Ellie Ness

A Prickly Tale

“Ma faither wis cooler than me,” Iain allooed as I FaceTimed him in his hospital bed.

“Wha’ dae ye mean? He wis mair stoic when he wis ill?”

He shook his heid, “Do ye mine tha hedgehog yairn? Are ye sure? Well stop me if ye mine hauf way through. So, ma faither spoke to his pal Mick who telt him aboot a man who had died in weird circumstances in Ulster: tha man had cam hame wi’ a sack oan hïs back an’ drapt doon deid when ‘e closed tha door. When tha man wis examined, it happent that tha sack hud containt a hedgehog an’ tha spines hud entered intae tha man’s back draining him slowly o’ bluid until he drapt doon deid frae shock.

“Ma faither wis a quiet man who hud ne’er gotten tha chance tae gang tae university because he helpt raise his brithers yince his mither wis widowed but he wis no fool.

“He argued wi’ Mick that this haed tae be a myth fur it dïdnae mak sense. Despite tha fact that Mick didnae ken tha man killt by a hedgehog he believed tha man wha telt him did, so stuck tae his storie.

“A few months later a letter arrived on oor doormat tae ma faither wi’ a Queen’s University, Belfast postmark. Ma mither was beside hersel a’ day til ma faither cam hame an’ showed hur tha contents.

“Dear Mr Patterson,

We write regarding your enquiry about a claim of death by hedgehog quills.

We have checked various resources in the library and, although several here in the University have also heard the tale, there are no newspaper articles, medical journals or literature that can verify the claim.

Moreover, the physiology of both human anatomy and hedgehogs makes it impossible that blood draining from multiple wounds would be pain free. We hope this answers your query.”

“My mither sayed, “So will ye phone Mick the noo an’ tell him he wis wrang?”

“Naw Dorothy, it’s eneuch to be richt.”

“So yon’s why ma faither wis cooler than me. Can ye imagine being proven richt aboot it and saying naethin to tha person who wis wrang?”

“A’ the years we’ve known each other Iain we’ve spent our lives trying to best tha ither, so naw.”

“Naw, so. Cooler than me. I wush I hud telt him.”

Published by Yarns (Twa) 2022

Tick Tock

Underneath the Botanics in Glasgow lies a labyrinth of tunnels from an old railway line closed to the public in the late thirties. Only valiant daredevils ever venture through the narrow gap that segues from city life to this abandoned, dark space – that inky blackness that your phone torch will only be able to illuminate a small sliver of relief in your immediate vicinity. Leaks from the city above have calcified over time to create moist, puddled areas of slippery danger which appear suddenly without warning as you venture further into void.

There’s an honour code amongst taggers: unless you’re declaring war you find your own space, you don’t cover up someone else’s art. And it is art – if a handprint in a cave in Indonesia was the first artist at work forty thousand years ago, then “we wiz here” tags under the city were nothing less than art. Listen up Glasgow School of Art!

Jamie was properly prepared this time. First time he had only had his phone to record the event and his cans of spray paint in his rucksack and it had been hard to find a large space without venturing further than he felt was sensible so he had left a mini version of the tag in his head on one of the drier ramparts holding up the vaulted ceiling just beyond the station platform. This time though, he had added in proper full beam torches and a runner’s head torch. He also had a tripod so his hand were free to complete the tag while capturing steady footage of his creation. Jamie didn’t work like Banksy, he didn’t have cardboard pre cut templates to spray through to speed up the process. He created on the spot – not primary seven bubble writing of his name enlarged to fit the space, or teenage dick pics for him.

Jamie’s tag, this time, was a girl’s face resting on her hand. Her scarlet lips pursed into a blown kiss or a look of surprise and her auburn hair blew outwards and upwards, as if caught in the updraft of a ghost train passing through the tunnel. One of the highlighted tresses curled into the word Jamie.

Afterwards, Jamie examined the video footage. Once speeded up it fitted perfectly into a TikTok upload with retro Art For Art’s Sake as the backing track. He always used that.

As usual, he went viral and this month’s income was assured.

He tagged in Glasgow School of Art again once it had over 100k thumbs up. If only they hadn’t turned down his application, they could have had all this creativity to nurture. By the time he finished this campaign, they would be begging him to become a student – Jamie was sure of it.

Published by Free Flash Fiction 2023

Cold Comfort

She limps, her walking stick tap-tapping

struggling to remember why

she is wearing her favourite floral dress

she glances at her sister-in-law,

overwhelmed

they were young teens

snatched from their homes,

dragged along dusty roads

imprisoned in a blood-red house

raped repeatedly

comfort women,

now in their twilight years

tap-tapping into rooms with sticks

trying to forget what can’t be forgotten

Waiting Room

Everyone from the terminal to the malingerers passed through Westfall waiting room. Magazines to soothe patients lacking patience when appointments overran lay splayed in one corner and a multicoloured child’s toy to foster coordination and curiosity sat in the other. The pale duck egg blue walls accented by succulent vegetable and fruit photography were deliberately chosen to convey calmness and healthy reminders of the five-a-day mantra.

Rocked babies fussed while waiting for boosters, elderly patients lingered to be called by their first name as if they too had regressed to childhood.

Sandra enveloped in the hubbub waited her turn, already running late. Her boss had originally had a semblance of compassion, but these monthly bloods to ensure that her cytotoxic injections weren’t killing her were eating into the 9-5 and his irritation was ostensible.

It didn’t help that Sandra’s veins liked to hide themselves deep on cold days. She had tried everything: hot drinks; gloves and hats; running on the spot to make those thready blue lines rise to the surface but sitting waiting her turn seemed designed to make them burrow down still further. Her arms and the back of her hands were various shades of purple and yellow. Even her boss wouldn’t have been able to insinuate that she was making it up although it didn’t stop his eye rolling when she submitted her next written request for a late start.

