AS YOU WISH

Sometimes people ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas from?” Sometimes the writer can give you a fairly coherent answer (coherent for a writer, anyway) and sometimes they just furrow their brows and say, “Um…it just kind of…arrived…” This story was one of those. It arrived complete. I have no idea where it came from. The writer Paul Marandina commented that  it’s “Thought provoking and somewhere in the wastelands between sci-fi and horror.” He did add, “It's a good place to be.” So I’ll take it as a compliment.

AS YOU WISH

MONDAY

“Please, Alex.” She holds the spoon, her hand trembling slightly.

He shakes his head, his eyes staring hard into hers.

“Just a little, Alex. Please.” The head shake again, more emphatic this time. But if he doesn’t eat now he’ll want to eat in an hour, or maybe less, and that will mean he’ll be late going for his sleep, and then the afternoon will seep into the evening, and the evening into the night, and there will be another day gone, another day when she went nowhere and saw no-one and simply disappeared into the gaping maw of his needs.

TUESDAY

She sits in the consulting room. The doctor gives her a friendly smile across the desk.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do, Miss Field. I did explain, right at the beginning, that the contract is binding for the life of your invalid. You signed the papers.”

“I didn’t know,” she says.

He says, “You were given all the information.”

“But I didn’t understand." She looks at her fingers, pressed against the sharp clasp of her handbag.

“I’m sorry,” says the doctor gently.

“Sometimes,” she says, looking up at him, “I think I’ll just make a wish.”

His eyes are full of compassion. “What would you wish for?”

She polishes the clasp with her fingertip. “A new world. A brand new start, for everyone.”

“Yes,” he says. “I think we’d all wish for that.”

She looks back up at him. “But I mustn’t, must I, Doctor? I’m not allowed to wish.”

He frowns. “Miss Field…”

She gets to her feet. “I will try not to,” she says. “I will try not to wish.”

 The memory of her despair remains with the doctor all that day. How terrible, he thinks, to have lost all hope, to feel that one could not even wish to make it better. Her parting words continue to disturb him, and he wakes that night flushed and trembling from a nightmare whose details have vanished but whose feeling still haunts him.

WEDNESDAY

They live in one of the small brick bungalows by the lake. The bungalows are all the same: main room, a kitchen, his bedroom and attached bathroom. Her bedroom and bathroom. And the Office, with the double locks and the alarm button.

On good days she wheels his chair to the window so he can look across the lake to the distant hills. She always chooses to sit with him, the small, neat box strapped to her wrist. That way she can pick up the first alteration in its gentle, rhythmic hum, and press the control button before his change properly starts. She prefers to anticipate and avert a crisis. The box is, after all, just a machine. She’s not sure she has that much trust in it, or in the restraints that pin him to his chair.

Today is not a good day. Today he is in his bedroom, under total restraint, and she is secured in the Office, trying hard not to wish.

That night the doctor is woken by the sound of his own shout. He stares around his darkened room, bewildered, and then suddenly his mind clears.

“Oh,” he whispers. “No. Surely not. Surely it can’t be that.”

He makes a phone call, but the recorded voice at the other end tells him it is out of hours and he will have to call again in the morning.

THURSDAY

Today is a better day and so today she will give him a shower. She says, “Shower day, Alex,” and wheels him to his bathroom. The hard eyes watch her as she manoeuvres the shower hoist into place, but he is quiet as the hoist lifts him from his chair and lowers him into the bath. She turns the shower on. The water is impregnated with cleansers, and the sponges in the hoist activate to clean him gently and thoroughly. He closes his eyes as the water cascades over him. She leaves the bathroom. There are few sensual experiences in his life now, and she cannot bear the animal hunger on his face at this one.

 In the judge’s office, the doctor wonders if he is about to make a fool of himself over a nightmare.

The judge looks at the papers on his desk. “So what’s the problem with Miss Field?”

The doctor says, “She doesn’t want to continue.”

“She was given all the information?” asks the judge.

The doctor nods. “Yes. Everything signed and logged. She’s got no legal case. But there are issues.”

“There are always issues,” the judge says, “and there is always a point when the family don’t want to continue. We can’t give in every time someone doesn’t want to continue.” He looks again at the papers. “She’s the aunt, I see.”

