So far my stories have had a Gothic tinge. “Ting-Tang” is a fictional solution to the Whitechapel murders. “Three Dark Tales” contains short suspenseful fiction about people who are threatened.
“News” is a shorter version of “Passage”, the novella I submitted to Tale Flick. Nolan, a lecturer, spends his working hours teaching at two colleges. He has to use a subway to walk between them throughout the day. On his way to work, he boards a train and encounters two derelicts and a graphic novelist who uncannily shares Nolan’s imaginings, largely drawn from experience. His central character is cursed with precognition. The aspiring writer’s mishaps incur the mirthful contempt of the two scruffs. The lecturer and author allude to them as Cat and Fox, because of their resemblance to Pinocchio’s persecutors.
The professional writer and the amateur agree to meet at mid-day to collaborate on a script. During his journeys between colleges, Nolan meets the animals, first in a betting shop where their obsessive interest in him is unnerving and then in the passage. He relates the first meeting to the author who dashes off a story board that predicts an attack on Nolan in the subway. Fantasy nearly becomes fact when Nolan unwisely ignores his new friend’s advice to avoid the underpass. The author guesses Nolan will be foolhardy so he follows him and prevents Cat and Fox fulfilling their intent to kill and rob the man they despise.
Carnaby must still walk to the station after a riotous evening with the youths of Print 2. He makes his way against the tide of football fans being marshalled to the stadium close to the building he has just left. He arrives safely, but learns from a policeman posted outside the men’s lavatory in the passage that an old man has been stabbed to death there.
In “Passage” I enlarge on the social and educational similarities between Nolan’s schooling and the misadventures of Coloddi’s mischievous schoolboy. Print 2 don’t want to learn Communication; they want to watch the match. The passage connecting their college to the business college separates those who have from those who just make do.
There are literary allusions in “Deadly Nightshade”. I was intrigued by the resemblance of the misadventures of the student in Gogol’s “Viy” to the entanglements of the undergraduate working in the twilight world of a hotel visited by prostitutes. My student is molested by an older woman and a girl who lives in a flat beneath his. In “Viy”, the student is overpowered by a crone and is blamed for her death when she proves to be the vampire of a local chief. The pimp in my story has powerful hands like the monster Viy in Gogol’s story who seals the student’s fate by pointing at the lad who has sought concealment in a magic circle.
The call-girl uses the back stairs leading to my student’s billing office to reach the rooms where she plies her trade. The billing clerk’s recollection of the hour of the girl’s murder when he leaves the office for his evening meal is destroyed by atropine the girl slips in his drink. Nobody remembers seeing him in his hour long break and he becomes a suspect. He tells the detectives who arrest him he remembers seeing the girl’s procuress in a corridor on his way to the basement refectory. His identification of the madam leads to his removal for protection and a siege at a farm.
The billing clerk hides in a clump of yews on a hill above the farmhouse before the pimp and his posse arrive to silence the witness. Like the fabulous tree-like being, the pimp points to the student’s place of concealment. The gangster’s henchmen swarm up the hill and hunt for their quarry in the densely packed coppice. They find him, but like the demons in the fable, they stay too long. The police arrive at cock crow.
Predators and prey abound in “Overseas”. There are feral cats kept by airmen. There are airmen who hate cats. Matthews and Young hate the beasts, because they yowl at night. They detest Korki’s owner who doesn’t play games and sleeps on the summer afternoons. They are wary of Williams’s unlikely protector, Erskine, who also hates cats, because he loves birds and rings them during the two migrations to Cyprus each year. Even Matthews, a giant, is careful to avoid Erskine’s boxing skill. Young becomes venturesome when he watches Erskine sewing a huge heart to give his beloved on Valentine’s Day. He becomes mettlesome when Erskine brings to the room a little owl he has caught and placed in a box he has kept in a cupboard in the entrance to the block. A Greek cleaner steals the box and Erskine threatens him. The box is returned with a message “Sorry Erskine”. Erskine ignores Young’s jibes and takes the heart and the little owl to show his future wife the next day.
When the ornithologist moves to married quarters in Limassol, the victimisation of Williams recommences. After a beating by Young, Williams’s prediction, that both bullies will leave the room before he does, proves to be accurate. When a member of the Bible Reading Association comes to preach on New Year’s Day, Williams hides in his locker and overhears Matthews telling Young about a physical imperfection the giant’s girlfriend conceals. Williams uses the information to concoct anonymous letters to “Mrs. Universe”, the title afforded to the big man’s companion. Williams dictates the lewd composition to the Greek cleaner he has been teaching English. Only Erskine recognizes the handwriting. Young is badly beaten and sent home. Matthews is dismissed from the service.
I have film scripts of “Passage” and “Ting-Tang” to send you.
