Unzip and Other Compact Stories

By Tommy Dakar

A new collection of short stories by Tommy Dakar. From humour to intrigue, from irony to philosophy, each piece has been carefully constructed to perform its task.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tommy Dakar
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310189555

Tommy Dakar

Born in England Tommy Dakar now lives and works in Granada, Spain. Author of short stories, novels, novellas and song lyrics he is also a musician and composer. He has worked in factories, on construction sites, in the investigation department of an important bank, as a busker, a shopkeeper and a gardener. He was a language teacher for many years, breaking into translation and bilingual representation. His works have been published to critical acclaim on various literary sites, including Storychord, SNReview, Write this, Write From Wrong, Language and Culture etc He has also been published in Spanish on Palabras Diversas and Ariadna. A collection of short stories, Unzip and Other Compact Stories, has recently been published, along with his satirical novels Balls, and Thick and Fast. The Trap-Door, which is literary fiction, and Falls the Shadow, a dvandva or twin set of separate yet inseparable short novels are also available at Smashwords. He is also working on another novel, due out soon. Here are some links to his published work. A World Apart published on Storychord. (http://storychord.blogspot.com/2010/11/issue-17-tommy-dakar-melanie-plummer.html) Also accepted for publication on MondayNightLit. Also published in print form by SNReview, Summer 2011 issue. Bellavista published on Language and Culture (http://www.languageandculture.net/backdrop.html) News of the World published 15th Feb 2011 on WriteFromWrong (http://writefromwrong.com/2011/02/14/fiction-february/#more-636) The Mystery Tour published November 2011 on Write This (www.writethis.com.) La Noche Mas Larga published in Spanish July 2011 at Palabras Diversas (www.palabrasdiversas.com) and Ariadna.com (http://www.ariadna-rc.com/numero51/lab56.htm). And if you are into music, check out Critical Moment (https://criticalmoment.bandcamp.com/)

Book preview

UNZIP AND OTHER COMPACT STORIES

BY TOMMY DAKAR

Published at Smashwords 2014

Table of Contents

Fear of the Dark

Kludge

Arven’s List

Home and Away

Unzip

Fade In, Fade Out

The Moor

You and I are Earth

OTHER WORKS BY TOMMY DAKAR

BALLS – A FULL-LENGTH LITERARY COMEDY

THICK AND FAST – A TRAGI-COMEDY NOVEL

FALLS THE SHADOW – TWIN STORIES, DIFFERENT YET INSEPARABLE

THE TRAP-DOOR – A DARK FANTASY NOVELA

A WORLD APART AND OTHER STORIES – A COLLECTION OF SELECTED SHORT STORIES

OR VISIT THE WEBSITE http://tommydakar.wix.com/tommydakar

Fear of the Dark

Kingsley Jordan did not realise as he turned the key in the door of his basement flat that in under three minutes he would be dead. He had been down on the streets all afternoon photographing the demonstration, documenting police charges and the defiant rows of angry protesters, and now he was thirsty and bursting for the toilet. Had he been a more observant man, a more cautious, apprehensive person, he may have noticed the tiny signs that spelt danger. There are always signs. The door had opened too easily, as if it had been recently oiled, and he did not have to struggle with it as he usually did. That could have aroused his suspicions. He may then have turned the light on to take a closer look at the lock and noticed the splintered wood. But Kingsley did not live in fear, and he badly needed a drink, even more than he needed the toilet.

He had no idea as he pushed the door closed behind him with his foot that he was putting down his camera for the last time, that never again would he place his heavy lens bag on the hall table. In the evening gloom of his underground home he did not notice that the drawers to his work table were all open, because Kingsley was not afraid of the dark, and his mind was focussed on a glass of water. Had his urge to urinate been stronger than his desire to quench his thirst, he would have gone into the bathroom and been surprised to see the toilet seat up, the water in the bowl resembling white wine. He would have wondered, maybe, how he could have been so slovenly, so unhygienic. He always sat down to piss, at least in private homes; it had been driven into him throughout his childhood. If his mother had been there she would have frowned and called it to his attention.

Kingsley, come here this instance! What did I tell you about this, eh? If I had an infra-red camera you'd see pee all over the place. It's disgusting. Now wash your hands and don't let me catch you standing up again.

So how come the seat was up, and the bowl unflushed? It may not have been enough to make him aware of the peril he was in, but at least it would have caused a slight nagging feeling inside his stomach, the way your body tries to tell you the car keys you confidently believe are in your bag are in fact in your other jacket, hanging on the back of the bedroom door. Though most probably he would have brushed it off as odd, just one of those things, have gently lowered the seat, pushed the eco flush, and headed off towards the kitchen anyway.

He had taken some fantastic photos that afternoon. The march had started off calmly enough, the crowd stoically bearing their banners of political slogans through the rain. There was the odd insult, the occasional joke, but mostly it was a serious affair, with a woman in a dark overcoat, a kind of cheer leader with a megaphone, prompting simple, monotonous rhyming chants. They had made their way along Main Street and had turned into Bigton Square without incident, where the police had drawn their line in front of the Town Hall. Both parties had held their ground, content with this standard stand-off. A manifesto had been read, and two representatives had disappeared into the council building with a signed petition. It was then that an elderly man had staggered into view, covered in blood, and fallen to the ground. What had happened? Who had assaulted him? The mood immediately changed, the singing stopped, and some objects were thrown at the riot police who until this moment had remained patiently in rank. Did they receive orders, or did they just over-react? There was a surge, a moment of panic, then the two sides clashed. The umbrellas and placards of the protesters were no match for the plastic shields and flexible batons of the police, and the crowd was soon dispersed, with people running in all directions. And Kingsley had got it all.

He had managed to climb up the scaffold of a nearby building and take aerial shots of the square. With his zoom lenses he could pick out almost anyone from the mass of frenzied bodies and freeze them forever. A young student, armed with a stick, defiantly yelling at the police lines, daring them to tackle him, as if saying 'all at once or one at a time?' A middle aged woman in a pink plastic raincoat covering her ears as she fled towards the shelter of a shop doorway. The police commander, his eyes sweeping across the multitude searching for ringleaders and weak spots. Later Kingsley had crept back into the square and taken close ups of the blood and tears, of the fatigue, of the mixture of elation and defeat that hung over the Town Hall like gun smoke.

On his way back home he had stopped off at a coffee house and flicked back through his work. There was some excellent stuff here, not only for the usual clients, but perhaps even for an international competition. One of them in particular stood out above the rest. It showed the frightened eyes of a young woman, in her mid-twenties or thereabouts, her head a riot of dark curly hair with strands sticking to her face like scars, and above her, about to fall, a police baton, held by an officer whose face seemed chipped out of granite. In the background a hellish scene of twisted torsos caught in combat, and all of this reflected in the huge plate glass windows of a bank.

It was photographs like these that made it all worthwhile. The rest was bread money. To Kingsley Jordan, journalistic photography was the mirror version of other art forms. A painter, a musician, a writer, or a sculptor creates something totally new, something that has never before existed, in the hope that it will reflect reality, make people see their world in a different light. A photographer does the exact opposite; takes reality as a starting point, then transforms it into art. The young girl in flames, the unarmed man before the tanks, the exhausted fire-fighter caked in ash and