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Be There For Me

Ursula dug her fingernail deep into her thumb. her face drained and she begin ever so slightly to tremble. Her eyes filled up. Then the old woman spoke.

"That's a shame."

Ursula snapped her eyes to the woman in the hat, or was it a cloud of bees?

"I could get it for you I suppose."

No it was a hat, but the voice, that voice. It was made of sounds that voices are not.

"But what would you do for me?"

Ursula began to shuffle away, her hands coming up in front of her.

"I should go."

And the woman just stared at her, letting her gry to leave, letting her fail.

"My dad will be worried."

"Hear my offer before you go. If you don't like it, you leave. No questions asked."

Ursula stopped moving again, in her mind's eye she saw her mother's face, the day she unwrapped her drone. Saw the look of pride, and love on her mother's beautiful face, such a clever gift, such a thoughtful one. And so expensive.

"Erm, Ok."

"Well then. I'll make you this offer once. I'll get your toy back for you, but you must sign a contract of sorts. You must make me a promise sweetheart. When the time comes, when the time comes you will be there for me."

Ursula swayed slightly. Everything felt wrong, but at the edges of it all there was this glittering scrap of hope, a vision of herself walking back to the carpark with a broken drone in her arms.

"What do you mean?" She replied, gaining a little confidence. The woman did not look fast or strong, she had no accomplices, she was most likely mad, but maybe, just maybe she did know how to get things out of deep holes.

"Take this effigy and keep it close to you always so as I can find you when the time comes. Sleep with it. Eat with it. Treat it like a guest sweetheart, a guest of honour. Promise me this and I'll get your shiny toy."

"OK. I promise."

"Promise what sweetheart?"

"I will be there for you."

And with that the woman moved like a gigantic toad, out of her chair and straight into the hole in the ground, effortless. Ursula's muscles twitched, as she barely repressed theurge to run as far and as fast as she could.

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Ursula loses her favourite toy

Ursula pushed forward into the thorny bracken just as the light began to bruise. So focussed on the sound ahead of her, she could just make out the whine of Tinkerbell, the buzz of the thronging insects and the low river rush of the motorway beyond.

She suddenly found herself crossing a ditch of brackish water, soaking her trainers and leggings, feeling like a fool. But the very sound of the drone ahead gave her reason to press on. She felt it getting closer. With every step forward, fresh cuts and grazes, fresh nettle stings, fresh test of her resolve.

Then she emerged at last into a clearing, and was stunned frozen by the scene. Above a deep hole, perfectly circular, set into a square patch of concrete, hovered the fairy drone Tinkerbell, and by the side of the hole sat a woman in a collapsable camping chair with a bobbly woolen hat obscuring her face.

Ursula took in the situation, the whole area was surrounded by a bush she was sure she'd never seen before, garlanded with white flowers each with a flash of purple about the centre. The bushes were thronging with bees. And there by the well, in a black and gold tracksuit, the woman sat unmoved and motionless when goldenTinkerbell stopped dead and dropped like a stone out of the air, falling out of time, soundless, into the hole.

[patriciaconway-blog]

The Doom That Came to Eastbourne

Welcome dear friends, welcome to a world where anything could happen, but even if it does, you'll rapidly acclimatise to it. Welcome to a world in which strange things lurk, only to become rationalised as soon as they appear and incorporated into your normal wordlview. 

Who can possibly guess what the motives are, of the shadowy players, within this internecine world of absurdly complex realpolitik, known as the Eastbourne local council? Who indeed, but rest assured, that should one hazard a guess that proved accurate, he or she would soon lose interest in their discovery. 

For Eastbourne, is a cursed hamlet, perched on a chalk crust by a salty pond in which eldritch creatures stalk, admittidedly rather shallow, cyclopean model villages. It is a place where nobody can be trusted, not even the local village green bowls teams, who exmploy the kind of doping tactics not seen in rural England since the early days of motor racing at Bexhill. 

