Category — Stort stories

And tonight I had to ask,

WTF  happens in the bathroom, Nigel?

Everything in there is drenched. All the toilet paper is wet, if I leave clothes, towels hairdriers there when I come back to get them they are wet.
Not damp Nigel  WET.  Sit on the dunny and you get rained on.

I cleaned it all up on the weekend wiped all the walls and the ceiling. Lovingly dried it off.

Tonight I go to the toilet and get rained on, again, the toilet paper is wet and I look at the floor and there’s a tiny little river of water, cascading between the tiles and the wall with a few struggling ant boatmen, rafting towards the drain on the sodden shells of cockroaches.
I clean the bathroom up, again cursing. Finally the smell of his burning dinner gets him downstairs. How to deal with this?
I opt for the, I am stupid and you are the cleffa one approach.

Nigel, I said, have you noticed if there is a leak or something when you have a shower…..in the ceiling maybe?

No… nuffin like that. Why?

Oh, it’s just I get rained on in there and the toilet paper is wet, everything is slimy and there is water banked up around the wall.

GUFFAW! Nothing to worry about, it just me I like a sauna and there isn’t one around so I turn the hot water on full and just let it steam up the room. Sauna is good for your skin. He says rocking on his size 994B feet his eyes twinkling with the realisation of his own cleverness.

Oh well, like I told you the other day about the power bill Nigel, blah, blah, expensive blah, hot, etc water, etc and, jeez….  MAAATE everything is fookin drenched.

Yeah, he larfs, even my clothes are soaked when I finish its just condensation, it’s ok. No need to worry. There’s no leak or anyfing like that.

Yeah! Well Nigel here’s the thing mate, I’m tired of having a piss in the rain it’s most fuckin uncomfortable and the FTP is cold and wet on my fanny and it’s pissing me orf.

AW well I suppose I could not have so much steam.
Aw well do you really think so Nigel, because that would be really fucking good if you could manage that mate because I’m sick of being watered like a bloody African Violet.

Tracy and Kitsu were sitting at a window table in the Green Iguana café on King just near the lights. The cars were angry, the red lights were really pissing them off.

Tracy was sipping one of those weak-soy-milk-caps with a dash of cold, the kind where coffee wasn’t a requirement to earn the name cappuccino. Her chair rocked back and forwards as she interrogated a bowl of muesli. Sultanas unable to submit a convincing argument to their usefulness were extradited to the far side of the bowl.

Kitsu watched in fascination, her macchiato’s, one for each hand, waited quietly on the table.

The waiter approached.

Deliciously scrambled eggs with wilted spinach was placed in front of her, wood, warm and worn from use appeared, and hovered over her eggs. The eyes of the waiter met Kitsu’s a covert operation was underway. The passion-ometer processed data, moving it quickly back and forth across the boulevard of unspoken desire.

A backup file was created.

Smell, dark, musky, pepper freshly cracked.  The waiter moved gracefully back behind the command position where decorative jars of yellow and red preserves mingled with untidy glasses of dead biros, blue. He hit the browse button.  A size ten challenged couple filled groaning chairs in the corner. A scan was initiated but a firewall had been installed.

The man was wearing a grey fisherman’s vest, the kind with pockets so big you could lose your passport in them forever. A leather shoulder strap strained diagonally across his chest and at the end of it a Nikon.  She was trying to wear white, with a money belt. By definition he was a tourist. So was she.  A plate of cheese and ham croissants with nowhere else to go sat helplessly in front of each of them. She licked grease, from her shiny rotunderingers.

Tracy looked across at them. “ Americans,” she said. Kitsu glanced over at the translucent skin and chests struggling to breath. “Naw, Ger-mainz.”
Tracy’s eyes scrolled down.  She shrugged, maneuvered continuously, miserably on her butt cheeks.
“What’s your problem, wanna go?”
“That’s it I don’t think I can go hunting today.”
“ Oh no… don’t do this. You always do this. Come on let’s go. Today is our lucky day. You’ll see, lets hit the road.”

Tracy hesitated, eyes in a funk and then,

“This is stupid, its’ some wacked out story you and your grandfather came up with while you were on magic mushies or something. I dunno, but there’s no freakin shape shifting silver fox.” She flopped back in her chair, “I’m just to old for this shitake, Kitsu!”
“You don’t look old…you’re older than me but you look…you look.”  Kitsu scanned the other woman’s face. The heavy kingfisher blue eye shadow, the black kohl, and then the two tone lips outlined in some shade of mocha-cha-cha-poo-poo to make them look huge…. really huge. It was a spinning-rainbow-wheel-of-death moment.

