Esther Chilton

I’d like to give a warm welcome to Kyt Wright, who is my Guest Writer this week. Here is some information about him:

‘Born in the 1957 the year the Space Race started when the USSR launched its first satellite and growing up with astronauts and cosmonauts on the TV meant Yuri Gagarin and Gordon Cooper were familiar names to me as a child. I only really started to take notice as the Apollo programme ramped up and remember very well the tragedy of Apollo 1 (as it is now called) then poor Vladimir Komarov in Soyuz 1 and Yuri’s plane crash. Getting up early one morning I was just in time to see a grainy Neil Armstrong make one small step for mankind on black and white British television, that same television showed me Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet then Doctor Who and my personal favourite UFO with the Moonbase girls in their shiny costumes (very interesting to a growing boy!) and the joy of seeing Star Trek on our first colour set, their uniforms in their varied hues like a rainbow palette.

‘My earliest otherworldly memory is a picture book about mice building a rocket and travelling to the moon for green cheese! I started reading Science Fiction at a young age by way of Kemlo, Tom Swift Jr and the wonderful TV21 with its pseudo newspaper format and the later and lesser Countdown comic. The first “big” read was The Fall of the Towers by Samuel R Delaney  my dad’s book and quite a weighty tome. He let me read many others after that. At school my English teacher set us reading John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids and the great-grandad of alien invasion stories HG Wells The War of the Worlds.

‘I was hooked, working my way through the Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Lensman series by EE Smith, anything by Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Edmund Cooper, John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury et al. I read everything of worth and many not so worthy, I wanted to write and I wanted to write what I loved most, Science Fiction! My poor English teacher had several large essays thrust upon him about a secret organisation battling aliens (sorry UFO) and robots that looked like humans and a story about a policeman on an island on a colonised planet with his girlfriend playing the damsel in distress (I might re-use that one) and he patiently read them then gave me criticism, some good!

‘I made plots and plans drew characters and vehicles but somehow never wrote much down, then the family moved from Grimsby to Leicester and I started an apprenticeship enjoyed a social life and eventually met a wonderful beautiful girl (who would put up with me!). We married had children and I later found myself sharing books with my eldest son in an echo from the past, I had tinkered with writing but still no book emerged, then a year or so ago…

‘Six months from sixty and the urge to write returned as an old plot from my teenage years re-emerged, the hero remained the same but a minor almost background character pushed her way forward to become the heroine and the original ending is now the beginning. McGuffins and contrivances have moved with the times and with the first book written, the sequel done and being finished off, a third ready for reworking and the bones of the fourth and final of the cycle in existence I am ready to reveal it.

‘It has been a long journey (and my wife is still putting up with me!) and now the struggle to get it published begins…

‘Are there any publishers out there looking for a new old talent?’

Now for Kyt’s entertaining story:

 

 

St Ives – Jacko’s sister

by

Kyt Wright

    Crispin Smythe took the pristine white speedboat out of St Ives harbour grinning and smugly fondled the bag of jewellery in his pocket, this should fetch a bit, she’s going to get the shock of her life when she sees what I’ve done to her precious picture, serve you right, bitch.

****

     Priscilla Hartford-Jones was a socialite and Crispin had set his sights on her straightaway, the daughter of a local businessman and entrepreneur and worth a small fortune to boot. They had met at a very prestigious party, she had fallen for his easy charm and good looks and all had looked set for him to be on the road to a very advantageous marriage.

There was a fly in the ointment however, a dirty great one in the form of Jackie Tremayne, a swarthy self-styled artist and boat owner who ran fishing trips for the emmets when they swarmed down in the summer season.

Pris thought the sun shone out of the little oik’s arse and flirted round him spending nights drinking with Jacko at the Gaff Cutter, a popular watering hole on the harbour front. Things had started to come to a head when Tremayne had presented her with a picture based on the legend of the mermaid of Zennor. True the picture was outstanding; the fishy woman was extremely realistic and her bust was to say the least pert. Pris naturally loved the damned thing and gave it pride of place on the wall above the mock fireplace in her expensive apartment with its view over the bay.

Crispin had been steadily working his way into her affections and this was a distraction that in his eyes Pris did not need. Worse still she had begun to divide her time between the two men but after a long argument she agreed to see more of Crispin and allowed him to move some of his things in to her home. Despite this and her assurances that it was just friendship with Tremayne he would often find himself glaring jealously at the picture, you are not ruining for it me my friend, one day you and I are going to sort things out.

