Conclusion - Of An Only Slightly Premature Holiday Kick-Off!

Conclusion – of an only Slightly Premature Holiday Kick-Off

Today Tanja Cilia’s “timely” Christmas trilogy concludes.  And personally, I think I saved the best for last.  I have to confess I think this one’s my favourite.  If anyone missed the first two, here’s your golden opportunity to read them all at once.  I hope all of you enjoyed this view of Tanja’s “dark” side as much I did.  Didn’t these stories remind you of looking through a mirror?  Into a world where things are slightly skewered, a bit out of line, a little hazy but sharp at the same time?  Please stop by and let Tanja know how much you enjoyed them!

The Ghost of Christmas Future

The calls from the withheld-number continued, and my migraines grew worse. The person who was calling me always seemed to know when I was alone. So I took to leaving it switched off. But whenever I switched it on to check whether I had any messages, the mysterious caller inevitably made his presence felt. It was not a missed call that came in when the other messages did; it was always in real time.

This was spooking me. I asked my children and my husband to swap phones with me. And the calls with the withheld-number switched to which ever phone I would be using at the moment.

I couldn’t take it any more, so I went to the Administration Department of my server. They told me I had to file a Police report, if I wanted to know who was invading my privacy; their simply divulging who was calling me would violate the Data Protection Act.

I went to the Hamrun Police Station, and indicated the screen of the mobile phone, which showed no less than 20 “withheld-number” calls within two hours. The Policewomen was sympathetic, but adamantly repeated what the clerk had said. She handed me a form to fill in, but I declined the offer.

As soon as I turned the corner, I smashed the phone against the wall, and then ground it with my heel. I knelt down, scooped up the pieces, and put them in my handbag, meaning to dispose of them bit by bit in each bin I came across.

I caught the bus to Valletta and bought myself a new mobile telephone from a different server. When it came to choosing the number, I asked each of the three clerks for a random pair of digits. The number these made up was fortunately available.

No sooner was the telephone functioning, than a withheld-number call came through. “See how popular you are?” joked the clerk. I felt faint. One of the young ladies ran to bring me a strong coffee from the eatery next door; another gave me her chair.

I took a deep breath and told them the bare bones of what had been happening. They informed me that with them, the procedure to find out to whom a withheld number belonged was the same as that of the other provider.

The only reason I had not placed a trace on my line before was not to give my tormentor the pleasure of knowing he had got at me. But it was now time to change my mind.

I was given a series of numbers for myself and all the members of my family to key into our phones immediately following a call from a withheld number. This allowed me to switch between using them.

But abruptly, on Christmas Eve the calls ceased. But, just in case they began again, I did not report this. I took to leaving my phone switched on.

On January 11, I was summoned to the Police Headquarters.

“Well?” I asked, mentally going over a list of people I knew disliked me. “Did you find the culprit?”

The Sergeant smiled wryly. “Do you remember Rom Houben - that man with the locked-in syndrome, misdiagnosed as comatose for 23 years? Do you remember how he said he was aware of what was happening all the time he was said to be vegetative, and how his imagination helped him survive?” “Yes, I do, albeit vaguely,” I replied, “but what does that have to do with the calls I’ve been receiving?”

“Do you remember Marija Refalo?” “Oh, of course I do, we were best friends in Primary School. When her Irish mum died, her dad had moved back to Gozo so his mum could take care of the family, but we’d lost touch after a couple of years...”

“Marija married a Norwegian. She’d been on holiday here - she was the pregnant woman thrown through of the windscreen in the accident where the bus overturned...”  “She’d lost the baby and was in a coma, wasn’t she?”

“Yes. At first her husband had insisted she be given artificial nutrition and hydration. Then, he met someone else... and he suddenly decided that it was cruel to keep her suffering. He decided to pull the plug on her. Incongruously, the calls you were getting came from her childhood home number... an empty house. No one lives there now.”

I flinched as if someone had slapped me. “It was Christmas Eve, wasn’t it, when they killed her?”

An Only Slightly Premature Holiday Kick-Off Continues!

Welcome back to Flowers on the Fence Country!  The trilogy of Tanja Cilia’s Flash Fiction, showcasing the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, continues with….

The Ghost of Christmas Present

He’s in Malta! she muttered, as she waited for the line to connect.  “Meet me at the Upper Barrakka in ten minutes, near where the Lift used to be!”  he said.  That’s all.  Not even the usual “See you!” which he knew could make shivers run up and down her spine.

He had told her not to contact him unless he gave the all-clear, and the coded message had finally come through on her mobile telephone. He was paranoid, she told him, when he insisted that she did not try to contact him on any social site, or even try and track his movements any online newspapers or on search engines. But he said he knew what he was doing – and she trusted him with her whole body, mind, heart and soul. So she didn’t.

