Laura Dockrill - Echoes

For my family…

I love you.

xxx

These stories are not all from my imagination; some have been retold and passed down from others and so…

With love and thanks to the following:

19:16. A special thank you to Danielfor this East London urban legend and for being an inspiration to me always.

Hibiki Jikinikiis for my friend and fellow poet, Tim Clare. Thank you for your time and exciting, revolting mind.

The Tongue Cut SparrowA special thank you to my motherfor the story and for your friendship…thanks for pretending not to notice when I steal your food.

That Shrewd Little Foxis for my especially talented friend and loyal editor Clare Hey, we’ve had lots of fun together creating these stories. Without you I would be in an awful pickle.

The Boy Who Cried MonsterThank you for the story, Ryan.

Cover Page

Title Page Echoes Laura Dockrill

The Boy Who Cried Monster.

Skin It Helps to Keep Your Insides in, Woah, My Skin, So Glad You Were Invented…)

Banshel

Isabella MocZareles Jezeballa Bumpington-Brown

Cowboy

Gutted

Pandoras Box

That Shrewd Little Fox

The Lady of The Snow

Cherkins

The Melting Lody

Ebony Matters

Siren

Woolf

May, Fay and Rosemary or Three Sisters and a Sledgehammer

Smugglers

Oh, You’ll Never Get to Heaven….

Ella

The Dove

The 12th fairy

Hibiki Jikininki

Onions

The Unmet

19:16

The Tongue-cut Sparrow

Echoes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Laura Dockrill

Copyright

About the Publisher

Off an oily main road, where not even the pigeons could be bothered to visit, was an ugly mechanical building. The building was so violently ugly that visitors were advised to bring sunglasses to shield their eyes from the hideous view. Most of the building had been deserted, odd bits of furniture lay everywhere, haunting empty office spaces, broken technical equipment, all under a blanket of dust and old skin cells as though it were the residue of a ship under the sea. Forgotten.

But at the very top of the building was an office full of professional scapegoats. Inside, the cold walls were colourless, covered with empty corkboards and organized post-it notes. Everything was stiff and dated and static, so painfully unforgiving it forced you to wander through it as though you were colour-blind. It was as though somebody had ordered everything to be painted grey.

And the eight people who worked in this office were dry and flaky–not in a tasty almond croissant way, but in a sore skin sort of way. And these people were pessimistic. They believed that the world was crumbling in; they believed everything was a conspiracy against them, gruelling, grumbling, and continuing, even though every day consisted of boredom and dullness and paranoia. And this wiry stiff party (bad choice of word) wouldn’t communicate–they wouldn’t know how to, they never played the radio or treated themselves, they just sat and stared and tapped away like robots. All except for one.

Albert started off at Limps as a work experience, forced by his parents to do something, anything , other than write his silly stories. And three years later he was still there, filing, plonking out letters, photocopying, but always, in his head, writing stories. His father said he should read more than write, he said before you even pick up a pen you have to know the history behind what you are writing about. He said, ‘You can’t have a tree without roots.’ But Albert believed that history was created every day and roots were growing all the time, it was just a matter of where you planted the seeds.

Albert liked writing about what he already knew. He liked to write about what he saw and what he felt. He liked to write at about six o’clock when the sky was so pink and perfect he could almost see Marc Bolan rising out of it. He liked to write about the cute girl he saw on the train that day who had odd shoes on and had bent a fork around her wrist as a bracelet. He liked to write about when he was little and wanted to be a wrestler so badly he would wear a carrier bag over his body like a vest and tear it open like a raging Hulk Hogan. He liked to write about the homeless man that got on the bus and told all the passengers he had stolen ketchup, brown sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper from a café and had managed to get away with it, laughing to himself, muttering, ‘Condiments, that’s all you need.’ He liked to write about the fat little Mexican girl with the braces on her bottom teeth who walked past him every day and the way she was always so fascinated by the little box above his house that looked like a front door where a pigeon lived. He liked to write about the weird lady with the white boots who was always trying to commit suicide and asking people if they wanted to come round and see her cooker. Or the squatters who everybody used to hate until they made a theatre in the living room of the squat and everybody loved the shows so much that whenever the council came over, the neighbours lied and said the owners to the house were just on holiday, just so the shows would continue. That’s what Albert liked to write about.

Boredom. How could anybody ever be bored? But, he had to be careful because that’s exactly what everybody at Limps suffered from, boredom. And it was contagious.

Once upon a shitty day, Albert had just finished a story about a wolf when he decided he was a bit peckish. Rolling back on his chair across the grey gravel carpet, he was about to stand when he saw Norman sinking his milky teeth into a cardboard sandwich, inside was all rubbery cheese and browning lettuce. He saw Sue eyeballing the computer screen so intently her eyes were beginning to bleed. He saw John just sitting, his broomstick tash twitching. Albert felt sick, watching them, he felt as though he were watching the room though a television screen. So, out of nowhere, he began to run.

He ran through the desks, throwing the paper up in the air, over to the bookshelf, rattling the books, encouraging the files to slide out of the shelves, he picked up the plant, still in its pot, grey and droopy and he smashed it against the wall (and then he felt bad, because it was alive and had the potential to be something beautiful. He would tend to that later). Then he ran in circles, destroying anything in his path and his colleagues just watched him. Gormless.

Out came Mr Hurt. ‘What on earth is going on?’

Good point. Yes, what was going on? He had to say something…

‘It’s a tidal wave. Outside.’

‘A tidal wave?’

‘A tidal wave, a flood, a…a…monsoon! Water’s everywhere…We’re going to be drowned if we don’t move now, now, now. Allow yourself to be swallowed up or move, move, move!’ he yelled.

‘A monsoon? From where?’ Mr Hurt tried to understand, but he hadn’t communicated in so long it was as though he expected a feast of bats to come screeching out of his mouth.

Before he even had a chance to answer, the workers uprooted, their knees creaking out of their swivel chairs like rusty hinges, surprised almost that their bodies could do something other than sit and plonk. They ran too, they joined in with Albert, running, fast and fierce, panicking. They found their voices, realized they could scream, realized they didn’t want to lose their lives, realized that they did want to have barbeques and parties, and learn how to make Death by Chocolate, they had always wanted to go to the ballet after all and pack a suitcase and go shopping for toiletries, they did want to skive work, have a duvet day, sleep all day, and see the sea. They ran, falling, scratching their kneecaps, scraping their skin violently, the bleeding felt good, throbbing, a pulse of its own. Alive, they felt alive. They threw themselves down the concrete staircase, reckless. Some cackled, wild with hilarity, and poured out of the fire escape, grey jumpers, grey ties, grey socks in a pile only to see…