Author Archives: chrisbuchananwrites

Manly Man on Tarmac

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

Who’s the stubbly man with the big neck
and chest like a wardrobe full of wet coats –
Desperate Dan in all but name and desperation
and boots – and hot feet in his heavy frayed socks?

That’s me. Manning it up, manning what I’ve got

and what I’ve got is two thighs, weighty
as King Kong’s sinewy, salty grey eyes
and hailstones hitting my hard-up fatty tongue
more melting than bouncing as I wait to drink

what’s left of black crystal molasses
from a tiny red can, but it’s not Christmas Coke
not today at least, today
it’s a different bearded rogue spread out

on the front – Captain Morgan –
and what tastes like Panda Cola, his mate.
Dirty.
And you’re not supposed to drink outside.

Blinks

by Chris Buchanan
Flash fiction, 2014

—

The hand comes up on my shoulder and grips with a purpose. That purpose. He’s not trying to get my attention, or remind me he’s behind me, or make some point about intimacy; he’s gripping my shoulder. He presses with every segment of his fingers, in sequence. No deeper meaning here, no code: he just wants me to know he’s gripped my shoulder. All right. No doubts about it.

And he says, “It’s what she would have wanted.”

Oh is it? Oh, well, glad you let me in on that. So now not only is she dead but it turns out my brother knew her better than I did. Awesome, thank you for that. What else would she have wanted, Jay? Maybe I would have done it.

He says “It’s okay” and I can picture him making a face. I don’t spend the energy to tell him that it’s not actually okay and that she is in fact dead. I might get mad, get teary, start running, anything. And he could do whatever he wanted with any of those things. I feel like I’m trying to argue with the designated driver at the end of a long night out. I know I’m right, I know he’s being a dick, I know none of this is really my fault and in the morning I’ll still suspect it, but I can’t say anything in case I throw up.

He takes my hand and pulls the cables I’m holding, forces my knuckles. So he’s doing it, but we can pretend I’m doing it. That certainly is the ideal solution right there, Jay. It’s kind of conspiratorial, yeah? Good then. You do it.

The house lights up. He’s done a good job arranging them into a little scene. It looks like the Santa in his weird little yellow car – we loved that one – is about to fall off the blue gingerbread house onto the ski slope. The reindeer are scattered about the house at various points, as though chasing each other. Good work. It all blinks right – no piece of wall stays dark for too long. Silent. He doesn’t click for the ‘ho ho ho’.

I say something I’d rather not repeat, he says something I didn’t even understand, and he hits me on the back with a careful aim.

He’s out of there very quickly after the lights go up, when the headlamps of their car jump in and we turn away from the colours. Annie’s bobble hat is behind the light and it looks like she sees me looking at her. She must be proud. Jay certainly is. He swivels halfway back to me and nods at something he didn’t share with me, then slowly spins back away.

The decorations blinking to one side, to distract me from his exit and the awkward scene change. APPLAUSE.

–

See more of my flash-fiction in my new Amazon e-book! Please.

The Hundred Things — e-book now on sale

My first e-book is now available on Amazon for e-readers and PC!

The Hundred Things is a collection of flash-fiction I’ve been working on here and there for a few years. 100 stories with exactly 100 words each. For just under 100 pennies! See what I did there.

Tiny pieces telling a hundred stories. Love, parenting, comets, the Gunpowder Plot, playing D&D after the apocalypse and ninety-five more.

Coversuggestion

Cover art by Eleni Tsami of Planewalk.net

Ranger, Wizard, Fighter, Thief

by Chris Buchanan
Short story, 2014
The four of them embark on an epic quest to defeat a mighty evil, as anyone can tell by looking at them. They are brave and true, as you’d assume. What might surprise you is how bloody annoying they are.

