The Extremists / 14 Stories

By Chris Dreyfus

The Extremists / 14 Stories

 

Life and love as seen through the eyes of fourteen central characters on a quest for human connection. This psychologically astute and literary collection of short stories will keep you reading to the end.

 

Darian writes a less-than-romantic letter to an ex revealing a traumatic past in The Extremists.

 

Magic realism enters The House of Lost Men. Carl, on the spectrum and lonely, develops an unlikely friendship. Tragedy forces him beyond his comfort zone.

 

The Cocido is a story about the strength of family and kinship. Sophisticated professional, Eva, visits her family home in Spain and is surprised her rustic farmer brother has found romance in the hills of Andalusia. They must act together upon hearing an urgent cry from the almond grove in the dead of night.

 

The Ravens is a dystopian tale told through the rye internal humour of the unnamed protagonist. He visits the barber as a pandemic weaves through his seaside town. Acute observations of people and a world in decline.

 

To mention but four of these fourteen riveting tales. The author brings an assured voice to these pieces of short fiction vividly evoking a variety of environments and moods with a good dose of humour.

 

 

From the Author of the hilarious: Sex & Death / A Farce in 34 Notes. A series of very naughty observational notes by the eccentric Sebastian Field-Marshall as he and his wife attend a funeral like no other.

Foibles / Three Darkly Humorous Novellas: A journey through the lives of three flawed inner-city denizens. An interconnected series of novellas told with compassion and humour.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Dreyfus
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223545729

Chris Dreyfus

Chris Dreyfus is an Australian writer of fiction and a visual artist. His characters drive the narratives of his fiction, often with a good dose of dark humour. He has produced many short stories and several novellas. Shortlisted for a short story prize in 2017, he has also published shorts in the literary magazines - Field of Words, The Honest Ulsterman, Blood & Bourbon and Every Day Fiction. Sex & Death / A Farce in 34 Notes  - eBook and Paperback. Search for it on all digital platforms. Foibles, a volume of three interconnected novellas released as an eBook and paperback. Search for it on all digital platforms. The Extremists / 14 Stories - eBook and Paperback. Search for it on all digital platforms.

Book preview

The House of Lost Men

Sartorial. That was the nickname I acquired in the house of lost men. And it stuck. Tim, a Māori man, released the nickname virus while working in our kitchen. At first, it offended me, and then I became accustomed to aliases based on appearance and mannerisms. In ancient times people were thus named, so why not now? When he wasn’t angry, even Angry began referring to me as Sartorial.

I lived in a refuge house for men who needed a place to sleep. For such as us, this was not always guaranteed. Sometimes, I imagine the house as a ship. A ship in a sea of troubles, journeying to a better place while we await our story to find us.

From the street, the house looked like others in the neighbourhood, in need of repair or demolition. A coin could be flipped either way. I hoped no one would be flipping the coin for a while. Being the third move in as many years, I was a little weary. I am not as young as I used to be. But then, one never is if you think about it.

A long dark corridor with the rooms lined up either side led into a courtyard. Beyond that, kitchen-dining and a lounge room. I noted every detail of the house. The corners were of particular importance.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

‘You’ve got a style about you, bro,’ the kitchenhand said after bestowing the nickname on me. He dished me up something I had trouble describing as food. Since we were always hungry, we ate it without knowing its origin and, quite often, its constituents. Approximate food might be a good name.

I privately called Tim, Beard. He had the blackest and bushiest beard I had ever seen. It obscured his face, and one could only ever arrive at an assumption of his expression via the twitching animation of his facial hair.

I tried Beard’s nickname out with Angry, but he looked at me in this weird way he has—as if trying to decide whether to attack me. He looked to the left of me and everyone else he encountered, so this must be kept in mind. At least he did not start shouting—his usual response when displeased, often leading to sedation.

‘Love the jacket, Sartorial,’ Beard said.

