Published in Novel Times (Issue 2, 31st July, 2011) & Icasm Magazine (Issue 1, 5th December, 2011).
Out in the wilder end of Northumberland, there once lived a farmer’s daughter who never slept.
She cost her dad a great deal in lightbulbs and heating, but more than made up for it in the work she did in the lonely hours, when her family rested. She had so much time, and yet never wanted for things to do, because others were always happy to give her the tasks that in other farmholds would fall to them.
So when her mam got up, some time before first light, the breakfast would be mostly done, the kitchen would be cleaned and the dogs would fed. When her brother Mark got up, at first light, the troughs would be full, the milking machine would be ready and the animals would already be out. When her dad got up, some time after first light, the tractor would be filled with petrol, the rotas would be ready for the lads, and his bacon would be crispy.
And this was aside from the other things she did. She washed and scrubbed and cleaned, she mended clothes and farm equipment with equal skill, she single-handedly saw to any birth or death of an animals that occurred at an inconvenient hour, she fetched in the wood and fiddled the accounts better than even her uncle Larry could manage. All of this she did all night, every night, except for the short stretch of each evening she allowed herself to read.
She had been doing this since she was four, when she had become increasingly puzzled at sleep, and had decided not to go in for any of that nonsense. She started with the old books in the house, but these were few and simplistic, tending to feature annoyingly smug yet gung-ho males who did such unlikely things as fly planes, drink whisky, or go into distant fantasy lands to free the exotic populace with the aid only of a crotchety goat, a compliant female, and a magical slipper. The girl decided she was having none of that, and so she started visiting the library, on the sly of course, because that was her secret.
But that was an hour of her life, the rest of her unsleeping time belonged to family and farm.
Now word got out, and a few of the local boys perked up at the idea. The girl was known to be quiet and a little shy, was decently pretty, was the daughter of a well-off farmer and allegedly never stopped working. Quite the prize they were sure.
And so they began to court her.
First was William ‘Billy’ Avers, whose family were from up Ashington way. He came to the girl one day and decided he would act like a real man, because that’s what all birds liked (especially her sort). He was sure.
“Morning pet,” he said as she stitched her brother’s many work shirts in the back yard, “I’ve been seeing you about like, and I reckon you could handle me, and there’s not many birds I’d say that about.”
The girl smiled, and said she would indeed handle him, if he could only guess her favourite book.
“Book?” He sneered. “What’s a lass like you want one of them for?”
And so the girl lost her temper with the uncouth youth and strangled Billy, and left his body in the pig trough. They fed well that day.
Next was Abdul ‘Abbers’ Carter, whose family were ‘not from these parts’, as the locals were wont to say in politer company. He decided the best way to woo the girl was to act like an old fashioned gentleman, and charm his way into her affections. A friendly smile and some choice, polite words would be just what such a quiet, hardworking girl would fall for. He was sure.
“Good morning Miss Handler,” he was wearing his best jacket, his cleanest t-shirt, and his shiniest trainers when he approached her outside the Post Office, “what a fine day this is. Would you care to take a turn about the graveyard? ‘Tis uncommonly pretty since the litter pick.”
The girl smiled, and said she would indeed take a turn with him in the graveyard, if he could only guess her favourite book.
“Why,” he said after some thought, “for a genteel lady such as yourself, I would assume the many romances of Mrs Stephanie Meyers.”
And so the girl lost her temper with the boy who saw her as such a stereotype, and caved in the back of his head with the hardback copy of Pushkin’s The Tales of the Late Ivor Peterovich Belkin which she kept in her handbag for emergencies. Later depositing his body in the freshly dug flower-bed of the vicarage, as there were some useful rumours about the suspiciously new vicar and his wild, catholic youth. The Rhododendrons did uncommonly well that year.
The third boy to try his luck was little James ‘Jammy Dodger’ Atkinson, whose family were local and had been local as long as anybody cared to remember (and they certainly cared to remind other folk, sometimes twice a week). He decided that honesty was the best policy, and felt that if he told her exactly why he would like them to plan a life together, then she would be his. He was sure.
“Hey,” he said, as she untangled the remains of a sheep from the wire fence that bordered the gorge that separated their farms. “I’ve been thinking, ‘n my dad sez I ought to get married, ‘n I reckon your dad would want you to marry my dad’s only son, bring the two farms together sort’a thing. Up for it?”
The girl smiled, and said she would marry him for his massive endowment, if he could only guess her favourite book.
“Err... The Bible?” he managed after several moments of hard thought, delving for the name of something he had once read, in the distant time when he was required to do such taxing things.
And so the girl lost her temper with the boy who didn’t even pretend to like reading, and whipped him to death with a length of barbed wire, before allowing his mutilated body to sink into the bogs on the far side of the gorge. The tadpoles did reasonably well, that year.
For a time there were no further attempts to court, seduce or marry the girl who never slept, the village was far too interested in the mysterious disappearances to think of such things. The girl continued on as she had, deep at night working her way through one of the more readable greats of Russian literature, and otherwise just generally working.
But eventually there came attention from another boy, the slightly drippy boy, the boy on holiday with his parents despite being a little too old to be doing so. They were staying in a caravan, rumour had it the three of them shared a bed.
She caught him staring intensely at her, one afternoon in the library. He was sitting with a tome bedecked in fake, black leather, with a silver skull on the cover. She was standing, browsing a collection of diaries, coloured in shades of green and brown, and published by Faber & Faber.
She felt uncomfortable with his gaze on her neck, not because she was unwelcome to such attention, but just because she didn’t want word getting back to her family that she wasted time in the library. They could get very snippy when she rested, they feared the disease would become terminal.
But he solved this dilemma and, for the first time in his life, the boy asked a girl out. Had it simply been for the way she fondled her folios, he may have been able to resist. Even though the way she handled her hardbacks left him wide eyed and panting, he simply wouldn’t have dared. But the way she pawed her paperbacks, well, that was quite another thing indeed.
The girl smiled, and told him she would indeed go round the back and fuck like bunnies, if only he could tell her what her favourite book was.
He did not hesitate, merely wrinkled his brow in confusion and asked;
“You mean you actually have a favourite?”
No one could have a favourite, he was sure.
And that was it, she was in love.
