Embrace: tales from the dark side
By Keith Brooke
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About this ebook
Eleven stories from the darkest reaches of Keith Brooke's imagination, each with a new afterword. Revisit the haunts of your youth, retell the story of your life, embrace your inner demons. Listen to the voices, go on...
'Keith Brooke is a wonderful writer. His great gift is taking us into worlds we never imagined...'
--Kit Reed
'Keith Brooke's prose achieves a rare honesty and clarity, his characters always real people, his situations intriguing and often moving.'
--Jeff VanderMeer
'in the recognized front ranks of SF writers.'
--Locus
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Embrace - Keith Brooke
Embrace
tales from the dark side
Keith Brooke
Published by infinity plus at Smashwords
www.infinityplus.co.uk/books
Follow @ipebooks on Twitter
© Keith Brooke 2010
Cover design © Debbie Nicholson 2010
Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
The moral right of Keith Brooke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
Novels by Keith Brooke
Keepers of the Peace
Expatria
Expatria Incorporated
Lord of Stone
Piggies (as Nick Gifford)
Flesh and Blood (as Nick Gifford)
Incubus (as Nick Gifford)
Genetopia
Erased (as Nick Gifford)
The Accord
The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie
Other books by Keith Brooke
Collections:
Head Shots
Parallax View (with Eric Brown)
Embrace: tales from the dark side
Segue: into the strange
Faking It: accounts of the General Genetics Corporation
Liberty Spin: scientifiction
Memesis: modifiction
Edited:
Infinity Plus (with Nick Gevers)
The Sub-genres of Science Fiction: strange divisions and alien territories
Contents
Skin
To Be Alone, Together
Mother
Debbs is Back
What She Wanted
Brighton Town
Passengers
The Story of My Life
Caroline
Resting Place
Embrace
Publishing History
Skin
February 3rd
I didn't want to see Laura today.
I have times like this, times when I know everything I say will come out wrong, everything I try to do will be clumsy and open to misinterpretation. Usually I can tell when I am in such a state and this morning I duly recognised the symptoms.
I cope, though. I have learnt to. But I didn't want to see Laura.
I am faltering already. I am not accustomed to writing in this manner. Today I rose, washed, breakfasted and knew that I couldn't leave my bedsit. But at the same time I knew that I must. I had my washing to do ... I can't let myself give in.
I made myself unbolt — top, middle, bottom — my door and hurry out with three Tesco bags stuffed full of sheets and trousers, items I cannot cope with in my room's small corner basin. The man from across the corridor was also leaving but he barely glanced in my direction. He is like that, for which I am grateful as I have no need to respond.
The launderette is only a few minutes away by foot but there were people everywhere and my skin was flushed long before I saw Laura, ahead of me with her hessian sack of clothing (lettered with the words TOG BAG; an unwanted Christmas present, she once told me).
I almost turned back but I fought my panic down and continued, despite the dark feeling that today was rapidly living up to my initial sense of foreboding.
We walked, one ahead of the other, for over a minute although it felt like many more. We met six months ago in the launderette and now Laura is one of the few people who will talk to me. Maybe that's why I am scared of her: she tries to penetrate my barriers.
Laura is about five feet two with lank gingery hair. This morning she was wrapped in a big quilted coat. On her head was a woollen hat and she wore gloves, scarf and a pair of street-dulled blue and yellow snow boots. I was also warmly clothed against the cold but I noticed with some surprise the number of people who passed me by in the street, coatless and wearing only light clothing. Two weeks ago, Laura commented that this decade is expected to be even warmer than the 1980s but, to my own senses, that can not be the case. As I walked my breath steamed and I was glad of my protective layers.
Thankfully Laura did not wait for me when she turned onto Magdalen Road, but when she entered the launderette she held the door open and smiled as I passed within. I loaded my machine with clothes, powder, coins and then sat with my back to the window, staring at the floor, aware that people were looking.
My face was warm and sweat was breaking out on my forehead so I loosened my scarf and my coat and tried to think peaceful thoughts. Laura sat beside me and my skin grew even hotter. Sometimes it is as bad as this. Other times I can confidently meet the inquisitive looks, seeing them as mere uninterested glances, knowing that it is all in my own head. Some days I don't even care.
Laura tugged at her coat, stood and removed it, then pulled a thick brown jumper over her head and dumped it at her feet. She smiled, for the second time. Aren't you warm?
she asked.
I said nothing.
Did you see the news?
asked Laura, knowing that I would not have done so. The news is for others, for those with worldly cares. My day-to-day is not affected by current affairs. The Bulgarian jihad is over,
she continued. The ethnic Turks decided Allah didn't want another slaughter on His hands. The Civic Renaissance have turned Popular Palace into a mosque as a gesture of goodwill. You should have seen the pictures: you've never seen so many happy people. It's beautiful. Really.
Then her words faded, as they do when she realises she has been speaking for some time. Laura is like that. Maybe she sits with me because I am even more paralysed by shyness than she. Maybe if I read a newspaper I would gain in confidence: it would give me something to talk about just as Laura's television is a prop to her own conversation.
We sat for a long time in silence; perhaps she sensed my mood. Although the morning did not appear as bad as I had anticipated, I still wished that I had allowed myself the luxury of staying at home.
There is a wasted old woman who appears to spend a lot of time at that particular launderette. Her name is Mrs Saxley, which I know because she is the kind of person who introduces herself and tells you bluntly what she thinks of you and of the world, regardless of all propriety. Nobody seemed particularly bothered today when Mrs Saxley stripped to her underwear and put her clothes in a machine, mumbling, Hot wash, hot wash,
under her breath. Laura noticed and she broke our silence by whispering, Just like the old advert,
but that did not clarify things for me. Strangely, instead of cringing and breaking out in a flush of embarrassment I merely returned my gaze to the cracks in the floor. It is only now that I can look back and recognise the incongruity of it all. Mrs Saxley sat right next to me and took up her knitting and I didn't even care.