‘Thank you.’ Straightening my shoulders, I cast my gaze directly at his eyes. A doctor told me making eye contact, though discomforting, is a good practice as it would make life easier going forward. The doctor said going forward often when talking to me, so the phrase also has special significance.

The coat in question is black velvet made from silk.

‘It’s real,’ I said.

‘Sure, if you say so. I’m not sure what you mean, though. Are you talking about the jacket or something else?’

‘I mean what I said.’

Curly’s appearance for breakfast caused our exchange to be brief. It occurred to me that Beard, new to the world of the lost men, might become a problem. I reconsidered after meeting him on the outside two days later.

I followed a routine and this is it. I tidied myself up in my room, straightened my magazines on the bedside table and arranged the items on my dresser, my hairbrush for my luxurious long silver hair and my lint brush for my velvet jacket.

The dresser, old and a bit wonky, had a large oval mirror attached. I noted the appearance of The Phantom in the mirror. Every time I encountered the creature, it stood there with an air of expectation.

Long ago, I named it The Phantom, my boyhood hero. I collected the comics until, one day, they disappeared. I suspect The Phantom, both brave and loyal, fighter for justice and equality, keeps an eye on me. The crime of piracy was a particular preoccupation in his comic-book form, and as a result I feared exposure to this evil activity.

I suspected my twin cousins of stealing my comics, as they disliked me, calling me dipstick instead of Carl, my real name. They would extend this sometimes with – you’re half a thou off, dipstick, dipstick. They found this and other things they did and said hilarious. I later found it meant one-thousandth of an inch had been shaved off my oil-level dipstick, a complicated and ultimately illogical insult as no part of me resembled an internal combustion engine in any way.

At one point, they mentioned they were going to buy twin fox tails, which might be something they would use to launch yet another unfathomable humiliation upon me. Foxtails turned out to be something they tied to their car ariels for reasons lost to me. Besides this malice towards me, the twin’s main preoccupation consisted of making their cars go fast and doing wheelies at the end of our street., which they did with increasing speed until one of them became a paraplegic.

My meds and those of the others were regulated according to needs—we took pills which worked to a greater or lesser degree—until they did not at all. It is my experience that prescribing medicines, never a precise art, could have enjoyed the nickname approximate pills. They came in what is known as a Webster pack. I am not currently interested in Webster’s identity, although it may be worth investigating at some point. The doses consisted of three in number; red, white, and blue in colour. The white one for my hypertension, the blue and red for something else.

I swallowed the pills, and arranged my hairbrush, lint brush, and magazines again to be sure. I headed out on my constitutional to the bay. I always have my right hand in my pocket and my back straight. I had combed my luxurious and distinguished-looking grey hair to rest on my shoulders. A pleasant feeling.

I stood beside the traffic lights pole and waited for the ticking sound which I initially thought might indicate the amount of steps needed to cross. It was frustrating to find this wasn’t so. Once I’d crossed, I negotiated a complex pattern of pavers—one long stride to step on the fourth of each group. The patterning appeared in such a way as to interrupt the otherwise monotonous yet comforting configuration of the pavement. A tricky part of the journey, but worth it in the end.

Upon passing the tall apartment blocks on Market Street, I entered a small park, the high light of this being an avenue of old Moreton Bay fig trees. This was a place of great peace where I regularly sat on one of the park benches for several minutes in the shade of the trees. It was a day crisp but also bright with the morning sunshine. Dew still melted amongst the leaves of grass.

If I timed it well, the shadows caused by the trees fell in the right places. Beneath the shade of one tree, a tap stood above a plastic ice cream container. Some thoughtful person had placed it there, so the birds had a ready water source. Crested pigeons and currawongs lived in the tree branches. Territorially speaking, there seemed ample room for these two species, but they squabbled if caught beyond some invisible demarcation, or so it looked to me. It could be argued they were performing an age-old ritual so ingrained with their wild natures it should not be as strange as a human onlooker might think.