She was not a girl to wait around, and he was not a boy to blow such a chance. Seventeen minutes later they were engaged, and slightly out of breath. But neither family were pleased with the news.
His mother wailed and screamed and mourned the passing of her baby, she did not make it sound as though he were dead to her, she made it sound as though death would have been the preferable option. Her dad shouted and raged, asked what they were going to do on the farm. Who would strangle the unwanted kittens now, he wondered, did she expect her brother to do it instead? She found it all very tiresome.
Happily, their dilemma was brought to an unaccountably fast end by the execution of Operation Casus Belli, when a unit of police stormed the farm. The bodies had been found, and it was common knowledge that all three of the boys had been going to ask out the peculiar girl with the bags under her eyes. Her dad was not known to be a gun-shy man, nor to be the kind of man who would allow his daughter do something so selfish as choose her own husband, so the police came with what numbers they could, and they came loudly.
Their cars had flashing lights and rattling engines, in her father’s head came a flashback to that tragic night he had watched Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now back-to-back. The bang of a faulty exhaust completed the relapse and out came the shotgun, with which he retreated to a makeshift barricade consisting of the fridge, the dresser, two sofas and the kitchen table. From that spot he peppered the invading filth with antique lead, accompanied only by a succession of equally matured terms of abuse.
Armed response was sent, and in the ensuing gun battle the girl’s mam and brother were both killed, and her dad eventually subdued and arrested, after a good seeing-too in the police van. The two lovers escaped through the field, and soon reached his caravan.
The boy solved the dilemma of his parents by placing a sheep’s head in the vehicle’s small fridge, leading his mother to panic and cling to her short and tubby husband in fright, accidentally smothering the poor man in her comically large bosoms. She then killed herself, thoughtfully saving her son the effort, though the effort of weighting their corpses for disposal in the river still remained.
The young, literate lovers then departed in the blissful malaise of first romance, and planned their life together. They found themselves opposite enough to be interesting, and similar enough to be compatible. He did sleep, but mostly through the day, which was ideal for her because she was never lonely when it was light. More importantly he did not call her pet, he had never seen the appeal in shiny trainers, and happily he had no intention of ever owning a farm. Instead he had a caravan all of his own, she’d never met anyone who could offer her the open road in such a way.
The marriage could not last, he was a genre boy to his death, and she was a lit-fic girl always and forever, but it was certainly fun for a time.
Copyright John Conway - 2011 - john.charles.conway@googlemail.com
Hello
- John Conway
- To steal something from a better writer than myself, I'm a drunk homosexual with low moral fibre.
Monday 5 December 2011
Sunday 23 October 2011
The Story Teller
Now here's a blast from the past. It began the year I was born so sadly I was a little too young for Marshall Cavendish's Story Teller magazine (though I did have enormous fun reading their Ancestral Trail series in later years).
It was a collection of children's tales, a mixture of modern novels and classic folk/fairy stories, so the likes of The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz mixed with Rapunzel, Cinderella and Pandora's Box; all of which were read by the respected acting type of the day (and now). These actors included, but were not limited to; Brian Blessed, Sheila Hancock, Joss Ackland, Joanna Lumley, Diana Rigg, Siân Phillips, Tom Baker, Ian Holm, Miriam Margolyes, Martin Shaw, Richard Briers and Derek Jacobi.
And why am I remembering this? Well, I've just found out that some lovely person has placed a number of the stories online. So go. Listen. And if you really need any reason to investigate further, just have a listen Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, read by Tim Curry.
It was a collection of children's tales, a mixture of modern novels and classic folk/fairy stories, so the likes of The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz mixed with Rapunzel, Cinderella and Pandora's Box; all of which were read by the respected acting type of the day (and now). These actors included, but were not limited to; Brian Blessed, Sheila Hancock, Joss Ackland, Joanna Lumley, Diana Rigg, Siân Phillips, Tom Baker, Ian Holm, Miriam Margolyes, Martin Shaw, Richard Briers and Derek Jacobi.
And why am I remembering this? Well, I've just found out that some lovely person has placed a number of the stories online. So go. Listen. And if you really need any reason to investigate further, just have a listen Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, read by Tim Curry.
Tintin Time.
I am a big Tintin fan, and the names attached to the upcoming film tick many many boxes. Stephen Spielberg, Pegg & Frost, Toby Jones, Jamie Bell, Stephen Moffat, Cary Elwes, Peter Jackson, Tony Curran, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Daniel Craig, John Williams - these are all good people who do good things.
But, there's a thing, a little thing, but a thing. You know how the Richard Lester The Three Musketeers adaptation was almost perfect, but could have been improved by lifting Tim Curry's Cardinal Richelieu from the otherwise terrible Disney version, in place of Charlton Heston's awful performance? Well, I have a hunch that the new Tintin flick could only be improved by the addition of a certain much loved theme tune.
Like this (made by a very clever chap named James Curran.)
The Adventures of Tintin from James Curran on Vimeo.
Sunday 9 October 2011
Lines of Flight, Mervyn Peake, the Illustrated Work
An exhibition of Mervyn Peake's etchings and suchlike opens at the Laing, next week.
And very good it looks too.
And very good it looks too.
Friday 30 September 2011
Merlin
I'm sorry, there hasn't been enough male flesh on this blog. I seem to be forgetting just what a sleazy individual I actually am. So with that in mind...
A nice bit of switching by the BBC coming up, as the very camp current run of Dr Who finishes and the potentially even camper series four of Merlin follows on. I'm rather looking forward to the new series of Merlin, which would have surprised me a couple of years back. Initially a pretty poor show, I was enticed back in by series three, which happened to show at a point where I was a bit broke and trying to avoid /going out on Saturday nights.
Arthur and Guinevere were still annoying, and Victor Meldrew still hadn't remembered how to act, but elsewhere things were better. The writing and production quality had gone up, and Colin Morgan was being given chances to actually show what he was capable of. The ever wonderful Anthony Head was of course still giving a brilliant performance as the stern, somewhat fascistic Uther Pentdragon, increasingly paranoid and unhinged. The totty factor had been considerably upped with the addition of recurring character Gwaine, played by the beautifully Irish (and just beautiful generally) Eoin Macken, whose scenes of 'friendship' (or bromance, in the modern parlance) with Merlin were so homoerotic as to border on the obscene. If ever a TV duo needed to do each other, it was them, not since Mulder and Scully had such pent-up sexual tension oozed form the telly.