Maybe the whole thing was in my mind.
Sometimes my imagination can be cruel. My dreams feature torture and death and there is nothing I can do but bow down and subject myself to the machinations of my own subconscious. Maybe I didn't go out to the launderette at all today, maybe my mind has constructed this warped fantasy to hide from myself the embarrassment of succumbing to shyness. But this has never happened before and, as I have said, I cope: why should my mind respond in such a fashion now?
My father used to say that it's a strange world; if today can be used as evidence, it is growing rapidly stranger.
~
April 6th
These last few weeks have been like an oasis set against the rest of my dried out life. It took me several minutes to craft that sentence and it still appears clumsy, but it is true, within the limitations of my existence. There has been nothing revolutionary in my lifestyle, I have not managed to find myself a job or anything like that. But I cannot recall a particularly bad day in at least two months. My nerves have been ... if not calm, then constrained. I have been able to go about my day-to-days in a fairly normal manner (if the word normal can ever have any real meaning). I do my washing, my shopping, I cash my Income Support.
I saw Laura today. There was a time, a few months ago, when we would meet often, but recently this has not been the case. Perhaps she has started using a different launderette. Maybe I will ask her about that if we meet again — I feel that I could, that even now I would not tongue-tangle my words and trail off into a skin-burning silence.
I was in Chapel Field Gardens, enjoying the daffodils and tulips. I felt relaxed. Out of doors and relaxed! There were people around but that didn't bother me because the grass was green and springy beneath my feet.
You're still feeling the cold?
I smiled and turned, lowered my face from Laura's gaze and said that, yes, I supposed I must have been. Laura has changed since I last saw her. The muscles of her face have always been taut, her eyes moving rapidly from side to side as if she was constantly fearful of entrapment. But today her face was relaxed, and her eyes were steady and sparkling in the low spring sunlight. She was wearing a mustard-yellow sweater and jeans. I was still wearing my winter coat, although only this week I have progressed to my lighter-weight jumpers in anticipation of milder weather.
I am not generally a person to take note of passing fashions in clothing. It is not my concern. But, this last week, the subject has forced itself upon me. To me this spring has started no warmer than average but the cult of clothing has, apparently, ruled to the contrary. Even on two-jumper days I have seen adolescent boys strutting like roosters in their golden shorts and similarly bright-coloured tee-shirts and (as Laura appropriately called them this afternoon) muscle shirts, the type that reveal the shoulders as well as the arms. Women, too, are wearing outfits that would normally make me blush. This trend is not restricted to the nation's youth, as I had always thought such things were. Only today I saw an elderly man wearing high-cut shorts and a muscle shirt and the smile on his face was incredible; maybe it's the new drugs they give them, I don't know. I find it all vaguely disturbing, but then I only have to think back to the punk rockers of my own youth to see that this fad is likely to last a year at the most.
Still, it was a relief to see that Laura echoed today's fashions in only the colour — and not the cut — of her clothing. I pulled my coat tighter and we walked on through the spring blooms, earlier and fuller than I have ever known them.
Laura talked, as she does, but today she did not simply recount those stories she remembered from the television news. Today she talked about the flowers and about the swallows, already skimming low over the grass; she mentioned people she has never mentioned before, friends I never knew she had, some who she appeared simply to have met in the street and talked and laughed with — she didn't know their names. She had even been to see her mother in Aylsham for the first time in six years. They had spoken about the past, about things they had never been able to discuss before and which Laura didn't explain to me today; the visit has clearly lifted a great weight from her.
As we left the Gardens and headed back along Theatre Street, Laura stretched and then pulled her jumper up over her head and off each arm in turn. Underneath it she was wearing nothing. My eyes fixed on her nipples, hardening in the chill air, then I caught her smile and looked away, barely registering that she had discarded her jumper on the pavement behind us.
I wasn't embarrassed, though. I wasn't even scared. Perhaps a little curious but that was all. Again, it is only in retrospect that I can see anything strange in the events of today.
Actually, I felt rather good as we emerged on Brigg Street. I even undid my coat. Looking around, I noticed that almost everybody was dressed as if for a heat-wave. There were shorts and tee-shirts, bikinis and thongs, many of the men and women went topless, and most wore no shoes or socks. I removed my coat and slung it over my arm, walking on slowly, enjoying the gentle mood of the city centre. I left Laura on Fye Bridge and returned to my bedsit alone, strangeness seeping into my skull. As I fumbled with my shopping and the key in my lock, the man opposite returned to his room, its door now artistically graffitised with the words DANNY'S DEN in various styles. He grinned at my clumsiness and said, Hi. D'you wanna hand, mate?
My mouth sagged open and the key finally turned. I hurried into my room and slammed the door behind me. My neighbour had come in off the streets completely naked. And then he had spoken to me for the first time. What is happening to the world?
I have calmed down greatly, now, but I still feel a little disturbed by this recounting of my day. Maybe it's just me: nobody else seems to be bothered. Tonight, before I retire, I think I will pray for the first time since I left home. It seems the best thing to do.
~
May 14th
I feel oddly calm, now, although I know I should not. I must start at the beginning and lead you (whoever may read this) through.
I did my washing today. It's easy these days, no waiting for a machine or a drier, no having to stand because you're too embarrassed to sit next to a stranger. Most people don't bother with clothes these days. I even saw a policeman this morning, wearing only his helmet and a grin.
It's funny how rapidly you