A Catholic girls’ school punctuated the park’s exit. I timed my walk so the students were at their desks. I had learned if I did not time it thus, the path would be awash with giggling, bantering, mobile phone-wielding adolescents. They seemed incapable of understanding what the comfortable movement of pedestrians might entail.

I stop at Garibaldi’s Kiosk at the bay beyond the park to buy a takeaway coffee and sit on a bench in the shade of the pines lining the esplanade. I am fair, so too much sun is not good for me, and a hat would look ridiculous on top of my excellent hair.

I liked to watch the boats moored in the bay and the sun’s reflection roll across the water like gold. The boats rocked on the cold golden water, a rippling sheen appearing at the same time every morning. I had become so enamoured of this spectacle; anxiety gripped me if, for some reason, I could not witness it. On such occasions, I’d take another pill—the blue one.

Walking to the bay this particular Autumn day, I mused about Beard’s use of nicknames in the house of lost men. They were beginning to confuse everyone. Even the shy and reclusive Curly had managed to mix them up.

I am the only one to get more than two consecutive words out of Curly, including the mismatching of Frisky with Tosser. Frisky appeared harmless enough. His primary preoccupation seemed to entail bouncing off the walls of various buildings around town. Tosser’s activities led to several stern warnings by the police to keep away from the girls’ school.

Laugher developed a more maniacal stance than usual due to being called Funny Man by Angry. It was said of Laugher that he could be genuinely funny, although I never found him so. He laughed maniacally at objects not generally considered amusing. Once, I came across him directing a great deal of hysterical mirth at a stick he had picked up while Angry stood by and lambasted him with all manner of insults, It has to be said Angry’s gaze was directed at the stick and not at laugher.

So, Beard’s renaming of everyone had the potential for chaos. The Phantom appeared less than amused when I practised the names in front of the mirror. I might have placed too much emphasis on them.

I read a surprising article about the Theory of Chaos in one of my magazines. This theory can become confusing in a house for lost men with names they were not given at birth. The random factors determining each subject’s chaotic behaviour become even less predictable. It sounds counter-intuitive, but predictability is at the core of chaos theory. It is all about the self-organisation of seemingly random conditions. I could continue, but it will introduce obscurity to what I hoped to be this story’s fundamental reality. I am reluctant to replace the word reality with certainty, as it might give the reader the wrong idea.

People underestimated my abilities in comprehension. When I was about fourteen, my aunt said, You probably won’t understand, Carl, but I am sympathetic. I’m sad for you, for the loss of my sister, your mother. I’m even sorry for the loss of your no-good father. They would have loved you better than I have. Whatever it is you have, you’ve inherited from his side of the family, and... Well, let’s say there’s not a lot of good in it.

It seemed lost on her that I had a high capacity for deciphering this sort of data. Not confusing for me at all. Aunt Felicity is dead, but I remember almost everything she said to me or about me when in hearing range. I lived with her and my cousins growing up. I have the dimmest memory of my mother, and as my aunt said—your father was a bad lot and shot through the day you were born. I understood this but would have liked the opportunity to personally assess his qualities.

So, after observing The Phantom for a while, negotiating the pavers, strolling through the park, observing the territorial rituals of the birds and avoiding the twittering girls, I arrived at the bay. The sun had burnt away the cold to reveal a clear day with the sun high and bright. The gentle breeze wafted through my hair. I bought my Garibaldi’s coffee and sat on one of the park benches.

‘Sartorial!’ 

Beard sat on another bench a short distance from mine. I remembered he had not been on duty in the kitchen. I felt compelled to be polite. A smile occasionally would also not go amiss, according to Aunt Felicity. From the reactions of some, my smiles don’t quite work. Sometimes the signals I try to convey in my interactions malfunction. The train of me continues until I’m derailed. It appeared the signal turned on correctly this time.

‘Hello.’

‘My day off,’ Beard shot a quicksilver twitch of a smile through his beard. He had coffee and a pastry. ‘Want to share my snail?’

