Hopes For The Future by Jean Ouest

Hopes stepped off the train, quickly glanced both ways along the platform and paused to touch the front of her coat trim which closed itself around her, keeping the cold and rain out. She twisted the faux button to turn the warmer up, these terminal stations were outside the Area of Equalisation and exposed to the elements.

“What a godforsaken place to end up, jeez. “ Hopes said out loud to nobody in particular or rather nobody at all as the platform and train behind her were empty, no normal soul would ever venture this far out. Speaking so loud like that would not be the respectful norm of the usually peaceful Transit stations and would have elicited a response from auto-security asking ironically if there was a problem needing reporting. This far out from the hubs didn’t even warrant the installation of arbitrary control mech.

“How right you are, Compeer Hopes.” Came a voice from just out of her eye line.

Hopes didn’t so much jump on hearing the voice but rather squatted, her arms raised in the balanced and sturdy position ready for both defence and attack. She scanned the area where the voice had seemed to come from, shifting her head on her neck like a bird trying to see if the slight change in angle might reveal something.

“Oh, do relax my dear, if we had wanted to hurt you we would have done so before now, surely. It has been a long time since anyone has been foolish enough or indeed curious enough to venture this far along the line.”

“What do you want?” Hopes said impassively, deliberately expressing not a hint of emotion. “Who are you? How did you get…here?” She remained prone, alert.

“Many questions, so quickly tell you are a lot more nervous and worried than you intend to show. I’m going to step forward so you can see me, please don’t blindly rush me, you will see I’m harmless…well, relatively speaking I’m not but right now, physically, I am…harmless that is.”

Hopes looked to the voice and saw a subtle loosening of the air, the shadows shifted slightly and the solidity of the greensteel wall liquefying briefly before the figure became apparent, the colour and contrast deepening quickly until the woman was in full view with her hands raised slightly.

Even though Hopes had been ready for anything, for anyone, to be revealed she was not ready for this, at least her mind could not quite recognise nor place the woman. Neither friend nor foe came to mind, the woman looked like nobody she knew but nevertheless was still oddly familiar. The woman’s old, lived in face didn’t fit the fashion she was wearing for this time, her coat was twentieth century perhaps French but her boots were…well not of any time or fashion Hopes could identify, they were dull blue but shimmered without any shadow or depth to the many moving creases and folds to the material. The deep green, belt tied, coat was banging on her memory doors trying to get out shouting “I had one like that.”

Hopes attention returned to the woman’s, now smirking, face. She still couldn’t figure out why the woman seemed both a stranger and familiar at the same time. The corner of the woman’s smile was turned up, quirkily; her eyes were beaming, belying the hoary age of the skin taught over the prominent cheek bones. Those bones… while having the subtle shape of age were triggering memories of curves deep within Hopes. Her instinct and intuition were flip-flopping between fight or flight then spiralling around relax or attack.

“Your mind is in turmoil, accept this and move on, accept I’m harmless standing just here.” The woman continued “You won’t understand this now but you will later, give in to that fact and bring your mind in to focus. You need to do that now.” Her fingers clicking in emphasis.

Hopes did as she was told, more out of self preservation and needing to bring her mind back from overloaded confusion rather than following the woman’s orders.

“Hopes. You recognise me, don’t you? There is a good reason for that which will become very clear very soon but for now you just need to listen and remember, we only have a short window to get this done without anything changing.”

“What? No, tell me who you are.” Hopes tried to counter.

“Hopes!” The woman demanded her attention quite loudly. “Listen to me. Now!”

“OK” Hopes began to reply but the woman cut her off before she had even managed to get it out.

“I. Am. You. Yes I am. Mu…our mum’s last words were the combination to the safe. Correct?”

Hopes nodded slowly but unconvinced.

“I’m not going to say the whole thing just in case there is the very slight chance someone or something is listening. The first number was 13 and the third number was followed by a right turn.”

“How the fu…” exclaimed Hopes.