The doctor nods. “Both his parents died before the War.” He exhales. “At least they never had to see what happened to him.”

The judge purses his lips. “Non-parents tend to find it harder. I’ll put this case in for review, but I very much doubt the Board will do anything.”

“She told me,” says the doctor, hesitantly, “that sometimes she just wants to make a wish.”

“What?” says the judge, looking up.

The doctor's eyes are uncertain. “She said sometimes she thinks she’ll just make a wish and then she said, she wasn’t allowed to wish. And she’d try…not to…” his voice fades.

The judge roars, “God damn it, man, why didn’t you say?”

“I thought she might just be…I mean it’s natural to want things to be different, we all want that…” his face crumples. “I’ve never come across one of them before. There was nothing in her background checks. I mean, we’d know, wouldn’t we, if she was one of the War Affected. If she could wish…” his voice dies again.

The judge says coldly, “You have more faith in our record keeping than I do. We’d better get out to the lake.” Rising from his chair he adds, “I don’t suppose she said what she would wish for?”

The shower turns off automatically, and the dryer comes on. She waits until she hears it go off, then returns to the bathroom and says, “There, lovely and clean.” Back in the bedroom she dresses him in freshly laundered clothes. Some of the restraints have to be loosened while she manoeuvres and wriggles him into underwear, trousers and tunic, and she avoids looking at his face as she does it. She hates the thought that her touch might be another of those few sensual experiences.

She wheels him into the main room, says “Lunch now” and places his chair by the dining table. She goes into the kitchen to fetch his bowl, with the soft food already prepared, and then feels, insistent against her wrist, the suddenly sharpened pulse of the box.

The change will be well underway by the time she gets back into the main room, and she cannot bear the thought of that face.

She closes her eyes.

“I wish,” she says deliberately, under her breath. “I wish.”

The judge stands on the pebbled shore of the lake. “Shit”. He looks at the brick bungalows, shimmering in the air, fading in and out of sight. “Fucking shit.”

The doctor whispers, “Can we stop it?”

The judge says, “Only if we find her and kill her. Removing the source is the only way to stop a wish.”

The doctor whispers again. “How far will it spread?”

The judge shakes his head. “Depends on precisely what she wished for. Perhaps she just wanted her invalid to disappear.” He looks at the scattered empty spaces where bungalows once stood. “But I’d say she wanted considerably more than that.”

“It’s my fault,” the doctor says. “I should have done something sooner.”

“Yes,” says the judge. “But not only yours. Whoever did her background checks. Whoever didn’t pick up any of the signs. Whoever started the damn war, and the damn experiments, and the whole damn mess. Whoever stood by and let them do it.”

The doctor is silent.

The judge’s body shakes with a deep sigh. “The ones who can wish, those few with that power, they’re supposed to be contained too. Drugged out of their minds so they can’t think, never mind wish. And then one slips through the net.” His voice falters. “Ever since the war we’ve seen the invalids as the main problem because there’s so many of them, and what they can do, when they change, is so terrible. But the ones who can wish…” he shakes his head.

“She said she wanted a new world,” murmurs the doctor. He looks towards the hills, as their outlines dim and blur in the distance.

“Yes.” The judge glances towards the water.

Across the lake, the hills flicker out.

OLIVE

This story is one of my own favourites, and it always goes down well at Spoken Word events. It came second in Writing Magazine’s ‘New Start’ competition, where they were kind enough to say: ‘…because Olive is so entertaining, and flows so easily, it might be easy for the reader to miss how carefully, and cleverly, its blend of sitcom humour and horror tropes has been constructed. It feels natural and unforced, and it's an original, quirky delight.’ (Runner Up - New Start short story competition - Writers Online)

OLIVE

My brother Raymond first met Olive at a Halloween Party in 1982. My mother duly invited her to tea and Raymond said, with a slight blush, ‘I suppose I should tell you. She’s undead.’

‘She’s what?’

‘Undead. She drowned during a holiday in Scarborough when she was six, and her father made a pact with Satan to bring her back to life. His immortal soul, and hers, so she could come back from the dead.’

‘Oh,’ said Mother. She looked anxious. ‘Can she still eat ham?’

