Hi guys
I have just finished watching a great film called 'Eat Pray Love'. It is one of those films that get you thinking about ones life and its problems. Mine would be the inability to really chill and let loose and stop worrying about what people think of me. So hence this blog. I want to share my writing and take any comments that come along, so i will start with 2 chapters of a story i wrote for an end of course piece from last year which was marked but never received any feedback on, enjoy or not :)
Misdemeanors in Time
1
Damn it?
Marcus Tullius wearily trudged through the blood soaked earth as he searched for the booty of war that would enhance his legionary pay. The mud oozed through his toes and cooled the blisters of many days marching. This is a glorious campaign against the Germanic horde, he and his cohort honored themselves before Jupiter Capitolinus this day.
Marcus stopped in his tracks. There dangling from the hand of a fallen Gaul was a necklace inlaid with semi precious gems. Just to make sure, he unsheathed his gladius and slid its point into the bodies giving flesh. With the gladius still impaled he grasped the necklace and tore it from its deathly grip.
As he held the necklace up to the moonlight to admire its beauty he was blinded by a very bright light. Bolts of lighting struck the earth within feet of him, the air crackled. Is Jupiter himself paying him a personal visit. The light faded and steam arose from the earth. Out of it stepped a cloaked figure. Its head pale and thin with hair long and scruffy like the Gauls he slaughtered. This beast stared at him through the bottoms of wine bottles fastened to its hideous face. Then amazingly it spoke.
“Er Hi! I don’t suppose this is hampstead heath and I am in the middle of a war re enactment?”
Marcus stared in disbelief. What should he do? This obviously wasn’t Jupiter. Perhaps it was the Gauls god come to take retribution upon him. The beast spoke again.
“I mean if it is. You guys have done a great job with the fake bodies and all.”
Marcus sensed the creature was scared. Maybe he had the upper hand and could overpower the beast and gain even greater reward. He slid his gladius out of the body and the earth gathered the fluids hungrily. The beast babbled further.
“Ah, that looks real!” The beast glanced around him at the uniforms. “I would hazard a guess at 101 BC Battle of Vercellae Cisalpine Gaul?”
Marcus stood and presented the point of his weapon to the beast. It bleated.
“Darn it not again. This damn device will be the death of me.”
The creature produced a wondrous artifact and shook it at Marcus.
“Oh allow me to introduce myself, Fred Spog at your service, and you are?”
Marcus let loose his most ferocious war cry.
“Shit!” I turned on my heels and fled, hurdling any bodies in my way. I always hated my PE teacher for pushing me until my whole body ached. I now thanked him.
I was out running my screaming banshee when my foot caught an outstretched arm and I took a tumble, rolled and was back on my feet clutching an embroided cloak. “Oh, nice stitching,” I thought. My roman friend was upon me and lunged. I side stepped at just the right moment sending my foe sprawling into the mud. It started to rain heavily as I stepped forward and found that the chap who wanted to skewer me had knocked himself unconscious. I turned the legionary over so he wouldn’t drown and admired the weight of his gladius before returning it to its sheath. I stepped back, sighed, fiddled with some dials on the timepiece and was gone.
I found myself facing the wall in a corner of a dimly lit office. My oversized overcoat dripping onto the lino. A thought passed through my mind. Sam Stone ace detective!..... Why couldn’t I be that guy instead of Fred Spog tracker of rare and unusual technology. I tugged at my sleeve that was embedded in the wall.
“Damn not again! I have been through so many overcoats I should add it to my expenses,” I whispered.
I slip off my overcoat and it squelches to the floor. Straighten my bow tie, paw at my unshaven chin, brace myself and turn on my heels. Nothing, empty! The brass buttons on my bright red jacket glint in the light. This was a bonus for completing my last assignment. The client had assured me that it was genuine Beatles, as worn by Ringo Starr. I was having trouble trying to get my mustache to match. Not that it mattered too much, as I was currently reluctant to part with some of my other bonuses; which included bermuda shorts and world war one trench boots. My latest client at least had promised me the porter trousers with gold piping as worn by Tim Curry in the Home Alone 2 movie. I decided that I needed to be more assertive when it came to bonuses and not let myself be led by my clients. I glanced out of the window and recognised the street outside, I was in the offices of the insurance agents two streets from my home. I smiled.
