Scary

A Short Story by Paul Mercer
I don’t really know what I am feeling as I lie here in absolute darkness trying to understand where I am and what I might be doing here. It is a strange sort of feeling, rather scary really. I know that I am lying on my back with my arms pinned down by my sides, and my legs are straight out in front of me and close together as if bound by some hidden force, and apart from being able to move my fingers and toes, my legs and arms are firmly fixed. Where the hell am I? I try to move my head from side to side but nothing happens; it simply will not move. It’s almost as if it is fixed in a vice. I can blink my eyes and puff my cheeks, but that is about all I am able to do. Also whatever I am lying on is very hard on my aging bones, and sharp pain is gnawing at me where my shoulder blades, unprotected by layers of body fat feel as if they were supporting the Eiffel Tower. But what the hell am I lying on, and why?

Then the strong smell of fresh pine wood invades my nostrils and I realise that I must be in some sort of a wooden box. But why would I be in a wooden box? None of this is making any sense. What the hell is going on?

Then with a sudden jolt to my brain it all comes flooding back to me. The argument. That is the last thing that I remember, arguing with her. God but she is a real pain in the arse, always right, never wrong. If I said black she would say white, and to top it all she is more holy than Christ himself. Anyway back to the argument. We had just finished eating a light supper consisting mainly of cheese and tomato sandwiches, and I was in the final stages of finishing a glass of white wine that she had poured for me earlier when out of the blue she decided it was time to pillory me by mentioning, as she liked to call them, ‘my many inadequacies’. This time it is all to do with my inability to perform like Nijinsky between the sheets. The horse that is, not the ballet dancer. I mean to be honest if you saw her without her clothes on you would understand why I am so reluctant. She is a little like a Michael Angelo sculpture before the first chip, bulky and not very pretty to look at. Well she went on and on until with a defiant stance I told her what she could do with her libido. She fired back at me and told me that if she had known just how useless I really was then she would never have married me. We were still at it hammer and tongues when the door bell suddenly rang. That is the last thing I remember until now. What the hell is happening to me?

I am still pondering this conundrum when I suddenly hear a deafening roar. It sounds like a giant uncontrolled blow torch belching out the fiery flames from hell.

Now with a fearful reality I know exactly where I am and what I am doing here.

I have been an Industrial Gas Engineer all of my working life and I have heard that sound on so many occasions when testing the most powerful industrial gas jets known to man.

I am cocooned in a wooden coffin that is passing through the incinerator section of a crematorium, and I have less than one minute to live.

The End

© Paul Mercer 2006

Swearing in Writing

Everywhere you go, you hear it. If it isn’t the ‘F’ word then it’s ‘bloody’ this or ‘for God’s sake’ that: it seems blasphemy and profanities are part of everyday life. You might use swear words in letters to friends but not in business letters, certainly not in a covering letter to a publisher. But what’s the situation regarding fiction?

It depends on your audience.

A story for a women’s magazine is unlikely to print an expletive stronger than, “Oh drat!” whilst the independent press, particularly the horror, fantasy and slipstream genres expect realistically raw characters with no holds barred. Literary fiction – which crosses all genres really – expresses exactly what it wants to say without censors or conventions: swear words are unlikely to be taboo here. Crime, westerns, chic-lit and lad lit would all be pretty bowdlerized without them.

So why tread carefully in Writing Life and Playground?

It’s true I don’t like gratuitous swearing and I can’t bear bad language in a piece of writing that’s badly written and spelled but on the whole the occasional swear word helps to make a letter or piece of dialogue within a story more lively. If I swear in your feedback letters it’s because it expresses most precisely what I want and need to say.

Perhaps a naughty word never passes your lips? Ah, but as a fiction writer you become an actor on paper, you create and get inside your characters’ personalities! Swearing therefore has permission – here and now – to fall onto your page straight from your head without audible evidence that you even know what the bad word means. And sex: yes please, we’re adults.

© Bernie Ross 2006