Efestival of Words is running a 'Trick or Treat' Hallowe'en Horror promotion, and my book of stories - Fragments - is being featured in the event. For the entire month of October, Fragments will be discounted by 25%. The code is over here. There is also a 5000 word sample of 'The Fool' there for your delight and delectation.
You can also take part in the Horror Bingo event, with every filled card receiving a free copy of the horror anthology Return of the Dead Men (And Women) Walking. One winner will also receive a free audio book of Julie Dawson's A Game of Blood. And there is a book a day of Legendary Horrors to be won for people who comment. All details on the Horror Bingo link above.
So, it's coming to a windy wet and chilly Winter here in Scotland. Autumn has been skipped entirely. It's very strange to have green leaves with just the faintest hint of yellow, and to be wearing a winter coat. The berries and brambles are ripe, although very small and still a little sour. The Bramley apples in the shop are huge and the Hallowe'en decorations are in the stores. Yet every bone in my body tells me it's Winter.
So a winter tale for this week's sample Sunday. From 'Sleet Dreams', in Fragments. I'll do the entire short story over the next four weeks and try for a spooky new tale for the final sample Sunday, just before All Hallow's Eve itself!
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Sleet Dreams
Maggie O’Hara knew that it wasn’t
hunger that made poverty so bad, it was cold.
Warm summer days and a gnawing stomach were bearable. Freezing cold days with noodles in your
stomach and no heating in your home was hell.
Rain dripping down your back and soaking into your clothes in the frigid
wind at the bus stop, was hell. Feet of
ice that had given out all heat to the snow that had soaked into the holes in
your shoes, was hell.
Hell was cold, and that was all
there was to it.
Poverty was not being able to choose
between food and heat, because there was no way you could heat a room in the
winters that slammed into the city every year.
Not on her tiny pension, no matter how much she scrimped and saved. Heating the room was just not an option: food
could always be found. Cat food was
cheap: a stove to heat it on, much more expensive. She’d never had to resort to cat food; a
kettle of hot water on instant noodles was cheaper anyhow. As were hot dogs, truth be told. But she knew she could go there, if she had
to. She’d never been cold and hungry and made it a life’s ambition
never to experience it.
No, the trouble wasn’t food. The trouble was heat. Poverty was not enough heat.
Like everyone else in her building,
Maggie paid for central heat in her rent.
Like everyone else in her building, she got two hours at 6am and three
hours at 6pm. Just enough to keep you
going, if you worked day time shifts and went to bed early. Night workers, and retired people like her, either
shivered in the cold, or bought their own electric heaters that ran off the
meter in the wall, using up electricity credit at a frightful rate. If you were, as the papers put it, on a
limited income, you couldn’t afford heat.
She couldn’t even pee in comfort: the tiled closet that held a toilet, a
sink and a shower cubicle, had no hope of staying heated from the towel warmer,
which switched on and off when everything else did, although it was a useful airer
of wet coats and clothes.
The communal bath room she could
use, if she fed the meter on the wall for lukewarm water, was too cold to use
in cold weather. By the time the tub was
filled, the water was stone cold. It was
fine in the summer and autumn, but in winter and for most of spring, no one
ever ran a bath. Strip washes at the
kitchen area sink were the best she could do once she couldn’t bear the cold in
the shower. And even that was fully
clothed when the snow was on the ground.
She couldn’t even run the gas from
the stove. When Tony, the landlord, had
inherited the run-down hovel from his grandfather, Guido, the rest of the
family had laughed. Tony had never
settled into the family businesses and never would amount to much, everyone
knew. But he’d surprised them all. He’d emptied the tenement of all the old
tenants, and the drug labs and ‘special apartments’ rented by the hour. He’d ripped out the aged, worn and dangerous
gas piping, put in new central boilers and rewired the entire building up to slightly
above code. He’d had to go above code,
as he’d stopped his grandfather’s payments to certain city officials. He’d cut most of the apartments in half, creating
two floors of ‘studio apartments’ like hers, on the top floors. Below was two or three room apartments,
depending on how he’d carved the old floor plans up. But whilst he pushed as many people in as he
could, he’d also put in good soundproofing and working plumbing. Every
apartment got its own pay as you go electricity meter, the front and back doors
got camera security and he banned naked bodies and flames in his building. He
was sniffy about cigarettes, and non-smokers found it easier to get a lease and
keep one. A single cigarette burn on the
fixture and fixings and you were gone.
Retired people were allowed one pet, but no one else. He re-tenanted the
entire building within two weeks of opening back up, and there was never an
apartment empty for two nights running.
No-one ever got more than a month behind on rent with a two month
deposit. He was making his investment
back at a decent rate, in a decent way: no wonder the rest of his family couldn’t
stand him and were furious Guido had left the building to him. His tenants
would kill for Tony, which went a long way to keeping everything calm. Maggie had seen mothers burst into tears and kiss
his hand on moving in day, their babies no longer sharing their cribs with
cockroaches.
