His Beautiful Disappointment (Microfiction)

Christmas of 2009 I was given 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love' by Raymond Carver, and inspired by that book in march of 2010 I sat down and wrote a very short story that I decided to call 'A Beautiful Disappointment'. You can still find the original on the Explore Auburnville Facebook page. I had only been writing a matter of months at that point, most of the feedback was positive and ever since I have had a soft spot for that piece. Recently I decided that I wanted to post that story on this blog. I wrestled with the idea of giving the original a quick copy and paste and a new home, but settled on the decision to rework it and this is the new version, at this point I cannot say which I like more. I'm sure you will let me know, enjoy.

 

They’d stopped talking. Well, he had. She’d continued with her excuses, flexing her flawed logic as only she could. He’d been holding the orange since the conversation had started, and twice he’d considered throwing it at her, but in truth he’d always been more of a spinner than a pace man, so he just sat there at the table.

The juice spurted as he dug his thumb nail through its skin; the fragrance of it hit his nose at almost the same time. The smell always reminded him of Christmas as a boy.

He started to remove the peel with precision and control, almost lovingly, as he slid his thumb between its flesh and the skin. He remembered a time when his thumb had moved as easily between her skin and her dress-strap - she had wanted him then.

With a silent satisfaction - he could tell this skin was going to come off in one - he continued to manipulate it and the spiral of textured orange skin grew longer. He gently folded the skin and rested it on the table next to his coffee.

‘Why do you always do that?’ She smiled. ‘There’s a bin behind you! Are you ignoring me now…? Please Peter we need to talk about this.’

She was still talking at him, as he stared at this naked beauty in his hand. Gently he started removing the pith, strand by strand. He thought of her white lace underwear on their wedding night. He carefully tore the orange in pieces and placed one half next to his coffee on top of its folded skin.

'Peter! Please answer me!'

'What do you expect me to say Trudy, really?' he mumbled as he placed one of the segments in his mouth. He chewed it slowly, growing angry as he did so.

'Saying anything would be a start, at least then I would know what you’re thinking'. She flinches as he stands suddenly startling her. He scrapes the orange, the pith and the skin into his hands, turns and slams it all into the bin, pausing briefly to take in its unwanted contents before allowing the lid to swing closed. Now completely disheartened he replies at last,

'The bloody orange was dry! …What do you expect? I feel let down,' he said, slowly turning to look at his wife again, ‘Utterly disappointed’.

‘I’m sorry’. Said Trudy as tears welled in her eyes again.

‘Well that makes two of us.’

‘I didn’t mean to, it just got out of hand; you’re the last person we would’ve wanted to hurt’, she shakes her head and continues almost to herself. ‘I just don’t know why we did it, please Peter, come home we can work this out. You loved me once, we can take our time I know you hate me now but we can make it work again with time, please!’

‘I don’t hate you Tru’, Peter said with a slight shake of his head, he takes her hand in his. ‘But, I don’t think I can get past this, maybe with time…’ He sits in silence for a while listening to her quietly cry and sniff, weighing in his head all the good times that were and what still might be. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he said at last.

‘Please’, she replied and looked at him like she used to.

(c)Lee Auburn 2010

It's New Home (Microfiction)

I had forgotten all about this very short story, it was originally written as a competition entry - To write a maximum of 250 words inspired by a famous piece of art (there were only two choices available). Why this particular story came from this Van Gogh I have no idea. I mentioned it was short, put the kettle on and you will have read the story by the time it's boiled. Enjoy!

His fingers could just touch it… but no he just tipped it further out of reach. His shoulder almost dislocated, sweat dripping from his nose. Frantic now his mind raced: how to reach it?

‘Give me a hand’ he cried.

‘What?’ came the answer.

‘Give me a hand will you!’

‘I can’t hear you, what did you say?’ he said, poking his head round the door.

‘I said for the umpteenth time, please for the love of Van Gogh’s fucking ear will you give me a hand!’

‘No need to be like that. What’re you doing on the floor anyway?’