‘What?’

He pointed at the pastry. Its resemblance to a snail so remote one could have called it a frog and not raised an eyebrow.

‘No, thank you.’ I had become accustomed to short and superficial encounters, often accompanied by some offensive remark from the person encountered.

‘Okay, man.’

We both stared out at the golden bay, each on our benches. This may have been the beginning and the end of our social interaction, but for a pine needle dropped onto Beard’s snail, impaling it. It stood straight up, like a ship’s mast.

He laughed. ‘Ha, what are the chances?’ As always, his voice came from deep inside his black beard. I could observe a pink mouth, but I didn’t like to stare for too long. He prised the pine needle from its pastry deck and twirled it between his fingers.

‘Is it really?’ I glanced at him.

‘What?’

‘So unpredictable.’ I sipped my coffee. ‘Pine needles are littering the ground all around us. The chances were excellent for one of them to fall on and even spear the...snail.’

‘Ha.’ He shook his head. ‘Yeah, I guess so. Hey, you’re a lefty like me.’ He winked and sipped his coffee with his left hand. From my point of view, this observation did nothing to promote comradery, and the wink below his dark and bushy eyebrow made me apprehensive. For a young man, he exuded a mischievous intent that may well convert to arrogance at any moment.

‘These were for masts in the old days,’ I said, pointing up with my right index finger while looking at the bay.

Peripherally, I could see Beard followed the direction of my finger in a searching way and looked back at me. His confusion might preclude any further conversation.

‘I’m...ah...I don’t get it, dude.’

‘The seeds for these pines were sown a long time ago. Even before my parents were born and before theirs’ I took another sip of coffee.

‘Shit, that’s old.’

A beard twitch indicated a smile, and I concluded it wasn’t some veiled insult. Sixty-one. I suppose it was old for him.

‘The trees were planted along the shore so seafarers in earlier times in need of a new mast would have ready access to straight timber. It is possible they had been demasted by pirates during their journey here.’

‘Really?’

‘I am making a supposition. There also may have been a fierce storm. I preferred the piracy scenario where the crew vanquished the enemy and limped broken-masted to a safe harbour. I glimpsed another smile via the lateral spreading of Beard’s beard. Several grinning teeth flashed. I believe people make amusing comments by way of deception, so I was alert to this possibility. As it happened, he surprised me by accusing me of falsehood.

‘You’re having a lend of me, bro.’

‘If you mean I am telling a lie, I’m not. Pines were prized over all other timber for ship’s masts. Also, you would have to be offered as an item to lend before another might borrow you. In any case, it is preposterous—’

‘Lying’s not right, mate. I just thought you were joking.’

‘Again, I am not. I do not understand jokes, so it is unlikely I would attempt one.’

‘Good to know,’ Beard said.

‘In any case, all the ships had carpenters on board and other craftsmen. Cooks, too. Though, no snails. Hardtack might be equivalent to a snail. A sort of biscuit used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods during the long sea voyages.’

‘Ahhh...right. Interesting. I never knew any of that.’

I did not fully understand why I ended up in my present circumstances. It struck me an arbitrary determination had been made on my behalf, having been studied and shaped into a category of person that did not fit. This regime had begun to rule me all my life.

On the day of my arrival at the refuge, Curly travelled in the van with me. Curly received his pseudonym from Beard for two related reasons. He had curly hair, which he never brushed and seldom cut, allowing it an alarming propensity for waywardness. Some mornings he looked crazed. He also had a habit of curling each hand backwards with the other hand, seeming to dislocate them. He walked around with his arms pushed straight into his sides with his hands pointing out. With Curly’s ground-focused, shambling gait, alarming hair, and propensity for hand acrobatics he was an odd fish to observe, which is a significant thing to say around here. Nevertheless, when Beard gave Curly his pseudonym, I thought it apt, clever even.

