Winter writing competition

“Oh yes, this is just perfect Willand… I thought you said this thing was four-wheel drive. We need to get to Tretsa before noon…”

“Hey, the guy who sold me it said it could take…”

“You believed the word of a used-cart salesman? A used-cart salesman called Honest Uther?!”

Grutzal the Hairy, Barbarian for Hire, smacked the vehicle’s side panel as the Wizard revved the horse for the ninth time. The wheels churned in the track, kicking golden autumn leaves into the air and providing forward motion at a speed rivalling the fastest of continental drifts.

“Look, it’s the fashionable thing to do,” explained Willand, shaking the reins so hard more of the bedraggled mystical symbols from his robe flew in all directions. “Arrive late, make an entrance…”

“Yes, fair point... However, I think they normally mean harvest dances rather than heroic battles to the death with a gang of demonic centaurs…” explained Grutzal in his calmest voice.

Willand gulped and tried the horse again, he’d been with the barbarian long enough to know his calm voice meant that he’d transcended annoyed to a point where all his vexations were queuing up and slipping on the knuckledusters.

Showing a disregard for personal safety only seen before in the Plummeting Platypii of Piyn, the wizard attempted the placatory approach.

“Now Grutzal, have I steered you wrong before? Didn’t I help you acquire a magical sword of renown?”

Both heads turned to take in the well wrapped parcel buried under their luggage, even a bag of Grutzal’s used jockstraps failed to muffle the high pitched voice proclaiming its love for young female goatherders skipping through the mountains.

“Yeee-ess,” pondered Grutzal. “I’m sure one day I’ll come to my senses regarding magical yodelling swords and their plus points over, say, a quiet ‘not giving my position away’ type of weapon…”

“OK, how about the oft fabled Tam O’Shanter of Tom O’Shanter?”

“Oh yes, I don’t mind looking like a pillock… after all, the reward of being able to speak to oysters is invaluable…”

As the explosion of pithy sarcasm threatened to reach Defcon three the two were interrupted by a reedy, off-tune version of Pantalentio’s ‘Concerto no 34 for Armpit Flute and Unsociable Bodily Functions’ coming from Grutzal’s loincloth pocket.

Pulling out his ivory iBone the barbarian flipped it open and waited for the BlueToe imp to collect his messages.

“Oh brilliant, it’s from Tretsa, looks like we’re not needed anyway.”

“But the Centaurs said if we didn’t defeat them the village would be subject to their alcoholism, orgiastic sexual perversions and relentless pillaging?”

“Exactly, all the plus points of normal politicians and honest too, they got voted into parliament uncontested… Dammit, we needed the gold.”

“Is this a good time to talk about endorsements? Bob’s Beard Delouser is after a face for their adverts?”

“Willand… do you want your lower intestine to ring to the sound of yodelling?”

ALL over again she feels the wrench of her belly, the low pull of her loins, a cradling slew of ice hot pain, acute, high, incisively sharp and so ruthlessly, accurately, exquisitely deep, it becomes almost a pleasure, though not even at all; followed by a sudden, muscle-tearing ejection, a final inner roar to threaten the inner ear; blessed, bursting release, a barreling swollen emptiness now, pain set aside, pleasure beating pain, pleasure thwarting enormous, cloaking fatigue; pleasure, pleasure, pleasure…

AS they bickered around her, she smiled without moving, blinked while her eyes stayed still. She felt the tear without the moisture.

FROM the left and from the right, noises and lights, smells and tastes, all switching and swapping places with ease, senses like relay runners, ribbons in the wind. Water balloons bursting, carousels rising, carriages racketing around their aching, bolted tracks. The caramel apple gleams and smells of burnt; its case is brittle, collapsing against her teeth; sticking to her lips as the soft pulp below yields to pressure. There is a flash of a camera, and the image is on the film, and the film is at the store, and then the print is in the frame, for a while, then in the album, later, then lost, some place, in storage, somewhere. But the smells are still there, now.

SOMEONE shouts at someone else while someone yet again insists everyone who is talking should be listening to them. No one, of course, is listening to the things she cannot say, but that’s okay, because she doesn’t really want to share them.

THEY’RE running through the familiar rising terrain, nipping over raised roots, darting down paths past leaning trees, whooping as they go; calf muscles strain up hillocks, bloat as the legs they’re sat in shudder into clefts, where they’re falling, rolling, laughing, kicking golden autumn leaves, throwing them too, then rising, shrieking, and running some more, laughter all around them, sunshine through the trees, branches against blue sky. Soon it is time to eat; but tomorrow will be the day to go home.

LIKE a croupier with his cards, she neatly stacks and restacks the memories, intertwining and folding them into no comprehensible order other than her own, alacrity imbued with calm. She is utterly aware as her legs lose their feeling and equally disinterested. Soon be there. The arms, for some reason, went ages ago.

FASTER now, yet each as easy. The soft dry host upon her tongue. Pineapple, her favourite fruit. The sting of a nettle. A drawn-out ferry horn. The touch of a hand inside her own. A crucifix sat high up above an altar. A sea, one summer, dark waves and bustling white crests. A disco ball. Napkins. Thick, meaty gravy. Promotion. A first day. A cold hand into a postbox. Signing her name. Tennis. The breath-like touch of hot summer air.

THEY bickered and ignored her, as she knew they should. They’ll need their snapshots, too, she thought. And so she stopped; forever.