‘I dropped it and then it rolled under the bed…’

‘…And you have such piddly little T-Rex arms you can't reach it?’

‘Well…yes, fuck-you-very-much.’

‘You’re welcome’ he smiled, ‘why don’t we just move the bed?’

‘Alright then… You get that end.’

‘Why do I get the heavy end?’

‘Well you’re the muscle Mary…’

‘…Oh very bloody funny - you need the favour; you get the heavy end.’

‘Ok on 3… three!’ In unison they grunt and sweat and swear.

‘It won’t budge’.

‘I can see that, I think I’ve popped something.’

‘Well was it expensive?’

‘Not really.’

‘Just leave it then, we’ll get another one.’

‘We can’t just fucking leave it… What if a kid finds it?’

‘Look we’ll be back in the U.K. by this time tomorrow, and anyway, who says it's ours ?’

‘I suppose, but I’m not sure I like the idea.’

‘You’ll live!’

(c) Lee Auburn 2010

The Story So Far...

Well well, so here we are my official last post of 2010, and what a year, well it's definitely been some kind of year and its also been just over a year since my first blog something like 54 weeks ago. Mostly it has been a year of not getting everything done that I wanted to, but that may have been due to unrealistic expectations on my part. Who can say? This year on the main has been fun, with a whole host of new faces sprinkled over it for good measure.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and believe it or not (and I was pleasantly surprised) this blog is being read in 15 countries including the UK. I would list them all but who wants to read a list of countries? You know who and where you are and I'm very happy you keep coming back. I'm hoping to continue blogging a little more regularly in 2011 and (fingers crossed) with your help to increase my readership.

Recently I have adjusted the settings on this blog to make it easier to view on your smartphone. Also, you can now follow me on Twitter (if you fancy it a little tweet-wise) @auburnville - it should make it easier to get feedback and/or throw abuse at each other (insert smiley here).

My bookshop job has been fun - I'm hoping my services will still be required after the Christmas rush but at the time of writing it is still unknown. I have been in a constant state of amused exasperation for the past few weeks as the customers come out with some absolutely genius remarks (and when I say genius I really mean bat-shit crazy).
         A man/woman walks into a book shop and says to the mild mannered assistant,
         'Excuse me, I'm looking for a book.'
         'Oookay,' said the assistant ('have you the faintest clue which book?' he thinks),
         'The trouble is...' continues the customer. 'I don't know the name or the author.'
         'Really? Is it this one?' The assistant picks a book at random from the shelves and shows it to the customer.
         'Well obviously its not!' The customer fixes the assistant with a stare that screams 'You bloody idiot.'
         'How do you know,' asks the assistant. 'You said you didn't know the book's title or author, and this is a fine read... Honest.'
         'But it's not about the sex lives of eunuchs.'
         'Oh I see... sorry we're out of stock.'

          ...and so it goes on. And this sort of thing didn't happen once; the amount of customers that expected you to be telepathic and have an encyclopedic memory of the amazon website was/is fantastic. My favourite moment was a customer who was after a recent Mann Booker prize winner: he was convinced it was this year or the last... three of us had our collective heads together we even googled it but we failed. Later when I had some time to undertake some further research (as this question had left me quite vexed) I discovered that the book in question just happened to be the Life of Pi, Mann Booker winner 2002 I believe. Oh well. The other breed of customer that gets very annoying are the 'we heard/read/watched an interview with an author of a book and I want it now... What do you mean it still isn't published yet, but why would it be advertised and not released?' I don't know ask the publishers.

Anyhow, enough of my grumbles for now. I would like to wish you all the best that 2011 has to offer, I hope you are all safe and warm, and surrounded by family and/or loved ones... and most of all happy. Try not to spend the money you don't have on the things you don't really need, and try to be a little more understanding of other people's points of view. To be honest most of the last few lines are more for my benefit although I've never been one for new year's resolutions, but I may as well add - be more active and try to eat healthier.