This is Sussex, and it is not a place for the feint of heart, unless it is in the literal sense, of a dicky ticker, in which case it is very much the place, for here the power rests in the hands of the silver dragons, a cult, a sect, a social club for the over 50's who enjoy Brexit, Light Farce and Blood Magick. Welcome dear friend, come in, turn the electric heater up to full, yes the weather is awful dear, but so are we..

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What the devil is this? Another five minute sketch done in the most dangerous typing app. This one is flavour text for a story world I am developing for a roleplaying game. It is a Lovecraftian Pastiche on the English South Coast in the Times of Brexit.

[patriciaconway-blog]

The Queen’s Mum

Once upon a time there was a princess, but this story is about her mum. Queen Sophia was an accomplished woman and she met her middle years with grace. She had three beautiful children and a husband who loved her well, and while she was respected in her work and had all the things a middle sized kingdom in a reasonably decent area could hope to provide, she was troubled with a restless heart.

Queen Sophia, unbeknowst to those with whom she dealt on a daily basis, was never quite satifisfied. And this was not to say the feeling felt small or silly to her. As much as she tried to laught it off, there were days when it threatened to swallow her up. There were days when she wondered if she had long ago been swept away, and replaced with a machine that lived in her life for her.

This was not the kind of kingdom where one did not do one's own washing up. And in amongst the endless tasks, of the war of her everyday life, Queen Sophia always felt the nagging tug, of a creature within her that wanted something else, without ever having the decency to explain what it was.

On the rare days that she found herself alone in the royal gardens, when the King had taken the children to see his mother, the voice was never quite as forthcoming, even when she was well rested and poised to take action on it's command.

Then one day her sister recommended a good witch.

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How to wake a sleeping god without being smited

The god rolled over and snuggled down deeper into her mattress. She moaned quietly, and breathed out such a deep and sweet sigh that trees in other worlds turned a more pleasing shade of green. It was beginning to seem hopeless. What if we throw rocks into her ears? Asked Moira. Then she'll probably wish us out of existence or something. Deena replied. Unsure of exactly how god's went about their business in this day and age. Perhaps we could simply tickle her feet. Moira went on. Oh yes, like a pair of naughty kittens? Nobody ever murdered a kitten for nibbling their feet did they? That'll work. The two girls stood there, pondering the move. Moira nibbled at a lock of her own hair whil Deena tried to look like she was waiting for a bus, perhaps the bus back to the real world. Then the god rolled again, her twitching eyelids the size of dinner plates, like leather sacks with footballs inside them, gave a hint of some inner dream taking place. Both the girls reflected later that it was a moment to reconsider one's beliefs.

[patriciaconway-blog]

The Weaver

”The Weaver.“ She repeated. 

“Don't tell me you've never heard of the Weaver, little codewitch like you.” 

Then it came to her. “Yeah, actually I heard it once. There was a girl at school.”

 She thought back to Shannon, muttering ‘Weaver Skett’, as she’d walked past Miss Arbeit. It was too late then to act as if she'd known all along. She'd have to play catch up. 

“OK so you heard of her but you don't know nothing about her do you like? I can see by your blank little face, my lovely.” 

Ursula waited for her lecture. 

“The Weaver, she's the one who makes everything work, she's the one who is all careful like, sewing every little stitch of the world together, never loses her concentration, never gets distracted or wanders off, she's just weaving, has been since the start, she'll weave to the end of things. You know the Weaver really, everybody does really, just maybe you never thought to talk to her before. But you write code, don’t you Applethorn? The Weaver is the goddess of Codewitches, they all worship her, they all leave little bits of code in their programs for her, dedicated to her, so that she'll bless their work.” 

Maya took a beat, measuring her audience. Ursula barely breathed.

“I guess you really aren't a witch yet are you. But you will be, look at you lapping this up, like it's the one cup of tea you've been waiting to drink all your thirteen years on earth.”

