A Very Large Number of Goblets Containing Nuclear Reactor Fuel, Please Bartender

There is something transcendentally evocative about dreamy barmaids. I call them dreamy barmaids because they make me feel dreamy. It works better if the bar is empty, and it’s just the two of you. If they ever ask you out on a date, reply with the phrase, “Sounds dreamy…” You may suggest going to the local carnival together and sharing candy floss while perusing which riveting, adrenaline-pumping rides to go on. If I were you, accompanied by a beautiful barmaid, who has fallen for your chat-up lines with a one-of-a-kind warm-hearted and loving reciprocal energy transferral, I suggest the Ghost Train.

Then, once admittance is granted, you can try and spook each other for laughs and giggles. Again, this works better if it’s just solely the pair of you. At the end of the experience, you may want to share a picnic on a comfortable grassy knoll, watching the theatrical bulbs of the funfair shine up to full intensity against the darkening wild Sailor’s Delight yonder above, watching the gypsies and their streetwise whippersnappers phasing out their hissing hydraulics, taking notice of other couples and families traipsing towards the exit, homeward bound for nourishing suppers of stock-infused broth from tin bowls and wooden spoons in front of flickering open hearth fireplaces.

You may want to kiss your partner on the lips. Or peck her on the cheek. You may also wish to document this eventful exchange in a journal when you split paths and return inland to your boring, lonely abode, where the memory of her might make you feel light-headed and giddy inside, as if she has left a coronet of exceptionality adorning your napper; indeed, as if she, of the higher and more joyfully-enhanced realms, has breathed a sample of her gladdened aura into your belly, which now, after having encountered someone who is worth a kingdom more than your equal, flows with divinely radiant rivers of life.

I derived this fondness of barmaids from an ice cream cart, in my hazy, fuzzy, smog-filled (I lived next to a power plant) youthful heyday. It started with a haircut in a Chinese hairdresser’s. I’d just taxed a drug dealer to the tune of £180, before I went in for my short back and sides, for 2 grams of Charlie. Instead of cash pound notes, I handed him toilet paper. This was a symbolic declaration of what I thought about him. The cheeky, daring scallywag pulled a switchblade on me, taking a dangerous swipe at my face. If my instincts weren’t tiptop like a fighter pilot’s, when I pulled back out of the way and skilfully dodged his maddened attempt at opening my cheek, he’d have landed me in A&E overnight.

Being a hopelessly addicted teenybopper at that time, I think it was the Indian Summer of 1992, I was bang-into getting high at every available opportunity, although, being perilously perched at such a young age in life, I could ill afford the workable waging funds to properly afford enough gear in ‘da hood to sustain this hedonistic penchant.

The woman in the hairdressers was vaping constantly as she buzz-cutted my ketwig. I was convinced the vapour was handing me out a nice little popcorn lung by the minute as I sat there a complete and totalled bag of nerves but I wouldn’t have changed anything about her for the world. I remember how deft and responsive her fingers were to the barbering instrument and its relational synergy with my head; they left me wondering about heady topics such as physical properties and interacting matter principles and scientific experiments about how flesh could be so beguiling and mesmerising, all when she was performing such a simple and commonly familiar ritual, which she most like performed to the same ability each and every day, and had done so for umpteen years to boot.

The woman told me a story of an ice cream cart which bonded two hardcore cultish dissident Rebellions-Aflame™ sweethearts into one exemplary amorous unison predisposed to both anarchy and generosity in equivalent measurement, when they both shared frozen Feasts and Twisters from its icy shelves of chilled confections which resulted in ecstatic jubilations on the taste buds. There was sweets, there was candy, there was sugar and sweetener, but then there was ICE CREAM.

Ice cream bonded the sweethearts in the story. The story bonds me to the hairdresser. The hairdresser bonds my out-of-control drug addiction to pretty ladies working behind bars. ENDS OF.