Oh heavens, he knows I’m pregnant.  Why didn’t he pick the Lower Barrakka, just across the road? He knows I tire easily – and it’s uphill all the way... I will never understand that man as long as I live.

She bunched up her hair, jammed on her crochet beret, and as she struggled to put on her parka, she rapped on her neighbour’s door and told her she was going out, and handing her the key to the flat, asked her to switch off the oven in fifteen minutes’ time.

“You look excited!” exclaimed the woman into who she bumped as she turned into Saint Christopher Street.  Oh yes, something’s come up... she blushed, and ran up the few steps.   She crossed Saint Ursula Street and turned left when she got to Saint Paul Street.  She was already huffing.  She counted each corner. At the back of her mind, there were those dreary history lessons in which she had learned how the streets of Valletta, except for the coast road, were at right angles to one another.  However, learning their position on a map was extremely difficult for her (she is dyslexic).

Her English language teacher had mocked her in front of the whole class when, during the Careers Convention, she had declared she wanted to become a journalist.  “You can’t even read a Primer!”  I’ll show her, she’d thought.

Eventually, her name had appeared on the front page of The Times of Malta, over the story about how ghostly presences had been seen walking along Saint Barbara Bastions. 

The said teacher had called her editor to say that someone must be ghost-writing her articles...

A medium had sworn he’d been contacted by ‘foreigners speaking heavily accented Maltese’ who were against the proposed underground track service, since it would desecrate their final resting places.  The people who had been commissioned to see it through said he was talking bunkum – there was a lot of money involved in the project. But it turned out that a prison for slaves had existed underground in that general area at the time of the Knights of Saint John.

Not many people noticed that, one Sunday morning, a priest had visited the site, said some prayers and sprinkled some holy water from an asperges over the bastion sill. She had been looking out of her bedroom window, but kept mum. She included the incident in her report... and it was not gainsaid by Church authorities.

He’ll think I’m not coming she gasped, as began climbing the shallow steps in the upper part of Saint Paul’s Street.  People were looking inquiringly at her flushed face given her evident pregnancy. A couple of them made as if to stop her and ask whether she needed any help – but she waved them off. She was actually on maternity leave, but she wanted to one-up the silly journalist from the rival paper with this Christmas scoop.

Once at the very top of Saint Paul Street, she took a deep breath and ran all the way to the entrance of the gardens, heading towards the back. “You made it!” he smiled. It struck her simultaneously that he looked deathly pale, and that he did not get up to greet her. It was only when she went to hug him that she noticed he was sitting in a wheelchair. She flinched.

“They broke both my legs.  And then kneecapped me, to make sure I never walked again... But it doesn’t matter.  Here, take this,” he said, as he handed her a big manila envelope, bulging with secrets.  “Leave.  Now.” 

She made to complain. He shook his head; and suddenly the wheelchair was empty. She gasped, and instinctively felt that for their baby’s sake, it would be better if she left immediately.

Returning home down Saint Ursula Street, where the steps were right across the street that was narrower than the one from which she had come, and no traffic could pass, she felt safer. But she hurried, nonetheless. She heard a squeal of breaks and a sudden commotion. People screamed as an SUV skidded to a halt behind and above her, just in front of the gates of the public garden.

It was later reported that four thugs wearing balaclavas had dashed out of the vehicle, leaving the doors open, and ran into the gardens, guns blazing. Five persons, two of them children, had been injured.

Hearing the staccato shots, and knowing full well she would have been a victim had she been seen holding the envelope, she bent double and retched. An old lady looking out of a tiny side-window at street level saw her.  Idħol, she said, inviting her to push open the door - kept on the latch as is still the habit in some places in Malta. She accepted a mug of hot, sweet tea and played for time just in case ‘they’ began scouring the streets.

Later, much later, she googled his name. The first link that came up was his obituary. He had died five months previously, in an unexplained accident on a business trip.

An Only Slightly Premature Kick-Off to the Holiday Season

Welcome back to Flowers on the Fence!   I’ve collected this particular Flower before.  On my second blog posting, in fact.  To refresh your memories, I introduced my sister-across-the-water Tanja Cilia and shared her impeccably crafted Haiku. 

