dark | side | thursday | twentyseven

Image | November 20, 2015November 26, 2015 | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday

Share your dark side?

I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.

This post is submitted both as 27 : 52 of my dark | side | thursday (yes, I know it’s late) which is a milestone in itself as it marks the opening of the second half of the story, and even includes a minor revelation, but it is also my response to Day 13 of the WordPress Writing 101 course in which we are invited to ‘play with word count’. For my own ‘constant readers’ you will know that this story is being told in 52 instalments each of 500 words. So I think it qualifies, you tell me. Or not.

dark | side | thursday | twentyseven

No. He was. Not. Dead.

He remembered it all.

The first day he had walked in that place, how he had felt, misty ambiguity, the strangeness of that place, the feeling of calm he felt there. And yet. Those plastic flowers. The faded photographs.

That hole, in the ground.

Her empty eyes. Dead inside.

Her hand in that of the man in black.

He screamed out loud. A scream from the darkest part of hell. He screamed. In the name of ‘hid. He screamed and screamed until his throat was sore and grating. He screamed as he remembered the snow, snow, on snow, on snow, his way blocked, the cold, the fear, the loneliness. His hopes smashed, pulverised under all that snow, the heavy burden that smothered his mind. Cut off the very air to his bursting lungs.

He screamed.

And no one. Not a soul.

No one heard.

Him.

But. Then. He thought. No. Not like this. No.

He tried to open his eyes. Tried to push his body up, his fingers numb, his mind more so.

The man in black.

A knife sliced through him. His stomach turned to water. His head pounded. He could not breathe.

What was it, about the man in black?

Who was the man in black?

He knew.

He had always known. Right from when it first started.

His eyes would not / could not see. Would not see what was there to see.

His fingers gripped the key. His body, mind, spirit (he had no soul, not now, maybe he never had) would not give up. He was not ready to move on yet. Not yet. Maybe never. The spectre of the man in black would not leave him. She would not leave him.

Or maybe he, he could not let her go. Not yet. Not after all this. All they had lived (or died?) through. Together.

His fingers tightened around the key.

This bloody key would yet save him.

If only he could bloody remember.

Faded photographs. Her photographs. Moments in (their) time.

The man in black. Yes, and him.

Her.

So much to remember, so bloody much to forget. Or not.

And then, his freezing, numb, fingers, found it. A narrow crevice in the unyielding stone floor.

Her, again, he remembered her. Again.

Not unyielding. Oh. So, not.

Pushing that to the back of (what was left of) his mind, he grasped the key in his freezing fingers. Pressed it deep into the yawning crack in the floor.

He pushed it deep, deeper, pressing it into the folds of the earth, he felt the floor vibrate as the key penetrated the folds of the crevice his fingers had opened in the floor.

He felt the ground beneath him move. Heard the ground below him moan as it was violated, torn asunder.

He heard her cry.

‘Don’t let him…’

And then. At that precise point in time. With no doubt.

He realised that he, no one else, was the man.

In black.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

twentyseven | fiftytwo

WordPress Writing 101 (November 2015): Day 13

trio

Image | November 20, 2015November 20, 2015 | andy townend

‘some men never listen, and others never learn’
– lyrics from ‘the lady lies’, from ‘and then there were three’, genesis

and then, there were three

(for wordpress weekly photo challenge – trio and lucile’s photo101rehab)

(a trio from me

andytownend.com

belgianstreets.com

belgradestreets.com)

zoran živković

Image | November 18, 2015November 26, 2015 | andy townend

‘mr pohotny, senior vice president of a bank prominent in the capital city, met god on a train’

– zoran zivoković, the train

I love writing.

I love reading.

There was a time, long long ago, when two of the few things that kept me sane were the well thumbed pages of an Isaac Asimov novel, oh, and strawberry jam sandwiches. With lots of creamy butter on thickly sliced white bread. Pure poison, the sandwich, not Asimov, that was ‘Childhood’s End’, literally and metaphorically.

I was barely eight years old.

But, that’s another story.

This post is not about me, well not really, it’s about a man called Zoran Živković.

And it’s also, indirectly, about a country, a city, a people, and a whole bloody lot more.

But mostly, it’s about him.

I’m a big fan of Stephen King, I’m one of his ‘constant readers’. My recollection may be wrong, and I’m damn sure King is not the first person to make this point. But, his opinion, expressed in his quasi-autobiographical ‘On Writing’, that the first line in a novel is the most crucial, the hardest, the most influential, has stuck to me, like a limpet mine. Always.

’Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K’ A fragment of the opening sentence of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Trial’. Frankly, having read that novel from front to back, and back to front, that opening line tells the whole sorry tale, nothing more is needed, the reader’s mind is slammed into overdrive right from the start, red / green, the smell of burning rubber on the road, there’s only one place to go.

And so also with Zoran Živković.

‘mr pohotny, senior vice president of a bank prominent in the capital city, met god on a train’

You don’t have to believe in God, ‘Hid’, or any other supernatural deity to get his point.

Just think. What would you do, in Mr Pohotny’s circumstance? What one question would you ask, knowing that the answer you received would be the truth. Would you want to know? Really?

