Jess lanai

‘They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

The man going to be hanged had been named Moist von Lipwig by doting if unwise parents, but he was not going to embarrass the name, insofar as that was still possible, by being hung under it. To the world in general, and particularly on that bit of it known as the death warrant, he was Alfred Spangler.

And he took a more positive approach to the situation and had concentrated his mind on the prospect of not being hanged in the morning, and, most particularly, on the prospect of removing all the crumbling mortar from around a stone in his cell wall with a spoon. So far the work had taken him five weeks and reduced the spoon to something like a nail file. Fortunately, no one ever came to change the bedding here, or else they would have discovered the world’s heaviest mattress.

It was a large and heavy stone that was currently the object of his attentions, and, at some point, a huge staple had been hammered into it as an anchor for manacles.

Moist sat down facing the wall, gripped the iron ring in both hands, braced his legs against the stones on either side, and heaved.

His shoulders caught fire, and a red mist filled his vision, but the block slid out with a faint and inappropriate tinkling noise. Moist managed to ease it away from the hole and peered inside.

At the far end was another block, and the mortar around it looked suspiciously strong and fresh.

Just in front of it was a new spoon. It was shiny.

As he studied it, he heard the clapping behind him. He turned his head, tendons twanging a little riff of agony, and saw several of the wardens watching him through the bars.

“Well done, Mr. Spangler!” said one of them. “Ron here owes me five dollars! I told him you were a sticker! ‘He’s a sticker,’ I said!” 

“You set this up, did you, Mr. Wilkinson?” said Moist weakly, watching the glint of light on the spoon.

“Oh, not us, sir. Lord Vetinari’s orders. He insists that all condemned prisoners should be offered the prospect of freedom.”

“Freedom? But there’s a damn great stone through there!”

“Yes, there is that, sir, yes, there is that,” said the warden. “It’s only the prospect, you see. Not actual free freedom as such. Hah, that’d be a bit daft, eh?”

“I suppose so, yes,” said Moist. He didn’t say “you bastards.” The wardens had treated him quite civilly these past six weeks, and he made a point of getting on with people. He was very, very good at it.

People skills were part of his stock-in-trade; they were nearly the whole of it. Besides, these people had big sticks. So, speaking carefully, he added: “Some people might consider this cruel, Mr. Wilkinson.”

“Yes, sir, we asked him about that, sir, but he said no, it wasn’t. He said it provided” —his forehead wrinkled-“occ-you-pay-shun-all ther-rap-py, healthy exercise, prevented moping, and offered that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope, sir.”

“Hope,” muttered Moist glumly.

“Not upset, are you, sir?”

“Upset? Why should I be upset, Mr. Wilkinson?”

“Only the last bloke we had in this cell, he managed to get down that drain, sir. Very small man. Very agile.”

Moist looked at the little grid in the floor. Hed dismissed it out of hand.

“Does it lead to the river?” he said.

The warden grinned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He was really upset when we fished him out. Nice to see you’ve entered into the spirit of the thing, sir. You’ve been an example to all of us, sit, the way you kept going. Stuffing all the dust in your mattress? Very clever, very tidy. Very neat. Its really cheered us up, having you in here. By the way, Mrs. Wilkinson says thanks very much for the fruit basket. Very posh, it is. It’s got kumquats, even!”

“Don’t mention it, Mr. Wilkinson.” ‘

From ‘Going postal’ by Terry Pratchett.

The coin in the well is a classic.

To me anyway.

I wrote it quite a while back and refined it little by little over the years. It’s very different from my other projects in the sense that it has an actual beginning, middle and end. And it actually all works to some degree.

It’s perhaps the only project I have that I could realistically finish without too much trouble.

It needs more refining and a very large amount of editing, but finishing it is very conceivable.

Writing it wasn’t too hard either, because it was lighter and silly and the main character is a grumpy and rebellious old man that’s pretty offensive and traditional. Which was fun to write.

It was my version of the wizard of oz I suppose and I know I started writing it after watching ‘the tenth kingdom’

One of my favorite childhood series.

 

The old wishing well sat on the border of Bob’s own property and since it was just outside his land, he hadn’t the authority to tear it down. 