Happy 2011 all!

Until next year...

Careers Advice (Microfiction)

This year I think it's safe to say the quantity of my writing has been quite unpredictable. I hope in general it's improving and that you're still enjoying it. The fiction I'm now posting is getting at least as many views as my opinions on life. Which I have to say I'm quite pleased about as I don't always want to be slagging someone off to find an audience (don't worry there is more of that to follow). So what have I written for you? Well on this occasion it's another dialogue-led piece, and if you have bothered to read this far then dear reader you shall be rewarded - because this is a slightly tweaked segment from my first novel. Yes I'm aware it's taking awhile but it will get there.       

            ‘Well sir, I thought I’d like to be a teacher.’

            ‘Would you indeed, and you're not put off by what you see everyday about the school?’

            ‘No sir.’

            ‘I must admit Toby that teaching at first glance does look like a glamorous and noble profession but it’s not all hot and cold running sixth form girls and all the free refectory food you can eat you know… There’re long hours, endless marking, and the inevitable addictions: nicotine and caffeine mainly. Most teachers find the only way they can get through the day is by lacing their coffee with gin or rum - personally I favour whisky. No it’s not very glamorous at all… I don’t think I could recommend it.’

            ‘Oh… I had kind of set my heart on teaching sir, I hadn’t given much thought to anything else.’

            ‘Well I suggest you do, unless you fancy a life so soul-destroying your wife decides to have an affair with Jones from her accounts office, and finally runs off with Jones from the I.T. department. You return home of an evening to an empty house with nothing more to look forward to than a microwave meal and a pile of marking, then spending the weekend trying to top yourself, off your face on a heady cocktail of Prozac and the supermarket’s own-brand whisky – vile stuff by the way – and if you're feeling flush getting a ten pound blow job from some leathery-faced old prossie who if you’re lucky has remembered to take her teeth out… No Toby, teachings not for you unless you would like to end up divorced, depressed, alcoholic, and sobbing yourself to sleep every night.’ He paused and removed his glasses. ‘Would you like my advice?’

            ‘Very much, sir.’

            ‘Now I’m not advocating prostitution but a good looking young man like yourself should find it possible to earn a good living.’

            ‘A rent boy sir… but sir! I don’t… I mean, I wouldn’t sir…’

            ‘… Now, now, you miss understand me I’m not suggesting for one second that you should start hanging about the local park’s toilets, like some sort of grimy truck driver or down on his luck pop star… I was only going to suggest, escort services, you know providing a service to lonely widows.’

            ‘Widows, sir?’

            ‘Yes, divorcees and business women… that sort of thing.’

            ‘Urm, maybe I should think about University first sir, concentrate on my studies for a few years.’

            ‘Of course Toby, I wasn’t suggesting you should dash out and join an agency today, oh my no.’

Mr Peters replaced his glasses, stood up and with a broad warm smile said,

‘Well I’m glad we’ve had this time to talk Toby, thank you very much for coming in… and remember my door is always open…’

‘Thank you very much sir.’

‘Oh one last thing, would you be so kind as to close the door on your way out. Good lad...’

(c) Lee Auburn 2010

Yuki-Shi no Yume (Microfiction)

I had written this story for halloween, but decided not to post it straight away. With all the snow we've had recently I've decided that this is as good a time as any. The title is Japanese and if I've managed to get the title correct its literal translation is - Dreams of Death and Blood. I hope you enjoy it.

The wind tousles her snow white hair, obscuring the girl’s terrible beauty. Kneeling naked beside him; stroking his face. She has nothing but love for this man. Lying in the snow he doesn’t understand why she wants him to die. He tries to tell her but he doesn’t speak Japanese. Blood in the moonlight looks black and now his hands are slick with it. The snow is falling on his blood spattered face, the flakes remind him of… cherry blossom. 