“I know because you know, I now because we know. I know because I was there when mum died. I know because I am you, a bit older yes but I’m you. I was you stood just there quite a few years ago listening to me, just the same as you are now.” The woman gave Hopes a moment to comprehend, or rather to begin comprehending what she had just said.

There was gap in the conversation filled by the relentless sound of the rain hitting the platform roof and the wind whipping along the track.

“If, and I say this without having to accept what you’ve just said, if you are me as you say then what do you want? Why are you here talking to me…us I mean…you…uh it makes no sense?” Hopes hands went to hold the sides of her head but she corrected herself, letting her arms fall loosely and ready for action again. Just in case.

“In a moment you have to board the train again, before the doors shut or else you will be left here and not be able to get back until someone else decides to come out here looking again and you know how little anyone comes this far out The Area. We only have a few seconds so listen and remember what I’m about to say.”

Hopes glanced behind her at the open train door and nodded back at the woman.

“Good. Go back, find mum’s electronic safe in her house, it’s behind the old fireplace. You’ll have to work out yourself how to do this without being caught and stopped by the museum security. Remove the fire bricks and keep going in to the wall, you’ll find it. The combination is the same as the old safe only in reverse and L for left and R for right. Enter that on the keypad, it will still work. The door won’t open but something else will happen and you will find out what mum was working on. You’ll then realise that they killed her, who killed her and why. Do you understand? Have you got that?

Hopes just nodded, mouth flapping soundlessly.

“When you have done that, return here and wait. Someone will contact you, give them the information I’ve just told you, all will become clear, I promise you. Then go and stop what those controlling bastards are trying to accomplish before they also find out how to.”

“Who?” Hopes was confused who she was suppose to stop. “I don’t know who those people are.”

“ You will.” The woman smiled broadly. “Get on the train now.”

Hopes walked gingerly back through the train door, without taking her eyes off the woman, or rather if she was to be believed, herself.

The woman faded back in to the green steel again but before she disappeared completely and before the doors of the train hissed shut the woman shouted, with a laugh.

“ Remember you are all our Hopes for the Future.”

Clockwise by Jean Ouest

The monk gestured, silently, to go round that way. His eyes darting and drawing a circle, his head following his eyes. It wasn’t obvious but it was subtly implied the way to walk round the stone temple was clockwise. Just like the Buddhist way, Sue wanted to say to him but it was also very obvious silence was etiquette, so she thought it, perhaps a little too deeply. She bowed to the monk, she didn’t know why, it just seemed the right thing to do, but she resisted putting her hands together in prayer like blessing, having to consciously grip her skirt sides to stop her hands moving. The monk smiled. Was that in mockery of her bow, she thought it was, his eyes had gone upwards in that ‘oh we’ve got another one’ expression. Perhaps not though, perhaps he was looking to god…or should that be God. She was never sure in cases like this, it would be small god to her but it might be big God to him.

Sue was hot, tired and sweaty, the cave temple was cool inside, its height a little above the clouds still nestling in the valley below meant the sun was fierce outside but the air remained cool in the shady interior. The climb up the hundreds of steps had been a lot harder than she thought it would be as she thought she was a lot fitter than she was and had not taken in to account how high above sea level they were now, the air was so much thinner. There was another factor too, Sue hadn’t considered the amount of wine she had drank the night before to settle her anxious nerves, it was made in the monastery below the temple, now obscured by clouds. Made out of what she had no idea but certainly not grapes and she couldn’t ask as nobody had talked or at least not in any language she understood. Cloud Berries she had giggled to herself after her third or fourth helping, nobody had stopped her refilling her large and ornate goblet, she had pondered the wine might be a lot stronger than her normal cheap supermarket Malbec. Well that wine was now flowing out nearly as fast as she had consumed it, the sweat was dripping from her and she noticed drips falling to the stone floor. To avoid the embarrassment of leaving a puddle while being watched by the monk Sue hastened to walk round the temple, it was after all why she had come all this way.