He would never tear it down. It was a favorite spot for the local children. They spent most of the summer Sundays coming up with elaborate means to skip church, and escape the watch of their parents whom never skipped church, only to play in the bit of forest that started around the well. 

For that reason Bob would see to it that the well was never removed. 

Bob hated children. He loved yelling at children. He loved the terror in their eyes as he chased them off and deep down knew he gave the wishing well most of its appeal. The dragon guarding the gold so to speak. The dare for them to approach and try to get a coin in that well never knowing if Bob would be lurking about. 

​The winter Sundays, especially on the extra cold winter Sundays like that one when a blizzard was starting to rise, the children stayed in church and the pine trees were only tall mounds of snow and the well was no more than a dark hole no amount of snow could ever fill and Bob walked by the well all the same.    

Not to go to church. Bob didn’t like church. 

He’d gone to the bar. Not that he drank. Bob didn’t like drinking. 

But he did like his friend Tom, whom on Sundays, whether in summer or winter, ducked out of church before the end toavoid the socializing and have his Sunday drink.  

Bob was on his way back home from an enchanting winter Sunday in which he complained to Tom and Tom listened without insight, when he had a very sudden attack. 

A very odd episode.

He got, what to felt to him, a very crude thought. Something obscene to the morals of himself, like if the devil bent a knee to pray to God. Bob felt quite sure that now and then, the devil did such a thing. Just as he felt quite sure, now and then God’s divine plan faltered into a wicked sense of humor. So Bob forgave himself the obscenity, the deep offense to the very core of all that made him, him.

But the attack worsened and he went even a bit further than that, he roamed around in the thought and even ventured into the action to commit the sin itself. Ignoring the humiliation as his beliefs hung about him in aghast and shuddered their disapprovals as he took off his glove to reach into his pocket. 

The metal was as cold as the ice in his pocket and there were only one large one. He shifted it away from the rest and with his middle finger (pointed at that offended part of himself) he dragged it into his palm and clamped it shut. 

An odd thing happened then. The wind dropped, it stopped whipping his old face and the snow stopped swirling around him and the air stopped misting in front of him. He had stopped breathing and all his opposing viewpoints had disappeared. His thoughts had all fluttered away and he only stood in the snow, vaguely aware of the cold beginning to seep into his pant pocketand nip at the tips of his fingers. 

He got a bird’s eye view of himself, an old man standing in front of a wishing well in a rising storm. If anyone were to see him standing there, they might be valid to think of him as an invalid old man. 

But his sense of himself returned very quickly, as quickly as the wind swept up again and cut his face. Bob liked his own opinion and disliked other people’s opinions. Viewing himself as others might view was a sin against his highest authority, himself. 

His rigid opinions all swept up on him as burning as the cold, but he’d already gone too far and there was a madness in him that wanted to cross the line and commit the crime.

Staggering through the wind, he held out the coin to the well like he were taunting a beggar, which he’d done on occasion, thumb and index finger over the edges showing its full size and worth.  

He hesitated a moment, watching the snow drift in and melt around the glint that coin managed to find in what little light there was in the grey haze. 

Feeling that cold seep in a little deeper on the edge of the risen humidity from a warmer yesterday made him feel it all more bitterly, he closed his fist tight around the coin, held it above the well giving it one last tighten of his fist before he let go and felt his dark hope slip through his cold fingers. The coin tumbled down, scrapping the sides of the well, bouncing off and catching one last glimmer before it disappeared into the darkness and made no more sound. 

#

Bob’s evening tea was much like his morning tea and his afternoon tea, the differences in each tea time had nothing to do with the tea, it was always the same tea and only switched what he paired with his tea. In the mornings he paired his tea with the front page of his newspaper and a particular dull outlook on the idiotic things in the news outside his small simple town and amused himself with thinking the more civilized were the dumber. In the afternoon he paired his tea with the local news that extended only to the surrounding counties finishing with the funnies, he didn’t ever find them very funny but had too much tea left just reading the local. In the evenings, he read the obituaries and usually felt uplifted by them to see who had finally died. 