“Sandra, would you like to come through?” broke through her reverie.

”I drank two pints of hot water Doctor. Let’s see if you can find the buggers today,” she laughed.

As usual, the doctor’s humour bypass displayed itself as she led Sandra out to the less welcoming room where a tourniquet and needles awaited if her veins were prominent enough to check for kidney and liver function deterioration.

God bless free-at-point-of-use healthcare. In America, on her salary, she’d be in God’s waiting room, not bemoaning the pricks.

Published by Free Flash Fiction 2023

Mother’s Day in Middletown, Middlesex Co.

I sit beside you and hold your hand Brandy, more for me than for you. “Sweet girl,” you say but I am both no-one and anyone to you Mom.

You taught me how to bake cookies and restrain myself from licking the spoon, to lie in the dappled sunlight with my legs closed instead of akimbo and put on a good show when out in the world – perfectly turned out, smile painted on, a credit to the family.

Do you think, Mom, that when your folks called you Brandy, they realised how ludicrous it would sound on an elderly woman? It’s a good fit for the child you have reverted to but it’s hard to take when you sometimes call me “Mom”.

I get an occasional glorious flash of the old you – a smile, a chastisement, a stroke of my hair but it’s ephemeral and quickly replaced by your need to watch familiarly favorite shows at full volume. You laugh and clap your hands every time Three’s Company or The Golden Girls comes on, you answer the occasional quiz show question and grin from ear to ear. We have a stack of recordings we replay interminably in your room but to be fair, even if we just played one tape over and over it would all be shiny and new to you.

I long to lie on the couch with my head in your lap while I explain my life. I could tell you about my miscarriage and being told this year that that finite motherhood window has probably shut for good without some very costly interventions and we just can’t afford it, not with the care home fees.

“Your mom’s strong, physically,” they reassure me, “she’s got years left.” and they mean it kindly, really they do.

And, you’re very happy Mom – you’re very easy to please food-and-entertainment wise. When I visit we sometimes play cards. Cards meant Bridge in the past but now Snap can be a challenge. As long as I remember to slow down you still get to win.

You’re still teaching me Mom, patience is most definitely a virtue, even if Patience is no longer practised. You’re the child I take care of, who gave birth to me.

Published on Story Nook 2022

Bark to the Future

Crusty casing – buffering the ravages of time

a skeletal trunk bravely bending into the wind

with fortitude and grace

Coarse but staunch

extraordinarily ordinary,

a-peeling, papery thin arms thrusting upwards

towards languid finespun catkins

auspiciously alluring and ambitious

alpha and omega of the whole

crepuscular dappled branches

knotted, knobby ripples teeming and

budding with blossoming display

Published by Green Ink Poetry 2023

The Whipping Forecast

Always

Gale’s marriage was stormy, gusty, her visibility poor

a blight

hidden by chador, and bruises – gradually easing later

with ice.

His fist, imminent – never moderate

veering, cyclonic

A hoar!

Losing identity, rather quickly she moved out

rough, very rough – then phenomenal

occasionally falling, steadily rising

Gutsy now,

frost between them is predicted

forever

Published by SpillWords 2023

Homeward Bound

Homeward Bound

Standing at the Middle Eastern International Airport with my passport and ticket in my hand I can’t take for granted that I will be allowed on the plane, even now. I watch my man, who would have been better off relegated to being a one night stand, passing over the back shish with the subtlety that comes with a lifetime of practice and I am allowed to squeeze past the barrier that would make it obvious to everyone that I am too pregnant to be getting on this plane but too scared of what I have already seen in the city’s hospitals to remain.

I turn for a final goodbye, as he sweetly lies that it won’t be long until he can join me, away from his home and back with me in mine. I won’t miss forty degree heat and power cuts or the sewerage truck that comes weekly to empty the tank. Nor will I miss trying to squat over a hole and using a bucket or a shower attachment to clear up the fetid stench of Arabic indoor plumbing afterwards. I won’t miss having to make sure not to deface the despot’s photo when throwing out the newspaper or being stopped for papers when we mistakenly drive down the wrong streets, a bit too close to something nobody should know is there. I won’t miss Arabic signage, constant songs for the glorious leader on TV and sweaty people in market places with no sense of personal space. I might miss the women and their easy Valium induced smiles and ululation, having an orchard with orange trees and vines in the garden and I might, just might, miss him – my arrogant, wealthy husband.

On the plane I watch women going to the toilets, black abayas giving them the appearance of gigantic pupae, only for them to emerge after a decent interval transformed into beautiful butterflies: make up thickly glamorous; hair coiffed into shining curls and bright western clothes revealed, ready for landing. “Ready for my close up, Mr Passport Control Officer.”

I land at Heathrow and weave towards my suitcase on the carousel. It’s only at this point that I realise cash is king and I have none.

“Si adni…” I plead with the men with the glamorous wives, “Please help me…” to the ground staff but I am in no woman’s land, caught between worlds and – very temporarily- financially embarrassed but everyone fails to make eye contact, pretending they don’t understand the plea of a woman whose belly is bigger than her suitcase. As the carousel clears it dawns on me that I need to do this myself and if I go in to early labour then my child will be born in London rather than at home. I can feel the kicking inside me, egging me on like a cheerleader- “Go girl! Go girl!”

Miraculously though, it works – I have my case and my placenta intact and I waddle out of arrivals fighting the desire to crouch down and kiss the ground as if I am the Pope. Viva La Mama. Viva l’enfant!”

Published by SpillWords 2023