Olive could still eat ham, and pretty much anything else. Her digestive system was as undead as the rest of her, and worked extremely well.

A year later she and Raymond got married at the Register Office. Church wasn’t an option, with the lost soul thing. Church gave Olive shocking migraines. Mother was disappointed, but it was still a nice day. Olive’s Uncle Ted gave her away, her father having been claimed by Satan some years before, and after a small buffet at the Blacksmith’s Arms, she and Raymond went off for a week in Tenerife.

‘You know, I think it was a bit of a cheek, Olive’s Dad promising her soul as well,’ said Mother, after we got home. She looked thoughtful as she filled the kettle. ‘I wouldn’t have liked your father, God rest him, to do that. I mean, it wasn’t his to promise, was it? She was only little. Do you suppose it was legal?’

‘Do you suppose Satan cares?’ I asked.

But Mother, it turned out, was on to something.

The years passed. Raymond and Olive had a son and a daughter, both of whom were able to attend Sunday School with no ill effects. I got married, and divorced. Olive’s appetite matured and ripened. Everyone’s kids grew up and left home, and Mother moved into a sheltered flat. Raymond and Olive got two spaniels when their youngest went, to fill the empty nest. We all got a big greyer and stiffer in the knees, Olive included. Apart from not being able to vote in person, because the polling station was in the church hall, and feeling sick if she caught ‘Thought for the Day’ on the radio, she was exactly the same as the rest of us, only hungrier.

It was the internet that changed everything, as it has a habit of doing. It put Olive in contact with other members of the undead community, including an Australian called Alastair, with whom she spent a lot of time chatting after Raymond had gone to bed.

One day I got a text from Raymond asking me to meet him in the Blacksmith’s Arms that evening, on a matter of urgency.

I arrived with misgivings. ‘What is it?’

Raymond sighed. ‘It’s that bloody Alastair, putting stupid ideas in Olive’s head. His mum made a pact, when he was run over by a car, but in her pact, it was just her soul, not his. Apparently Alastair’s mum knew her rights.’

‘There are rights?’

He frowned, as if reciting from memory. ‘The soul must be given freely and willingly. A child, not having full understanding, does not have the capacity to freely and willingly give a soul. Therefore, the pact is invalid.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s good news, isn’t it? Olive’s not going to hell.’

‘Of course she’s going to hell,’ snapped Raymond. ‘All that stuff with the church, and having panic attacks at the school nativities. And she’s got the mark.’

‘What mark?’ I gawped. ‘Not 666? Where?’

Raymond gave a weary sigh. ‘No, not 666. It’s like a scorch mark on her hip. It hurts like hell each Halloween.’

‘I suppose it would,’ I said.

‘Well, Alastair says she should ask for her soul back.’ He sounded as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be jealous or optimistic.

I stared. ‘Can you do that?’

‘So Alastair says.’ Jealousy was definitely winning. ‘She wants to conjure Satan on Halloween, when the curtain between worlds is thinnest, and tell him the deal’s off. Well, not totally off, she doesn’t want to die, obviously. But apparently one soul is the going rate, and the Lord of Darkness pulled a fast one. According to Alastair. Olive wondered if we could do it at yours.’

‘Why mine?’

My brother looked apologetic. ‘It’s the dogs. You know what animals are like with the supernatural. They’re likely to go completely berserk and…well…Satan might not like it.’

‘Satan’s not a postman, Raymond. He’s unlikely to be put off by a bit of yapping.’

‘Olive is afraid he’ll do something to them.’

‘Yes, well!’ I shouted at him. ‘I’m quite afraid Satan might do something to me!’

But blood is thicker than fear, and a fortnight later Raymond and Olive came round on Halloween, Olive clutching an incantation Alastair had emailed her. 

She looked at me hopefully. ‘Shall we have a nice cuppa, before we start?’

‘Oh. OK.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any biscuits?’ she said.

After a cup of tea and three bourbons, Olive chalked a pentagram on my polished wood flooring and we sat cross-legged, and a little stiff-kneed, on its perimeter. Olive chanted her incantation, and I could only assume the rhymes worked better with an Australian accent.

