Five thousand words? More than I Need
A David Sands Competition story by Vivien Deacon
An entry in The Sands of Time Writing Competition
Five thousand words? More than I Need by Vivien Deacon
Five thousand words? More than I need. I don’t have long to get it done though, barely enough time, forgive the typos, grammar, wish I’d known about this opportunity sooner. Lucky for me, I bump into this guy in the pub, literally bump, because he’s there with his wife and little boy, just collecting their lunch from the bar, and somehow I manage not to see him, this really tall bloke with a plate of sandwiches, and I stand on his foot, hard, and you know, grindingly, and I’m wearing serious boots. I apologise comprehensively but he just grins, Don’t worry, he says, it didn’t hurt, it’s bionic.
Whoah, really? I say, for real? I thought they were just in books.
He grins again and does the eyebrow thing. Then he sees me clutching my laptop; it’s open, and he sees what I’m doing. You writing? He says, what? And excuses himself, sorry, I shouldn’t be nosy.
And in case he’s managed to read even a little bit of it, I tell him it’s a science fiction short story, which is not true at all, it’s the total truth, it’s just below, and now I’m adding this introduction. So he tells me about this competition, how to enter, website for the details, everything.
What? I say, so are we in it, or is it about us?
He laughs. It’s a bit meta, he says, as his wife yells at him, David, sandwiches! and he waves at her cheerily.
So here I am. It’s a real opportunity to reach an open-minded audience, so it’s got to be good enough to get published, then maybe someone useful will read it. I’ve got a chance here. Maybe my only chance. They’re after me.
Okay. So.
The first thing is, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me, I’m completely innocent, I wasn’t even there, and anyhow, I’ve got an alibi, I was at Thornborough Henges.
Which is miles from Gormire. And this murder, this outrageous and egregious alleged murder, if it ever happened (which it didn’t), happened in Lake Gormire in North Yorkshire. Gormire is just a small lake, surrounded by a curious circular ridge, just under Whitestone Cliffs (that’s Wissoncliff to you, apparently), and it’s said to be post-glacial. It has neither streams flowing in nor streams flowing out. You look at it though, either IRL or in pictures. Obvious meteorite strike, or maybe alien spaceship crash site (and in some cases, there may not be much difference, eh?). Lots of legends, Wikipedia says – various devilish chases (aliens), it’s bottomless, and forms the entrance to Hell (meteorite, aliens), hiding a lost village (meteorite, aliens), and a goose fell in and came out again twelve miles away in Kirby Moorside, bald. I don’t rate this last one. Also it’s full of wriggly things (lake, not goose), which are allegedly leeches (alien security measure). Note that there are no roads leading to, or running around the lake, and only one very steep, very tricky path, coming down from the main clifftop footpath.
I went there, about a month ago. I was on my own, and I know how to be very quiet. I stayed a while, it’s a Site of Special Scientific Interest. You bet it is. They have rare birds.
Yeah.
So: The Victim (alleged) is a serious alien investigator (investigating aliens, not one herself) (though you never know, good cover), called Friuli Lupanska, known as Froot Loops, who has made many contributions to ALIEN, the ALien Investigators E-Newsletter. I write for them too, it’s just voluntary, I don’t get paid. Frooty wears brightly coloured dungarees, and has her hair in bunches. I don’t. I’m more of a jeans and T-shirt girl. The alleged rivalry between us arose out of a response I wrote to her review of increased alien activity round Ilkley. I regret now that I said that the aliens were probably drawn by the prospect of afternoon tea at Bettys, the famous restaurant (no apostrophe, I know, jarring, isn’t it?); but really, some of the accounts that she just accepted without question, they were unbelievable. Also, it is not true that I invented her nickname of Froot Loops, though it is pretty funny.
So just a few days ago, she disappeared whilst investigating Gormire, and the police are treating it as murder. They’re struggling though. It’s almost a locked room mystery with no walls. There is some evidence that she was there: a family on the main path saw her turn off down the little path to the lake, and a different couple heard her yell as she slipped, though it didn’t sound too bad. The police found footprints going down – it’s not a well-used path – with signs of a slip, and then continuing, but after that, the path was dry and gravelly. No footprints coming up. A police dog was able to follow her scent down, but once at the lakeside, it sat down and refused to go any further.
The Witness to her background is her boyf
Got disturbed there, the bionic foot guy comes over again, says Ms T, she’s judging this short story competition, she loves dodos, so put one in, she’ll love it, and so does her colleague Mr – and then he leans over and presses the f key so her colleague is called Mr fffffffffffffffffffff.
