‘Star-Topped Christmas Mincemeat’

“What are little boys made of?
Slugs and snails, and puppy dogs tails
That's what little boys are made of!
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice
That's what little girls are made of!”.

Recipe

 

Celebrity Christmas Mincemeat

Ingredients 

2 fat, over-ripe egos

Large quantities remaining sexual tension 

2 x 2 much money

3 children not your own

2 formidable intellects peppered with scant pinch common sense

 

Method

Mash egos to thick pulp. Grill for three weeks over red-hot flame in court of public opinion. Transfer to back burner and maintain dish at maximum heat to preserve optimal interest.

Stir in vast amounts of distortion, half-baked rumour and downright ballyhoo then combine with remaining ingredients just for luck.

 

To Serve

Garnish liberally with mixed powdered cannabis and crack cocaine.

 

****

Household Tip:

Hang out to dry and serve as just desserts with drinks on Christmas Day. 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Star-Topped Christmas Mincemeat,Nigella Lawson,Charles Saatchi

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 21 December 2013)

Alwayswriteagain: WRITERS’ PERFORMANCE EVENING

Alwayswriteagain: WRITERS’ PERFORMANCE EVENING: A microphone stand is needed for a writers’ performance evening in Karmiel, Israel on Monday 06 January 2014. Any readers knowing where on...

‘Piggy in the Middle’

Frazer: Hi – Lily?

Lily: Yes, it’s me.

Frazer: I can hear you but I can’t see you.

Lily: My webcam’s not working properly, so when I use Skype, I’m able to view the caller but he or she may only hear my voice.

Frazer: O.K., this’ll do. I’m phoning to check whether you’ll be joining us in February. Most people from our George Clayburn High School senior class of 1967 are dead keen to meet up and swap notes. After 47 years it’s taken some effort to track everyone down. Amy Hutton’s agreed to be host. If you decide to join us, I’ll email you the directions.

Lily:  That’s good. But I don’t know whether I can go. It’ll mean a lot of travelling and …

Frazer: Aren’t you interested? Several people have said they’d like to meet you again, especially after seeing the picture we used on the reunion Facebook page.

Lily: Yeah. I – er – well, I wish you hadn’t used it, Frazer. How the hell you found it – who gave it to you – beats me. It’s very aggravating.

Frazer: ‘Aggravating’? That’s a harsh term. The photo’s a charming memory of you with Rosie and Beth on the last day of term before we all chilled out  during the great ‘summer of love’.

Lily: Not me! I was the tubby, tatty stump, dumped for compare and contrast between two long-stemmed, flowering beauties. Rosie and Beth were both stunningly pretty; smiles on legs. I was just the fall-guy for all the  fatty jokes. Even the visiting French teacher, Mme DuPont remarked that every time she saw me I had become grosse et grasse – fatter and fatter.

Frazer: I remember you as quiet and reserved. We never saw you in the Plough and Harrow on Friday night or at the The Two Whispers nightclub which opened on Fresh Fields Road. What happened?

Lily: I’ll tell you, although it’s not the sort of thing that ‘nice’ girls once  ever discussed with boys. I became enormously fat after being prescribed a contraceptive pill to regulate bad periods. The treatment was unsuccessful, leaving me obese with a massive bosom and an even larger butt. I also developed a lump under one arm which my mother soothingly dubbed ‘your third breast’.

I was in a terrible mess, made worse by knowing that when you boys leered at me, it was not with desire but disgust. Don’t pretend you don’t remember, Frazer. Certainly, seeing that goddamn awful photo brought it all back to me.

Frazer: Y’know I’m a doctor? I also offer counselling, Lily. Would you like to talk?

Lily: I don’t want or need your help. But I must say that because of a thousand insensitive people like my elder sister, who somehow saw my appearance as an embarrassing affront to her, I became anorexic – bulimic – long before bulimia was generally known, let alone fully understood. I didn’t realise I was ill. I decided simply that  I’d somehow become  the most repellent slug ever to crawl the earth. Even my dreams were invaded with images too nasty to describe now, forty-odd years later.

So I tried the local Slim’n’Trim group, where Amy – yes, the same ‘Amy’ - had gone to shed a little weight before a holiday with Rosie and Beth. But I’d barely arrived at my first meeting when I heard her snigger with other club members about my size and saw the organiser and her assistant exchange   shuddering glances  when I was introduced. People didn’t bother to hide their scorn. As they didn’t care, why should I? So I didn’t attend  again and the pounds continued to pile on. This is how the fabulous summer of ‘67  became my private season of self-flagellating, self-harming, self-hate.

Frazer: Lily, I’m really sorry you’ve suffered but …

Lily: Hang on. There’s more. My mother took me to see a specialist about my ever-expanding size. But the doctor did not help. Instead he fondled my breasts in a pseudo exam while Mum watched placidly, making no effort to stop him short. Later, as I got re-dressed, I heard him say, “half the women in the country would die to have breasts like your daughter!” Still Mum did nothing,  said nothing, merely commenting later, “I didn’t like any of that”.

Frazer: What a horrible experience! Today that  would almost certainly  be viewed as calculated abuse. But you can’t blame us, your classmates, for what happened there.

