D. F. Lewis

HALF A BITTER (a tale of a fantasy convention that one never manages to attend) The convention was one of bookish first editions on trestle tables as well as dealers’ rooms, conference lectures, self-contained readings and a bar. Despite the bar, everyone seemed dowdy and sad, not dressed in colourful clothes, rarely smiling. I’d only dragged myself there, despite my health condition, to maintain friendships in this book world and its fantasies, some of which world migrated into open land around the conference hotel, weather permitting, some attendees flying kites that flopped back to earth, others trying to chat to each other with some alacrity, but failing. Even a few alpha males seemed downtrodden and unsure of themselves. One...

‘Laugh Out Loud’ or ‘Lots of Love’, she wasn’t sure if FREE MAN was a name or an imperative, or simply an expression containing a mispronunciation of the number 3 to describe someone with three heads, three legs, three arms etc. etc. Equally the word ‘man’ she knew was traditionally used to cover both genders in a sweeping generalisation that led to words like ‘mankind’ and ‘manhandling’. As she entered the cottage on the edge of the snowy moor, she saw the words ‘Free Man’ crudely scrawled across the mirror in the living room, creating a confusion of mixed reflections of the words’ letters and her own facial features. The precise moment such disorientation ceased was unknown as she realised she was home at last after several years...

Rather than copying and pasting my daily fiction miniatures as a whole in future here, I shall just leave a link at the second link below. Today it is THE DOG PATH: HERE. All my other latest miniatures, past and future, following my retirement from book reviewing, are HERE. Bye!

THE APPALACHIAN SUITE Lee, a floating voter, is appalled by most of what happens these days. The craggy ridge that divides us, the seemingly endless ricochet of serial incidents that beggar belief. Who can possibly cross that ridge with unequivocal welcoming of each other, Lee wonders. Such wondering occurred to Lee while equipping the outer self with climbing gear galore. Once a wanderer of plateaux, now a wonderer at these so-called heights, Lee surveys the apparently neat graph-like rhythms of the range that, when closer up, would become an irregular ruggedness instead. How could Lee cope with such a land of misbegotten angles on the outer level and the hidden crevices on the inner? When appalled, people tend to believe they are...

Adam’s angina was often painful and, therefore, the body doctor had supplied him with a newly invented pump that ‘simply’ needed to be attached to an inlet valve from his left elbow to help the symptoms. It looked like an old-fashioned toothbrush that was used by Adam’s ancestors before means were found for them to floss and scale without the involvement of a hygienist. Why the elbow, one might have asked, without an isthmus already existing between arm and chest. The pump was supposed to be greased at both ends with specially sugared almond cream before a careful dual insertion and was allowed to act as an artificial filter that bypassed the shoulder joint by such a bridge below it. A filter that worked in both directions of flow...

THE ORLOP DECK Humphrey Loader knew exactly what was meant by the orlop deck when he was ‘allowed’ to stow away on the Sixpenny Queen. The sailors he had been bevying with in a peninsula inn smuggled him aboard and then they pointed to the said deck as the site for his bivvy bag. He would not be comfortable, he was certain, but the thrum of the cables around him would keep him company at least. The destination of the ship would surely make his restless nights worthwhile. A destination that has no business in this narration. But the thing they forgot to tell Humphrey was the deck’s ghost, an overloop of rope still in the far corner being the means whereby it had ended its human days and become a darkly luminous spirit. Even if Humphrey...

THE BRASSO GHOST Thanks to yesterday’s interesting young lady inviting me and four others into her well-seasoned engine room complex, a hub of engineering contained within the depths of the moored ‘My Friend’ ship, yes, thanks to her, a ghost story was prompted in me today. I’ve long been an admirer of Warhol, although most people laugh at me, but when I saw seemingly endless rows of Brasso canisters lined up in the engine room, one of which was upside down, I knew I had been right all along about my artistic tastes, if not my penchant for blank stories that were often encouraged by listening to John Cage music as a quelling of the chitter chatter around me! Even ghosts need their social interaction and the letting off of steam by mere...

