and hidden chambers of the back cave far deeper than any of the inhabitants of the doline dared to show their noses. And Most of them weren’t aware at all of all that empty dark and cold and wet space. At some point, the vibrations gathered and rebounded into the bottom of the deepest caves and came back out in a roar that might have take the inhabitants’ hats off, if they wore hats.

The bats flew away into the sunlight, blinded and deafened, bumping into each others as their fabulously acute sense of hearing was overwhelmed by the vibrations and the rich harmonics generated in the crystal chambers down below. Some fell, spiraling down as if they had been shot by some anti aerial defense. They fell in the cockroach arena and into the reservoir of dung gathered by the dung beetles, almost crushing Daisy in the process. Her father caught her safe and rolled her like the little dung beetle she was.

The rats ran away spreading panic like plague, and while some tried to take advantage of the confusion to steal others food, when the vibration kept on shaking the ground around them and stalactites fell like fringe hail exploding into thousands projectiles, they began to fear.

It took some time for the dust and noise to settle down, long after the vibration had ceased. All the inhabitants of the doline had gathered on the edge of the entrance, not knowing if it was safe to go back home.

Hugo the Gecko wondered like many of the others.

What just happened? What if it happened again? Somebody had to volunteer to go see what it was that made that noise.

But no one came forth, all too shocked by the recent events. You could even hear some calling their families or friends.

Hugo didn’t feel up to the task, he was too small and fragile. What if another of those big rocks fell on his soft and elastic body? It would explode like a water bomb. Except the puddle would be red. Yet, when he saw little Daisy desperately looking for her mother, something rose in him. Something he had never felt before. Some might call it courage, but Hugo didn’t have a name for it. All he knew was that he entered the doline and went down to the flat stone, calling his gecko friends on the way to follow him. Dragged along by that strange emotion that was moving their friend, they followed and listened to him when he gave them a few instructions. They resumed their place on the stone, except this time Hugo was at the center and began to draw something.

The inhabitants of the doline had looked not understanding what the geckoes were doing, calling them reckless idiots to venture back into the broken world. But they looked at the strange shapes appearing on the flat stone at the center of the doline.

Suddenly a voice came out of the crowd. “It’s me! I’m here!” she said and waved her little beetle legs. “Daisy, Mummy’s here!”

Then everybody wanted to pass a message and the geckoes felt they were making a difference.

Despite the agitation, Hugo kept wondering. What happened? Someone has to go and see.

Albie pondered Lottie’s words. He’d been trying to forget the doline, but now he realized he’d been avoiding the inevitable. It was no good pretending there were other jobs for him, that much was becoming clear. His mission had been to protect the doline, and he’d failed.

Or had he? A new idea was glimmering in his mind, that he hadn’t failed at all. At first he’d been so embarrassed and anxious about the security breach that he’d only seen the obvious superficial layer of events. Yes, strangers had entered the doline; true, they were not supposed to let that happen. But now he wondered, were they strangers to the doline? Who were they? Maybe they were meant to enter, and his apparent lack of attention was a providential and timely. How did he, Albie, even know for sure that he was working for the right side? What did he really know about his bosses? And what about that handsome fellow who’d slithered out of the doline, the dark eyed one with leaves in his hair?

Albie hadn’t even told Alex about him, not after the shit hit the fan about the breach and illegal entry. The last thing he felt like doing was admitting that there had been an illegal escape as well. But Albie couldn’t stop thinking about him, the graceful way he shook the dust out of his hair, the depths of those lustrous dark eyes, his long slender fingers….

Now, Albie was kicking himself for hiding behind a tree, for not approaching the strange man, or at least following him to see where he was going. His job was to stop people from entering. Nobody had said anything about stopping people leaving it. It was unexpected, and he’d been scared. Was it too late to try and track his movements? He’d come out of the doline, he’d have stories to tell. Albie needed to know, he needed to find him.

He would find a way to trace him. He wondered if the new dog could help him, if he could find something with the mans scent upon it. Albie was determined to find a way.

“Jingle, where are you?” asked Finnley grumpily, peering into the darkness of the attic.

“Here”, hissed Jingle from behind some boxes. “Has that dreadful man gone yet?”

“Nope, still here. Drooling over Liz no doubt.”

“I won’t go back to my mother! That awful woman!”

“Well you can’t stay here so you had better go out the window.”

“What window? There is no window!” whimpered Jingle.

Oh for Flove’s sake! thought Finnley. No imagination. That’s her trouble.

Adroitly, she whipped out some power tools and cut a hole in the roof.

“There!” she said, taking a step back to survey her work. “A window. Now, off you go. And don’t come back.”

“Oh thank you, Finnley. You are wonderful!”

