Wednesday, August 27, 2008

There Are Doors (9)


Here’s the place where she met her nemesis on a snowy night in February 1939, after the debacle at the Bank of England.

The two men bursting in while she and Kurt were loading the barge. Brave, beautiful, blond Kurt running at them with a boathook and Detective Sergeant Flowers shooting Kurt with his service revolver and Kurt’s brains and blood jumping from his shattered head. And Mr Carlyle, that sly old fraud, whipping Edna’s servants from her and scattering them into nothing at all in the cold black air.

Edna had the presence of mind to jump into the water and release her hold on the fire imp, and the barge had gone up in clap of white flame. She remembers seeing it burning through blowing snow when she’d surfaced a hundred yards away. Remembers that she flagged down a taxi outside the London Hospital later that night. Remembers the look of surprise and regret on the face of the cabbie in the moment of his death.

An hour later she was at the safe house in Tooting. The next day she was in France.

Standing on the canal towpath in plain daylight, Edna Sharrow can feel her old enemy to the east. Like a splinter of black light in the corner of her eye. Still in that house in Spitalfields no doubt. He was a creature of habit then, and she’s certain that he won’t have changed very much. Goody.
Part 1

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Only now I started to understand that you are writing fiction story:)
I thought Edna was a real person.

August 29, 2008 4:18 pm  
Blogger Paul McAuley said...

Hi Sergey,

I'm just playing around with found objects. I don't know if it's a story (although it does seem to have a narrative direction). And I don't know if it would work without the pictures, which is why I'm playing around with it here.

August 29, 2008 4:25 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Paul, it really works.
Even reading your blog constantly -I believed from the start in reality of this pesron.
Thank you for opening one of your methods of work.
By the way, idea of such book there photos are the part of text could be interesting.

August 29, 2008 10:31 pm  
Blogger Paul McAuley said...

Hi Sergey,

Glad you like it. I was thinking of a series of tiny tales for postcards, picture on one side, story on the other. Or a story over several postcards that could be shuffled at random. Clearly, this is too linear for both; hard to kick that narrative habit...

And I'm sure I'm not the only one playing games like this.

August 29, 2008 11:15 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

May be you are not the only one but your idea is original and beautiful. On the hand - it's idea of multimedia book. On the other - traditional postcards... It opens wide possibilities... Cities, paintings, landscapes, each genre... It could be a kind of meditative reading...

August 30, 2008 11:35 am  

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