But the real gem was Morgana, played by the also Irish and beautiful Katie McGrath, who when I had last seen her was an irritatingly wimpy and overly moral glorified housewife; somehow by series three Morgana had been transformed into a vampy bitchess worthy of early nineties Disney, who practically steepled her fingers and cackled every time another character looked away, and who took every opportunity she could to pull on long velvet gowns and go stalking off into the moonlit night to plot with other witches.
So I will be watching, and this page here has absolutely nothing to do with my interest. Nor this one. Well, maybe a little. That and the fact that the last series had the ever fabulous Miriam Margoyles playing an evil pixie called Grunhilda.
And of course, lets not forget that Gwaine wasn't the first 'friendship' Merlin had had.
PLUS
EQUALS
Come on BBC. You want something daring in your family drama? Lets have a tea-time love triangle between Merlin, Arthur and Gwaine that will make the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot thing look like the none-event it probably will be
A nice bit of switching by the BBC coming up, as the very camp current run of Dr Who finishes and the potentially even camper series four of Merlin follows on. I'm rather looking forward to the new series of Merlin, which would have surprised me a couple of years back. Initially a pretty poor show, I was enticed back in by series three, which happened to show at a point where I was a bit broke and trying to avoid /going out on Saturday nights.
Arthur and Guinevere were still annoying, and Victor Meldrew still hadn't remembered how to act, but elsewhere things were better. The writing and production quality had gone up, and Colin Morgan was being given chances to actually show what he was capable of. The ever wonderful Anthony Head was of course still giving a brilliant performance as the stern, somewhat fascistic Uther Pentdragon, increasingly paranoid and unhinged. The totty factor had been considerably upped with the addition of recurring character Gwaine, played by the beautifully Irish (and just beautiful generally) Eoin Macken, whose scenes of 'friendship' (or bromance, in the modern parlance) with Merlin were so homoerotic as to border on the obscene. If ever a TV duo needed to do each other, it was them, not since Mulder and Scully had such pent-up sexual tension oozed form the telly.
But the real gem was Morgana, played by the also Irish and beautiful Katie McGrath, who when I had last seen her was an irritatingly wimpy and overly moral glorified housewife; somehow by series three Morgana had been transformed into a vampy bitchess worthy of early nineties Disney, who practically steepled her fingers and cackled every time another character looked away, and who took every opportunity she could to pull on long velvet gowns and go stalking off into the moonlit night to plot with other witches.
So I will be watching, and this page here has absolutely nothing to do with my interest. Nor this one. Well, maybe a little. That and the fact that the last series had the ever fabulous Miriam Margoyles playing an evil pixie called Grunhilda.
And of course, lets not forget that Gwaine wasn't the first 'friendship' Merlin had had.
Come on BBC. You want something daring in your family drama? Lets have a tea-time love triangle between Merlin, Arthur and Gwaine that will make the whole Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot thing look like the none-event it probably will be
Friday 16 September 2011
This chap, this chap was there.
An interesting little Observer piece, from a man who was there, on le Carre's Berlin.
I can't begin to say how much I'm looking forward to watching the new adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. If any actor in Britain today can claim to hold a candle to Alec Guinness, it's Gary Oldman.
And in other vaguely lit news (by which I mean a newspaper story linked to an author I actually like), have a look at this. The short answer to the question is yes, they should.
I can't begin to say how much I'm looking forward to watching the new adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. If any actor in Britain today can claim to hold a candle to Alec Guinness, it's Gary Oldman.
And in other vaguely lit news (by which I mean a newspaper story linked to an author I actually like), have a look at this. The short answer to the question is yes, they should.
Still?
There's been a few brilliant pictures of gay protestors fighting tooth and nail for marriage, and the known misery that comes with it, floating around the web recently.
Two of my absolutely favourite have to be these;
Happy times in many ways. At times you think the idiots are finally losing.
But then you read something like this, and your heart sinks, just a little.
Two of my absolutely favourite have to be these;
Happy times in many ways. At times you think the idiots are finally losing.
But then you read something like this, and your heart sinks, just a little.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Saturday 3 September 2011
Monday 8 August 2011
If wishes came true
I'm ill, and really wishing I wasn't.
But you know what I wish even more, I wish that this was real...
But you know what I wish even more, I wish that this was real...
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Awful Opening Sentence
Did you know there's an Awful Opening Sentence competition. And very funny it is too.
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal."
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal."
Thursday 21 July 2011
Shoehorn with teeth!
Job application in. Submissions in. Lunch had.
An afternoon of tidying and cooking awaits.
But I'm sure I have time for a little They Might Be Giants danced to by a lego man first...
An afternoon of tidying and cooking awaits.
But I'm sure I have time for a little They Might Be Giants danced to by a lego man first...
Wednesday 27 April 2011
Tuesday 26 April 2011
Tuesday 5 April 2011
But what could it be?
OK, last post for the night then I'll bugger off and read, promise.
Just noticed the other day that SFX have placed a humble request from yours-truly (submitted what feels like years ago, but is I admit probably just months) to their SFXperts column. You can find it here, it's the third one.
Now this series has bugged me for years, for a while I suspected it may be something like Earthfasts, or Children of the Stones, but I'm positive it's neither. And when I say bugged, I really do mean it's driven me loopy.
Just noticed the other day that SFX have placed a humble request from yours-truly (submitted what feels like years ago, but is I admit probably just months) to their SFXperts column. You can find it here, it's the third one.
Now this series has bugged me for years, for a while I suspected it may be something like Earthfasts, or Children of the Stones, but I'm positive it's neither. And when I say bugged, I really do mean it's driven me loopy.
The Snow Spider.
From a very new, very high-budgeted TV fantasy series, to an older, decidedly less highly-budgeted one.
Some wonderful human being has uploaded the old HTV adaptation of possibly my favourite book as a child, Jenny Nimmo's The Snow Spider (starring the ever wonderful Siân Phillips).
And what kind of person would I be if I did not share the love here.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Some wonderful human being has uploaded the old HTV adaptation of possibly my favourite book as a child, Jenny Nimmo's The Snow Spider (starring the ever wonderful Siân Phillips).