[patriciaconway-blog]

Ursula’s Drone

Ursula's drone flew higher and danced prettier circles than either of her sisters, in the moments before it broke. 

Her elder sister's drone was as solid as a rock, a quadcopter built into it's own tiny cage, defending it's propellors from the menaces that might encroach upon the freedom of a miniature flying machine. 

And the drone that her younger sister was flying stayed low to the ground, serving primarily in the game of taking a thousand digital photographs, converting her beauty into zeros and ones to distribute amongst the worthy. 

But Ursula's was the one that flew highest, because, as she was loudly proclaiming to her sisters, who were not entirely unimpressed, that she had engineered it herself, somehow putting the whole thing inside a new 3D printed chassis, a thing of plastic gold, that resembled very closely the form of a fairy, albeit a fairy without much detail. 

It was her first attempt at bringing a lifelong dream top fruition, well as far as a twelve year old can call her life long. Look! she cried, it can steer itself! And this was the bit that both sisters had to actually sit up and watch. This was the evidence of their sister's genius, hard to swallow and source of pride all at once. How the bloody hell did you manage that, Mary almost regretted asking. Well, you see Ursula began, and the fairy thing, loudly whining like a hairdryer, like three hairdryers all scooting about in the air, the fairy thing suddenly stopped responding to ursula's commands, sent toward it from her laptop, and shot away like an arrow fired across the late summer sky, past the tree line at the edge of the picnic area in the gardens of one of southern Englands finer stately homes. 

The drone was out of sight already as Ursula began the shouting and the running. Well it was her sisters who shouted, and she who ran. They were not following, paralysed by indecision, not sure whether to wait for dad to return from the kiosk with his latte, but it was in that moment that Ursula found herself already far enough away not to quite hear what the sister's were shouting. 

She wasn't focussed on them anyway, she was running as fast as her skinny legs could carry her, trying to keep the whine directly ahead of her, every now and then seeing some visual evidence, a tree branch spring back or some disturbed leaves. She was being drawn across the lawns and through the flower beds of a well tended classical garden, to the disapproval of various members of the national trust, especially as she charged through a bush, pushing hard, feeling the sharp pain of thorns scratching her arms and face, as she stumbled head first into the pathways of the maze. 

Now she had to run, and think, and plot her course, without letting the feint sound of the whining drone fade utterly away, in her head the horrifying dissapointment on her mother's face, not the words, there wouldn’t be any words, just a pounding, suffocating guilt, this drone gift, more expensive remember than the one's the other girls got, because she had begged to get one that she could reprogram, and that cost a lot extra, and everybody said you'll break it and now she had to keep running, even though tears were streaming down her face as she ran into the chilling air, the light just beginning to fade, most people leaving the garden now, on their way back to the car park and she made it out the other end of the maze. 

She found herself at one of the edges of the site, the garden ran up to a very high fence, made of wire. Easy to climb perhaps, but she stopped. She realised that the drone itself had stopped. It was still just too far away from her to see, but she could barely, but still just make out the sound of it's four helicopter blades whirring. She knew that it's charge wouldn’t last more than a minute or two longer. 

But the woodland beyond the fence didn’t look inviting, it looked darker, thicker, wilder. It was broiling with bramble and nettle, thick with all manner of weed. There was another buzzing sound too, perhaps flies, perhaps bees. And to top it all off, somebody had hung a sign on the chain link, a sign daubed with a type of graffiti she'd never seen before, like a message in another alphabet. She could no longer hear any sisters following her, and she felt very young, very alone. 

But there it was, a quick climb, a quick fight with the undergrowth and she'd be there, she could knock the drone out of the sky with a stick and carry it home, and all would be well. Just a few minutes of weirdness and she'd be back in the car, on the way back to London, told off but in one piece, with her golden drone, with her Tinkerbell still alive, and her mother exasperated but not, dear god not, disappointed. 

