This is a collection of quirky and surreal short stories and flash fiction. They are set in the future, or in a less complicated past, and they feature mysterious dimensions, black holes and portals and sometimes an ideal of caring for the environment. The characters are not quite like us, but almost.
From the Book:
Ostrich Plumes
“The feathers in your hat look like real ostrich plumes,” declared the librarian to the haughty lady.
“Everything about me is real,” she replied. “That’s why I want to borrow the grimoire. I know you’ve got it in your restricted section, so please go and get it.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, madam?” the librarian asked in a hushed tone. “You don’t want anything evil in your house.”
“I am in my house, and I’m evil,” she answered. “I’m sure I couldn’t get anything worse in there than myself.”
Silently he went to fetch the grimoire and booked it out to her, although he did ask for an additional ID as well as her library card. She showed him a debit card from an exclusive bank.
Later the librarian enquired with his learned and esoterically inclined friends whether they knew a witch or sorceress who wore an ostrich-plumed hat.
“I know her,” one of them said. “She believes in those old superstitions that you can turn someone into a frog or a toad. I’ve always been careful to be very polite to her in case she turns me into one.” He went on to explain that when engaged in rituals in public places she wore a swan-down cloak that extended from her shoulders right down to the ground, and the ostrich feathers in her hat were from an ostrich she had caught herself whilst on safari in Africa.
“Does she set a great deal of store by natural feathers?” asked the librarian.
“If she does it must be for the bone in them,” replied his friend. “She’s got all kinds of bones in her house: complete skulls, individual bones, animal bones. It’s like an archaeologist’s office.”
The librarian thought he would like to see for himself, even if only through a window. He looked at the address on her library records, and one day he walked past the house and peered through the window. He didn’t see any bones, but he did see several frogs in a tank and wondered if they were people she had turned into frogs. Suddenly he remembered the grimoire was overdue for return. He rapped on the door, thinking it would be a good pretext to speak to her if she was at home.
At first there was no answer, but then he heard confident footsteps coming along the hallway. She flung open the door, and to the librarian’s surprise she was still wearing the hat with the ostrich feathers even though she was indoors.
“Mrs Plum, sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I came to enquire because you need to return our rare book, or at least to renew it.”
“What impudence!” she exclaimed loftily. “It is mine now. I will pay the county council for it later, when I feel like it. Not another word or I’ll turn you into a frog and put you in the amphibian tank with the others.”
“Please don’t do that,” the librarian said hastily. “I don’t want to be a frog. I’ll renew the book for you, and if you want to purchase it from the library please write and ask the chief librarian.”
“I’ll do no such thing!” she exclaimed. “He might say no, when it’s such a rare book.”
“But Mrs Plum…” began the librarian nervously. Just then the two ostrich feathers turned into real ostriches. They began to peck him hard, one on each side of his head. He was being knocked between them like a rubber ball.
“No, no, stop it!” he shouted, flailing wildly with his arms.
“Why don’t you just turn into a frog, and hop away from them?” said Mrs Plum. “They won’t eat you-that’s why my tank is full of frogs.”
“Are you going to turn all of the staff at the county council into frogs?” gasped the librarian, hitting out wildly at the pecking ostriches.
“No,” she said, sounding bored. “I’ll order my own copy after all, from that bookshop in London where they know me.” The ostriches turned back into feathers, and Mrs Plum went back inside and closed her front door.
Later the librarian was locked away for believing that all the people who had ever gone missing in the area were frogs in Mrs. Plum’s amphibian tank. What do you think?