Lily: You’re right. But I remember one other incident that occurred before most students left town to start their adult lives. I fell victim to a vicious hoax. Amy told me you wanted to take me out and that I should meet you at the Plough the following Friday night. Common sense told me I was being fooled. But curiosity pulled me along, the engorged Miss Piggy being trotted gamely on a lead towards her public destruction.

I’ll never forget the guffaw of derision that rang out as the crowd saw me waddle in, then register Amy and you smooching  at the bar. But no matter. I must thank you both very much indeed.

Frazer: What?

Lily: The incident taught me a priceless life lesson. No, two: First, I grasped the close, cruel link  between “slaughter” and “laughter”. Second, I've  never  trusted anyone again. By the way, Frazer, I understand that Amy married a butcher. So please tell her, whatever she serves at the party, it won’t be bits of me.

 

 

Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,The Killing Game,Summer of Love 1967,Obesity,Contraception,Bulimia,Abuse

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 03 December 2013)

‘Saul Dislocates His Shoulder!’

Gibeah Mental Health Centre

Psych Consult – Schizophrenia

Evaluation and Management (E/M) Patient

SHAUL MATRITE-BENJAMIN

IDENTIFYING DATA:

The patient, a 68-year-old white Jewish male, is a retired politician and soldier. He lives  with his wife of 45 years who was present on his admission but did  not attend my consultation.

CHIEF COMPLAINT:

"I’m here in prison because I was wrongly arrested on false allegations of attempted murder”.

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:

The patient has minimal insight into the circumstances that resulted in his admission. He reports being diagnosed with late-onset schizophrenia  but states  that he has maintained his stable baseline for many months of treatment.

The patient was escorted to this clinic from the Western Galilee. He was admitted to the emergency room   after attempting to plunge more than three hundred meters from the promontory, Katef Shaul (‘Saul’s Shoulder’) on Mount Gilboa and into the Harod Valley below.

A group of tourists reported his crawling to the edge of the look-out and  threatening to jump clear, in order to escape someone who was trying to murder him.

As he was restrained by two doctors in the crowd, he clutched at  his head moaning that  his potential assassin had sent the flocks of vicious raptors that he imagined were circling overhead, waiting to claw him to death.

Before and on arrival at this clinic after transfer from the Emek Medical Centre, Afula, the patient was disorganized with everyone in authority. He has since been detained on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation order for grave disability.

At interview, the patient is still disorganised and confused. He believes that  he  has  been  arrested  and  is  in  prison.   He  reports  a  recent history of mental health treatment, but denies benefiting from this and considers it unnecessary.

I have spoken to his wife and eldest son by telephone. His wife reports that the patient is paranoid and has bizarre behaviour at baseline, particularly and increasingly during  the past five years, with occasional episodes of symptomatic worsening, from which he spontaneously recovers.

His son estimates the patient spends about twenty per cent of the year in episodes of worse symptoms and that during the past two months, the patient has become worse than he has ever seen him with increased paranoia above the baseline.

The  son  reports  that  the patient has barricaded himself in the family home  three times and has threatened himself (i.e. the son) and his long-term partner with the sports javelins he keeps with him at all times.

The patient’s wife confirms that he  sleeps barely three-four hours a night. However, she has been unaware of any obvious medical changes in recent weeks coinciding with the onset of the symptomatic worsening. She also reports the patient’s longstanding poor compliance with treatment of his mental health and age-related conditions and attributes this to his dislike of taking medicine. She also reports that the patient believes that he does not suffer from the condition.

PAST PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY:

The patient’s wife reports that he was first diagnosed with schizophrenia ten years ago and he has been admitted to other psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities in Israel and abroad.  The patient  last had  outpatient mental health treatment three years ago but dropped out of care, initially without her knowledge.

He was most recently prescribed Seroquel, from which he claimed to suffer unpleasant side-effects.

MEDICAL HISTORY:

CURRENT MEDICATIONS:

None.

ALLERGIES:

No known drug allergies.

SUBSTANCE AND ALCOHOL HISTORY:

The patient had not smoked until the onset of his condition but his habit has increased steadily during the interim and he now smokes two-three packs per day. He consumes alcohol occasionally, but not excessively and has never used illicit substances.

MENTAL STATUS EXAM:

Attitude:

The patient demonstrates only variable co-operation with interview, requires frequent redirection to respond to questions. His appearance is cachectic with poor grooming.

Affect:

His affect is fairly detached.

Mood:

He describes his mood as "O.K.”.

Speech:

His speech is normal rate and volume.

Tone:

His volume was decreased initially, but this improved during the interview.

Thought Process:

His thought processes are markedly tangential.

Thought content:

The patient is fairly scattered. He will provide history with frequent redirection, but he does not appear to stay on one topic for any length of time. He denies current auditory or visual hallucinations, though his wife and son say that this is present at baseline.  Paranoid delusions are elicited as described by the incidents at Gilboa.

Homicidal/Suicidal Ideation:

The patient denies suicidal or homicidal ideation. He also denies his recent suicide attempt (see above).

Cognitively, he is alert and oriented to person and year only. His memory is intact to the names of his close family and former work colleagues.

