Street Life

Sammy stood at the start of the street, knowing that it wasn’t going to be easy. He also knew what was at the end of it, a brick wall.

Hadn’t he been told enough times? Should he walk down the street as slow as he could, meaning the inevitable dead-end would be longer in coming? He decided that was the best method, and so slowly, he put one foot in front of another.

He’d only passed a few doors down when a person came out and shouted that Sammy was going too slow. You were meant to walk at a proper speed, he was told. So Sammy speeded up. About another six houses down, another person at another door cried out that Sammy was walking too fast. He should slow down and enjoy the views. So that is what Sammy did.

Further on, one older person called to Sammy, saying he should crawl all the way because that way, the end wouldn’t hit him so hard. So that is what he did.

Then it struck Sammy that he was walking down the street of life, dictated to by others. People who had their own ways to walk. Their own speeds. Their own journeys.

So Sammy stopped, smiled, cried out to the sky and started to run at a 100-miles-an-hour down the dead-end street. So he’d crash into the wall, but boy, what a journey.

bobby stevenson 2021

Waiting For The Winds To Blow

I’m waiting for the winds to blow,

And someday soon, or later,

They’ll take me on a voyage,

To a land of somewhere greater.

And if we do not get the chance

To wish ourselves goodbye,

I’ll look for you in kinder places,

As I go sailing by.

I’m waiting for the winds to blow,

To take my heart away,

And ‘though, we drift apart awhile,

We’ll kiss again, someday. 

bobby stevenson 2017

The LS Night Café

It wasn’t planned, nor had it been meant. It had just happened, much like the start of the Universe at the Big Bang.

Treacle (actually she was Christened, Ann but no one had ever really called her that) still had one of the keys to the village hall door. She was eighty-two years of age, and still sprightly, as some folks were want to say. She had cleaned the hall, girl and woman, for the last sixty-seven years, and still she found herself nipping in from time to time to check if the place was its usual pristine self.

If it wasn’t, she would straighten a curtain here, or wipe a smudge there, but usually she found that she had taught the younger folks well, and that they had all done a good job.

When Treacle lost her Harold, after he had a long battle with Alzheimer’s, she found her life as empty as the biggest hole in the world. For the last eight years, she had watched the love of her life take a long and slow walk into oblivion. She couldn’t actually say when the man she loved had properly left her, as the shell he had become hung on for a while longer. It was the longest good-bye in her life.

She neither cried, nor complained. What was the point? Everyone was walking around with some burden on their shoulders. Her's was a burden of love.
One Tuesday morning, she awoke as she always did around 3.24am. It was always there or thereabouts – Treacle couldn’t help wonder if there was some significance to that time on the clock.

It was a warm Spring morning and the Sun would be rising sooner rather than later. So Treacle got dressed and wandered down to the village hall. She knew there would be something there to keep her occupied – let her stop thinking about Harold.

When she stepped inside there were a few bits and pieces left scattered from the Kid’s Club, and she soon had those tidied away.
“I’ll make a cup of tea,” she said out loud to Harold, hoping he was listening.

She had found an old digestive biscuit in one of the shelves and was about to sit down to enjoy her drink, when there was a tap at the door. She looked at the clock, it said 4.17am. Maybe it was the police.

Treacle, always being one to avoid problems, went along a few windows to see if she could see who was at the door. She recognised the silhouette, it was old Tommy from across the High Street.

Tommy had been a widower for many a year, and had accepted it all – like he did life - with a stiff upper lip.
“Hello Tommy, what brings you here at this time?”

And Tommy explained that he’d seen the light on in the hall and wondered what was up. It was Tommy who had said about the village, that if you put on your bathroom light twice in one night, some neighbour would call an ambulance for you.

Treacle made Tommy a cup of tea and they shared a digestive biscuit. They didn’t talk about anything in particular, and most of the time they didn’t talk at all. It was just nice to have another human being to sit with in the wee small hours of the morning.

The following night, Treacle woke around the same time and once again she was down the village hall and once again, Tommy knocked on the door. This time Tommy brought his dog with him.
“Seems a shame to leave him in on his own.”

Treacle had bought newer biscuits – ones with chocolate on top – and both she, Tommy, and Elvis the dog shared them.