For years I have carried with me a large heavy suitcase. Some would say my belongings did not amount to much, and they would be wrong as over half the volume within the suitcase consisted of New Science magazines, with which I had a great fondness. I also possess Selected Works of Mark Twain. I have been described as both obsessive and compulsive. Although several occurred to me, I could not decide on an apt means of disputing the assertion.

I found the house’s corridor interrupted by a common area for food and other activities. Several square dining tables surrounded by chairs occupied most of the area, with a kitchen and servery off to the side. We stopped in this room, and the man showing us around, some form of manager, looked at us each in turn. As I mentioned earlier, I took careful note of every detail. Only dust motes resided in the corners.

‘You blokes are free to come and go as you please,’

After I became familiar with Beard’s naming system, I privately called this person Captain Cut. The Phantom should have been aware of this and about my circumstances in general, but it remained unmoved by anything I tried to communicate. If its task was to keep me company, it appeared to be failing. Still, this would fit with The Phantom’s comic-book character. He tended towards a remote and annoying inscrutability while a stalwart defender of the righteous and amender of terrible wrongs.

Captain Cut, broad-shouldered and big-headed, had a scar dribbling like molten wax from his forehead down past his right eye to his chin. When he smiled, his scar grimaced independently, which might have been disconcerting to some in the house of lost men.

‘Bar fight,’ he barked. ‘I was glassed and it didn’t heal too good. A long time ago. I like to get it out of the way when I meet the new blokes. I fought in Vietnam and came back with demons in me – a bloody mean drunk up till the fight. Somehow, I got turned around and chose a different path. I was lucky; many weren’t.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, um...what is glassed?’

‘A bloke broke the top of a beer glass and slashed my face with it.’

Curly had kept his eyes on the floor without acknowledging Cut’s speech, even though most of it appeared to be necessary information.  He had not uttered a word since we had made the detour to the hospital to pick him up. Why the hospital? Perhaps he needed a rest, which I understand. I thought one of us should respond to Cut’s personal information.

‘I had not intended to ask about your scar. Though, I am glad you explained your alarming appearance.’

‘Ha! Well, you’re a turn-up for the books, mate.’

‘Am I?’ Many people say things that should not be taken literally. I still do not know what he meant.

‘The rules are here,’ he pointed to a piece of paper encased in plastic and stuck to the common room wall, ‘Make sure you read them—it’s rare we give blokes second chances.’

Curly continued to find the ground compelling, so he had not the opportunity to read them.

‘You okay, mate?’ Captain Cut asked Curly. Despite his grimacing scar, his face carried an expression of concern. ‘You’re not gunna be any trouble, are ya, me china-plate?’

‘No, replied Curly.’ 

He had a voice so quiet and squeaky one could not be sure whether a mouse in his top pocket did the talking.

‘Good on ya. I run a tight ship, but a fair one.’ Captain Cut lifted his arm as though he would pat him on the back but must have reconsidered. I have learnt, as Cut clearly had, too, you could never tell what might happen if physical contact was made. Those residents at the house of lost men were sensitive fellows, including me. It is the frayed nerves, they say.

I have been here for nine months and have never known Curly to make eye contact with anyone. Apart from the incurable shyness, his fascination with the ground resulted from his manic search for discarded cigarette butts. He roamed the streets day after day, his eyes glued to the pavements. An Odyssean enterprise considering fewer people smoked these days. The fact is, I never saw Curly puffing on any of the results of his quest. I imagined bags filled up with used butts in his room. Did he have a phantom?

Ten of us lived in the house most of the time. Some left of their own accord and took to the streets. One fellow, whom Beard called Raggedy, pushed his haphazard way around the streets rudely telling people to get out of his way. He had an urgent thirst to quench at the various pubs he frequented and regularly thrown out of them. One day I was walking past a local pub called The Harp for reasons I could not decipher, and a gobbet of spit arrived with a slap in my path. Raggedy had chosen the moment to expectorate onto the sidewalk from the street-level balcony. The most disgusting man I’d