—

First

There were four of them, which is not at all unusual with this sort of gang. As is the custom, they were as diverse in appearance as any four people could be. An elf, a wizard, a knight and a barbarian. Daggers, staff, sword, hammer. The corners of the world. How these little groups meet and end up as friends quite so often is a mystery, but they do and these had.

The travellers ducked into a quaint old hay barn, following the wave of the kindly farmer who had lent them shelter. They saw dry, cracked muck, scrap wood and rusted equipment. Moonlight on a butcher table, maybe. Hardly a heroes’ welcome, but they felt it was better than another night outdoors with a little more gold in their pack.

The barbarian dumped their supplies and his weapon immediately and asked for more beer the moment he was seated. He wore the uniform of his people: long, fair hair, straps and buckles, furry pauldrons and greasy skin.

The pale elf with the blades and leather all over him leaned in, slightly as he could, and muttered, “There are two kinds of hospitality on the road, my friend: those where we get drunk and make allies, and those where something else happens. I fear this is one of the latter.”

Respectfully, “Aye, Swicewise.”

Swicewise, his name. Continue reading →

No Hallows

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

Tonight your kids dress their hooves and yellow their eyes
like Satan, like Pagans with tridents, like sirens and fallen,
begging for chocolate from strangers and secretly
dreaming of razors or hoping for razors
and wanting a razor
in the chewy black centre
waiting to cut their teeth
tonight
before the moon wanes and the wax pools and the wick is lit
for the slippery parades, the cold-curdled festivals of light.
One more night.
And elders – elder than eighteens – wait
in exhilarating silence
for realistic blood and a knife and a violin scream
and slashers and old Hammers and things that are alive
and wings out the window and living dolls that die
and the strength of the one girl
who reds
the plastic mask man and shames his dull white.
She’ll buy it in the sequel and he’ll be gone in the morning,
climb out from under the rock.
It’s all right.
There’s no fear of damnation tonight.

Shark Woods

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

I want to go to that shark infested forest –

you know the one?  The shark forest?

It’s in Guam or darkest Peru
or Vietnam or somewhere like that – the one
where stray knocked-off branches canopy the floor
like so many chopped-off bones and they’re covered
in shredded leaves and shark sweat and chipped teeth –
the one where thick finned beasts slink through trees
looking sideways like tigers and hammerheads wait
in the bits of the blue to sink quick onto your head,
split your cheeks and rip you from eye to chin and say
Smile you son of a bitch! and mash your pulp to
mist with the same serrated paper shredders they
use to say it. You know,

the woods where you look up and the sky’s sliding
with fat-middled bodies and lithe grey lumps with
empty eyes, a spring in their slide and nothing
in their mouths and I don’t know how they got up there
you know? Suppose they just push their way up through
the green-wreathed pale oxygen like human beings climb
into coral when their eyes slip back and their teeth are wet
you know the way I mean? The kind of feeling that
makes you jump backwards into the black and seeth,
I exist to eat smaller fish and mammals if I have to-
and you make your voice cut through the blue sap
inch by inch until you’re in — until you’re swimming in air,
breathing without thinking,

probably something like that.

I don’t know. But you know there’s no time to
work it out down there, deep in the reddening midst
of it, lost in the shark woods down where the bears
daren’t have their picanick, no bleeding body dare risk it,
and everyone knows the sharks don’t share their
splintered wood – if you step inside you’re after your
own hot blood, you’ll be tasting it in the great white’s
slipstream breeze – it’ll rush right through you,
tear you to pieces and scatter your scraps in the bracken
bits of stripped ribs and hands and knees on the muddy bed
below you, you’ll look like a lifeless mermaid lying
sidelong in an indoor fish tank, the paint licked off your
matt-black skin, and buried.

That’s where I want to go. The shark infested forest.