As for the tea itself, it was always black spice, even though he’d a wide selection of tea, an entire cupboard dedicated to collection of greens, blacks and herbals, to English, Chinese, Indian, even middle eastern teas, though he admired them, he rarely ever ventured from that little English shop’s version of black spice. And the tea cup for his tea, it was always the same. Old chipped looking like it had once belonged to an expensive set but now was lone and worthless on the verge of shattering. The white ceramic stained and only streaks of a once silver rim still survived.  

This routine never varied and was never interrupted. The road to his home was dirt and in this weather, inaccessible. So it was quite a shock to Bob that in the middle of reading the obituaries when he heard what sounded like a thud at his door. He looked up from his crinkled newspaper, snapped it back into place and continued reading, thinking he had perhaps mistaken the noise but then the noise came again. A two beat rolling thud at his door.  

When the third thud came he decided the noise must be as it sounded. There was, indeed, someone knocking at his door. Grumpily he gave in and set down his newspaper, Bob was not ever one that would leave a knocked door unanswered, not for politeness he simply felt it confrontational to knock at a door without first phoning and Bob liked to have the last word on confrontation.  

He opened the door and his heart had a little jump as he was surprised to see what he hadn’t expected. 

Nothing but snow and wind hazing the outlines of the pine trees. 

There was no one there. 

He hung there for a moment in the freezing cold wind, for the shock and simply for feeling over heated, he was about to gain himself enough to close the door when he was surprised again. A noise, one that was out of place as his mind had just settled and it were a contradiction to what he’d just become comfortable with. 

“Did you hear me?” There came that noise again, seemingly coming from the blizzard itself as there was nothing else. The blizzard certainly had a very unpleasant accent. “I said I was down here.” Thick and broken. 

“What?” Asked Bob and wondered if it were mad to talk to a blizzard, or perhaps more mad to not consider that it was a voice in his own head. 

“I said I was down here.” 

It took Bob a moment to put two and two together, but eventually after a few moments of blinking into the storm, it occurred to him to look down. 

It was a little clump of coat, hat and scarf wrapped around someone far too short to be anything but a child. “Well, can I come in?” There came that voice he had thought belonged to the blizzard. It’d well fit a blizzard, cheeky, heavily accented, deep, blundering. On a child however, it was much less fitting. 

“I’m sorry,” said Bob having trouble placing the voice and looking back to the blizzard to be sure it weren’t the one talking. “Who are you?”

“Does it matter? It’s damn freezing out here!” 

Bob paused for a moment, coming to grips with that voice really coming from that child, and then coming to terms with a child being outside his door, during a blizzard. It wasn’t a particularly bad blizzard but he was sure leaving a child out in the cold was most unfortunately against some sort of law. “Alright, yes I suppose, come in.” 

“Thanks mate” he said pushing his way past Bob’s knees. “Alright, bit dingy in here ain’t it?” Said the lad yanking off his snow ridden cap and tearing away his scarf. Only the child’s obnoxiously button like eyes had been visible between the hat and the scarf, but as he pulled them off the rest of his face fell out like manure into an already steaming pile. 

It was a very ugly child, the ugliest child Bob had ever seen. 

His nose large fat and red cast an impressive shadow over his chin, heavily lined face like the face of a man nearing old age and he had wiry red hair sticking out like someone had forcefully inserted each individual strand. 

“Right kind of you,” His accent broke away on consonants and was unnecessarily harsh on vowels. Bob considered it a city accent, yet that was more because he hated city people and preferred to associate all things he hated with them.

“My apologies.” Bob walked to the door. “I thought you were a child, to my relief you are not and I can now kindly ask you to leave.” To emphasis it Bob jerked open the door, letting the snow and the wind pour in.

“Now you just wait a minute mate. You don’t want me to leave.”

“I’m fairly certain, that I do indeed, want you to leave. Sir.” 

“No you don’t! I’m here for you mate! I’m came all the way here for you! To offer you a rare business opportunity.”

“I’m not interested in any sort of business.” 

“Trust me sir, you’d be interested. Very interested, hear me out.”

“I don’t want to hear you out, you’ve invaded my home. I thought you were a child. Please kindly leave.”

“Oi! Come on! Its bloody freezing out there and I came all this way, just hear me out. If you don’t like it, I’ll leave, promises. No troubles, no nothing.”

