Short Stories

By A. H. Richards

Computer-linked Lung People, all geniuses, dangle in a warehouse, grapes to be sucked. An old man becomes a bird and the wind. Hitler chokes on his lunch. London and Tokyo form the backdrops for a monstrous murderer and a suicidal romantic. An odd teenager makes his love-rival vanish. A 'lava lamp' baby is born in a skid-row clinic. Whether Minimalist in style or traditional; whether poignant, joyful, strange or macabre, these tales, as the subtitle says, depict "Life both Beautiful and Monstrous."

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. H. Richards
• Release date: Nov 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9780991923724

A. H. Richards

It was raining when I was born, in a tiny village hospital in South Wales. (It's always raining in South Wales, and the sheep that run through the streets, bleating insanely, come direct from Hades.) My grandmother's first words, when she saw me in my hospital crib were, "Let 'im die, bless 'im. He looks like a rabbit skin with a head on it." Those words were not spoken in malice. Impatient to get on with things, I had arrived three months premature. I weighed just over 3 pounds. Gran came from a generation when babes in my state would have passed away in front of the living room fire. Since that inauspicious birth, I have worked as a janitor, antique refinisher, music teacher, mink-farm labourer, factory drudge, and oh so many more abominable jobs! I have been deported from Japan, earned two graduate degrees, survived a number of insanely passionate love-relationships, and can play a guitar with my toes. I love Paris. I love cats as pets, and all animals as sentient creatures. I think this is why, when asked at around age nine the name of my greatest hero, I answered "St. Francis of Assisi." Tarzan came a close second: I kid you not. (I also harbour a crush on a hybrid historical/fantasy Joan of Arc, but did not know that at age nine: It has never done me any good.) I believe resolutely in the sanctity of fundamental human rights, kindness, and Nature in all its life forms. My great grandmother was Native American. That, and my Welsh birth and ancestry, I consider blessings. I now work as a full-time author and free-lance editor. I continue, obstinately, to write and publish fiction, essays, short stories, and literary criticism, with no immediately evident signs of mental injury.

Book preview

Short Stories

(on Life both Beautiful and Monstrous)

By

H. Richards

Published by AXL PUBLISHING at Smashwords

Text copyright 2013 A. H. Richards

All Rights Reserved

Cover Painting: Upper Canopy by Luke Turvey. Copyright Luke Turvey. Reproduction strictly prohibited without permission of the artist.

Table of Contents

Old quarry

Extinction

Oh, Pioneer!

Glittering

Where the Buffalo Roam

A Thousand Herons Overhead

Banana Sandwich

Love's Little Triangle

Average Monsters

Jim's Fate

Grave Diggers

About the Author

Old quarry

They were down at the old quarry, where the newer humans threw themselves off the cliff as though they were on fire.

I can’t get out yet.

Her smile duplicated his own as the realization clarified.

I’m too old… to be, shall we say, this happily tumescent.

I don’t mind if you don’t. She paddled lazily around him. And as for Arwen, she’s seen much fatter men than you wearing Speedos in Greece.

Arwen’s vivid, lovely scream plummeted with her from the 30 meter height. Then smothered in the water. Then she surfaced, eyelashes like spider legs, smiling and spouting water. The world was hers and he was entrusted to love and protect them always. For at least this Sunday.

Life is also always wasted on the old, he thought. We don’t understand it. Like cutting fretwork; you always snap something. But this summer, he wouldn’t think of that. His role was to be oldish and enjoy the myriad miracles. He almost had that down. It was becoming a doorway he could open at will, rain or shine. He wondered how it would feel when it all caved in, when he felt the knife’s twist, the seeping poison that was jealousy.

They all submerged at once and bobbed to the surface in a magical synchronicity. It would be easy enough to say those words, those three words that would bludgeon everything they had delicately built. His hand touched her thigh as he lifted a hand to wipe water from his eyes. She was too beautiful for words. And Arwen, simply a miracle. He pushed himself down into the colder current, pushed deeper, eyes straining through the murk. What are you after? he interrogated himself. Something from my past that has gone, he answered himself. The quarry’s deeps were impenetrable.

The thing, when you were young, was to be seen out of the water, not in it.

He stayed deep, watching the churning entry of the jumpers and divers; in fragments of silence listening to his heartbeat.

He surfaced with a tranquilly empty mind, to Claudette’s voice. This was rare, and he listened like an anthropologist, never quite keeping up with her words. What the heck? Where did you go? We thought you’d drowned or something.