I want to sleep with the dead and live with the big fishes,
make people scream when they see my head crop up, chopped up
loose and changed, fleshy, hanging like languid meat in the
shallows, open like a doll’s eyes, like a dogfish flies – slack
maw, gulping gasps of air like water backed up to the stomach
and bounding up and down and every way through it just spitting
and swimming and chewing whatever I want. That’s what I want,
I want to meet the maneaters in no-man’s land and catch their eyes-
taking sick red chum in my hands and snow white flakes in my
fingers, and grind, like a mad Captain Birdseye who’s dived through
their table and shattered it, upturned the surface and wrecked it,
come to Hell with high water and sucked it in and sunk it down dry,
let it settle. And circled.

I want that. I want to feel as full as this and never have to talk.
I want to breathe in my sides and never see the tops of trees.
I want to swallow
deep and smooth
cool as a copse
and not have to stop.

Dirt

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

The man tying the bag over his head,
the small of his back sore against a stair,
his lips gone numb and white, waiting to spread,
his legs tight like a mystic’s crossed in prayer,
his words like pulses wrapped in too much wool,
his neck that sometimes nicks him when he swallows,
his past like something catching on his skull,
his train of thought too stop-and-start to follow –
this wet-nosed ass who can’t quite tie the strings
is going to do a really selfish thing.
Before he goes he’ll guess at what you’ll say.
He’ll try to count your grief in weeks and days.
He’ll scare you half to death. This one will hurt.
You’ll drop and look for answers in his dirt.

Yin Yang Man

by Chris Buchanan
Poetry, 2014

—

Peering, I hold her like an alien,
trying to do that two become one, reunited
and it feels so good, perfect circle
made of cushioned angles kind of thing
in the dark.

A foreign nipple presses my front
and my cut wire hairs raise the silent alarm,
I uncoil, tense my thighs, black out my pupils
and stiffen like Juliet and think of Trojans,
not moving

until a breeze soothes my feet-skin
and hers, presumably. Her body – her small,
not mine, not brother, not male species –
willowy, pet, pettish, baby, honeyed, celestial,
prods at me.

She gives me a look I don’t know
and we laugh and kiss, shove our half-moons
back in, redouble our impression on the bed,
cover our mismatched colours, relax,
slip
away.

Fresh Water Sea part 1: Prayers From Hira

by Chris Buchanan
Short story, 2014
One story in three times. A survivor of the Great Flood talks to herself as she starves, a girl lives through the Cold War in a hospital bed, and in the present day a man tries to make conversation with his depressed daughter.

Part 2 HERE and Part 3 HERE

—

1

I have no other family left and I hate the silence, so I must speak to You.

Are You ready for the waters to assuage now, or are You waiting for me?

No answer.

I said a prayer when my parents died, and then again when my brother gave me his food and joined them. Did you hear that? It was our old chant for the passage of the dead. There were no words of my own in there. I said it while I bound their hard bodies in the empty chickenfeed sacking and laid them in the rainwater– the flood, whatever it is. It’s still a puddle, isn’t it? Big one. No fish. Not reached the surface. My mama said it was Your tears but there isn’t any salt, so.

I know You haven’t ever spoken to me before, but I still hope You will. There were so many of Your children before, and I was only a girl. Now there’s only me and You, isn’t there? I thought I might be special at first. Thought You might have chosen me. To be saved. Hurts my stomach to think of that.

2

Is this a punishment, Lord?

My mother didn’t believe it was. She said You loved us all and that decent people like my family would be saved: that was why You had led us to the boat. Its owner was dead I suppose. Did You starve us because we were thieves, then? Are we like Eve and we failed Your test? Or were we meant to drown like all the rest and finding this thing only prolonged our suffering? What is meant by this? Is it because people eat pork and mate with mistresses?

Sometimes I still see the piles of cattle and peasants who didn’t sink. The birds of the air used to peck at them when it was still raining, but they’re all gone now. Did they displease You?

If You’re going to kill me might it please come quickly? I feel like I’m waiting for lightning.

Is this a punishment or could You just not think of a better way?

I’m sorry Father. It’s so hard to put what I mean into words. Please. Can you hear my thoughts?