Ursula grit her teeth and took a running start at the fence. She was a fast climber. It took only a moment to scale the fence, and another moment to descend. One look back, and then she pressed onward into the wood.

[patriciaconway-blog]

Vintery mintery cutery corn

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So they sent this bot thing

So they sent this bot thing, this bot, was like, a kind of killer program thingy, and I don't have a clue how it worked like, but it just went after the videos. It could identify them somehow, no matter what people did to them, it could find them and just wreck the file. You'd just go back, maybe you ripped it off youtube, like a lot of girls did back when it was just getting big, because people wanted it I think even then people knew it was going to kick off, get banned or something, and of course it did in the end. 

SO there were backups everywhere, all over the world, because there were girls all over the world who had this reaction to it, like they couldn't tell you, I mean you know it was like narcotic, it was like a need for this stuff. 

And anyway people thought they had it safely stowed away but this bot would just come for it, through whatever, whatever, you just had it in your cloud or whatever and then it would be corrupted, totally unreadable file, wouldn’t play in anything. so people hid it, tried to keep it offline, on external drives and those little things people had back then, key things and some people even burned cd's and little tiny cards, I think they were, you know the cards you put in oh flash cards that was it. 

But it didn't keep em safe somehow, you like walked past a wireless charging point in a cafe, or you went round someone's flat and they had like smart devices in the house and somehow it would find new vectors, find new ways to get to the video files, to poison them.

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And it looked at first

And it looked at first like a long string of code, like somebody had copied it off a computer screen, because why would anyone write code with a pen and paper? But then she began to see in it, wrapped up in bits and pieces of a language she didn't know, fragments of half-familiar rhymes. They were bits of nursery rhymes. Not the versions she remembered from her own childhood, different somehow, maybe older. All of this in tight rows of writing, as small as possible, black ink, possibly from a fountain pen, for the occasional smudging, and possibly written left handed. She would be able to find out, scan a page and email it to a specialist. She wanted all of a sudden to do everything thse could, spend money even, to find out more about this. It must be a piece of art, maybe a local art student, did they get attacked? Why did they lose this piece? So many hours of work, so many thousands of lines, obsessionally precise, written with pace and a desperate sense of intention, this wasn't in any sense a game to whoever made it. It cost too much, in hours, in execution. Was the paper itself hand made? Was the cover of the book cut from some bizarre material?

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And there was this path

And there was this path, between the back of the station and the main road. Not very long it was, with a couple of streetlamps. Usually you didn't find yourself walking along it alone, but it was nevertheless, a place you might be afraid to walk alone at night, a young woman in the big city. There being a strip of wood along either side. The type of woodland, in the big city, that is littered with random bits of detritus, strewn among the flowers in Spring. And it was Spring, and the path was quite beautiful in Spring, the smell of warm, damp nettles and the mottled sunlight. And something caught her eye that afternoon, on the way home from work. She came off the path, and walked a few yards or so into the trees, stepping over brambles, bending back a branch with her jacket pulled over her hand, an improvised glove, to reach a page. There on the floor she found a mess of scattered pages, like a book chicken deflowered by an urban fox, not obviously porn, not in this day and age, but something else. The pages she gathered, yellowish and thick, rough edged, covered in tiny characters, had fallen from a disembowelled book.

[patriciaconway-blog]

Write Fast. Write Hard. Publish Everything.