And what kind of person would I be if I did not share the love here.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
A Game of Thrones
I've likely come too late to the book, the audio version of which I'm in the early stages of, as HBO's promising new adaption is almost upon us. And very good it's looking too.
Saturday 2 April 2011
Short Story - Fitzwilliam and the God of the Northern Winds
Published in Friction Magazine (Issue 2, 30th March, 2011).
Here’s the thing.
The boy named in the title wasn’t a very nice boy. There are things to recommend his class and things to despise them for, and he had adapted more of the latter traits than the former. Yet still, he didn’t deserve to be so lonely, and he didn’t deserve what happened one dull, brown, autumn day in his parent’s house too far north.
There was no society there, not really, but it was easier to affect lordship with a minor title, a larger house could be theirs. His father had more things to shoot, even if his mother had less conversation.
The house lay between villages in what we now know, well, those of us who know the area, as the fringes of Newcastle's west end. But there’s no trace of a house now, even under the terraces. You can find it on old maps, occasional references in the right documents, but nobody really remembers it. Those few who survived tried to forget.
So, the boy. We wouldn’t think him a nice child, but then those others he encountered weren’t either. He was a child between places, growing up with few boys of the right class to play with, and non of the right age, forbidden from associating with those below. So the children of the servants, the village urchins, the farm brats, those children he made the first tentative steps of friendship with at a young age. They hated him, and he hated them, and it allowed both sides to forget how much they envied one another.
His original governess was despatched post-haste, her name blackened, when it had come to his parent’s notice that he was associating with people outside his class. She was replaced by a tutor, who was ordered to fill the lake of his ignorance with wise and classical ideas, the right sort of knowledge.
It may have worked, they may have found him a man who could inspire the boy, a man who would give the boy company of a kind, who could understand what the boy needed and teach him in a manner that his parents would disapprove of, without them knowing. Had they provided him with that man, the boy needn’t have been such an emotionally crippled thing.
Instead the man they found was a black-hearted and wounded creature, devilishly smart but with no real desire to spread this gift; a man who stuck rigidly to the bare teaching hours and the dreary subjects approved by his parents, a man who made no attempt to help the boy. He did deviate from their wishes in a manner they were clueless of, but not in a way that could do anything but further injure Fitzwilliam, further twist him into a similarly dark hearted, angry creature. To describe it as that tutor might have described it, he abused him in the manner of Laius, and that was that.
So it wasn’t the boy’s fault he was hated, really. In a similar way it wasn’t his parent’s fault they were so incapable of loving or raising a child, or his tutor’s fault he was such a bitter and perverted man, or the local children’s fault they despised the lonely boy. They did to him as others had done to them, but I’ll say one thing for the boy, he ended that line.
None of them survived it, you see.
So the event itself, well that was a bad day. It began with cook’s son Iain, he’d played with Fitzwilliam when younger and now felt unaccountably angry that the boy no longer spoke to him. He saw Fitzwilliam had returned from school, his dark eyes in a perpetual frown, and had slunk away from Orkney House in a foul mood.
Down near the river he had met two of the farm brats, hiding because their da’ was due to start the harvest and they were determined to be out of earshot while the sun lasted, and they had cheered him up in a traditional country manner, by throwing stones at some animals for a time.
And they all talked about how much they hated the Fitzwilliam boy; flabby, stuck up and bookish, with a horribly intense stare and few words for anyone, let alone them. And they talked on, and they boisterously joked about how much fun it would be to lure him away, to do him in. The afternoon wore on and idle talk became more serious as they egged one another on. And then they told Gus down at the village, and he told his sister, and soon enough there were eleven of them all in.
So how to get him away from the house? None of them fancied the beating they would get if they were found out, or the even worse beating they would get if their parents were sacked as they very well could be, so they knew it had to be away from the house, and the villages and the farms. They needed the wilder places, still not too distant.
But how to get him there? They tried to think of ways, something they could say to make him come with them, some way they could trick him, but nothing they could think of would work, and everything would give him at least one face, who would have to suffer later on. So they decided to abduct him. Grab him, blind him, stop him from hearing or shouting and get him away from other people. They could figure out the rest as they went along, plenty of places they could go.
By this point Charlie was in charge, one of the bigger farm boys, and very keen to hurt any fucker as lucky as the snobs of Orkney House. Cook’s son, Iain, was beginning to have doubts, but things were rolling on now, He wasn’t prepared to stand up to them, he wasn’t sure that he wanted too.
And they did it the next day, the next morning.
Fitzwilliam was hiding himself, not from farm work, but from dry books and dry, probing fingers. He was out of the house’s grounds, he’d taken a knife and was sitting, stabbing the tip into the thick bark of an oak, not crying, because boys like him didn’t cry.
He was of a mind to use the knife, and was probably capable of it; he didn’t have a high opinion of the worth of others, especially not the children of servant and estate workers, but he didn’t have a chance. Because all of their plans for subtlety were lost when Gus excitedly yelled; “There’s the cunt, ower there!”
Their hopes of anonymity gone, Charlie was already lobbing a rock at Fitzwilliam’s head.
Hours later they were well away from the farms and the villages they knew. They’d had some fun, taking it in turns to kick his face, stamp on his chubby fingers, and punch his well packed gut, and now they were getting bored and worried at the same time.
Thing was, what now? There was no way he wouldn’t tell, not a chance. You could see to look at him he’d run squealing.
They’d tried threatening him with what would happen if he did, and drawn some very genuine sounding promises, but the older boys, especially Charlie, were beginning to realise they may have just, well, fucked up. They were fiery and impassioned yes, and they hated the rich bastard, but they were shrewd enough to have some idea of the status quo, and to wonder just what exactly would happen to them if it came out they’d assaulted the son of the local gentry.
All of them had seen a hanging, the taut noise of the rope didn’t seem so funny any more.
And now they were arguing, an argument that got worse, and attracted attention, because out in the wilderness in those days lurked things that don’t live in this part of the world any more. The spread of corporate religion, atheism and the industrial revolution has since banished them to countries where blood flows more freely, and education is still a luxury. But back then, even during the might of the Empire, they still skulked in the shadows of its provinces.