Insight / Judgment:

His insight is absent as evidenced by his repeated questioning of the validity of his mental health diagnoses. His judgment is poor as evidenced by his longstanding pattern of minimal engagement in the treatment of his mental health and physical health conditions.

Assets:

The patient’s material assets include property and financial resources enhanced by a strong and supportive relationship with his wife and some family members.

Limitations:

His limitations include his history of poor compliance with treatment.

FORMULATION:

The patient is a 68-year-old white Jewish male with a history of schizophrenia. He was admitted for disorganized and assaultive behaviour, having withdrawn from all medication for several weeks.

DIAGNOSES:

I: Schizophrenia by history.

II:  Anaemia.

III: Relationship strain and the possibility that he may be unable to return to his home upon discharge; minimal engagement in mental health  providers.

PLAN:

I will attempt to increase the database and will specifically request records from all previous mental health providers. The Internal Medicine Service will evaluate and treat any acute medical issues that could be helpful.

With the patient’s permission, I will start Quetiapine at a dose of 100 mg at bedtime, given a report of a partial response to this agent in the past.

Dr Reuven Pearl

Director

Emergency Room Admissions

_________

The above will be a chapter in a fantasy based loosely on the end days of the the reign of King Saul, the first monarch of Ancient Israel.

_________

Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Stealing from the Dead,Saul Dislocates His Shoulder,Israel,Mount Gilboa,Schizophrenia

 

 

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 25 November 2013)

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Here’s a family tale re-told for several millennia!

The first day of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, falls next week, Thursday 05 September 2013. May everyone who is celebrating have a great 5774.

Be well sealed!

Natalie Wood and Brian Fink

Technorati Tags: Jewish New Year 2013,Natalie Wood @ WoodPerfect,Natalie Wood,Brian Fink,Israel

msniw

‘Crying Wolf’

 

Wolf had arrived late and barely gestured in greeting.

 

“M’friends call me ‘Wolfie’. Who are you?”, he barked at the woman on the other side of the bullet-proof screen.

“Good morning, Herr Wolf. I’m Fräulein Roti Haube, your  court-appointed defence lawyer. In future, please try to arrive on time for our meetings as the authorities here at Stammheim Prison allow us only one half-hour a month”.

“O.K.”, said Wolf, tucking his tail between his legs as he sat down between his guards. “These men had forgotten they’d left me caged. So there was a last-minute fuss, fitting my chains and basket muzzle. But it’s all for show; a bit of theatre to impress you. Anyway,  I hope you’ve made more progress than my last lawyer”.

“I’ll be honest”, said Haube, riffling through the thick file balanced on her knee. “I’ve spent hours examining your case and it’s clear that until there’s an overall marked rise in your tribe’s population, you’re destined to live a long life in jail”.

“But I don’t understand. I’ve said if I can’t be free, I want to die”.

“Wolfie, I’m afraid that’s impossible under present legislation. Your family is in a peculiar position where you have us humans as both your only real enemy and your one true friend. According to the 1979 Berne Convention you can’t be executed because your clan’s not big enough to force us to curtail your activities”.

“’Activities’? Yeah! Those were the days,” mourned Wolf. “I still remember my final big raid with Silber Klaue when we were so desperate to feed our wives and kids after the long,  hard winter that we savaged twenty-seven sheep at a single farm.  Klaue managed to escape into the forest but I was captured because I’d gone lame. Funny though,  when I got here, even the  governor treated me with awe.

“‘Wolfie’, he said, patting the lid of my cage, ‘you and – er  – Klaue created the sort of blood-bath that would do the Mafia proud. You deserve a prize. I’ll start by keeping you in my office!’

“But I hate it there. I’m treated like a pet poodle. What’s more, I loathe hearing the staff use words like ‘cull’ instead of ‘execute’ or ‘shoot’. How would it look if we wolves said ‘let’s dine’? Klaue and I are strictly raw meat and water guys and on good days we each tore through ten kilos of a juicy boar or tender deer in a sitting”.

“So you feel you’ve been rendered – umm - impotent?”

“That’s not the half of it. Things here are now so bad I want to apply to the European Court of Lupine Rights to be allowed to die with dignity. I’ve become a laughing stock. Pure and simple”.

“But I don’t know why. You’ve got  the governor’s protection, so you’re well looked after and could live until you’re twenty – twice as long as in the wild”.

“That’s my worst nightmare!”, said Wolf. “The real problem? I’ll tell you: the governor’s taken on a trendy new doctor in the hospital wing who’s trying me on aversion therapy”.

“What on earth … ?”

“First, he clipped my claws and filed my fangs almost to the gum …”

“Then?”

”The worst bit’s so embarrassing,” said Wolf, his rasp dropping to the faintest whimper, “I’m going to put my muzzle to the speak-hole so I can whisper. Please lean forward”.

“Go on,”, said Haube, straining to hear him.

“I’m being made to eat vegan dinners. Every day,” said Wolf, his voice becoming fainter by the word, “I’m led kicking and howling into the canteen and force-fed grass and herbs while a comedian named ‘Sean Lamb’ looks on chuckling hard enough to shed  his fleece”.

