There Now is a Book
There Once Was a Man is out - finally.
After countless false starts (the self doubt shuffle is a real thing!), a catastrophic computer glitch (thanks large, faceless tech company!), a hundred thousand+ words written (as a short story writer, that equates to 150 stories, of which 80 survived to publication), a million revisions (well, maybe half a million), and a near-death experience involving a Thermos cup and a cube of crystallised ginger (there was absolutely no flashing before my eyes), ‘There Once Was a Man’ is out.
Excerpts:
He Lived a Life
Mr B was a backyard brewer of illicit brandy, ex-black ops in Burkina Faso, a buccaneer in the Bay of Bengal, and sole survivor of a bomb blast in Baghdad─according to Mr B.
Mr B also owned the unimaginatively named Mr B’s─a coffee cup-sized cafe-cum-wine bar squeezed between a former cobbler's and charity shop in Lorimar Lane. The thoroughfare itself was a rutted and raggedy rat run adjacent to a heaving high street that was more hum and hustle than buzz and bustle.
The previously lacklustre lane leapt into legendary status as the location of a lounge bar─boringly branded ‘The Bar’─that was closed down after a fatal shooting involving yapping yahoos who came back blasting after being blocked from entry by bouncers in wake of their boisterous behaviour.
Mr B was not the type of man to miss an opportunity to be the main character in a movie-like moment of mayhem and murder, and claimed he was actually there when the hullabaloo happened. He shouted out to everyone within earshot that he was─to use his own words─“slap bang in the epicentre of the eruption.”
As his story went, he was soaking in the last few rays of the dying summer sunshine and smoking a cancer stick, when the three turned-away thugs drew down on the duo of dismissive doormen.
“Boom, boom, boom!” Mr B would yell, seemingly deriving a sickening satisfaction from the scenes of savagery. He would smile as he shaped his slender fingers into an imaginary shotgun. He relished and revelled in the slack-jawed shock and spine-chilling terror on the faces─and in the voices─of his captive clientele.
…/
The Eulogy
The thickset man in the made-to-measure suit, with dyed and powdered hair parted at the side─and an ashy, gunmetal grey pallor to his dark skin─was my father.
Having made a brief visit between the ages of ten and eighteen─handsomeness had left his face decades earlier─replaced by a permanent scowl that pretended to be a smile; but it didn’t fool anybody. That rictus grin was now permanent, courtesy of an embalmer’s expertise. It gave my dad the expression of a man whose tongue had lost the sweet taste of joy and was forever sampling the biting flavour of bitterness.
The copper-coloured casket carrying him was lined with crumpled cream satin that clashed with the purple and white carnation stuck in the buttonhole of his light grey suit with burgundy pinstripes. The jacket was rucked up at the collars as if he was forced, not gently placed into the coffin, and his dark blue tie was askew. His shirt though, was starched, crisp, white and perfectly ironed.
My father’s dead eyes bulged behind eyelids that had been closed shut by my mother following the massive heart attack that took his life. She used a two-pence coin after they kept flicking back open after she tried fixing them with just her fingers. She mentioned that she was going to ask the undertaker to either sew or glue them to make sure they didn’t pop open again.
Although he was very deceased and lying in a casket, childhood memories of his stern gaze flooded my soul─and caused my heart to somersault in shameful fear.
There was another reason for my thumping chest. I was there charged with one, very important duty─to deliver the eulogy.
As I stood in the pulpit, I felt the eyes of a congregation staring at me, waiting for the eldest son to speak eloquently and engagingly with electrifying words that encapsulated the life of a man they knew as a friend, colleague, and a pillar of the community.
They packed every available inch of the church, from behind the crossing to the clerestory. There were suppressed coughs, sniffles and snuffles and the typical soundscape expected at the funeral of a man of the people; a God-fearing family man who took his vows seriously and served his community assiduously─until Death came calling to drag him into the afterlife, way too soon─even at 72─and deserving of a fitting tribute.