Her words echoed away. And what could that ‘something’ be? he wondered. Impossible to answer. One of those ambiguous things that meant something different to everyone, but could not be articulated. He paddled arms and legs, listening and watching around, like a deep-rooted tree waving branches.

When the time was right, he could simply say I’m sorry and probably have to do it maybe once more and then the day would right itself.

He beckoned to her but her gaze scanned the water and cliff for Arwen, until Arwen popped up at her mother’s back.

I was trying to find you and couldn’t see you anywhere.

Well, here I am. She kicked off, spraying them both with water.

Just kiss him, she said.

They stared after her and he noticed that they had held hands somewhere in between then and now. He lifted her hand to kiss it. Then she turned, this secret woman, and kissed him fully… gently… on his lips.

Extinction

It was burger-grill hot on this side of the street. Jenna held her stomach and stepped into traffic, made it to the other side with just a single one finger-salute from a guy in a pickup truck. Rednecks and punks – never a good mix.

She lowered herself down carefully, bum on the sidewalk, feet in the road, mercifully shaded under the donut shop awning. She watched between legs and bicycles and electric chairs for the bus approaching. They didn't look for you. You had to flail. And they only ran once an hour. She couldn't afford to miss it.

Then Mick was standing behind her. He tapped her with his toe, sucked a litre of smoke from his cig and exhaled over her head.

’Sup girl? Headin’ home?

Noooo Mark. Her voice lilted into sarcasm. You know this. I haven’t been home since March, 2025.

So where you at? You and Josh ain’t together no more, huh?

Josh went back to Wankerdom, where he belongs. And I’m not AT anywhere Mick. I’m just where I happen to be. She enunciated her words that way just because it was Mick. She did it every time, and she continued doing it, because it wasn’t the words so much, it was the attitude that guarded you.

Mick hovered, sucked again on his smoke.

Seen Zack?

She squinted up at him. Fuck Zack.

Mick dribbled spit on the sidewalk, hiked up his kilt. He didn't have the legs for a kilt. Some people had no clue.

Gonna hang at D’Arcy’s tonight?

Fuck D’Arcy.

Mick scrabbled her hair with his fingertips. Hey girl. D’Arcy’s ok. I know you like his ass. You jus’ got too much attitude some times.

I rate attitude, she said. I’m a mom.

The bus roared through the intersection, sunlight leaping off its mirrors. Jenna hopped onto the sidewalk and flailed energetically.

The bus' doors whined open.

What the fuck! You serious girl? Mick looked her body up and down. Gotta say, yer tits are waay massive. He twisted and spit again sideways. Shit! A fuckin’ mom. And you’re underage girl…

Jenna dug out her transfer, flashed it at the Pusher and squeezed onto the steps. It was packed to the roof, as always, and the Pusher earned his wage, leaning his weight on her, barely keeping the crowd from spilling down the steps. He gave a ferocious lunge; the crowd buckled, just enough to slot her in, then folded back around her.

Luck was on her side today. A moony-eyed teenager between her and the window fought upright and gave her his seat. It was the cleavage – always was. Maybe the torn fishnets. The bus lurched and swung. He was tenacious, this one, clinging to the hand bar, somehow maintaining a line of sight to her chest no matter which way the crowd swayed. Pathetic. Worms like him gave her the creeps. Living in the basement at home with mom, subscriptions to all the holo-porn a credit card could buy. Sad, odorous wanker.

Her mind slid back to her baby. She was underage to be a mom. But they didn’t know: She had signed up formally to be a child bearer back in the winter, January 2025. If it was a boy – and she had that feeling it was; it kicked like hell, a baby with attitude, and no time to hang around – and because he was healthy, she would be celebrated, and she'd get government child support. She'd be on tv, podcasts, the lot. The first 100% baby boy of 2026! A super rare feat. 100% sound; no Cyclops; two full hands, no more.

She realized that it still might not be a happy situation. Not everyone got to keep their baby. Depending on its needs, and the cost to the government, she may or may not get to be its mother. Surely they would see she could be a good mum – if she could deliver an unwarped baby, then being a mum would come natural too. They would see that, she knew it. If she had to she would get a job. There was always shit work – she could be a Phone-Geek in the Welfare temp pool.

Healthy babies, especially boys, were as scarce as peacocks in Alaska, and she was bringing one right through, ‘from Blip to Crip’, like they said on the streets. But she wasn’t going there, not any more. She was done with the streets. And her boy wasn’t going to be any kind of Crip – blind, testicles up around his abdomen somewhere, an arm coming out his spine, willy smaller than a peanut - no way. Hers would be a Pristine Boy.