The following night, Tommy was disappointed to see that the hall was in darkness and later found out in the village shop, that Treacle had gone to visit her daughter.

By the time that Treacle got to the hall again, Tommy had been talking about their night-time meetings, and when Treacle sat in the hall at 3.30am – there was a knock on the door and Tommy, his dog, and seven other people joined them.

It seemed that there were many people in the village who found it difficult to sleep. A couple of them played cards, one or two just sat and talked about this and that. One lady, whose husband was fighting overseas, sat and knitted her Christmas presents.

At the end of the month, Treacle was opening the hall three nights a week, and there were about a dozen people coming in at any one time: people who found the dark of night the loneliest time in their lives.

The blackness always made demons and problems seem ten times their size, and leave the soul empty and dark. No one could fight their night problems – folks would have to wait for the return of the sun to be able to just stand again.

But the club, The Lonely Soul Night Café (as Tommy called it) started to attract 
young and old. Edward, who had lost his dad a few years earlier, still had night sweats and found that talking to other hearts sometimes took the pain away a little.

Bernadette, who had always liked a little sherry to help her sleep, found that there was more warmth and kindness in the night café, than at the bottom of a glass.

They even started to put on little plays, or folks would write a poem, or a song, or perhaps they would just stand and say how they were feeling that particular week. Maybe they were missing their love-heart, or their children, or regretting chances they had missed in life. Whatever it was, it was spoken and dealt with at the café.

Some folks started to find that they made it through to the morning without wakening. For some they felt sad they had missed another night at the hall.
But for most, it meant that their healing was starting and they were ready to face the world again.

And that was everything.

bobby stevenson 2016

Cracked Hearts & Walking Wounded

Cracked Hearts

She washes her mother with water and with love. Gently caressing the body that looks like someone she once knew, but her mother’s mind has already gone ahead and waits for the soul to return. She cleans away the saliva from the mouth that once used to chastise and kiss and smile.

He dreads the sun coming up as it means another day and another night of little sleep. Somewhere between being ten years of age and this morning it all got complicated. The knots are too tightly tied to try to undo them anymore. He can hear the car next door starting up – the sign that he has to do it all….all over again.

 If it wasn’t for the kids she would have left months ago, may be years. They were happy once. They were in love back then but all she did was turn her head away, take her eye off from where she was going and they slipped away from each other.

 Okay, so he’s not a kid anymore but he tells himself that the injections he puts in his leg every morning are increasing his super powers. Yesterday he told himself he could see through peoples’ clothing. It made him smile and it greased another sticky day.

She’s 17 and gravity hasn’t hit her yet. She doesn’t know what waits around the corner but she is happy with her family and her dog called, Bertie. Oh, and her boyfriend.

 The old lady lives two doors up from no one. She’s been there since the war and the neighbours have come and gone and although she used to know everyone, she locks her door against the night. When she goes, she’ll go like Eleanor Rigby. Then she hums what she thinks is the tune.

It’s the end of another day and as the heads lie on the pillow, or the sofa or the street, everyone should be standing up there on the podium, arms aloft for a job well done.

To get through a day, any day, deserves a medal. 

The Walking Wounded

Sally Anne leaves the house at number 17 with her heart almost bursting through her chest.

She’s pregnant, ‘with child’ as she read somewhere - just like the girl who was on the cover of  that magazine – Sally’s really really happy, she’s already deciding how her new home will look. She only found out while her Mum was making the toast and tea and the little line turned blue.

At number 22, the curtains twitch as Sam Lot watches his little distraction, Sally, walking down the street - bless her. Tonight’s the night he’s going to have to tell her it’s over; his wife is beginning to suspect.

The Hammerston twins, Fred and Irene at number 31 leave together, saying ‘good morning’ together to everyone they meet. As they run up the street for the West Town bus, Irene wonders how she’s going to tell her brother about her job up north.

Next door in number 33, Geraldine paces the floor – ‘born worrying, die worrying’ her mother used to tell the neighbours. But the lump on her breast makes her pace faster.