“What’s he in here for?”

“Tale-bearing and lying,” mouthed Wolf, pausing while a guard dabbed his eyes. “He’d been pulled in for crying ‘wolf’. But the game’s up, Roti. Look who’s crying now!” 

----------

"If you look and find sorrow,
- it is because I sorrow.
If you look and find anger,
- it is because I am angry.
If you look an find confusion,
- it is because I am confused.
If you look and find wisdom,
- it is because I am wise.
If you look and find yourself,
- it is because we are not so different.
If you look and find your soul,
- then carry me home inside of you..."

(With thanks to ‘Lady Anubis’ - Deviant Art)

-----------

Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Crying Wolf,Wolves,1979 Bern Convention,Germany,Stammheim Prison

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 17 August 2013)

 

 

‘Vine Leaves’

“Friends,” said Anna rising to toast her guests, “on nights like this, Shakespearian lovers mused on ancient Troy, sighing how the wind kissed the trees but they made no sound”.

“Meanwhile”, said her partner  Dennis, “less than seven hundred miles from where we’re dining now in deepest rural Greece, citizens of biblical Israel yearned to sit under their own vines and fig trees – symbolic of an harmonious well-being never wholly realised”.

“Perhaps so”, said Mona,  a rabbi  from New York. “Study of the Hebrew bible shows time and again how lasting peace has been achieved only by totally annihilating the opposition!

“But”, she laughed, “a Saturday evening’s secular entertainment like this, in a vine trellised arbour like yours,  would be possible only after the Sabbath concluded. By then, the devout  would have  detected three stars in the darkened sky and blessed the new week with candlelight and sweet spice in a ritual shielding the holiness of the day of rest from the mundanities of the working week.

“I first visited the area as a student during the early 1960s with a non-Jewish friend who is now a respected  Christian theologian.

“She was wholly captivated from the first by many local customs, some of which reminded her of what she often saw when in my company. I ponder still, as modern Judaism developed, if it adopted universally popular Mediterranean habits and hallowed them by dogged daily use”.

“I’ve lived here for much of my adult life,” said Joe, a travel writer. “But my knowledge of local religious practice is still superficial.

“Instead, I’m eternally spellbound by these islands’ capacity for physical enchantment and will always treasure  their aura of ecstatic sensuality. No wonder tiny villages like Kalami in Corfu continue to attract romantic artists  and their adoring fans.

“I’m now aged 72 and still get a kick from witnessing the quite brazen procreation all around us! Everything - everyone – simply  pulsates with life and the potential of life. So unless it’s proven otherwise, I’ll die convinced these islands were the true and first  Eden”.

“But what of our younger guests, Aron and Emily? You’ve both been very quiet,” said Anna, now serving traditional desserts with thick, bitter coffee and Ouzo.

“Er, apologies for not joining the conversation,” said Aron. “Our bedroom window looks over a pond filled with frogs which woo lustily all night long. They’ve -  well, we’ve not  – had much sleep!”.

“Thanks for the wonderful food, Anna,” said Emily. “I’ve tried all the dishes here and if you don’t mind, I’d love to have the recipe for stuffed vine leaves.

“I’ll be using vines as a theme in a piece for a creative writing course I’m beginning in October and have heard that a ‘vignette’ is not only a decoration in  a book or  a ‘snapshot in words’. Apparently,  the term  began as ‘something that may be written on a vine leaf’. It’s supposed to focus on one element of a story, mood, character, setting, object, or perhaps in good hands, a rare blend of them all”.

“I know exactly what Joe meant earlier, said Anna’s mother, Carmel,  who’d just come home.

“On nights like this”, she said drawing up a chair, “when the weather  was almost too hot to bear,  my late husband, David  and I used the same room where Emily and Aron are - not sleeping this week!

“It’s secluded, so we’d drag the mattress onto the balcony where we’d make a love as dense as the overhanging vines, trembling like two tender  leaves in a freak summer storm. We never spoke, it was as though the mood would shrivel – blow away – from a gust of mere speech.

“Later,” she concluded, her large grey eyes laden with  regret,  “as we cuddled in devoted silence, David would fall asleep, his head resting against my bosom. So I’d lie still as a rock for hours, loath to have him stir. The next year Anna was born”.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Vine Leaves,Greece

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 06 August 2013)

‘In Gypsy Davy’s Locker’

Rachel Leah, named for the lovely sister and the other who was weary and weak-eyed, sped on a plane to Spain to meet her feckless father.

“Please visit us,”  his latest darling had beseeched. “Davy’s fallen, now broken;  unable to turn his wrist to make music or twist his pelvis in love”.

So Rachel Leah, American-Israeli film-maker, flew to Madrid where Alabama-rooted, Deep South-suited David had been reborn; become an Andalusian-booted flamenco gypsy artiste, wreathed in fumes of stale beer and clouds of Dutch black baccy.

“You may be my Dad,” said Rachel Leah, “but years apart have pulled us asunder; the blood ties quite worn away. Neither Jew, nor Christian, not quite father or even dear friend, your role in the family is henceforth as ‘Gypsy Davy Serva’,  a Cyclops eye on the score of a  siren’s song.