Before Bob could retaliate his tea kettle went off, the whistle cutting him in mid breath. “I suppose the decent thing to do would be to at least offer you a bit of tea before you I send you out into the cold.”

“There you go! That’s right of you!”

Bob shut the door and the snow and wind out with it, letting the room settle back up into a reasonable temperature. He removed his copper kettle from the stove, far too aware of the man’s presence behind him. It was like having a slobbering dog at his heels, one he couldn’t kick. Deliberately rough handedly to convey his irritation he ruffled through his cupboard trying to find an extra tea cup. He found an old dirty brown mug, one of those bulky clay things made by hand and meant to look rugged, yet he considered them simply an inept kind of ugliness. He kept it only because he hated it so and he enjoyed hating things. 

“Have a seat.” He said it like an order, rather than a suggestion, gesturing to the chair beside his coffee table. “Now then, have your tea, say what you will, but then you will quietly leave.”

The little man laughed, that annoying laugh as though something were truly funny. “I don’t plan on much talking, I’ll show you and you won’t want me to leave mate! I promise you that!”

Bob muttered under his breath and took a sip of his tea.

The little man produced a little brown faded suitcase, small enough to be appropriate for his size, it was striking only because Bob couldn’t recall him having previously had a suitcase, but as he wasn’t much interested he didn’t pay it much heed. Rather roughly, not that Bob was overly fond of that coffee table or did he deny its lack of aesthetic, still though it was very abrasive thing to do, walk in unannounced and abuse his coffee table by dragging and banging that little suitcase about it. 

He snapped up the clips that kept the ugly thing shut and gave Bob an obnoxious twinkle from those far too warm black eyes. “This here is just a little a display, an introduction of a sorts.” He paused on the opening of it. “What’s in here, is the best present you’ve always wanted and never got.” 

​In attempt to add more suspense, which only bored Bob further as he hadn’t any suspense to begin with, nor was he intrigued, but, all the same, to further that suspense he hadn’t accomplished in the first place, the short man turned that suitcase towards Bob and very slowly let it flip open. 

​It had nothing inside, to which Bob only sipped at his tea. But just as he was thinking how he’d pick the man up, which part of him he’d grab, if he’d pull him by the hair, take him by the ankle or pick him right up like the child he were the size of and toss him out into the snow, he caught a glimmer. Just a slight one, and as he looked the gold was too old and too rusted to much shine. 

​A bit transfixed he leaned forward and reached into the suitcase, grasping that dirty gold and pulling it out, it took a few beats, it were a thing far too long to have been able to fit into that suitcase, a clever trick to be sure. And one with a most appealing punchline, for out he pulled a long, curved, sharp and even with evidence of blood stain, sword. 

​“Well,” said Bob, turning the sword over in his hands. “Can’t say I expected that.” 

​“Oh boy,” the leprechaun clicked his fingers and that sword vanished from Bob’s hands. He swiveled around looking for it, even standing to look under his cushion. 

​“Didn’t know you’d pull out a real sword, can’t say I’m trusting a man with your disposition to be round me with a sword.” 

​Bob looked round for the sword, really very disappointed, he’d loved it. But he settled himself and retook his tea. “A fantastic trick.”

​“It ain’t trick, that’s magic mate.”

​“I’m not much interested in magic, whether real or imagined.” 

​“Oh come on, you going to tell me that didn’t get yah? Even a little bit. That there was the thing you always wanted even if you never told no soul nothing about it. That’s got to get yah at least a little bit.” 

​Bob’s eyes drifted to his thoughts and he did nod to himself, yes, it did get him, he looked around for that sword one more time and then shook himself. “If that’s quite all, would you be off? If you’re expecting a contribution, I don’t give them.” He paused. “Although purchasing your sword I may be interested in.” And he swiveled his head around to look for it again.  

“No mate, aren’t you getting it? That was magic mate! A grown man like yourself seeing magic ain’t much fazed. You don’t think it were real?”

“I’ve quite told you, I’m not interested in magic nor am I bothering to question if it’s real or an impressive trick. I’ve no interest in either scenario. I will however, consider purchasing that sword, so long as it’s a fair price.”  

The man tugged at his wiry hair and stomped his feet then regressed into a sigh. “I think we’s getting off on the wrong foot.”