‘Lucky’ Jim turns into the street after finishing another night shift at the old plastic Works. He knows it has its bonuses - Jim had no trouble finding stuff to wrap his wife up in. And every morning when he finishes work he buys a newspaper, ten menthol cigarettes from the corner shop and wonders if this will be the day they find her.

In the little shop on the corner, Andy, the milkman, delivers another crate of cream and then creeps out having failed to ask Matilda - who works there – if she’d like to go to the park on Sunday.

Matilda’s heart is almost bursting through her chest as she waits for Andy to ask.

And Hugh, big strong Hugh from number 36, can’t tell anyone (not even his best friend) that his black eyes - which he covers with his wife’s makeup - are not from playing sports. She’s warned him, if he acts like a child then he must be punished like one.

He’s hidden the packed bag in the shed for the day he leaves her.

At the white house on the corner, Alice takes in gentleman callers until her husband gets back from a far off land.

And in the bus shelter Eddie drinks a can, not to brighten the dull day but to tone down the colours.

And from every house on the street comes the screech of silent screaming.

Only the dogs can hear.


bobby stevenson 2016

I Still love You

I

Still love you

Though

It’s been a

Long time, it’s been a

Lifetime of

Living without you.

Our secret moments scar the

Visions I have of anyone

Else.

You were everything –  a

Once chance meeting in this lonely

Universe.

bobby stevenson 2016

Songs About Love

                             stories suggested by song titles



1.Grow Old With Me (Tom Odell)

Every year it was the same thing; was it going be a big Valentine’s card (looks too needy)? A small Valentine’s card (looks too cheap) or a bunch of flowers?
She picked a large card and the most expensive flowers – if you wanted to make an impact you had to spend large. It would impress everyone and keep her Mum off her back.

“Who are these to go to, madam?”
She felt embarrassed saying it, so she’d written it down and then quickly slid the card across the counter.
The flower woman picked it up and read it aloud.
“Miss Sophie Breckstaw, 19, the Gardens. Any message?” The woman asked and Sophie wondered if perhaps, the woman knew.

So what if she did, there were bigger crimes in this world than sending yourself a Valentine. Okay it was sad but hey, if it kept her mother thinking there was someone waiting in the wings to taker her daughter away, it was money well spent.

She laughed as she stepped on to the street. Another year, another stupid lonely year. Nothing changes.
The following morning she opened her eyes to February the 14th. It was a blue sunny sky that had a hint of winter laced through it. She loved those kind of days. Where you came home from a walk and felt that you had experienced something.
She planned to be out when the flowers and card arrived so they would be left at her door. That way, the neighbours wouldn’t think that she was just an old maid waiting on an obsession with cats to kick-in.

Sophie was only 32, for goodness sake, but thinking back on it – several hundred years ago - that was probably a lifetime of living. There was possibly a time when 32 was the mark of an elderly woman. God, she felt depressed.
She decided she’d go to the library (where else?) – She’d hidden in there as an obese teenager (the bullies never went to the library) and she still found the place comforting. It was her church, her sanctuary.

She caught her reflection in a window and liked what she saw (well, kind of) – she was now the proud owner of a very svelte body and (almost) thought her face looked presentable. Sophie never usually saw the admiring glances she got from men and some woman. In her head she was still that ugly child, still fat and still unworthy. The trauma that school kids inflict on other school kids takes some people a lifetime to get over (if ever). Bullies may never achieve anything great in their lives, except for the fact that they live on in nightmares.

The library was full of old men, old women, the unemployed and Sophie – the........well, she wasn’t quite sure where she fitted in. She was between jobs at the moment and had applied for a job in a bookshop just around the corner from the library.
“Miss Breckstaw,” whispered the librarian (the one with the wonky eye) to Sophie as she came through the door.
“That book you ordered, has arrived.”
“Which one?” Asked Sophie.
“Let me see, ‘Cosmic Ordering for Beginners’”.
“Oh that one, if I’d been any good I suppose I should have ordered it from the Universe, myself.”
Judging by the expression on the Librarian-with-the-wonky eye’s face, this was truly an irony-free zone.

So she was desperate enough to ask the universe for a job and why not, eh? Life was nuts, life was really nuts. It was only the stupid, social climbers who thought that life began and ended with the right schools, right jobs, and in saying the right things.