It had been a long journey to get here, planes, trains and automobiles she had quipped to herself, for there had been nobody to really talk to for nearly the whole journey. Being on her own was nice but just a little lonely sometimes. She wanted to share moments with someone but she didn’t really know who or whether she actually wanted to be ‘with’ anyone. She still hadn’t figured that one out although her mind was slowly getting more peaceful, the internal screaming and shouting was slowly abating, the noise of the before times, as she called it, was escaping just like she had.

The peace she had been looking for, yearning for, asking herself for, was why she was here, right now, and the temple was indeed very peaceful. The sparseness of the interior, the bare stone walls and floor, as well as the dim light, all gave a serenity to the space and as Sue walked slowly round that peace began to seep in to the spaces within her, the ones that had been filled with screams, with shouts, with cries. She wasn’t noticing the peace replacing her inner noise for it was as loud in its strength as that cacophony it was supplanting, for her entire attention was focussed on the temples object of existence. At the centre of the single room and seemingly its only object was a huge stone cross, not upright like in church but set at a diagonal, around it was also a circle of stone connecting each end of the cross.  Nobody knew how it had got here, it was as if the temple had been carved out of the mountainside leaving the cross loose in the middle but it was of a different stone, bluer than the dark granite walls and floor. It was too large to have fitted through the narrow doorway and it was all one piece, as extraordinary as her old, dog-eared and battered book described. There was, indeed, what looked like a long piece of metal imbedded in one end of it, just like the book had remarked, the edge glinting slightly as its length showed almost halfway down the cross.

The tiredness overcame her suddenly, a flushing exhaustion rising up her legs, she knew she needed to sit down or else she would fall and she didn’t want anyone, not even the singular monk here, to see her weakness, not ever again, nobody. Before she realised he was even gently gesticulating she saw the stone step jutting from the cross, then she saw his open palm in peaceful politeness meaning to sit. She sat and it was only then she saw it, highlighted by the single beam of light coming through the tiny high window above her.

The only decoration of the temple was painted on the wall high up, too high to notice unless you sat and leaned back as she was doing, the cool stone against her damp back. The decoration was a painted picture of a circle with symbols inscribed around it, yellowy gold on a deep and dark red background, in the middle the serpent in the shape of an ’S’ curled round the diagonal cross. With a slightly shaky hand she delved under her shirt to her waist and took out the glazed pottery bauble of the end of her sash belt. The one she had bought as a happy-go-lucky teen in that dusty junk shop in the back end of Oxford, the one she had took with her most places. She hadn’t carried it or kept it for any special reason, just because she liked it and it was a reminder of happier, carefree times. She held the pottery scene up and it was…it was the same weird decoration on the temple wall, not just similar but was exactly the same picture.

An odd, almost unrecognisable, feeling came over her, she looked over to the monk, he was giving her a serene smile, nodding gently, both his hands were bobbing up and down, palms open and facing upwards as if in oblation to her. She looked back to the decoration again, a relaxing smile crept across her taught face and she realised what that almost unrecognisable feeling was…again…it was happiness.

 

The Avoidable By Jean Ouest

Bob continued to walk along the lane, he had already moved from the far left to the far right of the tarmac to give the two elderly women some room. He was little disgruntled at having to move to the other side of the lane as the women had ignored the fact he was already walking along that side and had just started to walk towards him on that side when they had joined. When they had come out of the grassy side path on to the lane the women had seemed oblivious Bob was even there, just walking straight towards him, he had acquiesced and crossed to the right hand side. As the women got closer to Bob they chatted studiously, still seemingly oblivious of his presence one of them started to stray over to his side, moving more towards the middle than the side, within a few more strides she was even closer to his side and closer to Bob then to her companion. Bob’s mind was in a quandary, should he step off the lane in to the tiled porch outside the door of the house to let them pass safely by, should he say something to the approaching, and encroaching, woman, should he just ignore them and keep his head down, smile broadly and greet them in faux good spirits and in doing so hopefully alert them to stay back, to stay away, to keep a distance. The advice he would give anyone who asked, and even to some that hadn’t, would be to keep you head down and carry on, ignore things and let it all pass, don’t get upset, don’t upset others either as this would ruin his own day as he dwelled upon it for hours afterwards.