Charmed by the gossamer of dream, Kate fumbled to the side for the discarded nylons, tucked between the under-sheet and the mattress. Who cared about the ladders? Why worry about the denier or size? They were magical ones that eased her from waking into sleep then back again, via dream. They were nylons for the arms, not the legs, after all. A new fashion style that had replaced high-fashion gloves in the ranks of society. Still, these stockings were just as vulnerable, it seemed, as the more common ones for the legs. Perhaps, even more so. Arms were involved in all manner of tasks that legs were never privy to. Certain jobs that rich folk needed to do for themselves, and cooking as well as shaking hands with others. Not to mention the...

The King of All Points of the Compass relaxed back into his seat after receiving the expected phone call, and knew he had been given yet another temporary reprieve with regard to his health and longevity. This one, in itself, was good news, but soon enough there would be another phone call he would need to await with anxious expectation, and so it continued into the always unknown number of futures that criss-crossed beyond anyone’s scrutiny. Even his own. The ‘all points’ in his title ironically encompassed only a finite number of event-symptoms in whatever future it was that chose to become pre-eminent. A human being was a small mite compared to this vast complex clock-tower as a metaphorical symbol, much of which required...

WHIFFLING THROUGH THE BROAD LEAVES Oh, M.R. James had it right, but that does not prevent our wandering into the byways of the boy who was given a shilling instead of a sixpence and the creature created from linen sheets that rose on the bed next to the bed where we slept. And what happened to us afterwards? If you have not read the source work, please don’t count yourself one of us! You can sidle off with just a sixpence. And count yourself lucky. No more loud creating by the likes of you. Even sounding out as a form of creating-like-hell should not be sharp and sibilant with plosives, but softened with fricatives, to allow gentler spirits to follow us from the otherwise deserted beach that was grey and striated with groynes. When...

SHALLOW WATERS RUN DEEP Not sure Sarah’s friend Huck Finn got this common saying right, but it was good enough for Sarah. It made a sort of oblique sense, not as clear-cut as the ‘still waters’ version, but with a pervasive wisdom that reached truths otherwise unfathomed. Huck was much like that himself, with open signs of simplicity and a down-to-earth nature; he was old enough to not only suffer this nickname on everyone’s lips when meeting him but also to take credit for digging deeper than most other souls were able to manage. To the third level if not the fourth. It was as if his awkward turns of phrase were part of a birthright as an ‘oracle’ who had earned such a word to describe him through many years of a life walking the...

THE PERIWINKLE WATERFLOWER It usually grew near — or even in — waterfalls. Mainly near, because it didn’t endure long enough to be seen when actually budding in such downward rushes. Why am I so concerned to impart this information? I told Sally why, but she’s too shy to tell others in case they engage her in conversation. Maybe it was her size that made her self-conscious. Or the flecks affecting her skin. So I thought I’d better write at least some of this down before my knowledge of matters would be lost. Periwinkle is a colour between blue and purple as well as an item of nature study in itself. Bless its heart. Brings out a smile when I think of it, especially as a colour that Sally often wears as the colour of speckled designs in...

VIRGINIA CREEPER Always wash your hands when preparing stuff for the kitchen oven; you don’t know what might have crept upon them. I sensed the Virginia Creeper was parthenogenetic and I had no duty to explain what I meant. I just knew it seemed to come from nowhere because it was not officially native to where I lived. And that it commonly climbed old buildings and some tall trees with its customary glow of redness in its leaves. I put out of my mind that it was poisonously inimical if one was careless with handling it and didn’t wash one’s hands thoroughly. No holds barred, my meanings are well hidden. No condescending to those who may read this tract purely in order to read the dubious existence of ghosts into every space between...

WATCH FROM THE START The invitation seemed more tempting than ‘Watch Live’. Best to get at least a glimpse of the whole context in order to enjoy the middle and end. Hannah remembered the old days when cinemas regularly had continuous performances and one could enter and leave at whatever stage of the various screenplay storylines had been reached. It did not seem to matter, and, if Hannah agreed with my own views on this matter, one’s enjoyment and comprehension was not affected, in fact the middle-to-middle of some films was preferable to a beginning-to-end. Perhaps they once made films differently, fully expecting alternative timeloops in the audiences watching them. In later years, with the arrival of VHS, I witnessed Hannah...