Tony supplied the tenants with three
essential appliances, all electric. A
shower unit, a small instant water boiler that fed out over the kitchenette
sink and a microwave: the tenant brought in everything else. Tony had the wiring on the appliances checked
every year and all the smoke detectors in the hallways worked. You felt safe in Tony’s building. You could go to him personally if there was a
problem; he knew every one of his tenants by sight. He often changed the light bulbs in the
corridors himself, and many a potential tenant had lost the chance of a lease
for not realizing the handyman showing them around was the owner.
A
microwave was fine for her sort of income, but it didn’t heat much
otherwise. Most of the other tenants had
also bought plug-in electric grills, as well as stand alone electric
heaters. She couldn’t afford either; to
buy or to run. The meter that doled out
electricity took enough cash off her as it was.
Middle of the nights were worse, the cold would disturb her sleep, pinging
out through her aching joints, her hot water bottles having lost all their
heat. She’d twist, and turn, and try
layers in this direction, layers in that; there just wasn’t enough of her to
keep the bed snug and warm all through the night. She often dreamed she still had Bertie, her
old dog. Now Bertie had been great at snuggling
up and keeping her warm, much better than either of her husbands. But Bertie was long gone, in the cold, cold
ground. So was husband number one,
actually, but she didn’t mourn him. She
still carried the scar he’d given her when she’d miscarried their first, and
only, child. She’d been standing at the
kitchen table, scrubbing carrots in a bowl of warm water; even then she’d hated
cold hands. He’d been sitting at the table,
telling her flat out that the baby had died because she was a bad mother and
not to think he’d spawn any more with her, if she was gonna push them out early
and dead, in his bed. He wasn’t that
kind of fool, not when it was obvious she must have been whoring somewhere and another
man’s prick had killed his son.
She’d picked the bowl up and hurled
it at his head. It had hit square on
and split in half, leaving a gash on him; the muddy water erupting like his rage. She remembered slipping on the water as she
danced around the kitchen trying to escape him and the paring knife she’d
thrown at him. A slash to her inner arm, the tip of the blade taking the long
way down as she twisted past it, had been deep enough to scar and to flood out
enough blood to stop him in his tracks.
She often thought, as she looked at the thin line of white, that it had
saved her life that day; that slash that never made it deep enough to bleed her
out. She should have left him then, but
he’d been so contrite... Maggie shoved it away.
No, like Bertie, Fred was long gone
cold dead. She’d stuck it out to the
end, which hadn’t been long as cancer had taken him. Left her with the scar, some aches in her
heart about how you fall in love with a stranger, and a debt that would have
crippled Jesus. Cancer treatment had
turned out to be more than the insurance, wasn’t that a pip?
The phrase bounced around her
head. That had been Charlie’s best
saying, a cheeky chappy smile, and his English accent, to charm the socks, and
panties, off anyone. Oh she’d fallen for
Charlie, fallen hard. And he’d been good
to her. He’d helped pay off the debts in
return for his green card, had rented them a neat little house in the suburbs,
and tried to put life in her belly. But
all the rubbing up heat he did with all the other pretty ladies robbed him of
that vital spark, that’s what she reckoned.
Can’t stoke the fire at home, if you are layin’ kindling all around
town.
They broke up well enough. She just couldn’t take an empty bed and an empty cradle. He’d gone off to Southern California, where
he’d settled down to a life of widows and gratified smiles. Divorce papers had followed through a year or
two later. They exchanged a card every
year until they each moved one time too many.
He’d gone where the ladies were and
she’d gone where the work was. Before
she’d known it she’d drifted steadily north, into the cold zone. At first she was glad, as summers were so
much cooler and so much more bearable but she’d had younger bones and a good
strong back to earn money with in any way she could. Waitressing; maid; check out. Did one summer as a short order cook, but
didn’t like the heat, now wasn’t that
a pip? What she’d give now to be hot and
sweaty all day long with as many greasy burgers as she could eat.
But age had slowly wound down her
life, and her job opportunities. Minimum
wage was for the young and strong, and she’d never settled on anything she
could call ‘skilled’ labor, nothing that made still employing her worth anyone’s
while: too many younger bones and strong backs to choose from. So she slowly dropped down the scale... or
up, rather, as each apartment got smaller and higher up. Until here she was, on the fifth floor in a
one room hideaway and a closet for a toilet.
Which would have been fine if she’d still been in the south: she didn’t
need much. Sure, the building was old
but Tony had every corridor and stairwell checked weekly. Tenants were sober and respectable and there
were no vermin, either in the walls or the other rooms around her. The basement boilers were lined with rat
traps. The corridors were filled with
workers moving up and down all day, from one shift to the other. The thick gates and bars kept out all but the
most determined thief and nothing was ever allowed to molder. No, she could be in a lot worse places, even if
you did have to push past the drug dealers and the prostitute women and boys,
in order to get up the steps. She’d waited damn near two years to get in,
grateful the pay as you go meters meant she didn’t have to find a huge utility
deposit with the two month’s rent up front: she’d just scraped in.
