In July, August and September I have to write a lot to finish my course. Instead of writing new things for my blog I’m going to tart up some old things. Here, from November 2011 is one of the first re-tellings I tried out. Let me know what you think.
November: 14 Down, Mythical Maze (9)
After Theseus leaves
What kind of madness can you call it that led Ariadne to this island? She tries to remember, but her memories wisp away when she attempts to catch their threads.
I can’t remember much of the flight – its innards if you like. I was told that in Spanish the word migas is for the soft part of bread. The middle part surrounded by the crust. Do we have a word for that? It’s what I need now to describe the missing part of the flight in my mind, or if not missing then out of focus, getting out of the way when I try and look at it. Not that anything happened on the flight. I think. The outsides of the experience I recall. At the boarding gate, waiting for the plane to taxi up to the window. Wondering if the plane would be in a hurry – it was already an hour delayed – and would taxi too quickly, bashing into the window, killing us all or maiming at least/ at worst.
There’s a night bus couple sitting behind you. A man and a woman, at least judging by their voices, both archetypes of man tone and woman tone.
You can’t help but hear their conversation. They’re not keeping their voices down. What they’re saying doesn’t interest you until the man’s voice says, ‘Why are you always like this?’
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She showed up in a taxi. The sort that trawl the train station picking up tourists and children making brief prodigal returns. She took from the taxi a re-purposed cardboard box. Its four flaps were folded closed rather than taped shut. Her only other luggage was a hard plastic case on wheels.
She introduced herself to the receptionist as Shona Omara. The receptionist, who was also the proprietress Mrs Headle, told her how to find her room.
Shona pulled her case up three flights of carpeted stairs to the third floor. Along the walls of the staircase Shona noticed scuff marks, presumably made by other guests dragging their own luggage. She made a second trip to the lobby to collect the cardboard box.
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In this story a young man, older than a boy but not so mature that he would be expected to have as many regrets as he in fact carries around with him, leaves his home town, Hull, for an odyssey he himself cannot see the end of but in which the reader or listener of the story thinks they can predict where his story will take him.
I love your abused mouth; your lips pad together with final words.
I will die here too in a place where no-one can say my name, except for you. And you are dying mouthing not my name, but his.
Cities have fallen and cities will fall.
I lived on a mountain. My house had thick walls made of mud which men had carried on their backs all the way from the river banks of my home country. They were whipped up hillsides, forced over rocks wet with pure river water and through gullies slimy with stinking moss. The rugs in my house had been stitched by the women of my father’s house. They cried over each stitch. I could taste their tears when I put my tongue on the rugs.
It was a good place to live.
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The third child of the third daughter fell asleep beside a lake at the edge of a forest. Although the woods were ancient, thick and dark, the third child wasn’t afraid. As soon as night came she fell asleep just as she always had.
The spirit that lived on the edge of the lake and that carried the memory of the old world within it saw the third child sleeping, and without hesitation ate her.
For weeks her belly as wide as an ocean. It ripples. Time spent checking the packed bag, cleaning the prepared room, folding clothes.
Cooking then eating a curry. Its golden flavour rich rolls around her tongue, and the spiciness brings beads to crown her head, but the ocean is calm. Boiled eggs with crumbling sunlight yolks.
Even the clock ticks slow. Count these moments
before
the clenching. Sea-sickness, a tempest.
Her chair is on its side. There is blood on the towels cleaned just this morning. Thrown to the floor in the room cleaned just this morning. The packed bag stays shut. There is ringing. She screams.
Emerging from the eye of the storm, he arrives squalling.