“Most certainly.”

“Alright, alright then. I’ll get to the point. Just normally I like to be a bit appreciated, not use to begging a soul for nothing, ‘specially begging a man to take me seriously. It’s a bit humbling is all. You’ll get it when I tell yah.” He straightened his clothes importantly, the prominent laugh lines digging in round his mouth stretching out into full dimples as he smirked. “I’m a leprechaun.”

He sat with his chest raised waiting for Bob to look impressively shocked, but instead Bob just sipped his tea and responded as dully as before. “Is that the proper term for short people?”

“You have never heard of a leprechaun?!” 

“Of course I have, fictional short people with gold.” 

The ‘leprechaun’ looked frustrated at this response. He scrunched his already heavily lined face into a tight little ball of wrinkled skin, it reminded Bob of a scrotum. “This is why I hate doing business with old folk! Kids believe in me and they always get it!”

“Have you finished with your tea?”

“Don’t yah get what a Leprechaun is? What sort of business I’m in?”

“A postal worker perhaps?”

“I grant wishes you damn bastard!”

Bob’s dull blue eyes sharpened a bit, the drawl in his voice thinned just a tad, going up an octave. “Well that’s not what I expected you to say.”

“I told yah to listen!”

“So you mean to say,” He said as he carefully set down his tea. “That you’ve come here, knocked on my door, barged into my home, forced your little demonstration on me, because you want me to make a wish?”

“Yeah!”

“A wish you intend to grant? Like a genie sort of thing?”

The Leprechauns thick red eye brows fell over his black button eyes that were far too twinkly for Bob’s taste. “No, I ain’tlike no genie. You hear it from me, never do business with a genie. They will right screw yah. Mostly swindlers and I ain’t no swindler. I grant real wishes.”

“Real wishes is it? And just what constitutes a real wish that you could grant?”

“Any wish you want! I mean, I got some things I can’t do. But for the most part, it’s whatever!”

“And just what do you get out of it? My soul perhaps? Or a nice bloody sacrifice?”

The leprechaun shook his cocktail wiener of a finger at him. “There yah go again, being a funny bloke. But it’s nothing like that. Yeah alright, it’s a business opportunity. But I don’t want no souls, no blood, no money even.”

“Not money either? Then what do you want?”

“I ain’t use to all these question. Normally I only grant kids wishes. They don’t need to ask so many questions, you offer them a wish, they make a wish. Look here mate, it’s complicated. Where I come from, wishes and happiness is worth something. So if I grant your wish, I make a return on it. The happier you are with your wish, the more I make. So you don’t have to give me nothing, all you have to do is be happy with your wish. You get it?”

“Not at all.”

“You want the damn wish or not?”

Bob held the silence for a moment before speaking, watching that ugly brown mug that the leprechaun had left forgotten in his rant. “I see that you’ve finished your tea.”

“Alright then, I tried. Don’t be regretting this now, it ain’tmy fault I’ll get out of your hair.” 

“I didn’t say I wasn’t intrigued.” Those buttoned eyes sparkled with a fluttering of sickly hope. “I still think you’re mad of course, but an intriguing mad man.” Bob involuntarily leaned forward with his thoughts and found, to his surprise, that not making a wish was actually completely illogical. There was no point to not making a wish, it’d be irrational to not simply voice a request and see if these odd, red haired little man could make it come to pass. “Hmph.” He said to himself and sat back in his old grey chair, it hurt his back and he brought his tea to his lips only to find it’d gone cold. He grumbled out another “Hmph,” and stood to brew fresh tea. 

​He relit the orange flames and then dialed them down to that icy blue so that the water might merely lightly simmer. Lost in ritual, he remembered that he was very irritated but forgot the source of his irritation. Until it vomited out a series of harsh vowels that completely forgot its consonants. 

“So, what was it?” asked that Leprechaun, it had followed him into the kitchen.

“What was what?” 

“Your wish.”

“I haven’t made one yet.” Bob leaned against his counter and shifted his focus back to those blue flames, hoping they’d blot out the dilemma of having to make a wish or not make a wish. Both options seemed equally mad and he couldn’t yet decide. 