Just wait until the aliens landed, that would put a fly in the ointment. Still, the stupid middle-class folks that Sophie knew would probably try and social climb with little green men. It wasn’t enough for those folks to live a life, they had to go whizzing to their grave with fashionable clothes on.

Sophie thought that maybe she might (just might) be jealous of the people she despised. Okay not despised, but generally they got on her nerves.  If Sophie had been offered a pill which took away all her doubts, made her shallow and superficial, and therefore only unhappy, when her furniture got out of date – would she take it?
Probably, yes, she thought while sitting in the public library making a good job of impersonating the saddest human being alive. Maybe she wasn’t impersonating, maybe, in fact, she was the saddest person.

Still, here she was – she’d made her bed (through inaction and inactivity) and she would have to like it.
She decided that as she was too lazy to read a proper book, that she’d read a Dan Brown instead. She perambulated (today’s big word from her ‘one word a day makes your brain bigger’ book) over to the popular section. Usually the homeless, the drunks and the mentally challenged sat over there but she was willing to risk it to get a nice book, one that would drown her problems for the afternoon.

Sometimes, only sometimes mind you, she would fall asleep at the table and wake to find that the homeless, drunks, and mentally challenged were all looking at her in a disapproving manner. Some even ‘tutted’ and that didn’t help the way she felt about herself and so on those days she would go home and drink a bottle of wine, then cry at all the television adverts. She’d normally waken at 3am on the same seat and with her eyes glued together – it had passed through her mind more than once that maybe little people glued her eyes shut when Sophie was sleeping and drooling after a few glasses of wine.

It was as she was walking towards the popular book section, that Sophie was sure a man, who looked in his thirties (but was probably more thirty plus twenty - knowing her luck) had looked at her. It was one of those looks, where you know that there was a connection but you don’t know why you know that.

She didn’t look around, but she could feel him staring at her. Then again, Sophie sometimes went on these little fantastical trips where she was sure a stranger was having an affair with her, in their head. Problem was, it always turned out to be only in her head and not the stranger’s - so she now tended to take these so-called ‘connections’ with a pinch of salt.
She skipped the Dan Brown section and went straight for the weightier writers. Sophie thought that if he was watching, then this would look more impressive – still she’d normally got that wrong too. She’d found that when you tried to make an impression – no one was really noticing, and yet there could be someone she wasn’t aware of, drinking in her every movement. Life was very strange.

On the way back to her table, carrying ‘1001 Questions about Carpets’ (to be honest it had looked more intellectual but she hadn’t bothered to read the title) that she felt his eyes were staring into to her again. Did we all have a sixth-sense? Probably not, but still he did seem interested.

She lifted her books to move a little closer to him but when she got there, he was gone. Wrong again, she thought. She knew where this would lead, just like time in the Dragoon Arms Pub, where she’d go night after night hoping to run into a man she’d caught looking at her, and each night she would ignore him, and laugh loudly at nothing in particular. This did look super creepy as she wasn’t actually drinking with anyone. Anyway there were weeks sometimes that went by and he wasn’t in the pub, and then one night the guy would turn up and Sophie wanted to say, ‘how dare you leave me sitting here night after night, don’t you know that we have an imaginary relationship?’  - Still, saying that would have made her even creepier.

So back at the library, she decided to call it a day. She put on her old woollen hat and walked out into the rain. She decide that she would take the bus home, rather than walking, after all it was St Valentine’s day.
There he was, standing at the bus stop – did he know she sometimes she took this bus, or was it all in her head? She stood next to him and was sure she could feel him staring at her. ‘Maybe I am completely insane’, thought Sophie just as he turned and said something about the weather to her.

Instead of saying something back to him, Sophie grinned like a serial killer – she couldn’t help it, he’d caught her off guard.
When the bus arrived, he waved her on first (he’s a gentleman), then she sat on a seat which could take two, but he sat in the seat in front.

As Sophie’s stop came up, she stood very slowly, hoping he would stand too – but he didn’t. She could see, as she stepped off the bus that the flowers and card were sitting at her front door.
Sophie walked away from the bus stop in the opposite direction from her house, hoping that the bus would take her latest fantasy man away and he wouldn’t see the flowers.
Just then Mister Secombe, her next door neighbour, shouted on her:
“Where are you off to?” He called.