*****

There are no real Geisha anymore, only whores from what was the old USSR with faces made of sharp angles and their all-too-blonde hair. At least I’ve had a good skin-full of bad Sake. As I stagger back to my apartment across the bridge, Kyoto at night in the snow looks like a postcard and I love her. A little old man stops me, he’s smiling, all bad teeth and bowed legs, he speaks, but…

‘I’m sorry my Japanese is very bad.’ I say by way of an apology. He laughs and tells me that my friend said it would be. I laughed at this – but what I found amusing, I didn’t know.

‘Which friend?’ I asked, thinking he might know my girlfriend.

‘The one you think about whenever you cross a bridge.’

‘But...’

‘…He died, yes… but he still worries about you.’

I thought of him then, all wrapped and tangled in weeds, struggling - then still - carried off down stream before he was found at last, weeks later.

‘What’re you?’ I sneer. ‘Some sort of mystic?’

‘No’ he said, his bad teeth forming another smile, ‘more of a colleague you could say.’

‘What’s he worried about then?’

‘Your Kitsune’

‘What… you mean Kitty?’

‘Is that what she calls herself? She is Kitsune!’

‘Kitsune… I don’t understand?’

‘She hunts in the snow, her coat’s almost white and she will kill you!’

‘What the fuck! Are you seriously trying to tell me you’ve spoken to my dead friend, and he’s told you that my Japanese girlfriend, who I met Salsa dancing, is some sort of serial killer…’

            ‘…I’m not telling you anything about salsa-dancing serial killers, I’m not even here… but, in your dreams when you’re looking up and the snow is falling on your face, when you see your end, ask yourself who kisses you goodbye.’ He’s interrupted by the buzz of my cell.

‘It’s her’ he whispers.

My thumb hovers; do I choose red or green? I look back at him for courage or guidance but I’m alone on the bridge, and the snow starts to fall again, big flakes that remind me of cherry blossom.

 *****

The fox sniffs at the man lying in the snow, and gives out a little cry - if he heard it, it would have sounded almost childlike - and then tastes him. With the coming dawn the fox makes her way silently through the mist, moving deeper into the temple’s ancient gardens.

(c) Lee Auburn 2010

The Story So Far...

I'm not sure whats gone wrong with my time table at the moment: I know a large chunk of my time has been eaten up with my new job but really, it's not even properly full-time. I've clearly became a sad old man with the stamina of a 90-year-old. I now work in a large book shop for my sins [which must have been many in this and past lives] and I must admit I enjoy it - it's not quite as much fun as my days in the comic shop mocking teenage X-Men fans and generally fucking about but it's still work, which is nice!
     This blog was actually mapped out over a coffee before my shift started [with pen and paper in long hand]. The universe has managed to set the world to rights again it would seem. I slated the evils of Katie Price and TweedyCole and then last week [ish] I was given the task of stacking their new books [biographies both] - hundreds of the bloody things. If this wasn't bad enough I have to smile and make small talk with the fuckwits who buy this shit...

     What's that dear reader, why don't I leap across the counter and bite their noses off, spitting the grisly bits back into the blood covered faces crying something beautiful... Like a Morrisey lyric or something else that might come to mind, liberally dowsed with profanity and righteous fury? Because as I've already pointed out, I'm a corporate whore who needs the cash. Not to mention I get some sort of perverted pleasure from giving excellent customer service. At least for a while both biographies were being outsold by the spoof Meercat Bio -The Simple Life!
      All in all I seem to be less annoyed by things at the moment... I still dislike all things X-Factor [hate is too strong a word] - I now think I feel more pity towards the poor simple minded viewers [yes mother I include you] of this corporate money making machine... [stat attack alert]  Between ITV1 & 2 there has been over 5.5 hrs of weekly airtime given over to the show over Saturday and Sunday nights, not counting the weekly repeats. Episode 1 alone drew an audience of 13.5 Million, which on the night in question was a little over 50% of the TV viewing population of Great Britain. It still pulls somewhere in the region of 10 million viewers. Now get your voting fingers ready... because at 25p a text.... well you do the maths: how many times have you voted for one of these desperate-for-their-15-minutes-of-fame wannabes [all washed up and forgotten by New year 2011, fingers crossed]?
      It would seem that even in a recession business is good. I wonder what we could achieve as a nation if we diverted all this wasted time, money and energy into something useful. For instance, we could build a new henge for the 21st century,  not out of stone obviously as that weighs a fair bit and is slightly on the heavy side. Just think about what you could have done with all that time that you'll never get back. If I could be arsed I would research how many weeks this show has been running and then do some quick calculations to work out how many millions of hours have been spent in front of the TV, how many life times would it represent...
     ...I'm not sure I would want to know, would you?
I have only existed on this planet for approximately 360,000 hours and I would hope my life for what it's worth was not more than half way over. What will we do with the rest?