While the bus stopped to load passengers, she looked out at the neighbourhood, sorry, toppling houses, a mashup of crumbling brick, decayed siding and sheer ruin. Rotting front steps, clumps of nasty weeds spotting the sidewalks. There was a guy on a blue porch, with a monster mutt straining against a leash. The Lab Coat arguing with him needed the hulking cop who stood by with the tazer. Jenna had never seen the Biz Raiders in action close up. Biz, short for that killer chemical Bisphenol they first found everywhere nineteen years back. Cops with ‘experts,’ come to ‘sterilize’ a house, a factory, a store, even like this, in the middle of the day.

The dog guy stiff-armed a ‘fuck you’ to the cop. Jenna slid the window open. A word here and there survived the traffic din. Fuck you. Harley roar. …didn’ make ‘em. You guys did. … Two cars whined around the cop van… You guys fucked up big time… The back doors of the van banged open… take away my rights…my fuckin’ mds, my clothes, my fuckin’ dishes man. Fuck you, get off my step! The big cop fired his tazer and the dude dropped in the midst of a yell, crumpled and spazzing.

They were still hunting down chemicals like Bisphenol, phosphates, fuck-knows-what, years down the road from when they first tested. They couldn’t do it wholesale – that would mean shutting everything down, stores, eateries, clinics – make the world crazy and paranoid. So they did it guerrilla-style; one at a time, one building picked off, then another, stores shut down ‘for renovations.’ Sections of wall torn down, plumbing ripped out and land filled, even your neighbour's miniature DVD collection sequestered, melted. Every bit of merchandise that contained the killer chemicals bleeding, birthing new cancers, making mutant babies that could never be fixed, baked in mommy’s oven and too late to fix once outside.

But Jenna was happy. And confident, despite the pains and the worries. They were gonna be surprised. She would be the first in the neighbourhood birthing a healthy baby. She could sense it. Something about this life in her. It was urgent, determined.

It had woken her up to life. This child inhaled the cosmos and, breathing out in her, gave meaning to each day. And, she thrilled as the drama played through her mind’s eye, she would be a State Mom, a showpiece, evidence that there was new hope. There were miracles. Another point to our side, and zero for extinction.

Another few blocks and it was her stop. Jenna stood up, stroked her belly, drew a circle on it with her forefinger, then pressed her fingertip on its bull’s eye. There you ARE. Like the arrow on a shopping mall plan. My baby. She had never felt more sure of anything in her life. This was her time. A momentous, prophetic episode in the cycle of the planet. This was her say. Her flesh had blended with his – and a living miracle became birthed out of that.

The clinic matched the war zone it inhabited. Its walls were a retchingly sad neon blue, with green fronds slapped here and there, and pink, mauve, yellow hand prints all over, that had now scaled up like eczema, patches of concrete grey showing through.

Jenna aimed her belly at the front door. See this, little guy? Jenna’s chin indicated the clinic. I’m sure you can see out of me if you want. You…

Baby twirled in her, violently. A limb kick like it was trying to kick right through her skin. As if it was trying to punish her. For a second, calamitous thoughts filled her mind, made her weak and fearful. That kick had felt full of rage. An unstoppable biological thing that was having its way with her.

Jenna hung still, unable to take a step. The pain following the kick dissolved, and she waited, breathing short gasps. Suddenly the fear gnawed into her that she was a kind of pollution for this baby. She breathed delicately, pushing air out of her mouth as if each breath was a delicate sugar cube not to be touched by lips or saliva. Her breath had to be unsullied, unpolluted.

What was she saying? She loved it. Her love made her clean. It was natural. Even if she didn’t know who the father was. So what? It had been her choice, even if others saw it only as a shag in a night-club parking lot.

She could walk again now.

Everything from that night was a surge of browns and greens and blood reds, drowning beautifully in a jet-black ocean of stillness that was the night sky. And his breathing, in duet with a languorous growl that came up out of him. Or more like an uninterrupted purr, behind the sound of their tongues and catching breath.

She had heard her own cries like wild birds escaping her, flying away through anaemic streetlight. She had cried out, yelping her sex as if with new found pride, gulping at the unabatable hunger that clawed out of her, shocking her. His eyes got huge, glittering gold butter, with irises like a cat’s. And she saw the matching gold