The List

This is part 3 of the Postman for part 1 click here, part 2 click here and for part 4 here
I think it works as a stand alone too. 

Karel's head felt like he had a thousand hangovers crammed in there at once. His mouth was dry and his tongue tasted of sick. His teeth felt like he'd cleaned them in sewage. He lay with his eyes closed hoping that when he opened them he'd be in his hotel room, safe and well with the package Fritz had meant to pick up intact beside him. But he knew damn well he wasn't.
He stretched out on the bed and tried to clear his mind. He tried to think what he knew.
Someone had betrayed them, someone had got to the Postman, or maybe the Postman had always been foe, maybe this was a honey trap. Like a drug dealer willing to give away some good shit in the knowledge the user would get greedy, take risks, come back for more. Is that what Fritz and he had become, information junkies, desperate for the next big scoop.
His head ached but he was alive, that was the one thing going in his favour.
“On your feet,” Karel opened his eyes to see the woman standing in front of him. Her face stern yet amused. Two guards came in and grabbed his arms to make sure he obeyed her. “I’ve got some stuff to show you,” she said with a smile and turned her back and left the cell. Karel was man-handled along to the interview room.
One good thing had come from his vomiting. The stale smell had been replaced by bleach, not much better, but better. There was a glass of water on the table and Karel instinctively reached for it and took a sip. Swilling his mouth and swallowing. 

She stood there watching him. That smile sat on her lips. Was it even a smile or just a sinister grimace? She stepped forward.

“Look,” she said, and started dealing the documents she had in her hand like playing cards.

“Forensic evidence that shows gun shot residue on your hands.”

Karel shrugged.

“Forensic evidence that shows your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

She was enjoying this.

“Telephone records that show you in contact with the Iranian foreign ministry.”

Karel had to admit they were high quality forgeries.

“And listen,” She leant over and pressed play on a recording machine.

“Yes I killed him, he was going to betray me. He had to die.”

Karel thumped the table. It was his voice, but he’d never said those words. He hadn’t said anything.

“Good isn’t it?” She looked pleased with her work. We’re the best in the world at this kind of stuff. She left him to stew for a moment.

“Shall I use a technical term,” she said. Karel ignored her. “You’re fucked. Completely fucked. We’ve got the evidence to lock you up for ever. And we might even go for the death penalty.” She let the words hang in the air.  “Or of course…” she continued.

Karel didn’t look at her. He hid eyes with his hands. She was right, things were not looking good for him here, but this was all lies and where there were lies there was hope.

“Of course,” she said collecting up the papers she’d laid out on the table. “There is another way.”

Now Karel looked at her. He hated that beautiful face. Would happily smash it into a thousand pieces.

She got out another piece of paper and moved it into the middle of the table. It was a list of names. Karel looked at the ceiling and wondered if the brown circles had got bigger since he was last here.

“Who do you work with?” she said, moving the list closer. “Who are your sources?”

Karel kept staring at the water marks, ignoring the list, ignoring the request.

“Help me and I can help you get out of here.”

“Why the fuck should I help you?” They were the first words Karel had spoken in this room. “You killed my friend and then framed me for it. If I give you names, you won’t let me go. You’ll just have me and the names. You can fuck off lady.”

“You stubborn little prick. What do you think? That your liberal, leftist, idealistic principles are going to get you out of this mess? You think a jury of your peers will see you right? Jesus by the time we finish with you even Amnesty International will be calling for you to hang.” She pulled an imaginary noose around her own neck.” “Selling secrets to the Iranians, to ISIS, to the Taliban, you’re going to hell in a hand cart.” She stood up and circled him before unleashing a blow of such force that Karel slumped forward and smacked his head on the table. Those birds above his head sang, and Karel passed out.

The Alien Invasions - Prague Diaries

Insomnia. At least ten of my stories feature the word, I have no idea how many confront the issue in one way or another. It’s a common theme in my fiction because it is a common theme in my life. Going to bed feeling like all I need to do is hit the sheets and I’ll be out. Getting to to bed to find that I’m wide awake and ready for another hard day’s night. I wish tossing and turning was an Olympic sport. Imagine the medals I would win with the hours of practice I put in every night. I think I show more dedication to my insomnia than I have to anything else in life, Women, Writing, Work, have all come and gone but my insomnia is a constant companion.

It doesn’t matter where I am, home or away, I perform just as well. Over the past three weeks I’ve stared at midnight ceilings in Cardiff, Prague and Tallinn, listening to the sounds of the night, watching the shadows on the wall, and worrying about the time I called Mark Lewis a tadpole in Junior School; will he ever forgive me?

Insomnia Haiku

Insomnia has

no boundaries. Sleepless in Wales

And sleepless in Prague.

But sometimes insomnia is a blessing rather than a curse. It allows you to discover things that no one else knows exist. The silence of the car park in the dead of night, the couple fornicating in the park opposite my flat, the naked dog walker that dances in the rain, and best of all, the existence of aliens.