In the end, he had little choice, the thin woman, with the ubiquitous  pink sunhat, was within a few strides of him then just seemed to amble a couple of steps straight over to him and turned abruptly in his face, omitting a growl from behind her bare teeth. He wasn’t ready for this out-of-character, breaking of stereotype and somewhat startling of actions, it took him by surprise and being off-guard he stepped sideways and backwards, feeling the change of surface beneath his feet to the smooth, red tiles of the porch. Knowing he was very close to the front door of the house, he put his hand out behind him so as to make sure he didn’t back in to the weather-worn wood and bang his head or shoulder.

His hand hit felt nothing, it groped subconsciously for connection, his face and eyes still facing the oncoming woman and now her companion following her, advancing as if in cahoots, forcing Bob ever backwards in to the porch, further against the door. As his mind, seemingly slowly but in reality quite urgently, began to realise his hand wasn’t connecting with the expected wood of the door but really should have been by now, it was too late. Bob’s back foot, for indeed he was on the backfoot, hit the door step, too late his mind realised the door wasn’t there anymore and he continued with his momentum backwards and now unbalanced, downwards. He didn’t trip, more like just continue in a single, uninterrupted movement though the doorway and backwards on to the hard floor of the hallway.

It was at this point he let out the only sound so far, a stifled, anguished, grunting scream. The women were rushing towards him, snarling, arms raised, hands claw-like and Bob felt frozen, vulnerable, incapable of moving to defend himself. Unable to look away he was staring straight at them as the door slammed in the faces of the two, rabidly advancing women. A voice from the side, calmly said “You gotta watch those two. They’re always winding people up. Bloody witches, both of ‘em but that skinny one’s the worst. Had a horse rider, just there last week. Have a look, I’ve still got ‘im. Juicy he is, still alive too…he’s lasted longer…but now you’re ‘ere…”

The Fluttering by Jean Ouest

The sound came again, this time a little clearer but it still didn’t come from any discernible direction. It stopped…again, just as quickly as it had started and just as quickly as before. It was as though the sound knew when it was being listened to, as though it was deliberately teasing, mocking my ears, a sardonic tune playing an aside without even a hint of a rhythm.

I vowed to ignore the fluttering the very next time, well pretend to ignore it, not move my head or even my eyes, not stop what I was doing so as not to give it away I was really trying to listen where it came from. I picked up my book, the one that had turned out to be trashy and not a good recommendation this time, stupid Google. Luckily this book wasn’t too long because, as usual, I had to finish it even if it was bad, maybe out of respect for the author’s hard work or all authors’ strivencies or perhaps just being so tight I couldn’t possibly pay for something and not fully use it, or in this case finish it. Stupid. See I wasn’t even reading it while I was reading it, I was just thinking about reading it, not following any of the plot, who was this bloody character anyway, all the bloody names were the same idiotic Norse, elf, fairytale bullshit, just to give the rubbish plot some sort of depth and credulity…it didn’t work. If it wasn’t interesting then no amount of olde sounding names are going to help it sound darker and atmospheric, it lacked something… that little something extra, that little bit of magic other books might have, good books had. That was it, the magic was missing, no matter how many times the word was written, it was missing, absent, it hadn’t absconded it just hadn’t been, wasn’t, there in the first place. Whoever had written this bloody book had needed to add something more to it and they hadn’t, it was wannabe writing for sure, they had missed or forgotten the real magic of the page…a good story, a surprise, a hook to keep the reader interested…