3

Dear Father, forgive me for making You wait. I began to weep again. Did you hear that? It seems shameful to me. I am not a man, but I am not an infant either. You gave speech to men and their sons and daughters, yet sometimes I bleat like an ass. I hate it. But in a stupid way it does make me feel at peace.

This isn’t important.

I don’t know what it is that I want to say to You. Do you understand?

Lord God please give me a sign. Will you please just–

No, of course.

4

I nearly forget what the ground used to look like. I miss the colours mostly. Do You remember them? Grass and earth. I even miss the clouds.

Now all I see is blue, twice: two great big sheets of blue and the sun or the moon in one corner of them both. When I look up can You see my eyes, ah? Or if I look down can You see them on the water? Here–

I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes I say things and I laugh and I don’t know why. I might just be hungry. I’ve gnawed on these chickenbone splinters so much today, most of them are stuck in my teeth. Poor chickens.

Ha ha.

I wonder how many people are under the water.

It would hurt too much to climb over to the edge of the deck and look. If I put my head under, could I see them? Ha ha ha.

5

Can You hear me? It’s Kala-Hira-daughter-of-Lam. Can You hear me? I’m praying! I’ll wave at You, all right? I can’t shout any more. Do You see? Here on the little riverboat! It’s me!

Are You still up there or are you tired of watching?

No answer?

I don’t blame You. If I were in the Kingdom of Heaven I wouldn’t want to look down here either. Hmm. They always said it was beautiful. Is that why You drowned them all, Lord? Are they with You now? I haven’t seen any bodies in a long time.

I can’t remember what I was saying.

Are there any fish yet?

Dear God, it hurts to move now. Wait a minute. Don’t listen. I’m going to try to get up so I can look.

Don’t listen to this.

There. I’m sorry. I cursed. I didn’t mean it.

Another step now. Here we go. No–

I’m weeping again. Please, just ignore it. I fell. I need to pull myself across the deck. Fingertips in the cracks.

Almost.

God, my stomach hurts. Please help me.

Almost.

Two blues, reflections, deep and light. I want to look deeper. Lift me up.

Oh! There. Hold the– good. Wonderful. Can You see me? Are You up there, or down there? Here. Breathe. Let me look over the prow.

I–

God hold me up!

—

Continue to part 2

Fresh Water Sea part 2: Beverley’s Diary, March 1971

by Chris Buchanan
Short story, 2014
One story in three times. A survivor of the Great Flood talks to herself as she starves, a girl lives through the Cold War in a hospital bed, and in the present day a man tries to make conversation with his depressed daughter.

Part 1 HERE and Part 3 HERE

—

1

Every night I dream silly little adventure films about earthquakes, comets, plagues, bombs of course, & a lot of floods. There are always lonely heroines, sometimes with my face, sometimes not. Sometimes I can look through their eyes & sometimes I’m like an American director, just trying to control what I see happening to them. I wake up feeling weak. Disappointed.

The nurses suggested I should keep a diary. They make me move around the room every day, try to get me to speak. This feels different though. Look at all this. They wouldn’t recognise the voice I’m writing with!! Already more words on this paper than I get through aloud in a week. This is actually quite nice. Plenty of paper – – maybe I could write down some of the dreams if my arm is up to it. Later.

The Doctor Carnegie book is not helping. I hope they don’t want to read this rubbish.

You would think I’d get sick of this ceiling, but no. 2 months.

Can hear someone putting his ear to the door. Scratch scratch scratch. Yes, still breathing. Please don’t come in.

2

I should never have read that bloody Bible! Started to go through it the other day when I felt a bit more active and went through drawers. Don’t know what else to do when I start looking for answers. I miss my records – – I could usually find something in them. Always go to sleep feeling like a failure. Bible – – got about halfway into Genesis. Looking again now. Surprisingly miserable stuff.