The scan terminated she couldn’t find the go back button. She had to go on.

“You look awesome. I can’t wear makeup the way you do.” Kitsu hit pause, searching desperately for the right words but terrified of being involved they had left for the coast. “Maybe I should have a resurfacing job done too. How much was it, again?” she said arching to see her reflection in the café window and prodding her cheekbones.

Tracy squirmed and moved towards the edge of the chair growling “You, don’t, understand. It’s a war, I’ve fought with every piece of cosmetic surgery available but…” She squirmed-uncomfortable-distressed.
“What? Come on, get on with it the hounds are waiting.”
Tracy had nothing left “I burnt myself bleaching my pubic hair to match my-” Her scrawny hand tugged at her blonde pageboy.
Kitsu’s cups crashed landed in their saucers. The waiter bounded to her side. She waved him away.  “Why?”
“I found my first grey pubic hair last week. So I - ”
“Wait, no details. What were you thinking? You were thinking weren‘t you?”
“What if Johnny saw I was grey. Down there.”
Kitsu was trying to hold on to her composure but it was trying to catch up to the words on their way to the coast. Grey pewbs, huh! This was an eventuality she had never spent time wondering about but now that Tracy mentioned it, well, it was obvious. KERCHING, KAPOW, KAZOOM!  Hair goes grey, even that hair! Wow the final frontier breached, or in this case bleached. Who woulda thunk it? Who woulda spent that much time worrying about it? She thought but managed to say, “Why would he care. Seven years, you’ve been together!”
“Eight. It worries me.”
“Come on. It happens, get over it, move on nobody will ever see, well nobody except you and Johnny.”
“You don’t get it I don’t want him to see, I don’t want him to know.”
“Jeez, fr…. he sees you plasticize, rasterise, and redraw but you’re worried about his reaction to a grey hair? And, I thought you were a bottle blond…considered the alternatives, a Brazilian, or a merkin I saw a show on the discovery channel about them the other day!”
“Merkin?”
“A muffy wig, come in all colours. You could get it in his favourite colour .”
“A Brazilian would hurt.”
“Less blisters.”
“You’re not getting it. It is so stressful trying to stay looking good for him, he is so young.”
Kitsu straightened her discarded cups and coffee-stained saucers, “He’s not that young he is over thirty.”
“I’m over fifty.”
Kitsu groaned. “ Aren’t we all? He doesn’t give a dam. He is still with you isn‘t he? It‘s obviously for love because you aint got any money, honey. “
Tracy was on the verge of tears but years of training prevented her from ruining her makeup. She pouted instead. “I ‘m tired, it’s such hard work. You go chase that stupid fox I’m not going. I’ve reached my use by date. It’s all right for you. Look at you, your still foxy, with your impossibly high cheekbones, a wash and wear body and NO wrinkles, how did you do that? Not age!”
“I don’t think about it, maybe I’m like the silver fox I magically improve with age.” Kitsu looked at her reflection in the café window, huh she thought curious.
Tracy groaned, “It’s just a fox there is nothing magical or mystical about it.”
“Says you the weaver of spells and potions.”
“I’m still not sitting on a horse for three hours.”
“Fine, you can sit in the hunt bar drinking g and t’s and ask your Tarot cards if Johnny cares whether you bleach muffy or not until I get back. I‘m not going without your scrawny old butt.” Tracy ran out of the Green Iguana.

Kitsu paid the bill and trotted after her to the car.

The car a Cherokee jeep, was more than ready to go, it had been waiting for nearly two hours. It was over it, it wanted to get out of there.  It wanted to feel the wind in its’ grill, the open road under its’ steel belted radials. It car-growled.

At the hunt club Tracy sat in the armchairs nearest to the window. A bar steward approached, he took their order of Bombay Gin with tonic and a slice of lime, not lemon and stored it in his mind next to the mental note that said pick up the dry cleaning and a carton of milk on the way home. By the time he got to the bar the note about lime not lemon had been lost and was going to cause a problem later on with Tracy.

