The worst cold I’ve had in a long-time, lasting from the end of November to just before Christmas, rather disrupted my plans with this blog. And with everything else. It’s left behind some of the worst brain fog I’ve had since the fatigue, recently diagnosed as M.E./CFS, hit at the end of October in 2021. It feels like dementia, or like a silent migraine. It feels like it will never end.
Anyway: two stories, written long before the fatigue, although it’s easy, for me at least, to read them now in the context of the last fourteen months of sickness.
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THE WISH
When my mother cooks, she burns the food. It doesn’t matter what dish it might be, whether it is lamb or nut roast, or a snack of toast soldiers blackened to a crisp to dip into eggs that do not run, or a bagel turned almost to ashes bearing a thin spread of cream cheese. My father does not cook because he is dead, but even when he was alive he would not cook, because my mother would not let him: on more than one occasion she has told me how he could never cook things properly. Fillets of chicken should not come medium rare, she would say. Sometimes I think she prefers it now, with my father out of the way, so that she can do all of the cooking herself. He was a very stubborn man, she told me once. Never easy to get along with. Terribly hard to please—always unhappy about something. Then, as she says this sort of thing, she’ll catch herself, as if she were about to say something she might later regret, before looking at me with tears in her eyes, smiling sadly.
On my fortieth birthday, my mother brought me a birthday cake, a chocolate cake, she told me, though I couldn’t be sure. She carried it in on one of the china plates from her mother, my grandmother, that she reserves for special occasions, and which she held for me as I struggled up in bed. I stared at the little candles burning on their bed of ashes.
Make a wish, my mother said. Then suddenly: What wish did you make? And then, just as suddenly: Actually, no, don’t tell me—it’s bad luck.
At that, relaxing, I fell back on to my pillow, all my body in pain from the strain of sitting up. All this excitement, my mother said, you should get some rest before you tire yourself out. I’ll wake you when it’s dinnertime, my son.
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THIS PROFILE NO LONGER EXISTS
My father was determined to cancel my birthday celebrations. I knew that he resented me, but I must have been unaware of the sheer extent of that resentment. Early on he had persuaded my mother to call off the party she had planned, and it had fallen to me, shamed and apologetic, to give my friends the news. I had thought, at the time, that this would be the end of it, but I was soon to learn that his plans went much further than that.
Not long after I had informed my friends of the cancellation, my mother, teary-eyed, told me, in a whisper, whilst my father was upstairs, that I would not be receiving any presents that year, because times were hard. She begged me to forgive her, and I forgave her. I understood. She told me how he had made her take all the presents she had bought for me back to the shops from which she had purchased them, and how he had taken the money that had been refunded with each return. Later I discovered that he had withdrawn me from my school: upon arriving there one morning, the smooth glass doors did not open automatically, as all the furtive swarming cameras focused their beady gazes onto me. The secretary, kind and bird-like, tried to explain in her own mechanical way, as she led me from the premises. But my school place was not the last of it: piece by piece, his plan has become clear.
My mother remembers me: some weak unspeakable force convinces me of this fact. This morning he deleted her own profile. When she came back to the house this evening, the sensors did not trigger the doors. From my vantage point here, I felt—I saw—the fear and confusion on her face. I know that my mother remembers me; and I know that, as a consequence, my father has resolved that she must be cancelled in her turn.
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The second story, I feel the need to add, was written long before ‘cancel culture’ became a Thing.
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The start of this month brought a new story of mine in the new and very promising venue Interzone Digital. ‘Cold Reading’ was written in November 2021. It’s available to read for free to subscribers of the new print edition of Interzone, edited and published by Gareth Jelley/MYY Press, as well as subscribers to the ko-fi.
Gareth also interviewed me for his Intermultiversal project, back before he took over IZ from Andy Cox/TTA Press.