“I am, aren’t I,” smirked Finnley.

And after all, Liz didn’t even know she had an attic so she certainly won’t notice a window.

At that moment the trap in the ceiling opened revealing the dark attic.

“Is that smoke coming from the attic?” asked Godfrey, suddenly worried someone had started a fire up there.

“It’s looking more like mist,” said Liz who had suddenly forgotten about her unborn babies. “You know, in those mystery novels they add some when they want to create an atmosphere of suspens.”

Godfrey looked doubtful as the mist was continuing to pour down from the attic in slow motion, like the harbinger of a darker secret. A loud noise made them jump. A metallic ladder, apparently attached on the attic’s floor which was the corridor’s ceiling, unfolded quickly. It stopped just before hitting the floor.

They all looked at each others, waiting for someone to say something. Anything.

“Go have a look, Godfrey,” said Liz.
“Shouldn’t it be Walter? He’s from the police after all, if there is danger he should be the one to take the lead.”

Liz looked a bit uncomfortable.
“I’m not sure,” she said in a hum. “There might be some dark secrets I don’t want to reveal to outsiders.”

“Are you coming or what?” Said a voice coming from the attic.

In the kitchen, Fox beheaded the chicken in a swift move. He tried not to be horrified when the creature’s body kept on running around, headless like a peaslander. He felt vaguely aware that’s what he’d been doing all that time. Running around without a very clear idea about what he was doing.

“Don’t let it run around bloody n’all!” said Margoritt, “Who do you think is going to clean that mess?” The old woman, huff and puff, limped rhythmically after their dinner. Someone had heard her scream and came into the kitchen. It was that tall Fae guy, Rukshan, who looked so successful and handsome. Fox felt depressed. The Fae had caught the dead body, which had eventually stopped moving, and put it in the basket Margoritt had taken on the table.

“Thanks my dear,” she said with a giggle. “Would you be so kind as to pluck it for me?” She then looked at Fox. “Sorry, lad, but with a name like yours I’m not sure I can trust you on this one.” The old lady winked.

Fox couldn’t be annoyed at Margoritt, he wouldn’t trust himself with a chicken, dead or alive. And the old lady had saved him from the blizzard and from that strange curse. He attempted a smile but all he could do was a grimace. Margoritt looked at him as if noticing something.

“Why don’t you go with Rukshan,” she said, “A bit of fresh air would do you good.”
Fox shrugged, and followed the Fae outside.

“And send me that Eleri girl, I’d like to have a word with her while she clean the blood on the tiling.”

Outside it was noisier. Fox found the woman arguing with her male friends, one of whom looked like a statue with big wings. She seemed relieved to have a reason to get away from the crowd and her own problems and left with a smile. He wondered how she could stay happy while being surrounded by conflict. Maybe she liked it. Fox shrugged again.

He walked to the small courtyard, sat on a log and watched the handsome Fae removing the feathers. Rukshan’s hands looked clean, the blood was not sticking on his fair skin and the chicken feathers were piling neatly on a small heap at his feet.
“Aren’t Faes supposed to be vegetarian,” he said. He cringed inwardly at his own words. What a stupid way of engaging a conversation.

Without stopping, Rukshan answered: “I think you think too much. It’s not doing you much good, and it deepens the shadow under your eyes. Not that it doesn’t suit you well.” The Fae winked. Fox wasn’t sure of how to take it. He stayed silent. He saw the bag the Fae was always carrying with him and wondered what was inside.

“It’s a story,” said Rukshan.
Fox was confused and looked puzzled.
“In the bag. It’s a story. But it’s not finished.”

Fox felt warmth rise to his face. If the Fae could read his thoughts… he preferred not to think about it. Rukshan smiled gently.

“I need help to complete it and better understand the characters. Would you like to help me?”
Fox wasn’t sure what made him answer yes. Did it matter if it was for the welcomed distraction from his dark thoughts, or if it was for the promise of more time spent with the Fae?

“Pssst Glynis, are you awake?”

There was no response so Sunshine, the parrot, leapt from his shelf onto the bed and nudged Glynis with his beak.

“Ouch! Sunshine!”

“I’ve got a joke for you. It’s a good one this time! You will be glad I woke you.”

Glynis groaned.

“What’s smarter than a talking parrot?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Come on! you aren’t even trying!”

“Aargh. Most things are.”

“Oh how rude. You really aren’t at your best this hour of the night. It’s a spelling bee! Get it? A spelling bee. A bee that spells. Not that anything is really smarter than a parrot. Hmm maybe I should have let you sleep,” cackled the parrot.

“Extremely hilarious. Now be quiet, Sunny, and get some sleep. We have to get away extra early in the morning.”