* STAY DREAMY *

THE PARACHUTE FIANCE by Sharon Hood

DNM FICTION edited by A.Michael

Sharon Hood is 27. She is outgoing and quite childish at times. Her biggest asset is her ability to approach and talk to total strangers. Her biggest downfall is drinking one too many in Wetherspoons and doing exactly that. The most important thing in her life is her son, who she has just got back, and the thing she is best at is looking after him.

Beatrice the instructor, 44, took a liking to Pedro on their steady climb to 13,000ft, over landscapes and lakes green and blue. He’d been in the group she’d been training all morning, but only now in the cramped confines of the aircraft did his presence really sink in. His features were soft, his manner softer. He looked at her in a funny way that made her belly itch with butterflies. He wore an expression that seemed to indicate he had some kind of icebreaker to share with her. Like ‘what are you doing tonight?’ for example, or ‘I think you look great for your age’. He was silent, however, except for the obvious concerns most 1^st timers have. His heart wasn’t really in it; she knew that today was his birthday and the jump was a present from his family, who were watching from down below.

She did her best to relax him, more so than other clients, because it struck her that he reminded her of her first husband, who had sadly passed away when she was eight months pregnant with her 1^st and only son, who had also been tragically lost to sudden death syndrome when only six years old. Beatrice’s 2^nd husband had walked out halfway through their third year together and ever since the only chance she ever had time to enjoy male company was in work, when she was jumping in tandem with men in what could only be described, for them, as either very intense or very exhilarating situations. For her it was ace every time.

The 1^st timers could be tricky to work out. Bravado on the ground counted for nothing in the air. A lot of them bottled out last minute. Pedro wasn’t a bottler, but she could see that he was infected with fear by the power of the vertigo. She could help him with that.

They jumped. All was good. His face was a giant blissful smile. Then disaster struck. The cord trapped and the parachute failed. They went spiralling out of control, the planet a spinning canvas of blurry colour, the wind a screaming banshee. Given no choice, she had to open the reserve without releasing the first one. The two instantly tangled. And that was it. Game over. Just like that. Bye-bye life. Pedro was very quiet, and she admired that in him, but he clung to her like a baby. She realised the coincidence then that he was the same age to the day as her son would have been, had her son still been alive.

When someone reminds you of a loved one, she thought to herself, you almost want to love them unconditionally too, even though you may not know the slightest thing about them. It was like Gods sending down angels and messengers, and they never came more than once or twice. It was cruel for her to encounter someone special at the very end like this. Cruel. Her life had been sad, overall. She’d spent many months and years in grief. But there had been good times, and those good times flashed through her mind like a stream of rosy photographs.

This was a good time. The freedom of the sky and the clouds. The peace. She would die flying, and flying she loved more than anything else in what was left of her life. No sweat. She had done it a thousand times before. Pedro, though, none. She held him back just as tightly, and they communicated so-so much without saying a word. As one they plunged like a bullet to the earth, Beatrice making sure she was on the bottom underneath him to take the full force of the impact.

Pedro didn’t like this, and tried to stop her, but he was no expert of the heavens like she, and was eased gently into submission. Her back hit the ground first and dead pain exploded throughout every outermost nerve-fibre in her body, but she only felt it for half a second before the whole world and all she knew of it collapsed inwards into a chasm of black pixels, and out she went, like a light.

She awoke a week later, in a wheelchair, wearing a neck-brace. The hospital ward was sunny. Pedro sat opposite her with tears on his cheeks. She felt so overjoyed to exist at all, for the both of them to exist, that her present condition didn’t bother her one bit. She was so happy, she started to tell jokes to cheer him up. Soon enough they were laughing together. She would get better. As author of this story, I guarantee it.

It was in a fit of giggles and laughs that Pedro proposed to her. Beatrice thought that was his idea of a joke. It wasn’t. She had saved his life and he wanted to be with her.

“But I’ve got twenty years on you,” she protested.