Not that Boss Jenner knew anything about horses. He had never been near a horse, let alone groomed or ridden one. Yet, his favourite expression when facing someone who appeared to be acting impulsively was ‘hold your horses’ and then go on to explain why such metaphorical horses should thus be held. Imagine a situation, therefore, where Boss Jenner encountered a horse in real life completely beyond the context of what had transpired before such an encounter. Out of the blue, quite unpremeditated, he lurched forward with his head, or his nose did if not the rest of his head. More a leaning motion than the presumed lurching, in hindsight. He could not believe his eyes as he caught sidewise his own reflection in what he later found out...

ANYTHING GOES, ANYTHING BUT It was called Deep River, but it was anything but. With a nightwatchman’s house little more than a hut, A township where simply anything went, And that meant its days of Truth and Consent. And today much goes, simply everything goes, And jolly townsfolk strode in espadrilles and finest hose. But a rogue element set alight the night hutch house And turned this jolly verse into unscanned and unrhymed prose. You see, inland Deep River had a dry dock as its central point, to which no deep river led. Indeed, no river at all. This made no sense without a strong element of truth and consent. The fact that a huge ocean liner sat between the huge plinths of the dock’s work area, swarming with working hands, and...

THE LITHOGRAPH It was difficult for Don to judge whether it configured a single face or two human figures standing up in a boat ready to dive into the sea. Whatever the case, by evidence of its feel to Don’s fingers, he sensed it was a lithograph not a print. More suitable for a vibrant ghost story than an exercise in surface pareidolia. The meaning of the ‘p’ word just used by Don — opaque to many — was a portal to an inner depth below the surface, indeed a visualisation towards shapes of new meaning. He shook his head. Whom was he talking to or writing for when expressing the above words? He placed in his mind’s eye a face of a stranger, a plain but strangely attractive female face, and the rest of his thoughts were addressed to...

The Macaroni People did exist in fashionable eighteenth century history, but enough of them! You can look them up. This single mention is more than enough. I want to talk about the Macaroni People today or, as some call them, the Macaroni Madness, even the Macaroni Miracle, depending on one’s point of view. ‘Elbow Pasta’ — look this up, too! — is a form of Macaroni. Yet, when, in these days, politicians tend to be straight up and down, or soft in the middle, either divisive or all-embracing, it’s important to get terminology right. Covered in cheese. Or with sugar and raisins, as a more wiggly form of the rice pud one was given in the old school canteen. Macmillan was prime minister then. And he said we never had it so good. Well, I...

Corrie turned to her bestie and smiled. They were both needlewomen from the top drawer of hand-sewing. Skilful in the patches of make-do-and-mend for kids, more artistic embroidery and optimal vents in men’s tailored suits. But best of all they loved combining general knitting with their own psychological propensity towards cross-stitch. Quilting was still a no-no, though. But never say quit! Indeed, never say never, which makes a mockery of the first never! The second lady stared across the room at Corrie and wondered why she never called her by her name. Maybe she feared getting the name of presidents mixed up. An in-joke that would soon grow stale. She could not possibly countenance the fact that a bestie like Corrie didn’t actually...

I once heard this was a recipe from the French Revolution, but I could never confirm the authenticity of the reference. Such a crunchy thing seemed like anathema to me, anyway. A theme to be obviated by any means possible for fear of what it may lead either by real ascertainable connections or the capricious means of word association. Whichever way it was, the thoughts such algorithms evoked soon became a situation more fearful than a frayed ceiling confronting the lady who slept under it — fearing the ceiling’s flawed whiteness might be an actual ghost that she knew at heart could never exist. The click of knitting needles or what sounded to be a click of knitting needles from the opposite side of the otherwise empty bedroom did not...