“No, Dad! Please don’t try to deceive me. With a stash of evidence against you, I should have little more to say and even less to do. What more may a warring father and daughter expect from a broken-pelvis-shattered wrist Sunday afternoon?

“However,” said Rachel Leah, now in directorial command, “for the next ten years I shall focus my forensic eye upon you  through the viewfinder of my camera. We start today. It is our new zero”.

“What do you mean?”, mourned Davy, his spirit fairly snapped in two.

“Your broken bones will knit themselves,” said Rachel Leah. “But only time – the greatest healer – will mend the family you half-created, then fractured with your fooling. My proposed cure is to reunite us all on film.

“You’ve fathered five children by five different women, fine mothers in their middle and latter years. They’ve had big lives, Dad. My film will show a bare sliver of their existence; their ‘Boy David’ lives.

“They were – and remain – boldly bewitching  characters. All would be yet greater if they had not been frustrated by you.

“I tell everyone – my half-siblings, close confidantes, colleagues, journalists too - that our relationship has been distressingly dissatisfying. You haven’t been absent enough to be just an abstract idea, and not present enough to be really satisfying in any way.

“But, hey Dad, tell you what: Despite all, I’ve come to like you and cherish your artistry, your wit, even your skewed brand of candour.

“I appreciate, for example, how you’ve taken so little from my own artistic pride, requesting simply that I remove  only three words about you from my film script. I suppose I set out to humanise you, but part of me also needed to punish you a little bit."

“O.K., honey. I’ve felt all that; the joy and the pain,” said Davy. “There’s no need to lay it on slab. I don't mind being a sacrificial lamb for you. I owe it to you. You want me to say I'm sorry? I'll say it five million times. Of course I'm sorry. But come on. Finish your film. I want to die sad. It's a sad story. No?"

“Yeah,” sobbed Rachel Leah. “So is the Bible story of Jacob and his wives. But he got the right girl in the end. What about you?”

-----------

Gypsy Davy, directed and written by Rachel Leah Jones, won the Documentary Edge Festival 2013. After being premiered on Israeli television, the film also gained much attention at prestigious events like the Sundance Film Festival and the International Women Film Festival, Israel.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,In Gypsy Davy’s Locker,Gypsy Davy,Rachel Leah Jones,David Serva

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 22 July 2013)

‘Home Alone’

Great Aunt Julia slumped in her seat, her ramrod-straight back sagging beneath the weight of the news she must convey.

Then, as she began forming the  characters on the page before her, Julia realised her fine script shone with the gloss of unwonted tears.

“3 Deanery  Square,

North Shields,

Tyne & Wear

“04 May 1978

“Dear Sylvia and Lesley,

“My letter today brings the saddest news. I am now alone. Aunt Ellen died  two nights ago after several days in hospital.

“Until it was beyond me to cope she was with me here, but I realised that her many illnesses and suffering over the years had finally exhausted her.

“My love to you and the rest of the family.

“Aunt Julia”

And as she folded her note, pushed it into a matching envelope, sealing it carefully with a damp sponge, Great Aunt Julia sighed. Who, she wondered, would tell the girls when she died? Would it matter? Would anyone care?

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Home Alone

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 05 July 2013)

 

 

 

 

 

                                           

 

 

 

‘Little Miss Know-All’

Bebe scrambled her way up to the highest stone in the rock garden and spread her arms wide.

“Daddy!” she yelled, “Now it’s my birthday and I’m four, I know everything.” 

“Ha, ha, my darling,” said Peter Stanley. “What exactly do you know?”

“Umm. I know I shouldn’t be up here on the rocks ‘coz Mummy says I could fall and get hurt. I know how to count to one hundred and say all the letters of the alphabet. I can also write my name.”

“You’re my clever, special birthday girl,” said Peter. “Anything else before I help you get down and give you a big hug and a kiss?”

“Yes, Daddy. I know  that my birthday treat will be a Barbie doll, a pizza and ice-cream at Poppa Pizza with you, Mummy, Grandma and Grandpa.”

“Is that it?”

“Erm, I don’t think so,” said Bebe. “I need to tell you that I don’t want tomato on my pizza.”

“Why’s that?” laughed her Dad.

“Well, Mummy gave me those little round tomatoes at dinner-time. She said they’re called ‘cherry tomatoes’ because of how they look and taste. But I don’t really like any tomatoes because of the bits they have on top. They scare me.

“Y’mean the stalks?”

“Umm, yes. They look like spiders and I hate spiders. Ugh! And there’s something else.”

“What?”

“I told Mummy that yesterday when I was watching telly, I saw her through the window in the garden  talking to Greg next door. He has hairs under his nose which look like furry spider’s legs.”

“It isn’t nice to talk about how other people look, poppet. Try to say only kind things. O.K.?”

“But Daddy, I don’t know why Mummy got so mad when I said I saw Greg give her three of those little tomatoes from his house made of glass.”

“I also don’t know why, honey. I’ll ask Mummy, if you like.”

“Was it ‘coz I said I saw him give her another one, from his mouth into hers and then their two mouths got sort of stuck together like twins? Y’know, Daddy, just like Aunty Tracy’s new babies. They’re so cute!”