“O’ course you have a wish. How do yah think I found yah?”

“Whatever do you mean by that?”

“This.” Said that Leprechaun. Bob could see him in his peripheral, with his little arm stretched up and out, but he ignored it. He didn’t look until seeing with his peripheral visionbecame too tiresome and he could no longer not see the leprechaun, so he looked at him. 

Stuffed into his fleshy palms and held out for Bob to see was a little glimmer of a thing, something gold. 

“What of it?” 

“You dropped it down the well and made wish, it’s how I found yah.”

Bob glanced back through the corner of his eye, careful to give the little coin only a momentary look. The bloody thing looked rather smug, sparkling far too much and far too unrealistically. “Stealing wishing coins from wells, doesn’t that counter the effect of the wish?”

“Course not!” Shouted the leprechaun over the sound of Bob’s tea kettle going off. “I’m the one that grants the damn wishes, I can take the damn coins. So tell me what’d you wish for?”

“If you found my coin, shouldn’t you know my wish?” Bob poured freshly hot water of the old dregs of tea and added spoonful of black leaves and twigs watching the water turn amber. 

“Don’t work that way. You gotta say it.”

“And why is that?” Said Bob, far more bewitched by the leaves of his tea seeping out dark water than the words of that short red haired man. At least that’s what Bob told himself. 

“Damn adults and their questions. It’s just how it bloody works. If you’d just tell me your wish, I could prove to yah I’m not mad. If you were a kid, I’d have granted your wish and been gone by now!”

“I don’t know what I want to wish for yet.”

“Mate, you threw a bloody coin down a bloody well, I think you have an idea of what you want to wish for.” 

Bob couldn’t help himself, he turned from his tea and looked at the little man with eyes hollowed, they’d been rather blank the entire time, but this was a different kind of blankness, as if his thoughts had diverted entirely. “Whether you’re a leprechaun or a madman, my wish is still impossible.”

“If you never tell me, it sure as sin is.”

Bob smiled slightly, not with amusement but as a way to mask the other emotions creeping into his expression. “My wife,” he said. “I’d like her back.” 

“Oh boy, that is hard. Kind of a different area, cupid sort of thing. I mean I can help though, o’course I can. It’s just not guaranteed. Why’d she leave yah?”

“She didn’t leave, she died.” He said and turned his face back to his tea. 

“Bloody hell mate, I don’t know that I can deal in the dead.”

Bob held his face away a moment before turning to it back to the Leprechaun, laughing at his own ridiculous disappointment. Hope and desperation, if there was even a distinction between them, had a curious way of making the known impossible seem momentarily possible. “Well I suppose, for the entertainment you’ve provided I could offer you my phone to call a taxi. That is if leprechauns have need of taxis of course.” 

“Hold up there, I said I don’t know that I can. I could look into it.” 

The violence in the emotions that hit Bob happened so suddenly with so much thrust of hip behind the punchline, he got mixed between them all and rather than words, he grunted out strange exhales, cackles and the beginnings sounds of profanity. Like any good country man when too perplexed, he simply picked up his tea and sipped at it. 

He swirled the dregs around in the dark water. “You sound as if you are prosing something dangerously insidious and perversely indelicate.” 

The Leprechaun scratched his head. “I ain’t much designed to be delicate, I’ll give you that.” He adjusted his ugly little dark green sweater uncomfortably. “It’s easier with kids, they kind just blurt the shit out they want. Adults ain’t so good at saying that stuff, the deep down stuff. Don’t like acknowledging it. I’m just asking you to acknowledge it mate, if that’s what you’d want more than anything else. Just asking you to ask for it.” 

It was another rather violent string of emotions that hit Bob and all fought each other for supremacy, his head clouded and he went into ritual, refilling his copper kettle to leave it to boil and scooping more black spice from that silver tin into his already very dark and steaming cup, he didn’t even notice as it began to spill out. 

His mind ventured into a strange perversion of thought, wandering past known facts into flashes of fantasy.  

He shook himself for even the consideration, it felt wrong, deeply immoral to even entertain such a thing, into evil to even consider a wish for something that was so completely unattainable. And yet, he felt he could over throw the devil himself and take his seat, for it didn’t matter. He wanted it.