This dodo thing gives me a real fright, you’ll see why in a minute, and I smile and say thanks. He smiles too, and says okay sorry, just trying to be helpful, and off he goes.
The truth is what I’m writing here, not dodo’d fiction. Where was I? Yes.
The Witness is her boyfriend Lionel Thackeray, who likes to be known as Zak (Zak Thack? Can he be serious? Alas yes, though it is true that the name Lionel is cool in the same way as an ice cream down your shirt). Furthermore, it is true that he and I were an item a while ago, though I want to make it clear that I dumped him, not the other way around, however he likes to put it. He now helps Froot Loops with her investigations, though he used to help me, and has supplied her with some of the information that I collected and told him about, clearly a man of no honour whatsoever.
So a week before the alleged murder, Zak (heh) trips over his own shoelaces, falls over and breaks his fool wrist. So he can’t manage the steep footpath down from the clifftop, which is hazardous even if you’ve got two good hands. And it’s raining, which will make the dodgy footpath dodgier. So he stays in the car, and off goes Frooty on her own, says she’ll be a couple of hours. Yes it is true that when we were all in the pub two nights before, they told us they were going to Gormire, and yes it is true that Frooty and I fell out over an article I’d written for ALIEN which she said was just a rehash of something she’d written for a rival publication called ACTREX, Alien Conspiracy Theories Re-EXamined. Which it wasn’t, it just happened to be on a similar topic, and we may both have lost our tempers a bit. It is certainly not true that I did the usual detective story thing, and shouted, I’ll kill you, Froot Loops! Because I didn’t.
So back at Lake Gormire, two hours later, no Frooty, no response on her mobile, though there are some major fluctuating signal problems around Gormire, as we all know, and Zak goes to the top of the dodgy path downwards, and thinks about it, and calls the police. They search the area round the lake, find firstly no sign of Frooty around the water, or in the woods. The trees come right down to the lakeside, so it’s all rooty and stony, no chance of tracks, or they’d maybe have seen something, yeah something, but they didn’t. Secondly, the police divers can’t find her in the lake, which turns out to be twenty feet deep max and most of it’s much shallower. It’s far from bottomless. One of the police divers gets interviewed on the local News, and he’s unwilling to say much, except the water’s unexpectedly warm.
What Zak doesn’t tell them is that from the top of the path that leads down, he saw flickering lights over the lake, and he doesn’t say it because he thinks the police will think he’s crackers, which I have some sympathy with (Zak, not police), but in the pub yesterday afternoon, he does tell us. He says he thinks it’s aliens, and she’s been abducted. Why any self-respecting alien would want to abduct Frooty, I don’t know. Paul, who was abducted twenty years ago (he says), and never stops telling us about it, says you don’t seem to get many abductions these days, maybe they’ve learned all they need to know, but Zak insists that aliens have taken her. Then he says, but don’t worry, she’ll be fine, they’ll give her back in a couple of days. She’s fine, he says, he just knows. He taps his head meaningfully and says he’s in communication with the aliens, she’s just going for re-training, and Paul is madly jealous.
Then the police come in and ask me if I’d be willing to go down to the station and answer a few questions.
Am I under arrest?
No, it’d be voluntary.
And if I say no?
You’d be under arrest.
Lawyer.
You don’t need a lawyer, it’s voluntary.
Lawyer.
I’ve watched enough cop shows to know that the only thing you say to the police without a lawyer is can I have a cup of tea?
This is all very very scary, but we go down to the police station, and they get the duty solicitor, because I don’t have one of my own. He looks about twelve years old, blond, does he even need to shave in the morning? Expensive looking suit though. He introduces himself as Gareth Wainwright. We get to talk in private, no cops, so he can advise me. But it’s not like that at all.
Gormire eh? he says. Did you see any dodos? Apparently there’s a small colony, they like the dense woodland, and their plumage has grown much thicker, because of course it’s not as warm as Mauritius. And he looks at me, question-eyes.
Oh deary me. Oh deary deary me.
That’s not exactly what I said to myself, but I’m maybe not allowed to use any fruity language (heh heh) in the august publication. So what I said to him was, er… no. But of course I didn’t go down there with Frooty, I mean Ms Lupanska, because I went off on my own to Thornborough Henges that afternoon.
Really? Why?
To commune with the Ancients, I tell him.
He looks puzzled. But it was raining, he says.