“Perhaps I should put in a claim on my overcoat.”
I prised open the window and slid down the drainpipe. I fastened the roman cloak around my shoulders and bounded away like Zorro to my bed.
2
WTF?
I lay in my bunk pondering the previous days activities. Life was getting complicated. I stared at the numerous world war two aircraft dangling from the ceiling. They knew my secret. I imagined them swooping down upon me, wave after wave. Their bullets hammering into me like my mother’s scorn. My excuses had become pitiful. I had taken down multi million dollar companies, exposed evil tyrants and tippy toed through deadly minefields. Yet facing my mother with the truth was unbearable.
She will be knocking on that door anytime soon, wanting to know what I have been up to. Using the modeling club to cover my antics had become difficult since she interrogated Billy last spring. Billy wasn’t happy. She enticed him into the parlor with homemade scones and jam. Then demanded information on my current activities, whilst waving a metallic spatula in his face. He had to give up the modeling club after that, his hand was not steady anymore. I had even come up with the idea of inventing a girlfriend, perfect I thought. It’s difficult leaving the house when your mother is literally clinging to your ankles sobbing. Why didn’t I love her anymore? How could this girl be so mean and take her baby away from her? In the end I had to pretend a breakup from the imaginary girlfriend as my mother wanted to meet the bitch responsible for her misery. She was happy as pie again. Although she did offer to track down and sort out this girl who had broken her poor didums heart.
I decided that it probably best to face Armageddon in attack mode and left my room before my mother gained the high ground. I made my way down to the kitchen and my favorite chair with the padded cushion that my Gran had lovingly embroided a heart on for me.
My morning egg sported a fetching red and white striped cosy with silver stars. This confirmed to me that it was indeed Friday. A different cosy for every day, my sleep deprived mind uttered. That and the fact that mother was lusting over the milk man at the door who had brought our weekly dairy order.
“Oh Frank, I am a little short of cash this week. Will you take payment in kind?” she offered letting the strap of her floral nightie slip off her shoulder.
Frank looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming bus. He shook as he spoke.
“That’s ok mam ....just pay at the office.”
He leaped into his milk float and sped off at 10mph. Mum cast him one of her withering looks that could turn milk into cottage cheese.
She shut the door just as the grandfather clock announced its regular hourly chime.
“Fred!” she shouted as she entered the kitchen. “It’s 8am and you haven’t touched your egg yet. Leave them specs alone. You wont have any glass left in them at this rate.”
I sighed and thanked god it was Friday. I looked forward to my modeling club tonight. I was building my own Lancaster bomber from scratch. Perhaps I could model it on my mother, I mused as I smashed my spoon through the eggs shell.
I didn’t like my job. It played havoc with my social life and had reduced my visits to my cherished modeling club. I now stood in a brightly light office after escaping from my mother’s interrogation at breakfast through the back door. My replacement overcoat is tightly wound round my wiry frame. My owl like eyes peek out from underneath my Bogart hat and scrutinised my latest client.
“Will you stop pacing up and down matey,” I thought eyeing my clients frantic movements behind his polished oak desk.
I fished in my pocket, pulled out a screwed up scrap of paper and waved it in my clients direction.
“My.....my, expenses are noted..... d..d...down for your appraisal,” I stammered. My client stopped pacing and slammed his fists down on the table, making me jump.
“Director Grant! Of the FBI!” I said standing my ground. “Will you for once in your m..mighty existence sit down and listen.”
I had been through hell these past three days. The mission to retrieve the device had nearly ended in disaster. Of course there where always, what the director called ‘discrepancies’ in the way that I operated under mission conditions. No matter how much the director moaned I always got the job done. I gave my mission report with added ‘discrepancies’ this time.