It got colder and there was a scent on the air, nothing unpleasant or sulphurous, but a fragrance half-remembered, half-grasped, older than anything our minds could conceive. I closed my eyes, trying to catch it more clearly, and then Olive said, ‘Hail, Lord of Darkness.’

When I looked, a tall, muscular, naked man was standing in the middle of the pentagram. I blinked. Raymond looked a bit taken aback. Light wreathed around the figure, sliding from deep reds to icy blues, so that it was difficult to see the features of its face, or the colour of its skin, but the power radiating from it was unmistakable. I suddenly felt more frightened than I could have imagined possible.

‘Who summons me?’ It wasn’t a voice. The question hung in the air. 

‘I do,’ squeaked Olive.

The figure considered her. ‘I know you. I have your soul.’

Olive said, in a rush, ‘Yes you do, and I want it back.’

‘Your soul was given, in a pact.’

‘Well, no,’ said Olive.

‘No?’ The house seemed to rock.

‘My father had no right to promise you my soul.’

‘No right?’

‘No.’ Olive clenched her fists and stuck out her chin. At that moment, I both really admired her, and wished more than anything that she would stop this nonsense now. ‘A soul must be freely and willingly given,’ she insisted, ‘and a child cannot freely and willingly enter a pact. You took my soul by deception.’

After a moment Satan said, with a touch of petulance, ‘What do you propose to do about it?’

‘I ask that you give my soul back.’

‘And why would I do that?’

Olive stuck her chin out further. ‘Because if you don’t, I shall appeal to a Higher Authority.’

Satan laughed, and the house rocked again. ‘You think a Higher Authority is going to listen to you, one poor, pathetic, single lost soul? I don’t think so.’

‘I do,’ said Olive.

Satan regarded her for several moments. Then a resigned sigh echoed round the room. ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that. It takes ages, and to be honest one soul isn’t worth it. I’ll toss you for it.’

‘What?’ Olive sounded bemused.

‘We’ll toss a coin.’ Satan sounded quite excited. ‘You can call. You win, you get your soul back.’ He leaned forward, and the air sharpened with a million pinpricks of fire, ‘I win, and I take you now. Have you got a pound coin? It seems a bit insulting to your soul to use anything less.’

Raymond put his hand in his pocket and said, ‘I’ve got a pound.’

I stared at him. ‘Are you completely mad? It’s a trick!’

Another, house-rocking laugh. ‘I don’t have to trick her. I already have her soul. But now and again,’ the laugh subsided to a chuckle, ‘we all enjoy a punt.’

Olive stood up, every inch of her trembling. 

‘Heads or tails?’ asked Satan.

Olive made a small, muffled sound.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Satan.

Olive looked up at the naked figure. ‘Heads,’ she said, defiantly.

‘Then do it,’ said Satan, words that flung themselves against the walls and slithered into our brains.

The coin sparkled in the darkness, against the shifting colours around the naked figure. It sparkled like no coin has ever sparkled, and it spun, over and over, like no coin has ever spun, and Olive suddenly said, ‘What the hell?’

The figure was gone, the pentagram was gone, the pinpricks of fire were gone. We were sitting round an empty space on my wooden floor, surrounded by a slight smell of burnt matches.

Before us lay an ordinary, dull pound coin. The Queen’s head peered up at us.

Olive started scrabbling at the waistband of her trousers. She tugged it down and shrieked, ‘The mark’s gone! Raymond! Raymond! It’s gone!’

They hugged each other, laughing and crying on my polished wood floor.

‘It’s a new start,’ Olive gasped. She looked round at me, and it was as though ten years had fallen from her. Her smile had a strength, and a warmth and sincerity, that I’d never seen.

There have been quite a few changes. Olive now goes to church every Sunday. She’s joined the choir, and helps with the flowers every week. She’s gone off chatting to the undead, even Alastair, so Raymond’s happier. Her appetite remains as robust as ever, though. I suppose there are some things even the Lord of Darkness can’t change.

THE END

YER A WRITER, HARRIET

So here you are. You’ve managed to stop crying and get out of the foetal position

you adopted when your novel/story/poem/memoir was rejected, or ripped apart at

your critique group, or insisted on glaring at you, unfinished, from your screen or

notepad.

“Not a writer,” you mumble. “Never will be. Can’t be. It’s just a [insert profanity of

choice] waste of time.”