And, after knowing, what then?

Živković poses his question in a short story which lingered in my mind long after the initial reading. Each time I take a train journey, I wonder, what if?

I have a collection of his works, alongside other novels by other authors, translated into English from the original Serbian. They are all good, but this one cuts through, like a cruelly sharpened knife through that strawberry jam sandwich.

Serbia, is a country that has a bad vibe for many people. Except, perhaps, those that have visited, and not at the controls of a drone, but lived and worked there as I did.

Belgrade, and her people, have been good to me.

But, I digress. I often do.

How often do any of us have the opportunity to sit on a baking hot summer’s afternoon, sipping a cold beer, with one of our favourite authors? One who helped shaped our view of a country and its people?

Sit in on a creative writing class in a University (in Serbian), listen to the softly spoken words of encouragement, the challenge, the passion that those words elicit?

And see the glitter and glow in the eyes of the students. Their respect for this man, their teacher.

I had that experience this Summer.

Zoran gave me a piece of advice.

His advice?

He suggested that I practice writing a short piece of prose to accompany my photographs. My eyes welled up as this author that I admired told me this. Someone I respected and admired had taken the trouble to share a beer with me, and his philosophy, and a little part of his life.

So, here, Zoran, I took your advice. Well, sort of, anyway, in my own way.

And thank you, perhaps in a way, you have directed me to the question that I might have put, in Pohotny’s shoes.

Or not.

The Train, by Zoran Živković was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 29 September, 2005.

Click on the link below if you’d like to listen to ‘The Train’, and let’s hope we read, and hear, more from Zoran.

This post is my response to the prompt of Day 12 of the WordPress Writing 101 course in which we were invited to express our opinion on a piece of work, (our) opportunity to comment on something you’re something passionate about, or review a piece of art or entertainment that you love or despise – so, this time, I followed the prompt to the letter, I think?

WordPress Writing 101 (November 2015): Day 12

coffee

Image | November 18, 2015November 26, 2015 | andy townend

‘we’re not enemies, we just disagree’
– lyrics from ‘is this it’, the strokes

Her: Would you like a coffee?

Him: Yes please, I’ll fix it.

– He did. And yet, he didn’t.

Her: Time for another coffee?

Him: I’d love another, but I’ll miss my train.

Her: Well. Never mind.

– He didn’t. The train was late. He could have. Would it have made any difference?

Him: No. Not really.

(Her: Well. Never mind.)

– the end?

This post was written in response to the prompt for Day 11 of the WordPress Writing 101 course in which we were invited, in one way or another, to ‘update your readers over a cup of coffee’. As ever, I tried my best to stick to the prompt, and this time, I think I almost made it. And, as they say in the movies, ‘any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.’

WordPress Writing 101 (November 2015): Day 11

(crime) scene

Image | November 17, 2015November 26, 2015 | andy townend

‘How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorised.’
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line

The door opens, slowly, rattling up.

Inside, there is security, double locked doors, video cameras, a keen eyed concierge, neighbours who know everyone. And yet know no-one. Not really. Who knows. I don’t. Do you?

Inside, they are like me, maybe I can trust them, maybe not, but I know them, and they know me. I think.

The door rumbles up and over. Electrical humming. Cables taught.

Like my nerves, drawn tight.

It’s all over the news.

They. They might be out there, beyond the door, the double locks, the security. They might be there. And, they might get in.

Blue lights flash. Sirens fill the night with something less than seasonal sensation. Doors are broken down. They are there, and they, the others, the ones with the blue lights, they know it.

And, between them and me, the door. It rolls back down.

Closed.

Safe again, or not?

At home, in a place that you might just have seen on the news.

This post was written in response to the prompt for Day 10 of the WordPress Writing 101 Course in which were invited to ‘quietly observe the world around us and write about what we see.’ Sadly, where I live it has been far from quiet, albeit reasonably far away from the events that resulted in the disquiet here, although some say vice versa. Needless to say, this post is in part fiction, and (mostly) a reflection on recent events.

WordPress Writing 101 (November 2015): Day 10

(not writing)

Image | November 17, 2015 | andy townend

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway?
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

(not writing) is both the the title of this post and also what, in the context of the WordPress Writing 101 course, on which I embarked a couple of weeks ago with the best of intentions, I have been doing or (not doing).

So, now, during my lunch break, over a crafty coffee, or hunched up on the train (yes, I am once more commuting to work by train rather than as a solitary occupant of an expensive pollutant on four wheels) I am playing catch up with last week’s posts.

I write but I am not a ‘writer’.

By day, I am a consultant in the media and telecommunications industry, something that pays the bills and, as it happens, involves a great deal of communication, both written and verbal. So, yes, I write a lot for a living, and have learned much from many who have tried to make me write in a crisper, clearer voice ‘can you try to use less flowery language’ or perhaps ‘if you can’t get that idea on to a single page you’re just going to lose them….’

But, I am not a ‘writer’.

Although, I want to be. Try to be. And will keep trying.