‘Are you sleeping with that toe-rag artist?’ he asked one night; she had returned very late from a girl’s night out.

‘I never said we were exclusive, my lover,’ she emphasised in a mock Cornish accent; she was quite drunk.

‘So you are?’ he could feel his anger rising.

‘What’s it to you, Crispin? You’re only after Dad’s money, when all’s said and done.’

‘Not that again, Pris, I love you, you know that.’ The one thing he had always liked about her was her naivety, since when had she become so perceptive? ‘They’re his words, aren’t they?’

‘No, but knowing Jacko has made me realise what a conniving bastard you really are.’ Priscilla looked adoringly at the picture. ‘Such a sensitive man and so good with his hands.’ She side-eyed Smythe grinning slyly.

‘That’s it then, it’s over, I’m sleeping at my place tonight, you bitch,’ he snarled slamming the door on the way out, best go before I do something I regret…

****

     Early next evening Jackie Tremayne was coming out of the Gaff Cutter after a quick drink when Crispin approached him in the car park. ‘What do you want, Crispin?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Are you sleeping with Pris?’ he snarled.

‘What’s it to you?’ asked the artist, ‘just because you got a posh voice and a fancy name, it doesn’t make you special, you’re just a money-grabbing tuss.’

Crispin was enraged but held his temper back. ‘Why don’t you come with me to Pris’ place then she can tell us face to face who she prefers?’

‘Isn’t she out in Penzance tonight?’ asked Tremayne.

‘No, she had a last minute cancellation.’

They walked through the back streets to the other side of the peninsula and climbed up to Pris’ apartment. ‘She’s not here you twat,’ Jacko said.

‘I knew that you prick!’ Crispin snapped.

‘Then what do you want, an apology? Cos’ if you do you can fuck right off,’ Jack felt a sudden pang of fear, he had never noticed how much taller than him Crispin was, or how well built.

‘I don’t want an apology I just want to break every bone in your body, but I’ve not much time so I’ll settle for this.’ He punched the artist in the face breaking his nose and knocking him to the ground. ‘Good with your hands Pris said, well let’s see how good you are after this.’ Smythe stamped on each hand in turn enjoying the cries of pain from the floor then dragging the artist up by his collar hit him repeatedly until he passed out…

****

     Priscilla came back some time later to find her home ransacked but far worse than that was the sight of Jack sat propped up in the mock fireplace, the picture around his neck, his head protruding through the ragged hole where the mermaid’s face had been. ‘Oh God, Jack,’ she pulled the broken frame off and put her arms around him, ‘please don’t be dead!’

He stirred groggily, ‘Pris I think I need an ambulance.’ He looked at his broken fingers. ‘Bastard!’

She called 999 then sat down next to him. ‘Who did this to you, my love?’

‘Who do you fucking think, Crispin fucking Smythe that’s who,’ he paused then said in a panicky slur, ‘we’ve gotta find him!’

‘We’ll leave that to the police.’

‘No we’ve gotta find him before my sister does, she don’t take kindly to anyone hurting our family!’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister?’

‘She lives local, we don’t talk much, she’s a bit odd.’

****

      Crispin Smythe or Christopher Smith as he was known to the police in the West Midlands was a con man with a short fuse and a history of violence, he had actually liked Priscilla seeing her as a more than just a mark, but now he’d lost it with that little prick that was the end of that. He had taken a thousand pounds the silly bitch had left in a drawer along with two of her credit cards and all of her expensive jewellery. He would have to get rid of this nice boat he had coerced Pris into buying but hey-ho he would see what tomorrow brought. He kept to the coastline heading north in the falling dusk when he saw something white in the water close to the shore. There was a woman swimming and obviously in trouble. She started waving frantically. He thought about ignoring her but decided he had been enough of a bastard tonight so somewhat reluctantly steered towards the pale figure and as she began swimming towards the boat he realised she was naked, the night’s looking up, he thought and reached over the side to help her aboard. The face seemed very familiar and he realised that she looked like the mermaid in Tremayne’s painting then Smith recoiled in shock as she smiled at him baring needle sharp teeth like those of a fish. She grabbed his arms clinging to them with a vice like grip and he reeled back in horror half lifting her out of the water.

The shock of seeing her toothy smile was nothing compared to that of seeing the golden scaled lower half of her body. He screamed as she hissed and pulled him into the sea with her; a large golden fishtail flipped briefly out of the water and sank below the surf leaving the smart white boat drifting alone.

***