“I don’t care,” Pedro replied, “it’s what me and my family want.”

“Yes then,” she said.

© Sharon Hood 2010

JENNY (my valentine)

I did some voluntary work over Christmas that involved reading some creative writing from people in secure mental health institutions, and I think I came across a gem. Not in the quality of the poem to follow, but because of who I suspect wrote it. I’ve actually been inside a secure unit myself, when visiting a friend, Clarence, back in college, and I’m 90% convinced that one girl in particular I met there, on a number of occasions, was the same girl whose entry I read for this years Koestler competition. Same Christian name, same hospital……I think it is her. There is no way of checking, but in my mind I will make it her anyway, for my own pleasure. Although I’m sure I don’t have to.

Although I was there to see Clarence when I found myself inside one of these institutions, it was actually Jenny who I was most interested in laying eyes upon. Clarence didn’t need me, he was having a great time playing darts with and taking the piss out of a pyjama-clad slobbering nutter from Ireland. Her room was just by the table where we sat. We weren't in a visiting room, oh no, but right there in the middle of the ward. Dangerous. Clarence wasn’t on the high-risk floor, but you still had to watch your back. The slobbering nutter, to me……(this might be difficult to explain, but here goes)……okay, the slobbering nutter looked like he felt he was armed, with those darts. That’s it. He looked like he felt like he was armed. Hence I didn’t play. I just sat watching Clarence act like he was still down the youth club.

The first room I would see whenever I came onto the ward would be ‘Jenny’s’ room. The door was always open. The window was always open. She was always fully-dressed in brown corduroy pants and a heavy red wool pullover. She always had a small porcelain angel on her table, and she was always sat on the edge of her bed, hands resting on her knees, staring out the window. She had short thin dark hair, kind of like a big fluffy flattop brushed forward, and thick-rimmed specs. She never moved, like a statue, peaceful.

Whenever I left I would see her turn at the last minute, as if she had made a note to say goodbye but saw me too late in the corner of her eye. I never had the courage to retreat a couple of footsteps and lean back to smile or say hi. Until the last time I was there, when I knew Clarence would be getting out, and I would not be coming back. Then I stuck my head in and said, “Bye, Jen.”

The look. That look on her face. The warmest expression I’ve ever seen. So welcoming and hopeful. So warm. Not a single haunt or shadow in it. From a block of concrete to animated light. She edged further along the bed as if expecting me to sit down next to her, which my stupid idiot self didn’t do. I’d always wondered why Jenny was in such a place, as she looked perfectly normal, but now I could see how her arms were horribly disfigured. There were tidy blocks of neat slash marks, as if she was counting the days of every month and ticking them off in her flesh.

She explained, apologetically, embarrassingly, “Days without masturbating.” Then it was time to go. A nurse was telling me to leave the room. So I did, saying bye again. Jen said goodbye back. And that was it.

Not much of a verbal exchange by any means, but there was so much of a connection deep within I still feel it to this very day, and often wonder if she still ever thinks of me. She was so pretty and gentle, so delicate and soft in nature. I could tell immediately, within seconds; it was in her aura. She would never harm a fly, or a soul, but inside I could not imagine the complexity of whatever turmoil felt it necessary for her own hand to guide blade over skin. And yet I wanted to know every detail. I wanted to fix her. The bad part was knowing for sure in my heart that I could fix that girl. The even worse part was believing that she would have actually liked me to fix her.

A Trip to the Shops by Jenny

I unpeel myself from bed and dress
Then realise I forgot to wash
I face the morning with empty guts
Treading warily as if lost

Taxis, wagons, planes and trains
Assault my senses in the light
Counting pennies in preparation
Groggy from my medication

I stand in the queue for things I need
And I cannot breathe
It is rush hour beyond the automatic doors
My will is melting through my pores

Chocolate and cola until I am sick
Then water and today’s fresh drugs
Radio and telly till midnight comes
Take me away if this is my home