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The Distinction Between Graffiti & Muralism

The distinction between graffiti and muralism is surely a fine one. There are perfectly preserved murals on the walls of the presevred city of Pompeii. But there is also graffiti saying things like 'the girls here are well fit.' and other such classics. The crudely illustrated penis is perhaps the oldest piece of graff known. But modern graffiti is something that has become synonymous with hip hop culture. It began in the the late 1970's, and there are arguments over where exactly. Most agree it was New York, perhaps it happened at the same time in Paris and Chicago. But it was a time when the city was becoming the mega urban sprawl of modernity, and the extreme inequality, the slums, the lawlessness of the city centres all gave rise to this flowering of rebel cultures, and graffiti was one of these accesible ways that kids who had nothing could respond to the culture of fame and conspicuous consumption that characterised the popular culture of the time, and so it was that Taki 183 wrote his name and post code all over the city with a stolen marker pen. And this became a kind of fame for those who could not have real fame, success for those who were excluded from success. It spread across the modern world like a plague. Today it remains an essential part of the aesthetic of the modern city. No city is without it, except perhaps in Belgium. Which is so freakishly clean it's scary.

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The most dangerous typing app

The most dangerous typing app swallowed the finest scene I ever wrote when suddenly the police hammered at my front door, threatening to smash it down unless I answered immediately. So naturally, I lep up from my writing nest, in the warm embrace of my duvet. What do you want officer? How may I assist? As my heart went deep down into my ankles, knowing the finest moment of drama I had ever crafted was fading quietly away to nothing on the little silver chromebook lying where it had moments earlier been tossed aside by the bed. The officer snarled. He was a dog. A real dog. Was he here on cop business? Or was he another customer? Officer, I can assure you I no lomger sell that stuff here. I am a changed man. But it was useless. They insisted, I relented. The door swang open and they bounded in, tails wagging, and drool flying. OK, ok. I'll do you a deal. Just because you're both such fine looking officers. I'll sell you my last bag. Hell, just take it. I'm out of the game. The two dog cops settled at that, circling one another in the hall, with some difficulty as it is a narrow space. But they were still...

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We Paint on Walls

We paint on walls, make marks on walls, gouge words and diagrams and symbols into walls, we have done this since there were walls and we did this before there were walls made by the hands of humans, we did this on the caves, the very cave walls where the shadows from Plato's fire danced, because the wall is the precursor of the screen, it is the godfather of the screen, the flat plane being the place where the symbolic world meets the real world, the place where you can enter through they eye, into the landscape of the mind, abstracted from life, and returned to life as a text, an image, a symbol or a world built of those things, unique to us because only our minds seek these relationships between a few marks, a few daubs of paint and the things we have felt, sensed, thought or dreamed of, half glimpsed in the long night before the electricity came, and now still, squeezed between one moment of modernity and the next, we cannot, no matter how far past the days of god we might claim to have come, we cannot escape this cornucopia of angels and demons that cloud around our skulls, language, money, numbers anything and everything, that we have abdstracted from the world that we have taken from our experiences and made into something else, something we might call meaning, we who are the one scrap of carbon in the universe that woulsd think to look at the universe and call it a universe, as if we could reduce it to two dimensions.

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Be careful what colours you wear.

They warn the tourists. If it's blue and yellow you'll be fine but if not it better be plain black or grey, something neutral. Not black with stripes or white with stripes. Wear block colours. So if you have the money, you hit the shops and get your blue and yellow. Better still you buy a Boca Juniors shirt. They won't challenge you, they'll love you for it. They'll grab you by the shoulders and jump up and down chanting bocabocabocaboca directly into your face. Not as an act of agression mind you, as an act of exuberant, raging love. You'll be accepted into the Boca Army for the day, you'll be part of the surging mass of blue and yellow that lives and dies for Boca Juniors. So fanatical that they hardly notice that they are the only fans in the stadium. We don't need away fans to have a party. We can fill our stadium ourselves, with fiesta, with a noise like a revolution. Every game. Every single game. Nobody could ever say they only sing when they're winning. It's an awe inspiring level of commitment. These fans have inherited their team from fathers, grandfathers. These Barrios are built on Boca Juniors and even if there is a shadowy side to the Barras Bravas, here in the midst of it all, the vast majority of supporters seem to be having a positive experience, a moment of joy in an unstable and difficult lifetime, in a country of volatile economic fortunes, in one of the most famous capital cities in the world, the big apple - Buenos Aires.