She wasn’t so much proud of her
little place, as settled in it. Her
treasures were safe here. Her
grandmother’s quilt: her mother’s porcelain figurines. Her collection of commemorative plates of dog
breeds: they hung safely on the walls, smiling down on her. She was as reasonably sure as anyone could be
that they’d still be there when she came back every time she nodded goodbye to
them as she went out. It was just the
cold, the winter. Winter and being poor
were not good bedfellows.
Literally, at times, as the cold
made her homeless to all intents and purposes.
As the morning heat burst faded she’d be forced out onto the streets
like those who didn’t have a home at all.
She’d found all the routes and tracks and tricks that her fellow travelers
had evolved in their own survival and it provided her with a routine, a way to
get through to summer; to when it was no longer cold. A routine she needed to get up and onto if
today was going to be a good day. She
took a deep breath and forced herself out from under the layers.
The trick was to be clean, neat and
respectable, without making it look like you had a coin in the world. Shopping malls and libraries were good for a
couple of hours but sitting down in malls for too long brought security, and
sitting down for too long in libraries, brought aches and cold: libraries just
weren’t that warm. Not all day
warm. Having an address, and thus a
library card, bought her a couple of hours a day with no problem. Enough time to read through the newspapers
and then move on. Shopping malls were
great for thawing out from moving about from one place to another. But they required regular walking about and
pretending to window shop, which was, in its own way, a pain in the butt. Staring at everything you couldn’t ever afford
soon lost its thrall. Museums could
shelter you for a time but they never warmed you through. But she liked looking at paintings, that was
sure. She was always going to get a book
about painters out of the library, so she understood what she was looking at,
but she somehow never got round to it.
Romances and thrillers were her idea of a good read.
Then there was a regular round of Goodwill
and soup kitchens. Hot soup and bread
always sounded fine as the cold seeped into her bones and she was expert at slipping
in and out of places without being noticed, but lukewarm grease water and stale
bread made you so depressed it wasn’t always a good deal. She used to help out at some of the shelters and
so avoided them. Some were too pushy in
their salvation thumping and some had too low a clientele, lice being the least
of the ‘extras’ on offer. But there was
a wide selection of decent ones throughout the city, and bus rides to and fro for
a couple of square meals could be the answer to pouring rain. She could also get tins of soup and beans and
packets of dried noodles from the churches if she truly ran out. She tried not to do that: there were people
in worse shape than her that needed such, but hot food in the middle of the day
was worth a lot when the snow was drifting.
Her day was varied enough to keep
her wits sharp at all times, and a balance between staying on the move and not
spending more effort on getting warm and eating than she was getting back. The nirvana moment was when she was tired,
aching and still warm enough to believe life was worth living, and she had only
half an hour or so to get back home in time for the heating being switched
on. That way, when she finally headed
back, she was happy and grateful; longing to be in her own space, tucked up by
a radiator, glowing in the transient warmth as she read books or watched TV. Not cramped and bitter and moaning about her
terrible lot in life and feeling sorry for herself. Happy to have what she did have was a better
option than dwelling on what she did not.
Her grandma had instilled that in her at an early age and she kept the
lesson close to her: her Gran had lived through the depression unlike two of
her siblings.
So she was always striving to be
happy and settled as she crawled into bed, holding onto the heat and not
thinking about the radiators cooling down to stone cold dead, leaving her to
fend for herself. Some days it worked,
some days it didn’t. Days where she
still dreaded going home even if she was cold or hungry, were bad days. Days where she headed off home, grateful to
her core that she wasn’t sleeping in a shelter or trying to garner enough dry
cardboard boxes and a safer alleyway to sleep in, were good days. Excellent days were reserved for summer.
The weather changed the routine
substantially. There were ways to eke
out her money by supplementing. Dry days
were best for that. Trawling through dumpsters
for items that could be sold, or eaten, was a useful addition. You had to be careful though, to not make it
too obvious and not to look too desperate.
And choose your dumpster route wisely.
Dumpsters held all manner of things: dirty needles, excrement (areas
with a lot of young families were out), broken glass and dead animals. Good food could be under rotten food, even at
the market areas. Dealing with smells
and slime was crucial, and many a treasure had been left as to reclaim it would
leave her looking too far down the pecking order. Keeping clean cost money, and being clean was
crucial if she was to keep all she did have.
There were also a fair amount of territory wars and some areas had to be
checked out with one eye behind you.
She’d once been tipped head first into a sewer rat of a dumpster, for
daring to ‘steal’ from someone who claimed to own the whole block. She’d lain there in the stench and filth,
whilst the person – she never knew if it was a man or a woman, just an aged
bundle of screeching rags – had banged on the side and then weighted down the
lid on her. It had taken an hour of
heaving, sweaty work to get out, and her clothes were in slimy rags by the time
she’d managed to get the lid up enough to crawl out. She’d had visions of her body being noticed
at the dump, and the terror of a communal burial with the rest of the rubbish
had finally been strong enough to propel her out. She could see her dead fingers being gnawed by
rats and her eyes... yes, fear had finally got that lid up and her out of her
reluctant tomb. Dumpsters could provide
bounty but it wasn’t for the faint hearted or weak stomached.
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