The Ancients don’t mind a bit of rain.
I don’t tell him that I think Frooty was abducted by aliens, because he won’t relate to that as a theory, but I do explain that I didn’t do it –
– do what? he says –
– anything, because I wasn’t even there, and I’ve got an alibi, I was at Thornborough Henges.
Did anybody see you?
Hmm, maybe not. I didn’t see anybody else there, so I doubt it. It was raining.
Not much of an alibi then.
You’re supposed to be my lawyer, I say, and he grins.
So then we do the whole same thing with the police, but they don’t grin. And they make a lot of me and Frooty falling out, and Frooty stealing my boyfriend –
– It wasn’t like that, I say, I dumped him. And they do me the eyebrows thing.
– and stealing your work, they say, and catch you out stealing hers.
Gareth protests.
– and having an alibi that can’t be confirmed –
– I didn’t know I’d need one, or I’d have gone into Leeds and found a nice young copper and asked him the time.
Gareth smirks.
They can’t arrest me, they haven’t even got a crime, so they have to let me go, but they give me a look which says we know you did it, and as soon as we can find out exactly what it was you did, we’ll do you for it.
I get outside, it’s all been very alarming, but I got arrested a couple of times in my young days, going on protests. I’d have felt a lot worse if I hadn’t have had some experience. So, big sigh, put it behind you, they’ve got absolutely nothing, and Gareth says, can I give you a lift anywhere? I’m not in a rush.
Are lawyers allowed to give clients lifts? I ask him.
Who’s to know? he says. And you know what? I’d really like to take you for afternoon tea at Bettys.
Oh, I say, well, you can give me a lift, thanks, because it’s dark and it’s raining, and already I’m feeling cold raindrops on my shoulders through my T-shirt. No coat alas. We walk down the road a little way. Here’s my car he says, it’s a little Toyota, and he unlocks it, ker-dunk, and we get in. He turns to look at me, suddenly very serious.
It’s the dodo mating season, he says, if all this disturbance doesn’t stop soon, it’ll be a disastrous year, practically anything puts them off doing their duty.
All I can do is look at him.
Yes, he says. They’re very precious, you know. We’ve done our very best with them for years, but they so vulnerable to even the slightest setback. Please don’t tell anyone about them. You saw them, didn’t you, a month ago? When you went down to Gormire on your own?
Oh deary me. Oh deary deary me.
Right, I say. No, I won’t. I won’t tell anybody. It was a month ago and I haven’t.
I’m not at all sure I want to be in this car with him.
He nods, turns on the engine and the fan, and the windscreen steams up. He can’t find the cloth to clear it, so he turns the interior light back on, and locates the cloth, leaning forward to wipe the screen. Watching him, I haven’t quite got round to putting my seatbelt on.
These are all strokes of very good luck for me, because as he leans forward, his sleeve rides up and I see that his forearm is bright green and scaly.
Yikes! I say, or something similar, grab the door release, leap out and sprint down the road. There are pedestrians in groups, laughing and milling around, there’s traffic, and I run across the road, don’t get hit, and dive into a big group of noisy lively folk out for the evening, seethe around with them for a while, find myself in the bus station and jump on one of those coach-like, limited stop, town-to-town buses. I crouch down in my seat. He doesn’t find me.
Phew.
I can afford a night in a hotel or a pub, I have a proper job, you know, so I stay on the bus, though I don’t know where it’s going, there was no time to look at the front destination board. I decide I’ll stay on it till it gets there, wherever ‘there’ is, and put a bit of distance between me and Mr so-called Gareth Wainwright.
Nice pub in a nice little town , looks prosperous, but I guess most of the people who live here work somewhere else. The pub’s old, charmingly crooked, and I get a room, though they don’t quite like the look of me, it’s late and I don’t have proper luggage. Still, I pay upfront, I have to use my card – does anyone have cash these days? So it’s either card or sleep under a hedge, so if Mr so-called Gareth Wainwright and his pals, because he’s not on his own, is he? is into banks and bank accounts, then I’m doomed.
So I’m having a decent lunch before my doom arrives, and a bit of a think. The only protection is the threat of spreading the truth around. So I start writing this, and then this David fellow turns up and offers me a place to send it. I have the website and competition page open, all my details filled in, ready to save, then upload and submit.
Oh yikes garth wainwright just wal
About Vivien Deacon:
I’m a woman of mystery, so I can’t possibly tell you anything. I’m not an alien though.
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