Lots of end-of-the-world. I remember when my Dad suddenly wanted to go to church during the Cuban crisis. I had no idea what was going on but I remember how frightened I was by the service. Him sat there on the pew, clenching it with his legs, looking at the ceiling like one of the struts was about to snap.

Could still happen, any day now. Could happen right now.

Right now. I know it’s not a good idea to think that.

I actually slept with the lights on last night, & worse, it helped.

3

I thought I was getting better. I was moving around and writing. I was talking to the nurses a bit, even thinking about talking to parents. Now it’s all sleep & tears. God I hate this. Don’t know what to write that won’t make me sound like a lovesick bloody thirteen-year-old. I wake up & cry.

I, I, I.

I will now humour the latest chapter of the self-help book.

Exercise – what would you like to see changed in your life?

Yes, everything. I want something to happen. Fall in love before the dust sticks me to the shelf. Get out of this bloody place before I end up here forever. My parents survived a world war but I’m the one hospitalised – – and by nerves. Like shell shock but no shell. Just fear. Bedsores. I know it’s not laziness, I know that, but I don’t get up. I just lie here & I don’t get up. I could do but then what? How do you start again after this kind of disgrace?

Honestly I wish somebody would read these!

I had a thought about sneaking out at night & doing it in the river. The old stones-sewn-into-the-dress routine. For a minute it seemed like a wonderful idea, but window is locked. It still comes & it fades away like that. Felt my mouth twitching at first – – a rush of air through my neck. Very easy breath. The sort of feeling I used to get when I was little & I had something nice to anticipate. Christmas morning.

Hey mum & dad, do me a favour and have the nurses sneak in and take these papers away – – and then read them.

I see a red door and I want to paint it black. No colours anymore I want
I don’t think this is helping at all.

4

I’ll tell you what I think (been in the Bible again). I think Heaven is under the sea. They said on the TV that most of the ocean has never been explored – – we don’t know what’s down there.

Now we know there’s no paradise above the clouds. We’ve been up there + there was only the moon so unless it’s on Mars or Jupiter or something then it must be underwater. I haven’t found the part of the Bible where it says Heaven is up in the sky and all the angels wear white dresses and play harps!

I think it’s undersea. When you’re dead you sink beneath the waves + everyone is there.

That’s why sailors in olden times used to come back to port with tales of mermaids. They had seen people’s immortal souls under the surface of the water. They’d seen ghosts that had made their way back to the water. Maybe when we die we drip away into the rivers + into the clouds + end up back where we belong.

Angels with fluffy pillow white wings in space!! We know that isn’t possible. But they could swim? Once the lungs are empty they could be graceful swimmers. Weightless + lithe. Rivers are the hands that carry us out there + til then we sit at the banks waiting for the water around us to grow. Wait to slip through the cracks / into the blue.

I hope that’s the way it is. I wonder if the City of Atlantis is at the bottom! You have to sink like a stone before you start swimming!!

Nurses / next of kin – – sorry for making you pore over all this lunatic shit.

5

I know it’s been a while. I’m not sure what to say. I feel very different. & too suddenly. Scared to put it on paper in case it turns out to be imagination.

Dad came in. Said he had been outside the door lots of times. Talked. Not sure what he said that was so important, but something apparently was. Got out of bed, walked to door.

I remember going to Starkey Pond when I was a child. I have a very fond memory of me & the parents making lots of little paper boats, dropping them in the brook and then running with them, watching them race down all as one, prodding them a bit if need be.

Seeing the pond with all of them on it, the slab of rock in the middle like an island & the bullrushes all round. Just a lovely memory. Dad must have brought all that paper with him specially. Always made me think it was my idea and I was talking him into it! Just noticed. When I’m home, would like to go back there.

Will talk to mum next time. Maybe call Sue after, talk to her. Not yet. Maybe a week. Don’t know. Never thought about this.

Been writing.

—

Continue to part 3