I had successfully infiltrated the underground bunker by means of the tea lady. Apparently Maud had always been there, even before it had become a secret bunker and considered part of the brotherhood. She had felt like part of the furniture; like the grandfather clock waiting patiently in the lobby, reliable and admired by all. I had bumped into her accidentally on purpose in the local coffee shop. I had then gained her life story over a full course breakfast I had provided her with to make up for my clumsiness. She thought it nice that someone had given her breakfast for once and that lately she felt more like the tarnished teapot that had been replaced with that monstrous vending machine that spewed forth muddy concoctions.
I expressed my good fortune upon meeting her as I wished to play a practical joke upon an employee of the bunker who had wronged me. I explained that going in through the lengthy security checks would alert my foe to my presence and spoil the fun. The idea gripped her elderly body and a glint of life entered her sullen eyes. She proposed that I dressed in her oversized overalls and patterned headscarf and entered through the trade entrance with her keycard. She explained to me her daily routine and expressed relief of gaining a day off from her toil.
The Siamese cat was a problem I hadn’t foreseen. It knew! I still bare the marks of its claws where it had slid down my back after rugby tackling my face. Maud had neglected to tell me that cuddles slept in the doorway of the very room I needed to enter. She had sniffed me and transformed in an instant from overwhelming cuteness to feline epilepsy. I was not proud of what happened next. In my pain I turned as she reached the floor and punted her. She sailed through the air with a look of shock on her face and disappeared down the garbage shute. I wondered if the furnace was lit today. Stumbling into the room I blacked out for a couple of minutes. When I came to a siren was whistling down my ears. Had cuddles been found. I quickly by passed the security checks on the safe holding the device and bolted for the exit. I was met with strange looks as I hurtled past employees in the halls. I was floral decadence as I had also partaken of Maud’s perfume which she had eagerly offered me and this now wafted around my nostrils and made me think that I could possibly have a future in drag. I vaguely then remembered throwing the keycard at the exit door and disappearing into the night.
Director Grant steadied himself in his chair. He fixed his gaze.
“Mr Spog! The device reprograms your brain with new memories. You have been gone for two weeks.”
He placed the retrieved metal box on the table and opened its many catches. Inside was a bag of jelly babies.
I sank into the nearest chair. C.R.A.T.E.R (CRiminal And TErrorist Republic) had beaten me this time. What bothered me though, more than anything, is what had happened to me in the missing 11 days and how was I going to explain it to my mother. I caught the directors gaze and feebly uttered.
“I suppose the porter trousers are no longer up for grabs then?”
“Mr Spog. It would be pertinent for you to have a little holiday from tracking for a while. You are at the moment considered a security risk and will no longer be under assignment with this agency until this risk has been cleared. I would take that timepiece from you, but I don’t want to lose more agents.”
Director Grant was referring to the time when they had discovered my special qualities and instead of initially recruiting me, had tried to remove the timepiece from me. Resulting in the agents that tried disappearing to god know’s where. I had managed to find one agent who was about to be burnt at the stake and rescue him from medieval England. Agent Jones had at least managed to give up smoking after that as he could no longer bare to be near any naked flame.
“That will be all Mr Spog!” the director bellowed.
I strolled out of the office and wandered the streets for hours munching on the bag of jelly babies I had swiped and was dismayed that there wasn’t many green ones in the packet.
Upon zapping back home I re entered through the back door and crept into the darkened kitchen. A blinding light met my gaze and a mother’s scorn descended upon me. After repeatedly hitting me across the back with a frying pan and accusing me of motherly neglect, she had relented and left me uttering that I was not her Freddy anymore and that I had changed over the last week.
I climbed into my bed, sore. I at least now knew that I had been coming home regularly during my missing days. I drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep and dreamed. Images of death, strange characters and garden gnomes flashed through my mind. I awoke with a start after a particularly vicious gnome was about to labotomise me. My wide eyes fixed on the lone chair in my room. In it sat a young girl of Asian decent.
“Hello Fred. Remember me?”
Hi all