Sometimes I’m so committed to my insomnia I dream of being awake. But I must have been sleeping because I woke up. The way my body was contorted on the bed suggested it had been a restless sleep. There was a dream to be remembered but it stayed in the shadows, not ready to reveal itself. My eyes drank in the night light and grew accustomed to the shades and shadows, and it was then that I realised someone or something was watching me.

Big eyes stared at me, not blinking, not moving just watching me, observing silently. I wasn’t scared, not really, more intrigued, flattered even.  I wondered if this was a regular thing, if aliens came to watch people sleep, or not sleep in my case all the time. I hoped they watched more people than me, I wasn’t a good sample. If it was only me, then their reports back would say humans did a weird tossy turny thing at night.

The eyes seemed to grow larger, more piercing. The face seemed amused, smiling at me. But you have to be careful with aliens not to project our own facial expressions on to them. I’ve learnt that in Bulgaria, where they nod instead of shaking their heads, and shake instead of nodding, most disconcerting. Maybe an alien’s gormless grin was actually a human scowl.

We continued like that for a while, the alien staring at me, me staring back at it; the cars chugging past outside and the birds just beginning to start their dawn chorus. Was there a melancholy in its eyes, a yearning for a homeland galaxies away? Or was I projecting again?

Either the sun was edging nearer to its alarm call or my eyes were getting more accustomed to the light, but I was now able to pick out more detail. I could see a tuft of something on its head, a transmitter maybe. Its arms seemed straight and lifeless, while its nose was bright red. It was then and only then that I felt a little foolish. I hadn’t spent the last few minutes staring into the eyes of an alien from far far away, but had been staring at my Mole, a Czech soft toy that had sat next to my bed in Prague for goodness knows how long.

Mortality - Prague Diaries.

This last week I've seen my own death in a variety of ways. Okay, maybe I’m being over dramatic, but there have been three instances this week where I have confronted my own mortality.
A major difference between the UK and Czech is when you go to the doctors for a routine thing like a headache in Prague, they think nothing of packing you off for blood tests, whereas in the UK a blood test is kept for a special occasion, like an autopsy. Now, unlike some members of my family, (it’s okay Marg, I’m not naming names,) I am not much of a hypochondriac, but waiting for test results starts the what ifs ringing in your mind; what if the indigestion is an ulcer, what if the sleepiness is diabetes, what if the headaches are an incurable tumour. I started planning for worst case scenarios, started composing letters to loved ones - I even wrote a will. I was ready to die. Of course the tests all said I was healthy, even my blood pressure was normal. But there was one thing, one thing that keeps cropping up and one thing that might eventually kill me, yes you guessed it, cholesterol. Good stuff was low which is bad, bad high which is also bad. Time to quit the sausages and find my Lycra cycling shorts.
But before I could get out on the bike I had a little job to do in Estonia. I love flying, I even love turbulence which gives the whole flight a fairground thrill feel, so the bumpy flight home was no problem at all. Nor was the announcement about peanut allergies, although that did make me think how horrible it must be to be one pressurised cabin away from a serious anaphylactic shock. No, my plane problem was the man sitting next to me flicking through pictures of handguns on his phone. What do you do when a man is flicking through gun photos on his mobile? Especially in a week when plane hijackings were the latest think from the Eighties to make a comeback. He's not technically doing anything wrong but he's doing something a bit creepy. If it is illegal to joke about having a bomb on a plane, surely looking at photos of weapons would also be frowned upon. Was he choosing which one he was going to use to take over the plane? I thought for a moment about calling the cabin crew but then thought how stupid I'd look if it was a false alarm. Did I really want to embarrass myself?  Surely being the victim of a terrorist attack would be preferable to making a scene. So I did what every good Brit would do. I ignored it and tried to sleep while wondering what it would be like to die on a hijacked plane.
My final brush with the grim reaper came as a direct consequence of the first. “You need more exercise,” my doc said, so I dusted down my old bike, gave it a spray of WD40 and whoosh, I was off. I was loving the feel of the wind in my hair, the lactose acid in my legs and the phlegm in my lungs. Yep, it was all going well until the wheels came off, literally. Crunch went my back wheel, I wobbled, lurched to the right, where seconds before a dumper truck had trundled past me. Luckily for me the gears had kept the back wheel from leaving the bike completely so no harm was done to me but the damage was done to the bike.
But this was not my brush with death, no, that was still to come.  You see I was a thirty minute walk from home, the back wheel was jammed so I couldn't push the bike home. I had to carry the bloody thing across my back like a wounded calf. I was glad I didn't understand comments in Czech I heard as I walked which no doubt translated to something along the lines of, you’re meant to ride it, not it you. The sun was beating down and my water bottle was empty. I trudged through the streets with the beast on my back. By the time I got home I was sweating, breathless and tired; my heart was no longer healthy and my blood pressure not normal. As I gasped for breath black wisps swam in my eyes, this was it, I was going to die. 

But you’ll be pleased to know I lived to fight another day. But now I am very aware that death lurks around every corner and even when you try to stave it off in one way  you could be putting yourself at risk in another.