Until next time...

The Story So Far...

Hello all, I hope this finds you well.
I can't believe it's already Mid-October, I go off to sleep one evening and lose the best part of four weeks.

It's X-Factor season again, [Rant-Mode-Enabled] and do you know what... I couldn't give a flying fuck - its safe to say that I wouldn't piss on Jedwood if it was on fire! Please please if there is a big guy in the sky let the TweedyCole get bitten by something bigger next time like a fucking Tiger [the last great act of a dieing species]. Also a little known fact - well, little known to me - Simon Cowell is worth in excess of 350 million quid! Try to remember that as you franticly text vote for Sad-fuck-for-the-win - yes Mother that includes you, put the phone down.

[if you enjoy X-Fuctor I can recommend the blog of the "Un-working Girl" she loves it - one day I'm sure we will meet to exchange notes... It could happen!]

If someone is going to start some Facebook campaign for a Christmas Number One can we have something a little more traditional this year, don't get me wrong I very much enjoyed last years 'Killin in the Name of' but it was difficult to sing the kids to sleep with. Maybe, 'Down with the Sickness' - the Richard Cheese version? Or for something a little more traditional - Nat King Cole maybe?

Turkey was fantastic by the way, I recommend it wholeheartedly. There were of course a few things that perhaps could have been better but since most of these were other British tourists there was no point complaining to the resort management. How I giggled when I heard the fantastic comment,
"What! There's foreigners here?"
Yes you bloody idiot I believe it's you!
Lady Auburnville and myself looked at each other stunned when another Sterling Brit abroad complained the pool bar wasn't open yet, and then the whole group of them went out into the world to find a supermarket that would sell them beer. Why were we stunned at this obvious use of their initiative? Because it was 8.30am, and the pool bar opened at 10am. You couple this with the family that couldn't find anything to eat at the breakfast buffet apart from eggs - the kids all had boiled and the parents scrambled - when the buffet was a full continental breakfast: a mass of wonderful meats, cheeses and fresh fruit. There were also large bowls of cereals [the lack of cardboard boxes must have confused them] fresh bread, large bowls of preserves and honey, and every other day there were pancakes or eggy bread. It was almost enough to go berserk over.

There were complaints that there wasn't enough English food...

Why? I don't want bloody Mac D's [somehow McD has become a British staple] or fish and chips, you hideous waste of human life, I don't go abroad expecting a version of Britain where they've managed to find a virgin to sacrifice to the mighty Sun God. Speaking of which it was almost 40oC most days, in Britain if we have temperatures at that level we would probably expect to be witnessing the end of the world. But still there were bright pink Brits the same colour as their bikinis... and couple this with the strange activity of Brits sun bathing topless by the pool only to cover up to go for a swim... Oh and one last thing that amused me as a parent: if your child, when asked to do something like - 'Get out of the sun you're going to die!' says 'No!' and you threaten to discipline them, then please do. I know we don't all want to be thrashing our pride and joys to within an inch of their snotty wingeing high pitched screaming little lives... But you do have to follow through with the discipline otherwise you'll end up blaming the schools when they've turned into horrible little shitbags.

[Rant-Mode-Disabled] And breathe...

In the words of Baz Luhrman 'Remember the sunscreen'

Until next time...