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,http://fridayflash.org/press/2013/05/23/fourth-anniversary-blog-hopFlash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Little Miss Know-All

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 29 May 2013)

 

‘My Enemy Tastes Better Eaten Hot’

* Extracts from an exclusive interview  given to  internationalnewsandviews.com, your 24/7 online news and film service.

“Khaled al-Hamad leaned against the side of  his battered car and  lit a cigarette.

“He invited me to take a drag, which I declined.

“’Everyone refuses to understand. But you seem reasonable. Will you let me explain?’

“I nodded.

Picture Credit: ‘Truth Loader’

“’My so-called ‘cannibalism’ was not just about war. It was not merely about blood and honour or even the humiliation of a woman and her two daughters, all fully naked. This conflict is eating the heart of my people.

“’Let me illustrate,’ he said, gobbing  the words so hard his spittle hit the ground in bullets.  ‘I love Syria much more than I loathe our Jewish pig neighbours in Israel. So when I discovered that the dead dog’s mobile phone contained images of children being murdered along with rapes, torture and dismemberment, I gave him a taste of his own medicine.

“’Believe me’, continued the Syrian rebel fighter also known as Abu Sakkar, ’if the bloodshed in Syria continues at this rate, the few people left will behave like I do now.

“’It is Bashar al-Assad and his cohorts who are the true cannibals, not me. I may have eviscerated and consumed the heart and liver of one of their men but they have violated - laid to waste - the soul of our beloved country. You can see the result for yourself. I’ll never regret my action. Indeed, I’ll be happy to do it again and over until the end.

“’I hope to slaughter all the Alawites,’” added Hamad. ‘Maybe,’ he added eagerly, ‘you’d like to see another video clip showing me ‘sawing’ a member of the pro-regime Shabiha militia with the same axe I use to saw trees? I hacked him in small pieces and in large ones. It gave me as much pleasure as seeing a pilot’s head cut off and roasted on a grill. I can smell the aroma even now. Then I and the others drank the corpse’s health with his own blood. It was most noble; quite simply,  a life-changing moment.

“’Are you sure you don’t want to share my cigarette?’”

--------------- 

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,My Enemy Tastes Better Eaten Hot,Syria,Civil War,Bashar al-Assad,Khaled al-Hamad,Abu Sakkar,Cannibalism

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 24 May 2013)

‘Open Mike!’

Amy Reynolds pushed her way, smiling,  through the mass of tables shaking hands and air-kissing as she went. Then she mounted the podium, waited for the buzz to subside, and began to speak.

“Hi, y’all”, she said in an assured drawl which startled all who knew her. “It’s great that Michael and I are surrounded by close family and friends on this special night.

“Thirty years seem a long time, but they’ve disappeared in a wink. And what better way to celebrate our Pearl Wedding Anniversary than at the Fulborough Poets and Pedants Society where we’ve had so much fun?

“I realise,” Amy went on, “that most of you are beyond surprised to see me up here - and speaking note-free. As I’ve always been labelled a slow thinker and passive onlooker among a crowd of articulate, wisecracking wordsmiths, I’ve rarely performed anyone’s work, let alone my own. But I’d like these few lines now to strike the beginning of a change.

“Why,” she continued, allowing a rehearsed grin to slide slowly across her face, “the club chose to use an ‘open-mike’ night to celebrate our marriage, I don’t understand. After all, my dear husband has always been something of a closed book. To everyone but me, of course!

“While our daughter, Alison, is long accustomed to our finishing each others’ sentences, we in turn  realise that we’ve begun to look alike, and that our main distinguishing feature is  that Mike has more hair on his chin than on his pate. Meanwhile, when I boast I’ve lost weight, he retorts that I’ve probably left it on the dressing table  between my hearing aids and glasses!

“But,” she added amid theatrical groans and  whoops, “tonight is also a time for tributes.

“I can’t forget, for example, that it’s thanks to Iris Burton,  first my schoolmate, then work colleague and – umm - long-term friend, that I joined the society and met Michael.

“’I’d like to give you  a token of my esteem,’ you said Iris, as I left N R Insurance after a row. ‘We haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I know you love literature and are desperate to fill the void  left by a lack of formal higher education. So here’s a copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury’.

“What a shame you had forgotten to cover our old school stamp on the flyleaf or to erase the scribbled  comment about me on the page featuring Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Or had I been meant to see it?”

Iris coloured slightly and called back, “Oh, c’mon, Amy. It was just a joke. Anyway, you’ve said that it was through me that you first came here.”

“I can’t argue with that, Iris,” agreed Amy, smiling again.

“But I must ask, while I’m on track, if you, your husband John or indeed, Mike – had  intended that I should find something else: paperwork belonging to a bank account that  Mike opened twenty-eight years ago in favour of your daughter, Tricia?

“I came across it last week when I was  spring cleaning. Although I’d no idea that Mike had decided to strengthen our two families’ friendship with this generous continuing contribution towards Tricia’s upkeep, it reminded me of something mysteriously sweet I glimpsed when our two darling girls were babies.