“They were English.”
Tracy looked confused. “What were English?”
“The fat white couple.” Kitsu prodded against the deliberate silence, “What, what is it?”
“So you think I’ve got a scrawny old butt.’
Kitsu groaned. “Jeez give it a break I was just trying to lighten things up.”
“Yeah that’s working.”
Kitsu crossed her now jodhpur clad legs. “That’s obvious.”
Tracy could feel some bodies eyes all over her as they approached she looked up it was Todd Hunter .“You‘re not dressed yet?”
“She’s suffering from olditis can’t climb on a horse.”
“Well then maybe it should be off to bed with a warm milk and brandy for you instead of that gin and tonic. Rest those old bones of yours.  Come on it’s a good fox sighting day.”
Tracy snapped, “Their two words I never want to hear again OLD and FOX. I’m sick of hearing about that stupid shape shifting fox. ”
Todd Hunter gave Kitsu a, I see what you mean look. His feet shuffled, “ Come on, the fox promised Jack she’d..”
Suddenly he went all misty his eyes turned to a distant vista. “I remember..” Tracy groaned and mouthed invisible words. Todd stared at her. She stared back. He continued, lost in entrancing thoughts spoken out loud. “Jack enticed her to his side with gifts of warm milk and honey… many tried but his hand was the only one she ate from.  At night, out of sight of prying eyes she would slip to his side and together they would sit in the moonlight. As she intrigued him with her adventures among the stars his fingers patiently worked the honey into the milk.

Then, hungry and impatient she would nudge his hand from the bowl. He would surrender to her as her soft pink tongue lapped and curled gently around his fingers seeking the milk and honey.”  Todd Hunter paused lost in thought. “She had answers to questions he didn’t even know he needed the answers to. I have a few questions too.”
“Listen, she doesn’t exist. And if it does it’s probably got arthritis, osteoporosis and heart disease.” Tracy hailed the waiter.
“And wrinkles?” said Kitsu
“You’re making fun of me?”
“Just trying to get you to lighten up old girl”
‘You’re so childish. I’m sick of hunting that silver fox, if she exists she must be the most ancient creature alive and deserves a break.”
“She could be.  Old Jack thought she was a celestial fox from the stars and…”
“Yadda, yadda, yadda I know. When a fox turns fifty it has mystical power and can become a woman or a man yadda yadda yadda.” The sound of the pack woofing in the background interrupted her.

Kitsu sprung to Todd Hunter’s side. “We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Frack you’re always so freaken enthusiastic.”  Gin and Tonic spilled out the corners of her gortex lips. “I’ll be here.”

Kitsu padded softly after Todd Hunter. Her senses were roused. She was ready to ride.

The call of the hunting horn and they were off. Kitsu’s huge mare leapt to the front of the field. A mile away with the hounds just ahead of her they came to a jump and the mare lifted easily into the air without loosing a beat. They were moving quickly. The hounds had headed off to the north.  Kitsu was close to them, her mare never lost the lead.

The morning was gathering speed, racing towards a long cold vodka martini when Kitsu saw the quick flash of fox fur. The mare turned and followed it into a wooded area, twisting and turning through the trees towards the creek. The horse dropped her nose at the waters edge and wet her lips.  Kitsu pulled a small parcel from inside her jacket, unwrapped three smackos, dismounted and climbed onto a boulder to wait.

The fox moved quickly into a low-slung tangle of scrub. She was on the trail. It was the fox trail, with many secret tentacle trails. This time of the year the wattle along the creek is out I’ll go there she thought and turned south to the creek.
The air updated the progress of the dogs to her.  A lizard scuttled out of her way. She smiled, fox smile silky. She moved quickly, too quickly for the branches to get out of her way and they snapped back in annoyance, depositing clouds of golden pollen upon her back their voices crackling in air above her. She heard the creek whispering up ahead and her feet hastened to the sound. Passing her on the trail was a smell, dark, deep, and a tantalizing smell. A smell familiar, yet not familiar.  There was something else… but the smell called and she abandoned caution to hurry to it. She was a few velvet feet steps away from the creek now and the water became anxious it’s summons, strong and insistent - it had news for her. Hurry! Her nose investigated the air, strong and delicious smells resembling meat. Ah, hurry fox, hurry…there, see!

Meat, but not meat coming from the top of that big boulder.

She padded towards the boulder circling it carefully in one direction then in the other her nose keeping an eye on the origin of the smell. Her feet keeping an eye on the path she stopped and rested on three feet, one paw played with the air then rested on dark river stones. Then leapt silently to the source of the smell. Her cells scintillated. She nearly fell off the boulder with shock.

The red fox had come to the conclusion some time ago that things were not always what they seemed to be and this only confirmed it. It was agreed that the smackos should be shared and when they were finished the red fox licked the salty flavour from her fingers.

What a curiously human looking fox, the fox thought!

The morning had been long. The afternoon hot, the drive back with a gin soaked Tracy, tedious. Tracy’s self-righteous “I told you, you’d never catch that fox, there is no fox, sorry, “SILVER FOX”, your Grandfathers  fho-x stories are boring,” eventually sending herself to sleep.