My first ‘real’ blog kicked off in the fall of 2011. That is when a little project called belgradestreets.com was born. A little project that, as they say, had legs. A project that gave me two published books of my photographs, two exhibitions (so far) and a documentary on Serbian Television. And an ambition to do more, a lot more, with my photographic aspirations.

That first project was the child of my lifelong passion for photography.

My photography is (one of the things) that I do when I am not consulting, (not writing), or anything else. When crafting pages for that blog, those first two books, I echewed words (I’m not a writer) and let my photos tell the story that I had in mind.

My second blogging project kicked off, again, as a photoblog, a place to share my feelings and views about living and working in Belgium that I called belgianstreets.com

This is also where I began to muck around with words. Still not writing, but not just pretty pictures either. Then, just over a year ago, I took part in the WordPress Photography 101 course and, not content with just posting pretty (or not) pictures, I began to stretch my writing muscles a little.

That, in a roundabout way, resulted in this blog. Not a platform from which to promote my photographic ambitions (yes, that’s another putative project in progress) and not a blog featuring a single place or theme. This blog is where I now do my (not writing). Earlier this year, I participated in two great WordPress courses. Writing 201 in which I published some quite dreadful poetry, and Writing 101 which, of course, I took part in later to learn how (not) to write.

And so, here I am, still (not writing).

And, if you are still here, and if you did, thank you for reading, I really do appreciate it.

This post was written in response the the prompt for Day 9 of the WordPress Writing 101 course in which we were asked to write about what we do when we are not writing. In addition, we were asked to plan to interview a fellow writer, more about that in due course.

poetry 101 rehab: changes

Image | November 16, 2015November 15, 2015 | andy townend

Do you miss the Writing 201 Poetry course by the Daily Post? If so, then join this blogging challenge and let the poetry flow!

How does it work?

Feel free to answer the prompt, twist it or ignore it; write a poem of your own or share a poem by another author. Write about your inspiration, your creative process or other poetry related thoughts, but this is in no way obligatory. Nothing is obligatory in this challenge. The idea is to get together, talk poetry and have fun!

How can you take part?

Anyone can take part, anytime you want. Publish your poetry post and add a link to it by clicking on the Poetry 101 Rehab badge below or share your link in a comment. Use the tag Poetry 101 Rehab, so we can find each other in the Reader.

I will act as your host, and I’ll be here for you to reply to your comments, read your poetry, like and comment. While this post is the starting point for the challenge, do visit fellow poets in the link-up and chat to them on their blogs!

This week’s prompt is CHANGES.

changes

change us,

phases

faze us,

changes

and, chains

that bind

us,

change

What will your take on the keyword CHANGES be? Blog about it in a poetry post and share your link in the comments section of this post and by clicking on the Poetry 101 Badge above.

dark | side | thursday | twentysix

Image | November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 | andy townend

Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.

Do you have a dark side?

Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.

Share your dark side?

dark | side | thursday | twentysix

He was soaking wet.

Every fibre of his clothing was dark, wet, cold and clinging to his shivering body. The place in which he had awoken seemed pitch black. He could see nothing. He could feel nothing.

For a moment, a moment of pure terror, he imagined that he was blind. Those few seconds, fractions of seconds, seemed to stretch into eternity. The prospect of a life of eternal darkness took his breath away, his mind froze.

Then, slowly, he began to remember.

First, there had been a key. When he had opened his eyes, he remembered finding a key. His mind wandered as he mulled over how he could possibly remember having opened his eyes if he could not see. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind.

Something told him that he had no time for such thoughts.

Oh, how he longed for the short, sharp, internal warming of a shot of slivovitz. The feeling of the viscous liquid covering his tongue and flowing freely down his throat, warming and calming as it filled his aching belly.

His mind wandered. Memories of plastic flowers, faded photographs, a walk on a spring day. Memories of taking photographs. Memories of searching for something. Something special. Those memories haunted him.

And, of course. She, haunted him.

He recalled how, on that warm spring day, a day filled with hope, he had first found that (or was it now, this) hole in the ground. Recalled how they had walked around it, wondering about its history. Wondering about those rough hewn boards pulled across the opening.

And then, of course, he had returned.

Alone.

And, in doing so, he had found the key.

His memories were blurred, confused and contradictory. He found it hard to make sense of the fragments of recollection that engulfed his mind. Driving snow, ice and an endless road, a journey filled with hope and expectation. A large, empty square, a tower with a clock that had changed over the ages, some felt it boring, out of place, its figures changed over the ages by tyranny. A column, a column that somehow made him think of plague, of death and horror.

And, of course, he remembered her. The feel of her hand in his. He remembered it all. The hospital cell, that small hard, narrow bed. What they had done there, what he had done to her. He remembered the cries as she submitted to it all. He remembered the box.

He remembered the end.

Her hands, those fingers that he had held in his. Entwined in those of the man in black.

Her eyes, lifeless, cold. Her gaze fixed on him but with no emotion, no feeling.

Whatever had been there. Gone.

He needed that shot, needed it more than ever. His fingers reached down to his pocket, blind instinct reaching out.

And he knew then. What he had always known.

Bad things happen.

Then, something inside him shivered, stirred.

He was not quite dead yet.

The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.

twentysix | fiftytwo