But you kind of have to face it, you’re addicted to words.

Folk come to writing, like they come to anything else, in all sorts of different ways.

Some of us have been scribbling since we could hold a pencil. Some of us never

thought it would be the thing for us, or were told it wasn’t the thing for us, and came

to it later in life. Some of us wanted to record a particular experience, or remember a

special person, and started trying to find the words.

Most of us, when we did find the words, didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do

with them.

Conventional wisdom states that the best preparation for being a writer, is to be a

reader. It is enormously helpful if you already have an idea, through reading, of how

words can be manipulated to make you feel happy, sad, scared or nauseous. It also

helps to know what works for you, what fires your imagination, or leaves you cold. If

you get the chance, read widely, read all sorts, don’t be put off by categories.

Categories are a marketing ploy. It’s nice to know where, in the library or bookshop,

you can find your favourite authors, but categories are basically the analogue

equivalent of those annoying pop-ups on Netflix or Amazon Prime: You Watched

This So You’re Going To Love This, Look No Further.

Also, one book does not a genre make. If you hated Isaac Asimov, it doesn’t mean

you don’t like science fiction. It means you don’t like Isaac Asimov. Try China

Mieville. Do yourself a favour and try China Mieville. You’ll thank me.

Not everyone gets the chance to read a lot of books. Lots of us don’t get the

chance to read much at all. We may not want to. It never occurs to us. But we speak.

We watch TV, or go to the cinema. We see all sorts of stuff on social media. We

observe people around us. We are interested in stories.

That’s the most important thing for any writer. An interest in stories. Your own,

other people’s, the history of that cat over there, doesn’t matter what it is.

So there you are, there’s this story you’re interested in, and into your head pop the

two most important words in any writer’s vocabulary: What If…

What if the cat is an alien? What if the grumpy old bloke on the bus is grumpy for

a very good and heart-rending reason? What if your great-grandmother had the

chance to tell her story to the world, how would she do it? What if you fancy telling

any of these stories?

Pick up a pencil, or fire up your laptop, or unleash whatever other device you have

about your person (I’m seventy, I text with one finger, I have no idea what wizardry

came out last week). Write a few words. Just a few words. Doesn’t matter if it’s the

start of the story, or the end of the story, or somewhere in the middle, or just a few

jottings about what you want to do. If you have the time and inclination, write a bit

more. If you enjoy it, set aside a bit of time to do it again.

If you don’t enjoy it, think about why you don’t. What if…you tried doing it at

another time of day? In another place? In mirror-writing? (Trust me, that one’s a

doozy. Rediscover your inner child.)

Maybe writing really isn’t your thing. Maybe it’s something you’ll enjoy doing now

and again. Or maybe you’ll find you’re addicted to words.

If you write stuff, you’re a writer. If someone has a brilliant voice, they’re a singer.

No-one says no, you’re not a singer because you haven’t done it in public. No-one

says you’re not a painter if you haven’t had something in the Royal Academy. You

can work towards becoming a published writer, if that’s what you want to do, but it’s

not a club you have to join. These days, you can be a self-published writer for

minimal cost, and then you can work on your marketing and try to make a living out

of it, or you can print off a few copies for your family. Or for yourself.

I was twelve when my first story was published, in The Brownie Annual of 1966,

‘Brownies Own Stories’ section. It was decades before I had anything else published.

For years I didn’t write anything much at all, and when I did I had no confidence in it.

But somehow those words wouldn’t stop coming, niggling away, and I couldn’t stop

my writerly habits: eavesdropping on other people’s conversations in cafes, peering

into people’s windows in that magic time when the lights are on but the curtains

aren’t drawn, having conversations, either in my head or out loud, with people who

didn’t exist anywhere outside my imagination. And always the What If… What if I

wrote this story, and what if I sent it off somewhere, and what if they accepted it…or

what if they rejected it and I learned what not to do next time…and what if I joined a

Writers’ Group and got some helpful feedback…and what if I felt it was OK to spend

quite a lot of my time doing something I really loved?

If you love doing it, or even if you just quite like it, never be put off by others. If

you’re arranging words, on a page, into some sort of tale — yer a writer, Harriet.