And something crept into their minds, a thing that feeds on malevolence, and it found its brightest mind not in Charlie, but in Cook’s son Iain. Charlie could be a nasty piece of work, like his dad he was big, and brash, and abusive, but he wasn’t a killer. Cook’s son on the other hand was the type of boy who is far angrier than most boys, an anger dredged down under a placid face that made other mothers smile, he could be a killer perhaps. And the god found him.
Gods need minds like that, because to be a great god requires servants willing to drench their hands in blood, to raise great love or fear in tribute to an image or a name.
And as the argument rose on, the boys unaware of eyes watching them from the thick boughs of the forest, Iain, the son of cook and a thoroughly respectable boy despite his class, picked up Fitzwilliam’s knife and dragged the bound boy away.
By the time the others noticed, distracted by the site of Charlie kicking the shit out of Gus, they had no idea where the other two boys had gone. And eventually they began to make their way back to the village and the estate.
And as they wandered home, confused, bitter and worried, Fitzwilliam’s eyes watered as the probing fingers of a god drove his one time friend to gut him while he still lived, with his own father’s knife.
They were on stone and in trees now, miles to the west of his home, near the peak of the Tyne valley. Something had been there once, something of a different god, a dead god. Something buried and forgotten before Hadrian had raised his wall, the remnants of which was less than a mile away.
But now it was ruined, and buried under earth and moss, and trees had grown up around. It was thirsty, and it drank the blood, and the new god, who up until then had been little more than a shred of malevolent thoughts in the wilderness, gained a form through sacrifice on a dead rival’s alter. And it birthed a disciple.
Fitzwilliam’s soul was gone, collected by Lady Death for her own master, he at least wasn’t in thrall to this god; the evangelical form of Christianity driven into him over his short life assured that he was taken for judgement like so many others. But Iain gave his soul to that new deity, and became his man, and with the last dredges of Fitzwilliam’s miserable life, he birthed the forest.
Gods have no form, or to be more accurate, a god can look as it wishes. They’re entertainers, they use theatrics and masks, play a part to inspire belief. They link themselves to the sun and moon; to death, life and birth; to wood, bronze, iron; to water, fire, stone; to wind and ice. To something the primitive apes they rule, and are at the same time ruled by, will worship. And they match their form, and let all know that they are that thing.
And so the thing that considered itself heavenly took a simple yet powerful image from Iain’s mind, and overhead the northern winds screamed in obedience to the thing that now called itself their master.
The forest crept and grew for a time, but it did not intend to stay, now was not its time. It allowed itself its glory, minutes, nothing more and then it crept on, its soul blackening earth far below the air, and it followed Iain.
Some people, many of whom were outwardly nastier people than the cook’s son, may have regretted what had happened. But Iain didn’t, he found taking another’s life meant nothing, and he understood he could do it again. Because ten frightened and regretful boys, blanketed with dark fear and darker guilt, would still be making their way home. They had come far after all. And in those days, the days of George the Second, it was possible to do many things if you had a mind.
He ran. He ran until his breath rattled from bloodstained lips, he ran until every muscle was an agony of flame, and he knew that agony was a sacrifice in itself, and it gave the thing that lived in the winds more and more strength. But no form of self sacrifice or prayer can rival a true offering, a sacrifice of blood, death and terror. A sacrifice of that sort is the strongest, that’s the sacrifice that makes a god.
And so Iain Carter ran through his pain, in an ecstasy of religion, and he caught his friends, though they barely would have known it was him. The boy came from encroaching dark as evening fell, and as they neared fields more familiar to them they stared in horror at the tattered, stinking, blood drenched creature waiting for them.
“Well,” the thing said, “he won’t be grassin’ none of us now.”
One of the boys started to cry, and Iain shot him a filthy look.
“Don’t be such a coward,” he said, “or I’ll do you next.”
“Hang on,” Charlie stepped forward. “Do what? You’ve hurt him, fair enough, but I know you Iain Carter, you ain’t got it in you to do someone in, not proper like.”
“You reckon?” Iain spat back, stepping closer to Charlie than Charlie felt comfortable with. “And I know you, Charlie Herbert. Not the man you thought you were, eh? Couldn’t go through with it in the end, can’t do what has to be done. Hardly a man at all, are ye’?”
“Piss off you pan faced little...”
But Iain cut him off by punching him in the stomach, and the knife blade wedged between his fingers punctured the older boy’s gut with a wet, slightly ridiculous noise. It took seconds but the other boys caught on and ran, only to be caught by the twisting limbs and roots erupting from the earth, as the god sent his forest to the aid of his first disciple. The thick, rotten wood looped round legs and bodies, and the screaming boys were caught. It took time for all of them to die, starting with Charlie, and working down to the youngest and smallest, Gus, who had watched the entire thing.
And then they were all done, and the roots drank the blood, but more potently the god drank the sacrifices and the terror and their impotent screams and prayers. The god of the northern winds was pleased, and Iain felt his pleasure. His own almost matched it, he was sure he was a man now.
As night drew in he took the bodies to the river, and left them floating. His house was dark when he got home, were they looking for him? Or had they not noticed he had gone? Either was possible. More likely was that they were looking for little, fat Fitzwilliam. Iain felt a hatred for the people he knew, and realised he was glad he was leaving. He washed and changed, took what little he wanted, then departed his home.
He had been right, many had been called in to search for the missing Fitzwilliam, the other boys held far less importance in the eyes of the right people. But, eventually, most of them returned. Once Iain was sure that Fitzwilliam’s family, and his own, were back at Orkney House, he prayed and begged for the forest once more. It ripped up the grounds around the house and smothered the dour building itself in dark branches. And then inside the boy started a fire, and left through a narrow gap in the boughs that sealed behind him. He watched from a distance as the house and those inside burned, all in the name of his god.
The flames did not touch the roots, but when they eventually sank back into the churned earth only the stone of the walls still stood.
Then Iain left, some distance away he burned his bloodier clothes and walked into his new life.
Things then weren’t as they are now, a few miles away could be foreign parts, out in the provinces, away from the cities and their enlightenment which was spreading slower than some thought. He went east, not far as we would think of it now, but he affected an accent, affected and education and nobody questioned it. He had always known he didn’t look like a servant.