Oh, oh, oh, there it was again, the sound, the fluttering, louder this time, again, right don’t look round, keep staring at the page. Where the hell was that sound coming from, there was no direction, it was like it was behind me but it wasn’t, it was like it was between my ears but it wasn’t. It was like when you read and hear the words in your head but they are still on the page, the ethereal narrator that doesn’t actually exist except in one’s own imagination, in your own thoughts. My god that was it, that was where the fluttering was coming from, that was what the sound was, it wasn’t  a bird trapped in the chimney, wasn’t leaves blowing in the wind against the window, wasn’t mice behind the skirting, wasn’t a wasps nest growing in ceiling space. The fluttering was coming from the book, was the book, it was the fluttering of pages, trying to lift off, escape the bindings but it wasn’t actually coming from the book itself, it was coming from my ow

n mind like I was lifting the pages in to my head like reading the words, the internal narrator, but I wasn’t imagining the sound, the fluttering was not of my making.

The dry, scraping, indefinable fluttering remained this time, I gradually started to close the book, as the covers neared each other the fluttering lessened, went down in pitch, quieter. I opened it out again and the sound regained its strength, I turned the page and I thought the fluttering might have intensified, just ever so slightly or was that my imagination. I flicked over the next page, then the next and the next and the next…yes the fluttering was gaining in every aspect. The sound was almost beginning to drown out my own thoughts, I persevered and flicked more pages over, making sure I never looked away from the book , the words blurred on my eyes but also seemed to float off the page nearer to my face. The fluttering louder, the words nearer with every turn of a page, then suddenly a blank page, the printing simply stopped, abruptly. Was that the end? I had no chance to check because the book started to slip thorough my fingers…no it wasn’t slipping through my fingers it was my fingers slipping through the book, oh my god what’s happening, I can’t hold the book any longer but the book wasn’t falling, I was, the book seemed to be getting larger but it wasn’t I was getting closer to it, no I wasn’t getting closer, the book wasn’t getting larger I was getting smaller. I stared at my fingers, my hands, my arms as they grew translucent then there was a pop, the fluttering stopped.

There was no sound, no light, like the book had been closed. I mentally felt for my body but I had no words to describe what I felt, only a blank feeling. There I stayed, motionless inert but for how long I have no idea, time seemed to have run away. Of a sudden but not of surprise I came in to light, there was light, I would say I blinked but I didn’t, in front of me was a bright world waiting, sighing, but not my world…it was someone else’s world, I started to imagine words and I felt myself lift off and coagulate, solidify, become structure, dark against the light but also ethereal…

I narrated.

You Beneath Your Skin by Damyanti Biswas. Great book, all proceeds go to charity.

Great crime thriller available via Amazon, physical book in India and ebook in the rest of the world. Not expensive, well worth the read, thoroughly well written by a professional writer – I recommend this book whole heartedly and proceeds go to two wonderful charities too – Project Why  and Stop Acid Attacks.
Buy it here and support two great charities.

I wrote a review of it too:

I’m not one for writing reviews so bear with me. I found this book to really well written, it totally hooked me in to the story and the characters then surprised me and shocked me in equal measure, then I couldn’t stop reading it. Not a story for the faint hearted but the descriptions bring alive the feelings of the characters such that you would believe the author might have experienced them herself, I think she just did a lot of really in-depth research. Difficult subjects are dealt with neither flippantly nor sympathetically, more realism than pulling the heart strings. The characters are flawed like they would be if real and their lives are not too fantastical to be actual real life people.
The way it is written takes a little getting used to as it has a slight ‘Indian English’ lilt to it but this has a warmth and flow you soon start to like, the way characters speak are very true to life of the way people actually speak in Delhi which adds to the realism and depth. This book is not just another throw-away crime novel, by reading it you will learn about both modern and traditional Indian culture and society, even learn some Hindi with characters referring to each other using traditional greetings and words or respect.
There are several great things about this book – the story, the characters, the subtlety and more but the greatest things are all sales proceeds go to two fantastic charities so not only you get a thoroughly good read you get to feel good knowing you are helping others too – where’s the downside of that…there isn’t one.