So Where To Today, Writing Brain?

So this fella, right? He grabbed Mick the Dick’s  bicycle and off he rocketed out Mothermacree road, cause that’s where he was told his dad was lying face down in a ditch … blood pumping out of the side of his head, a waterfall of thick red blood … barely breathing …

No, wait this fella was me … no, no not the dad, the lad who just stole the bicycle … none of that third person shite, where someone else has all those mad but exciting things happen to him … adventures … finds a load of money and bates off all the bad guys, takes out that evil little doctor fella with the twisted eye … before flying off to Rio in his own propellor plane, with the girl …

This one’s for me, baby …

Mick the Dick was inside buying a big raspberry ripple ninety-nine, and it was dripping all over his cone hand as he came out of the shop …

Cone Hand Mick …

Standing upright, I cranked up the speed on the no-gears old Nelly bike, pumping hard on the pedals my 13-year-old feet were reaching easily now, and sitting back on to the old leather saddle, like a knight of old … or Billy The Boy Wonder Racer, coming from behind at the finish to surge past all the grown-up riders on the old black bike he found in granddad’s attic …

Leaving the stunned Mick far behind, his wild shouts fading fast …

Jaypers, I was getting tall if I was sitting and still pumping those pedals …

This was scary, but thrilling … much better than the last time writing brain took me off out the back road, behind the old deserted quarry … pitch-black night … my heart in my dry mouth, backsliding past the creepy old cemetery, holding my breath for some reason, as if the dead bodies now sitting up, their flayed skin hanging off them and the worms wriggling in their eye-sockets, would buy that … my heart jumping as a sudden whoosh of wind banged the creaky old sign against the rusty black gate … 

And then, if I wasn’t not bad enough, frightened enough, writing brain lifted my … his … fingers off the keyboard a moment, only to plunge them back down, typing furiously now as he suddenly had me turning on my ankle and sliding down into the rabbit burrow that appeared at the side of the road,  growing bigger and bigger, pulsing, as I staggered off down it … my ankle all stiff and achy …

The passageway lit by the dim greenish light thrown out by the kerosene lamps hanging from iron holders on the earthen wall, the stench of the gas getting into my coughing lungs, and the damp wet earth, the loud scraping and scratching of the creatures I could not see … and … shite. So stinky!!!

A rainbow mist came curling around me, wrapping itself around my cold, short-trousered legs, my old short-sleeved grey polo top leaving my bare arms freezing … shivering from more than the cold as I blundered on … until I came to this … what was it? …  a purple … rabbit … at least three-feet tall as he stood on his hind legs, like Bugs Bunny …with a green leprechaun hat tilted to one side … leaning against the wall, smoking an old Woodbine cigarette, like old Uncle Bob used to …

Kind of cool looking, though, as he beckoned me over to him with his right paw, and pointed with the other one towards a small faded lemon yellow door to his right.

… See that’s what brain came up with that time … some flash fiction thing he had to do on a writers’ group page on Facebook … 

I never did get to talk to that rabbit, cause just as I pushed through the yellow door, it turned into an old fridge, full of spidery cobwebs and empty milk bottles … and this massive strawberry trifle, that i just had to take a bite of …

Better even than mum’s Christmas trifle, with the angel delight, soft whipped cream and those little silver beads   

Big globs of soft, gooey custard and strawberry jelly all over my hands as i fell to my skinned knees, choking …

Bloody flash fiction … why wouldn’t they give me a proper story start I could grab a holt of … like a good old murder mystery, that I would solve before tea-time … like the Famous Five …

Or the summer air full of life and possibility as I headed off towards the village … and then I heard a clock ticking, and now I was running with Doug towards the Time Tunnel … my favourite TV programme when I was a kid … Thursday night, swimming night, and home to the Time Tunnel, mum still drying my hair as the tick tock music started … and off they’d go, Doug and Tony, spinning through time, round and around in that black and white 60s vortex thing … and I was spinning now, round and round, and out I rolled onto the grass and down a hill, faster, faster until I land up against a massive oak tree, only it wasn’t an an oak tree, but some kind of dinosaur’s ankle …

Or better still, since I’m 13 in my imagination this morning, writing brain could have me meet a girlfriend …

My first …

Like, now I’m the amazing Beast superbounding across the lawn to rescue Marianne Sayers from Mick the Dick, who has her by the hair … shouting at her, his enormous forearm raised and forming a terrifyingly vast and ferocious fist …

My lovely Marianne, that I could never talk to and look her in those impossibly gorgeous wide-set grey eyes, even though her brother Gerard and I were damn-near bessies … my fair Marianne with her thick blonde hair and that adorable fringe across those eyes, her eyelashes fluttering, and that mysterious smile, the one she reserved for my bloody older brother …

But I’m here now, my enormous Beast feet way too big for any normal shoes, I can leap 20 feet in the air, bounce off walls, and hang off the roofs of houses … so Mick the Dick has no chance …

See? 

I’m the one writing the stuff, making it all up, and I still don’t know where it’s going

Or me right now ..

Anyway, It’s hard to keep your eyes on the road and you flying around corners on an old Nelly bicycle, and writing this all down as well …

This is more like it …, better again … first person, and present tense

Immediate and engaging

And the present is tense, right enough.

Still don’t know where I’m going … and then i remember I’m supposed to be rescuing my dad …

But sure, that’s imagination for ya ..

I think brain just put all that stuff about my bleeding dad lying in the ditch as a motivation to grab the bike …

To kickstart a story, throw rocks at the character up the tree and see where that takes him …

Motivation, drama, plot … whatever … 

Sure otherwise I’d never go near Mick the Dick ..

He wasn’t called that for no reason

A deadly bollox altogether, with his big red farmer’s head on him, and a pair of arms that would destroy you with even a half belt …

Shouting like a lunatic, no doubt as I span off out the road, and still sucking the raspberry ripple running down his wrist …

Fuck that, says I to myself, I’ll tell him after …

Or abandon the bike and leave town on the next train.

Sure nothing keeping me in this town, at this age, only my imagination

And the strange need to write this stuff …

Naw, loving to write it all …

Sure enough, I dont know what’s true or not anymore, and I start to really worry about my dad … I can hear the ambulance siren … ne-na, ne-na … carrying off the auld fella … ne-na, ne-na

That bastard brain has set me up again …there’s no-one there.

Never was …

Only aul Josie Brady with the gig-lamp glasses and the hissy teeth, gawping at me with her big shopping bag hanging as she spins around, staring hard at me, her black beret down over her iron grey boy’s haircut … 

In our town long ago …

Nosy Josie we called her …

Well, Jaysus, this will give her enough gawping for a week …

Telling Canon Murphy all about it in confession …

Me flying off again, my two legs in the air, as I take the Carnaree turn, a bit too quick, and Mick the Dick’s brakes aren’t the best …

Sure I suppose it bates sitting around out the back here in my garden, like the old codger i am now … waiting for things to happen …

Wondering should I have another coffee …

Naw, brain is great like that, still takes me places and gives me ideas …

So where to next, brain? …