He moved around and eventually settled in a hamlet called Huxton-on-the-Hill, the horrific things he had done did not catch him. In Huxton Iain he founded a religion, birthed a thing that lived in the wilds. He became more secretive when settled, he was older, more cautious, but driven in different ways. He had proved himself, more than proved himself in fact. The god lived now, firmly, secretly. But a god needs more than a man, a god needs a church, and a religion, even if they are to be small and secret. And Iain had to provide those things, to found them.
There had never been any pact or spoken agreement before that point, until then his loyalty had been unconditional and unasked for. But now things changed, he could feel age’s wither at the corners of his flesh, and then, in 1813, he agreed to head the new religion, to build its church in secret, in exchange for a more time, indefinite time.
Iain carter, the boy whom low stock who had done terrible things, did not look like a terrible person. Dark curls framed his pretty face, that curious girls had often called womanly. He liked his looks, and his locks, and his lithe fingers that he had always been sure were suited to fine arts, to music and writing, rather than labour. And with a god and a church behind him, those things could be his. There was no drawbacks to the gift, moralists tell us such a gift should come at a price, but if there was a price he did not see it as such.
He had to guide the church, but he became proficient at those crafts, and his violin playing was much admired. Frequently he would leave, travel the world for a number of years, and return as his own son to further guide the small, secret church that lived so remotely. And occasionally he would make sacrifice of the same kind he had birthed the god with, find someone devout in the church, and manipulate them into helping him. The faithful follower would be goaded by fear and manipulation, and together they would find some innocent victim, some person of pure faith, some person whose bravery could be broken and who could die in miserable fear.
Life would continue, the cook’s son knew that eventually he would be forced to surrender it himself, and he wondered what would happen when that day did arrive. Would he be tired, or would he live with this perpetual joy for his own life, and his perpetual thirst to see and know the world that was unfolding, and his constant, unending desire to worship that young and wild god.
He filled out his compact, he grew a church, a hidden and wiry thing, as tough as the dark briars that loitered beneath the earth. Both growing as the God of the Northern Winds did, gaining true life as he did. Not in a nice way, not in a serene haze of stained glass, noble architecture and harmonious music. Gods and their religions are bathed in the darker deeds of man, they’re vested in death, and a determination to sprout into magnificence and dominance from obscurity in the empty air of the wild places.
They grow from the blood, religions, those that grow strong. Its how we make it, even as we deplore it, and it’s us that suffers for them to be.
Copyright John Conway - 2011 - john.charles.conway@googlemail.com
Here’s the thing.
The boy named in the title wasn’t a very nice boy. There are things to recommend his class and things to despise them for, and he had adapted more of the latter traits than the former. Yet still, he didn’t deserve to be so lonely, and he didn’t deserve what happened one dull, brown, autumn day in his parent’s house too far north.
There was no society there, not really, but it was easier to affect lordship with a minor title, a larger house could be theirs. His father had more things to shoot, even if his mother had less conversation.
The house lay between villages in what we now know, well, those of us who know the area, as the fringes of Newcastle's west end. But there’s no trace of a house now, even under the terraces. You can find it on old maps, occasional references in the right documents, but nobody really remembers it. Those few who survived tried to forget.
So, the boy. We wouldn’t think him a nice child, but then those others he encountered weren’t either. He was a child between places, growing up with few boys of the right class to play with, and non of the right age, forbidden from associating with those below. So the children of the servants, the village urchins, the farm brats, those children he made the first tentative steps of friendship with at a young age. They hated him, and he hated them, and it allowed both sides to forget how much they envied one another.
His original governess was despatched post-haste, her name blackened, when it had come to his parent’s notice that he was associating with people outside his class. She was replaced by a tutor, who was ordered to fill the lake of his ignorance with wise and classical ideas, the right sort of knowledge.
It may have worked, they may have found him a man who could inspire the boy, a man who would give the boy company of a kind, who could understand what the boy needed and teach him in a manner that his parents would disapprove of, without them knowing. Had they provided him with that man, the boy needn’t have been such an emotionally crippled thing.
Instead the man they found was a black-hearted and wounded creature, devilishly smart but with no real desire to spread this gift; a man who stuck rigidly to the bare teaching hours and the dreary subjects approved by his parents, a man who made no attempt to help the boy. He did deviate from their wishes in a manner they were clueless of, but not in a way that could do anything but further injure Fitzwilliam, further twist him into a similarly dark hearted, angry creature. To describe it as that tutor might have described it, he abused him in the manner of Laius, and that was that.
So it wasn’t the boy’s fault he was hated, really. In a similar way it wasn’t his parent’s fault they were so incapable of loving or raising a child, or his tutor’s fault he was such a bitter and perverted man, or the local children’s fault they despised the lonely boy. They did to him as others had done to them, but I’ll say one thing for the boy, he ended that line.
None of them survived it, you see.
So the event itself, well that was a bad day. It began with cook’s son Iain, he’d played with Fitzwilliam when younger and now felt unaccountably angry that the boy no longer spoke to him. He saw Fitzwilliam had returned from school, his dark eyes in a perpetual frown, and had slunk away from Orkney House in a foul mood.
Down near the river he had met two of the farm brats, hiding because their da’ was due to start the harvest and they were determined to be out of earshot while the sun lasted, and they had cheered him up in a traditional country manner, by throwing stones at some animals for a time.
And they all talked about how much they hated the Fitzwilliam boy; flabby, stuck up and bookish, with a horribly intense stare and few words for anyone, let alone them. And they talked on, and they boisterously joked about how much fun it would be to lure him away, to do him in. The afternoon wore on and idle talk became more serious as they egged one another on. And then they told Gus down at the village, and he told his sister, and soon enough there were eleven of them all in.
So how to get him away from the house? None of them fancied the beating they would get if they were found out, or the even worse beating they would get if their parents were sacked as they very well could be, so they knew it had to be away from the house, and the villages and the farms. They needed the wilder places, still not too distant.
But how to get him there? They tried to think of ways, something they could say to make him come with them, some way they could trick him, but nothing they could think of would work, and everything would give him at least one face, who would have to suffer later on. So they decided to abduct him. Grab him, blind him, stop him from hearing or shouting and get him away from other people. They could figure out the rest as they went along, plenty of places they could go.