Kitsu stood in the warm embrace of the shower.
The late afternoon sun trickled in through the window striking her body. She closed her eyes and caressed her sore shoulders. The moment wanted to be enjoyed - she obliged it. The water delighted, ran the length of her body soaking up knowledge of her as it went remembering the colour, the curves and the soft touch of her skin. She picked up the shampoo to rid her hair of dust, horse and fox. She got the shampoo all worked up then let the water flush it out of her copper locks.

Her eyes rode the filtered afternoon sunlight to the park.   She thought about the morning the heat, the hunt, the smell of fox.

Something stirred, she looked down and there caught in the sunlight curled up snug, was the silver fox its soft pink tongue winking at her.  Kitsu laughed.  She reached down and stroked the soft fur now wet and heavy from the shower. She teased the strands, a soft pink tongue curled around her fingers as she separated the silver from the red hair   “At last fox we meet.”
The fox laughed. Kitsu laughed. The water laughed.
A measure of creamy liquid spurted into her palm. She cradled the silver red locks in one hand while applying the herbal shampoo with the other. The fox’s coat shimmered, its pearly pink tongue winked.
Still laughing Kitsu rinsed the soft red-silver fur then grabbed the conditioner, massaging the tantalizing scent of twelve woodland herbs through the gold.
She turned off the water. Turned the blow drier to gentle heat and tousled the silken coat, warming and drying the rare creature. Fox smiles. Kitsu padded to the her room pulled a shirt on it felt odd, confining she stared at it. “Huh!” she crooned. She ripped it off and grabbed armfuls of clothes moved quickly to the window and threw them out into the street below.

She was throwing shoes out when the phone rang it was Tracy, the gin had worn off.
“Listen I just wanted to say, well you know. I’m sorry.  All those things I said about gramps… you know I didn’t mean it. I am sorry. I loved the old guy too.” Fox ears twitched.” You are listening aren’t you Kitsu. I mean, well you know. I’m a little stressed with things and all.”
“Yep I know.”
“It’s just that I worry so much. I know these things don’t mean anything to you but… But I’ve got nothing, just Johnny. If he leaves I have nothing.”
Kitsu yelped excitedly. “I’ve found the silver fox!”
“Kitsu you need to get out come over to my place we’ll have coffee.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“ Don’t be ridiculous. You have a walk in wardrobe full.”
“I threw it all out.”
“You threw it out?“
“Yes all of it. Out the window.  I’m going to buy new things tomorrow!”
“Kitsu!”
Kitsu scanned her body, stretching her arms, her toes, twisting to see her back as she walked to the window and peered over the railing to see her clothes strewn around.
“I most certainly did.” She glanced across to the park where several dark shapes bounded into the undergrowth. They looked a lot like foxes. Foxes in the city! City foxes! She thought out loud.
“You’re obsessed,” groaned Tracy. “Your mind is going, you need to get onto some HRT. How much soy are you eating?”
“Fried?” Kitsu hung up and padded around the apartment exploring, it all looked different.
Soon, Tracy knocked at the door “Kitsu, Kitsu let me in. I’ve collected your clothes of the street. I’ve brought you some tofu. Kitsu! The concierge is going to send someone out on to the awning get the rest. ”
Kitsu eyed the door, the open window and the park outside. She didn’t really care about the clothes. She didn’t really care about eating HRT or tofu. All she really cared about was the smackos in the fridge. They were getting dangerously low and she didn’t know who was eating them but it wasn’t the dog that she didn’t have.
She didn’t feel like talking to Tracy at all, Tracy was going to annoy her she could tell. She padded softly to the kitchen and set a bowl of milk and honey on the bench.
The door barked urgently again, some one was on the other side causing it grief but it stood its ground. Its job was to admit and repel and today it was drunk with power and wasn’t letting anyone in and nothing was going to change its mind. Especially a bleating blonde.

Kitsu’s ears were twitching uncontrollably. She followed them to the balcony. It was late a few God sunrays were waiting to be deleted. The soft silver hairs on her ears flinched. She heard the call.  Then down in the park just to the left of the magnolia tree she saw him, a male fox. He had been waiting for her for a long time. He was younger than her but he was more than ready for her. She had been on this earth for more than a thousand years, and she had been notoriously hard to catch. There were things, things he wanted to know he called her again. Effortlessly she leapt to the railing.

He called again.

Laughing, Kitsu sprang into the great everything and noticed for the first time, the soft silver down on her paws.