“Please don’t go,” she appealed as Iris and John half-rose from their seats in an attempt to leave. “I’d love you to stay and help me to lead a toast to friendship. I’d also appreciate your help in clearing the mystery up.

“It’s something that’s puzzled me for the past twenty-eight-and-a-half years. A riddle that I’ve tried to solve since I cared for both girls during a weekend when the three of you - Mike, Iris and John – were away at a poetry festival. I couldn’t fathom it. How, I wondered then, and am beginning to comprehend in my slow way only now, did I find that Tricia and Allie each bore  a mauve button birthmark on their right buttock? An identical tiny blotch, in the exact place as that on my soul mate Mike?

“The same little beauty spot that late Grandma Reynolds insisted had passed through a dozen generations. It was the family trademark, she’d smirk after a thimbleful of brandy. "‘X’ has always marked the beauty spot. Know what I mean?’”

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Open Mike!,Palgrave's Golden Treasury,John Keats,La Belle Dame Sans Merci,Birthmarks

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 04 May 2013)

‘Oy Gestalt: The Circumference Of A Bomb Shelter’

“… in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard ...” (‘The Diameter Of The Bomb’, Yehuda Amichai)

Spring 2013

“Dear Diary

“Today I  awoke in someone else’s dream. How I arrived there I  cannot comprehend.”

What had happened?

“Something or someone had roused me from the deepest slumber so I should see a flight of steep stone stairs floating towards me. The handrail was near enough to touch, but  passed almost too  swiftly for me to grasp.

“Finally, I managed to stretch; to place a foot on the lowest step. Then I clambered, infant-like on fours towards the top, only to  turn around and to step, then free fall,    further and still further until I reached the bottom again, landing clumsily but without injury. 

“However, my satisfaction  was short-lived. Sitting awhile in the stairwell, I then struggled to stand upright. As I turned my head I discovered  scores of bone-thin men and women milling about the doorway of an unwindowed, concrete room, waiting for some entertainment to begin. This place was a bomb shelter.”

“A ‘bomb shelter’? ‘Entertainment’?       Had there been an air-raid?”

“There had been no raid. Of that I’m sure. I’d heard neither  explosions thundering nor sirens wailing. Indeed, the all enveloping stillness added to my growing sense of fear.”

“What next?”

Because I’d become ensnared in this other, unknown person’s head, everything inside the room was peculiarly  familiar: the grimy, unadorned walls; the dim, naked light and the jumble of  black plastic chairs with their attached arm desks. It was as though I had returned to school. But all the students were adult, some well past middle age.

“I was even more troubled when the group leader arrived. He was stern and overbearing; more like a military commander than a  teacher.”

“Who was he? Had he been due to provide the ‘entertainment’?”

“He introduced himself as Leo Ingram,  a professional therapist. He intended to conduct a workshop. I had believed we were to hear a lecture. But Mr Ingram made me a fool.”

“How?”

“As he entered, I heard him say: ‘Hmm! We’ve plenty of space here. I want the room cleared. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me push back the chairs to make the circumference of a large circle. Then you may sit down.”

“And …?”

“He asked – no, told - us to rise to speak; to  explain who we were, where we were born and our current situation. I couldn’t see the point. What business was it of his?”

“So …?”

“He led a meditation  which left me cold. I was the isolated outsider. Again I didn’t understand what was happening; what I was supposed to say after the silence or the reason for our standing up to speak. Clearly I was the only one unable to contribute and that annoyed him. But I in turn was angered. I should not have been there and felt I had suffered unfair public humiliation. But I was unable to flee as I could not control  the dream.”

”Any more …?”

“The games started. We waggled our arms and hands in the air; balanced  one foot before the other; walked forward; backward; weaved in, out and around each other’s places in the circle. Some people changed position; others shook hands. For heaven’s sake, still more hugged and kissed like reunited lovers! I felt embarrassed simply watching them. Then I spoke. There was no lower place to plunge. I was at rock bottom; had come to earth and so dropped my own home-made bombshell

“’I’m leaving,’ I yelled, loud enough to crack the shelter’s concrete walls. ‘But before I go, I must tell you that you should not practice your highfalutin’ mumbo-jumbo in this space. How I got here, I  still don’t know. If you are playing games to heighten participants’ ‘perception’ or ‘awareness’, first I must know how to extricate myself from this other, outwardly imposed self. Can you tell me?

“I sense that in its time, this shelter has saved people from being murdered. But I can feel other less fortunate souls still wandering here. They’re desperate to experience a notion of ‘wholeness’ and ‘integrity’ in their existence. If I’ve understood that correctly, then I don’t need your help, but they do.”

“Finally?”

“Leo Ingram retorted, ‘As you believe with your brazen, over-confidence that I’m unnecessary to you, you’re upsetting those who do depend on me. Not everyone is as strong as you’.

“Then the impression of being with Ingram, his students,  the shelter and the stairway all faded. I awoke here with you at my desk and began to write.”

“It is late. Put down your pen. Close my covers. Switch off the light and go to bed.” 

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Oy Gestalt:The Circumference Of A Bomb Shelter',Gestalt Therapy,Perception,The Diameter Of The Bomb,Yehuda Amichai

 Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 28 April 2013)

 

‘Between Two Stones And A Hard Place’

Lol Brenner stopped her hands trembling by hugging her coffee mug.