By this point Charlie was in charge, one of the bigger farm boys, and very keen to hurt any fucker as lucky as the snobs of Orkney House. Cook’s son, Iain, was beginning to have doubts, but things were rolling on now, He wasn’t prepared to stand up to them, he wasn’t sure that he wanted too.
And they did it the next day, the next morning.
Fitzwilliam was hiding himself, not from farm work, but from dry books and dry, probing fingers. He was out of the house’s grounds, he’d taken a knife and was sitting, stabbing the tip into the thick bark of an oak, not crying, because boys like him didn’t cry.
He was of a mind to use the knife, and was probably capable of it; he didn’t have a high opinion of the worth of others, especially not the children of servant and estate workers, but he didn’t have a chance. Because all of their plans for subtlety were lost when Gus excitedly yelled; “There’s the cunt, ower there!”
Their hopes of anonymity gone, Charlie was already lobbing a rock at Fitzwilliam’s head.
Hours later they were well away from the farms and the villages they knew. They’d had some fun, taking it in turns to kick his face, stamp on his chubby fingers, and punch his well packed gut, and now they were getting bored and worried at the same time.
Thing was, what now? There was no way he wouldn’t tell, not a chance. You could see to look at him he’d run squealing.
They’d tried threatening him with what would happen if he did, and drawn some very genuine sounding promises, but the older boys, especially Charlie, were beginning to realise they may have just, well, fucked up. They were fiery and impassioned yes, and they hated the rich bastard, but they were shrewd enough to have some idea of the status quo, and to wonder just what exactly would happen to them if it came out they’d assaulted the son of the local gentry.
All of them had seen a hanging, the taut noise of the rope didn’t seem so funny any more.
And now they were arguing, an argument that got worse, and attracted attention, because out in the wilderness in those days lurked things that don’t live in this part of the world any more. The spread of corporate religion, atheism and the industrial revolution has since banished them to countries where blood flows more freely, and education is still a luxury. But back then, even during the might of the Empire, they still skulked in the shadows of its provinces.
And something crept into their minds, a thing that feeds on malevolence, and it found its brightest mind not in Charlie, but in Cook’s son Iain. Charlie could be a nasty piece of work, like his dad he was big, and brash, and abusive, but he wasn’t a killer. Cook’s son on the other hand was the type of boy who is far angrier than most boys, an anger dredged down under a placid face that made other mothers smile, he could be a killer perhaps. And the god found him.
Gods need minds like that, because to be a great god requires servants willing to drench their hands in blood, to raise great love or fear in tribute to an image or a name.
And as the argument rose on, the boys unaware of eyes watching them from the thick boughs of the forest, Iain, the son of cook and a thoroughly respectable boy despite his class, picked up Fitzwilliam’s knife and dragged the bound boy away.
By the time the others noticed, distracted by the site of Charlie kicking the shit out of Gus, they had no idea where the other two boys had gone. And eventually they began to make their way back to the village and the estate.
And as they wandered home, confused, bitter and worried, Fitzwilliam’s eyes watered as the probing fingers of a god drove his one time friend to gut him while he still lived, with his own father’s knife.
They were on stone and in trees now, miles to the west of his home, near the peak of the Tyne valley. Something had been there once, something of a different god, a dead god. Something buried and forgotten before Hadrian had raised his wall, the remnants of which was less than a mile away.
But now it was ruined, and buried under earth and moss, and trees had grown up around. It was thirsty, and it drank the blood, and the new god, who up until then had been little more than a shred of malevolent thoughts in the wilderness, gained a form through sacrifice on a dead rival’s alter. And it birthed a disciple.
Fitzwilliam’s soul was gone, collected by Lady Death for her own master, he at least wasn’t in thrall to this god; the evangelical form of Christianity driven into him over his short life assured that he was taken for judgement like so many others. But Iain gave his soul to that new deity, and became his man, and with the last dredges of Fitzwilliam’s miserable life, he birthed the forest.
Gods have no form, or to be more accurate, a god can look as it wishes. They’re entertainers, they use theatrics and masks, play a part to inspire belief. They link themselves to the sun and moon; to death, life and birth; to wood, bronze, iron; to water, fire, stone; to wind and ice. To something the primitive apes they rule, and are at the same time ruled by, will worship. And they match their form, and let all know that they are that thing.
And so the thing that considered itself heavenly took a simple yet powerful image from Iain’s mind, and overhead the northern winds screamed in obedience to the thing that now called itself their master.
The forest crept and grew for a time, but it did not intend to stay, now was not its time. It allowed itself its glory, minutes, nothing more and then it crept on, its soul blackening earth far below the air, and it followed Iain.
Some people, many of whom were outwardly nastier people than the cook’s son, may have regretted what had happened. But Iain didn’t, he found taking another’s life meant nothing, and he understood he could do it again. Because ten frightened and regretful boys, blanketed with dark fear and darker guilt, would still be making their way home. They had come far after all. And in those days, the days of George the Second, it was possible to do many things if you had a mind.
He ran. He ran until his breath rattled from bloodstained lips, he ran until every muscle was an agony of flame, and he knew that agony was a sacrifice in itself, and it gave the thing that lived in the winds more and more strength. But no form of self sacrifice or prayer can rival a true offering, a sacrifice of blood, death and terror. A sacrifice of that sort is the strongest, that’s the sacrifice that makes a god.
And so Iain Carter ran through his pain, in an ecstasy of religion, and he caught his friends, though they barely would have known it was him. The boy came from encroaching dark as evening fell, and as they neared fields more familiar to them they stared in horror at the tattered, stinking, blood drenched creature waiting for them.
“Well,” the thing said, “he won’t be grassin’ none of us now.”
One of the boys started to cry, and Iain shot him a filthy look.
“Don’t be such a coward,” he said, “or I’ll do you next.”
“Hang on,” Charlie stepped forward. “Do what? You’ve hurt him, fair enough, but I know you Iain Carter, you ain’t got it in you to do someone in, not proper like.”
“You reckon?” Iain spat back, stepping closer to Charlie than Charlie felt comfortable with. “And I know you, Charlie Herbert. Not the man you thought you were, eh? Couldn’t go through with it in the end, can’t do what has to be done. Hardly a man at all, are ye’?”
“Piss off you pan faced little...”