Well, I’ve got a new mission in life.  Think back with me.  How many times in the group e-mails have you seen Tanja preface remarks with “I’m an editor, not a writer but…”  But nothing.  Tanja Cilia is a writer.  Her specialty – and I’ve been privileged to read many of them in the past months since we’ve come into each other’s lives – is Flash Fiction.  The woman writes Flash Fiction worthy of the most classic episodes of The Twilight Zone.  I have never, ever, in my entire life known anyone who says so much in so little, twisting and turning her words like a knife until – she flashes in for the kill.  She’s represented here by the image of Athena that has become her trademark.  She prefers it to an actual photo, she says, for the same reason she prefers radio over television.  The imagination produces better pictures.  Maybe that’s the secret to her incredible shorts.

After much cajoling, I have prevailed upon her to allow me to re-present a trilogy of Flash Fiction that appeared in 2009 in the online Christmas Supplement of the Malta Times.  Today Flowers on the Fence – most proudly – presents  The Ghost of Christmas Past, as told by Tanja Cilia.  Stay tuned, though!  The Trilogy will continue…through the present…through the future…..

The Ghost of Christmas Past 

I open the secret drawer of the bureau I’d bought myself as a Christmas present from the auction. I’d always wanted one.  The very idea of combining the old and the new – setting up my laptop on an antique, and in my own version of retro chic, excited me.

One of the carvings going down the side of the bookshelf stood proud of the rest.  I reached out to flatten it – and a panel at the side of the bureau sprang open.

Hey!  That’s MY handwriting.  That’s MY diary!  How on earth could my diary for 2008 be here, of all places? How come it’s so dusty?

I had been a gifted child. My peers and teachers had hated me for it, and tried to break my spirit.  When I fidgeted because I was bored, they said I was arrogant.  They mispronounced my name on purpose, just to see me get het up.  When I put my hand up to answer the teacher’s questions, I was always ignored.

For the official documents of my consultancy firm, I always use black ink.  For private use, I always use “nice” ink colours like aquamarine and lilac and peach.... I know it’s frivolous, but my friends, to whom I still send snail-mail letters, really appreciate it.

But the diary is written in blue ink, throughout.  It’s weird. I never, but never, use blue ink. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I am compelled to read the entries, as if this would soothe the unease I am feeling. It’s the exact opposite of déjà-vu.  A presentiment that something ominous is about to happen.

It’s like a rumbling behind my belly-button, and the vertiginous feeling you get when you look out of a high-rise building, and the aura before a migraine strikes, and a tingling sensation behind my knees..... as if something is not quite right with my body, but I cannot quite put my finger on it. 

April 12... My daughter came home from school in a teacher’s car because she had twisted her ankle when playing volley-ball.

The name of the teacher as given here is Miss Camilleri.  But I know for a fact that Miss Camilleri  cannot drive.  It was Mrs Brincat who had brought Ruth home; she had been in my class at school - we had been best friends -  and she always gave my daughter special attention, for old times’ sake .... 

I turn to June 5, on spec.  That was the day the brakes of our car didn’t hold, and we ran into the car in front of us.  Yes... here it is, “car crash”.  Oh, no!  It says we were in the ‘new’ Getz Malibu...  When the accident happened we could not have been in any other car but our old trusty Triumph Toledo. We never had any spare cash to purchase the car we really wanted – a Toyota.

July 28.  My sister-in-law’s baby was stillborn. 

It was not.  In fact, the baby died of an internal hemorrhage six months after he was born. And my sister-in-law says that she has never told anyone but me about her recurring dream, in which the baby is stillborn. 

August 17.  There was the explosion at the fireworks factory across the fields from our house. Someone had bought some contraband Chinese fireworks, and they were dismantling them to see how they were assembled. Snow put out the fire from the explosion.  

Snow?  I cannot understand this. We never get snow in Malta – and if we did, it would never have been in August, when the weather, as we say colloquially, is hot enough to fry eggs on pavements. 

My head spins; I think I’d best make myself a mug of tea and lie down. But first, I have to check - although I am afraid to do so - September 3....

I remember that on the night of my birthday, I had cried myself asleep because I felt unloved and unwanted.  The husband and kids know I hate surprise birthday parties and yet they threw me one anyway.  True enough.  I made a scene and spoiled it all for them, saying that what I want is respect and not empty meaningless, expensive parties... My sister-in-law called me a spoiled brat.

That is so not true. I didn’t want to be a killjoy, and so I pretended that I was enjoying it. I can still recall the ache in my jaws from my false smiles, trying to make them believe I was enjoying it. Later, the little one asked me whether I would have preferred “just a hug and a kiss” from each one of them... and that is when the dam holding back my tears had burst.  

I hear a key turn in the lock. I call out to tell my husband I am in the sitting room, and he asks what the matter is.  He probably realizes from my voice that I am under shock, and I hear him running along the corridor. 

He is not my husband.  I can see the puzzled look in his eyes. And when I silently point down at the diary in my lap, the pages are blank…