Sophie had to turn, make some stupid excuse and then walk up to her door.
“I wasn’t sure to whether to take in the flowers and card, or not. You’ve got an admirer,” said, Mister Secombe.
Sophie gave another stupid grin and then turned to see the bus hadn’t moved off and HE was watching her and the flowers.
So she did what she always did in these circumstances – panic. She picked up the card and flowers and threw them into Mister Secombe’s arms, shouting:
“Stop sending me these things, you know that you and I aren’t having a relationship.”

Then she looked to see if HE was watching but to her disappointment, the bus had gone.
Mister Secombe was completely bemused and wondered if maybe his neighbour was a bit touched in the head. 

He was just about to tell her that the flowers and card weren’t from him, but Sophie had already slammed the door shut.
 
Still waste not, want not, thought Mister Secombe and he took the flowers inside as he had a very good idea of what he could do with them. It was one of his better thoughts, and because of that, he whistled all the way to the cellar.
But that, dear readers, is a story for next time. 


bobby stevenson   2015
www.randomactsstories.blogspot.com

The Tin Can That Loved

What happened to her and why she was there, would always be a mystery. Sadie, on the other hand, could remember everything about her time in the house.

When Sadie had found the child, she had been wrapped in an old sweater, and had been placed on a step at the front door. She didn’t cry at all - the baby only smiled and gurgled. Sadie could remember all of that exactly.

In the past, Sadie’s role had been to look after her families, to cook for them, to clean for them, and babysit the younger humans. It always ended up being more complex than that. Humans were complex, their lives even more so.

With this little baby, Sadie saw it as a chance to become one of them, to raise the baby as her own.  She called the infant ‘Tiny’, as she’d heard one of the humans referring to a doll with that name. She had the name stored in her memory for the day she might need it.

Although the baby had been placed at the door for someone or something to look after her, Sadie, herself, had been forgotten about. Like any old hardware, she had been left at the house when the family had moved on. For several years, she had kept the living space tidy, and when parts fell from it, she would repair them.

Her wish had always been to nurture, to be a mother, just like the humans. So when Tiny was left at her door, she felt that whatever God had been listening, had answered her prayers. Two lonely souls abandoned in a cold universe.

Sadie could never cause harm to a human but that didn’t exempt her from theft. Sadie stole milk for the child, then later she would steal more sold foods for her little Tiny.

At first, Sadie was determined to teach her little loved one herself, but after a few months of these well thought-out activities, she realised that Tiny needed the company of other humans.

Sometimes it was hard to tell mechanical hearts from the real thing and so, Sadie was able to convince the school that she was Tiny’s mother (which she was) and get her enrolled in a nearby school.

Tiny never questioned that her mother was a robot - to her Sadie was the universe, entire. She was a love source in an uncaring world.

As Tiny grew taller and stronger, Sadie never aged – not that it worried Tiny. Except at school, when comments were made about how her mother never seemed a day older – not like their mothers. Sometimes Sadie would disguise her face a little with a scarf so as not to make it so obvious that she was not like them.

Sadie watched as her daughter grew into a beautiful woman. She smiled as she saw Tiny fall in love and Sadie hoped that one day Tiny would settle with someone who cared for her as much as she did.

Then the world fell in on them both. Someone reported Sadie, some mother who was probably jealous of Sadie’s ever beautiful looks.

They came for Sadie and when she protested, as did Tiny, she was told that mechanical hearts were not capable of loving humans.

There was a trial about the moral rights and wrongs by the State and the Church; and as the media reported it: ‘the tin-can that loved’ - Sadie stood no chance, no chance at all. Sadie was, after all, a S(elf) A(ware) D(irect) I(nterface) E(lectro) and that was the beginning and the end of it.

Tiny made one request that on the day she was to be married, that she wanted her mother, Sadie to be there. This was granted.The following day, Sadie was taken away and destroyed but she was always remembered as the first mechanical heart that loved a human. 

There are many kinds of love in this world, as many as there are people (and robots), and all of them are beautiful.

bobby stevenson 2015

http://www.randomactsstories.blogspot.com/