But Iain cut him off by punching him in the stomach, and the knife blade wedged between his fingers punctured the older boy’s gut with a wet, slightly ridiculous noise. It took seconds but the other boys caught on and ran, only to be caught by the twisting limbs and roots erupting from the earth, as the god sent his forest to the aid of his first disciple. The thick, rotten wood looped round legs and bodies, and the screaming boys were caught. It took time for all of them to die, starting with Charlie, and working down to the youngest and smallest, Gus, who had watched the entire thing.
And then they were all done, and the roots drank the blood, but more potently the god drank the sacrifices and the terror and their impotent screams and prayers. The god of the northern winds was pleased, and Iain felt his pleasure. His own almost matched it, he was sure he was a man now.
As night drew in he took the bodies to the river, and left them floating. His house was dark when he got home, were they looking for him? Or had they not noticed he had gone? Either was possible. More likely was that they were looking for little, fat Fitzwilliam. Iain felt a hatred for the people he knew, and realised he was glad he was leaving. He washed and changed, took what little he wanted, then departed his home.
He had been right, many had been called in to search for the missing Fitzwilliam, the other boys held far less importance in the eyes of the right people. But, eventually, most of them returned. Once Iain was sure that Fitzwilliam’s family, and his own, were back at Orkney House, he prayed and begged for the forest once more. It ripped up the grounds around the house and smothered the dour building itself in dark branches. And then inside the boy started a fire, and left through a narrow gap in the boughs that sealed behind him. He watched from a distance as the house and those inside burned, all in the name of his god.
The flames did not touch the roots, but when they eventually sank back into the churned earth only the stone of the walls still stood.
Then Iain left, some distance away he burned his bloodier clothes and walked into his new life.
Things then weren’t as they are now, a few miles away could be foreign parts, out in the provinces, away from the cities and their enlightenment which was spreading slower than some thought. He went east, not far as we would think of it now, but he affected an accent, affected and education and nobody questioned it. He had always known he didn’t look like a servant.
He moved around and eventually settled in a hamlet called Huxton-on-the-Hill, the horrific things he had done did not catch him. In Huxton Iain he founded a religion, birthed a thing that lived in the wilds. He became more secretive when settled, he was older, more cautious, but driven in different ways. He had proved himself, more than proved himself in fact. The god lived now, firmly, secretly. But a god needs more than a man, a god needs a church, and a religion, even if they are to be small and secret. And Iain had to provide those things, to found them.
There had never been any pact or spoken agreement before that point, until then his loyalty had been unconditional and unasked for. But now things changed, he could feel age’s wither at the corners of his flesh, and then, in 1813, he agreed to head the new religion, to build its church in secret, in exchange for a more time, indefinite time.
Iain carter, the boy whom low stock who had done terrible things, did not look like a terrible person. Dark curls framed his pretty face, that curious girls had often called womanly. He liked his looks, and his locks, and his lithe fingers that he had always been sure were suited to fine arts, to music and writing, rather than labour. And with a god and a church behind him, those things could be his. There was no drawbacks to the gift, moralists tell us such a gift should come at a price, but if there was a price he did not see it as such.
He had to guide the church, but he became proficient at those crafts, and his violin playing was much admired. Frequently he would leave, travel the world for a number of years, and return as his own son to further guide the small, secret church that lived so remotely. And occasionally he would make sacrifice of the same kind he had birthed the god with, find someone devout in the church, and manipulate them into helping him. The faithful follower would be goaded by fear and manipulation, and together they would find some innocent victim, some person of pure faith, some person whose bravery could be broken and who could die in miserable fear.
Life would continue, the cook’s son knew that eventually he would be forced to surrender it himself, and he wondered what would happen when that day did arrive. Would he be tired, or would he live with this perpetual joy for his own life, and his perpetual thirst to see and know the world that was unfolding, and his constant, unending desire to worship that young and wild god.
He filled out his compact, he grew a church, a hidden and wiry thing, as tough as the dark briars that loitered beneath the earth. Both growing as the God of the Northern Winds did, gaining true life as he did. Not in a nice way, not in a serene haze of stained glass, noble architecture and harmonious music. Gods and their religions are bathed in the darker deeds of man, they’re vested in death, and a determination to sprout into magnificence and dominance from obscurity in the empty air of the wild places.
They grow from the blood, religions, those that grow strong. Its how we make it, even as we deplore it, and it’s us that suffers for them to be.
Copyright John Conway - 2011 - john.charles.conway@googlemail.com
Friday 1 April 2011
Titus Awakes.
Will be released 7th July it would appear. Alongside a new, illustrated edition of the sequence's first three books.
And very pretty they both look, too.
And very pretty they both look, too.
A bit of a refresh.
As Editred sadly disappeared some time back most of the story entries on here had stopped working, so I decided a spot of spring cleaning might be in order.
They were mostly old versions of stuff I have much improved, and a few that should never have seen the light of day.
However expect more to come.
The lovely folk at Friction Magazine have just been in contact to tell me they will publish one of my more recent efforts, Fitzwilliam and the God of the Northern Winds, in their next issue. This is due online any day now, and I shall of course provide a link when I do.
I'm also whittling away at my entry for this year's Northern Writer's Awards, which will be the first 3000 words of the book I am working on, The Cuckoo In Winter (which I hope will be the first in a sequence of books to be called A Northern Wind Is Blowing). I think that too might make an appearance, as I am increasingly pleased with it.
They were mostly old versions of stuff I have much improved, and a few that should never have seen the light of day.
However expect more to come.
The lovely folk at Friction Magazine have just been in contact to tell me they will publish one of my more recent efforts, Fitzwilliam and the God of the Northern Winds, in their next issue. This is due online any day now, and I shall of course provide a link when I do.
I'm also whittling away at my entry for this year's Northern Writer's Awards, which will be the first 3000 words of the book I am working on, The Cuckoo In Winter (which I hope will be the first in a sequence of books to be called A Northern Wind Is Blowing). I think that too might make an appearance, as I am increasingly pleased with it.
I Write Like...
I like this result. Means I might even stop taking the piss out of things like these now.
Or possibly not.
Or possibly not.
Saturday 1 January 2011
The Raven
Some bugger made this on a tiny budget, and now it's being made into a film with presumably a much bigger one.
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