“You bastard, Harv. When you prodded me awake we were at Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv with Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman.”

“We were doing what, where?”, demanded her husband. “I’ll have to monitor your dreams more closely, young lady. I can’t be seen hobnobbing with riff raff. Anyway, I’ve caught you out first go. Wyman hasn’t been with the Stones since the early nineties and …”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Harv. You’re so goddamn literal. Anyway, about the time you poked me, they were sitting  behind us quiet as mice while Roberta Flack agonized her way through Killing Me Softly.

“‘Great piece’, murmured Jagger impressed, as she bowed and left the stage. I was just about to turn round for a schmooze when – with classic timing -you woke me and ruined everything.”

“Huh, sorry! The Stones, Israel, Killing Me Softly. Now it’s beginning to make sense,” said Harvey.

“When we arrived home last night after the  Independence Day barbecue, you were weak and weepy from far too much Merlot. Then you crashed out. I’d spent half the evening making excuses for your grumpy behaviour, reminding everyone  how you lost your brother here during the Yom Kippur War and  had that huge row with your folks.”

Harvey’s  outburst shook Lol, shamed,  into action and she got up to clear away the breakfast things.

“Yep! You’re spot on,” she said over her shoulder, as she stood at the sink. “I’ve been drinking far too much  red wine with meals. No. Any time, really.

“It helps to blur the edges. Events from forty years ago keep drifting in and out of my waking thoughts and the pain, well …

“Anyway as I hit the sack, somehow I remembered the rumour about The Rolling Stones visiting Israel for a 50th anniversary concert. Then, of course, there was ’73.”

“Yes, my sweet,  1973 was a very big year indeed,” said Harvey, not daring to touch Lorraine,  who hated physical contact when she was worked up.

“Strange,” she murmured, “how a torrent of bad things which seemed to happen together and so quickly, had  been waiting to sweep me away for years. 

“When we started dating after Alicia Sherman’s 21st birthday do, where Flack’s track was played over and over, I was dead moony and couldn’t get the sound of her voice out of my head.”

“Then your dad did his level best to kick you back to reality!”

“Too right! Simon was working as a war volunteer on Kibbutz Beit Shaul in the Golan when he died. He and his mates from all over the show had been warned about what could happen when the fighting got tough.

“But all of them loved the adventure as much as they admired Israel. They were thrilled when they met Israeli soldiers of their own age who treated them like heroes simply for having flown in to help pick fruit and milk cows while they were at the front.”

“But my main memory is your hysterical call that  Wednesday evening. Something about Simon lying mangled under a tractor and your parents hating you much more than they loved him.

“’It’s not fair!’,” you screeched down the line. ‘I’m here helping Mum make dinner after a day at work so I’m shot at point-blank range for not understanding what’s happened to my brother, third hand.’”

“Correct. As Simon was  not on  active combat, for an instant I couldn’t figure out how he’d  died. Had the kibbutz been bombed, I asked.

“’No, you little twerp!’, roared my father. ‘Drag yourself out of your self-involved fog and listen to me!

“’Your brother’s died in a freak farming accident; nothing to do with the war. He was trapped under the back wheel of a tractor which he didn’t know had been left in gear. He was crushed to death. Understand?

“’War or no war, we’ve got to get to Israel. The embassy says that Simon will be buried at a cemetery which belongs to the kibbutz. This is an honour as usually, the plots are kept strictly for members.’

“So the fag-end of the war and Simon’s funeral became my initiation here. No tourist odyssey for me. Instead, it was my first step on the road to becoming a properly developed adult.”

“Yeah, that’s why you made another lunatic   phone call,” said Harvey. “One from Israel in those days was still a novelty. I was absolutely convinced I was going to lose you.

“Then you said, ‘my parents and I are being reasonably civil to each other. But that’s all. I can’t stand their company any longer. My mother’s been even worse than Dad since we arrived here, complaining that Israeli customs aren’t like those at home.

“’’Jews don’t put flowers on graves back in England,’’ you told me she said, within earshot of the kibbutz secretary and rabbi who both spoke good English and had done so much to help. ‘’It’s a pagan custom. It’s  also wrong for women to attend a funeral and when people place  pebbles on a grave top they’re  just plain superstitious.’

“’I’m trapped, Harv,’” is how you put it. “’I’ve got to get out. I need to move on – maybe by staying here, at Kibbutz Beit Shaul – if they’ll have me’.

“Then you knocked me sideways – you hussy! ‘Please,’ you added suddenly, ‘don’t mock me. And for God’s sake, don’t  call me a slut. I want  you to come out here to join me. Bring your guitar and your favourite records. We’ll sort everything else out later.

“‘I love you very much, Harvey’, you said. ‘I want us to get married – have loads of kids. Our children will love us because we understand how it feels to be young; desperate to stay alive in the old-new State of Israel. At the moment, darling, I’m sure everything will last forever’.”

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Between Two Stones And A Hard Place,Israel,Yom Kippur War,Rolling Stones,Roberta Flack,Killing Me Softly,Jewish Cemeteries

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 18 April 2013)