Experimental Short Fiction: Publications + Proposals. © Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
It begins by the shallow path that slopes unevenly away from the shadow nut wood. Here, along the broken hill and towards the distant wet rock, corrugated cylindered tunnels, all built to hide and imprison, shelter straight back frightened animals.
Thick with the embrace of both mud and food, death stamps its mark into heated spot, as an acid smell of ripped air, fallen dead leaf and crippled motor oil twists open the unyielding buckle of weed.
Here -
Where...small talk clouds swiftly dug passages to the next world...Where...fractured gang lines decide night time movement...
Where...the slow of foot shadow wooden shovel...
Where...the painted path, that divides day, disappears like the canal bridge into glassy undergrowth...
Where...glances do not go unnoticed and powerful voices weaken after each glass..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Here -
Where...sunny morning and night time shadow move among rusting steel underpass...
Where...oily shapes are squandered along collapsed kerbside shop front...
Where...twisted paths sheepishly carve a route across knocked out grass and broken bale...
Where...weather growls at footsteps and distant noise is ancient and honest...
Where...cracked window wired doorways smell of cheap red wine and restless sleep...
Where...stubs of paper shape tomorrows nightmare...
Where...dreams begin and life ends..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Steve Coel
Here -
Where...clipped metal drunken cars clutter the broken citadel at the head of illegal van garaged highway...
Where...coffee blasts from shattered arch match whispered vaped chatter...
Where...youth stubble walk across butchered sleeping path...
Where...loose coin is exchanged on the blind side of adult corners..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Here -
Where...small feet climb cob-web steel tree and pram wheels fall into strutted path...
Where...voices falter and fingers strip lace and metal...
Where...cobbled streets are cursed by van driver and box fresh trainers stumble out of brightly lit off licenced corners..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Steve Coel
Here -
Where...locked doors open to sharp knocking...
Where...chapel neat red velvet seats line walls of rooms that glow with stories of hill and tractor, long tipping nights, and arguments lost to hated officials...
Where...memories are painful and lonely deaths from Park Drive and Senior Service are still talked about in public houses...
Where...boasting is frowned upon...
Where...whispers are heathen across bleak land...and words are spoken loudly by clear eyed distant people...
Where...clotted shoes clamber over torn stile, delayed stone wall and heathland water..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Steve Coel
You follows the signs - you has to - is what you does if you needs to get what you needs...is all about corners and way you deals with them - really is the truth of the matter - end of.
Today, doorway...long corridor. Place used to be arcade. Not now. Shops are long gone, roof caved in, steel mesh windows ripped out by scrappies with walls decorated courtesy of local youth. No charge. Nice touch that.
You could say it's quiet round this way now there's nothing left to nick. Council says places like this is going to be developed. We'll see. Meantime it's where I comes to spend my days to finish jobs I been doing during the night. I'll have finished in about six months anyways. Do what the fuck they wants then. All of them. And if they ever finds out what I's been hiding round here won't be any comeback.
Promise is a promise.
Steve Coel
Steve Coel
Steve Coel
In high heeled plimsoll, your shoe spears steel spines of cold, open, derelict stone.
Steve Coel
You're close to pub and laughter but in the headlight of fears grip.
You can see...
metal empty nothing grim war lost simple machinery class blind building hope gaps full atomic paint street flame schedule blanket beach valley sweat furnace promise blunt blank liquid warehouse shield padlock flint bank balance blame
Steve Coel
I can see...
puddle space imagination life calm fever plastic violence naked window landmark dream guilt barricade paradise splash field narrow orchard painting decay mine blunder silence spindle alley gravel table canal fence blade fossil platform waste failure
Morning
Is about frail, weightless older men who come into the cafe for their daily three hour coffees, game of cards and who all talk endless bollocks about non existent winning horses.
Afternoon
Is mainly about shapeless smackheads and local hard core druggies who come into the cafe to settle small debts and to boast about knowing where next deal is going to happen.
Evening
End of the day for some. Cheap fatty meals and shelter from street pain.
Late Night
Is about 'real money' being made in busy stockrooms of empty shops.
Steve Coel
Once you bypass
the last starched lightning tree
you enter a hillside world
of midnight stream
and border wire music.
Here, across shilling debris
early shadow
and blisters of high mist,
nature composes movement
from iron and broken bone.
Steve Coel
It's found up along cobbled visions of forgotten towns in times disputed by all who lived them.
In places caught by Pentax and Olympus, children play on empty streets near to crumbled demolished homes.
Tall ships hanging over brick wall skulk in this broken vision. Tall ships made by small people whose dreams, daily smashed, mirror the horror of this passing time.
Close by, crisp tied visitors arrive and soon leave. As they always have and always will. Visitors making quick decisions over local pie and ignored cake.
Windowless empty youth painted buildings now scatter to wind and sudden downpour.
In large open working spaces; in tired dormant, feral communities; few people gather each morning for early shift. Labour here is too vague, mechanical and undisputed. Tiredness is instant and contagious. Jokes are few, clumsy and dulled by lack of echo.
Uniforms, worn in shame, are cheap and ill fitting as they signify nothing but cowardice and lack of respect.
Crouching; doglike alongside a fence corrugated with time, the local old man patters his way home, all memory a slight flicker in grass and paper. Liquid; sweet and delicate, reminds him of people long gone. All are now dismissed with relatives and friends, sweethearts and enemies, photographs and bruises. In a bottle he finds time and peace. In a bottle he becomes young again, a fighter, a winner.
Steve Coel
Today...dry docks glisten with salty channel rain as woollen old men sit on one of their favourite benches. Each will smile broadly as together they remember the songs and laughter of young hard welders. Today...visitors will glance at walls of dismal grey photographs. Some photographs show weary men and women waving half empty beer glasses in the air. Others are of car empty streets clogged with leather boots being dragged to early shifts. And some are of boys playing scrappy football with tight balls of Western and Echo in muddy parks bordered with adverts for cheap beer and bread. Tomorrow...the old men will return and see it all again. The departing visitors will not see them.
Innocence doesn't exist here anymore, not even for the young. No, only dead eyes stare from photographs taken on cheap cameras by drunk uncles.
Standing in the doorway to the Custom House you silently mouth a plea for small change. This is not your regular spot and your recent close shave has gone. The waterside is busy, but you are not, and slowly you are becoming invisible. Eventually, you will disappear leaving only a shadow in each doorway of this street.
Note.
The shadow of a man, each day up from the Sally down the docks. Into town. Stillness. In the doors of the Western and Echo.
Stepping away from the street through a broken broad open two door, you painfully walk into a high congregation of brown paper and leather. Once inside, along damp tired walls, you discover anointed paint quietly peeling and unclean fragile carpet, frayed by disappointment, falling into gloomy empty corners.*
Cut into bitter wet stone by masters of dead trades, your life story. Brief like you, words torn from broken parents, target the elders who created your passing.**
Steve Coel
Our life hangs on a single thread / It soon is out and we are dead / Just like a flower you were up at dawn/ A day passed by and you were gone / So boast not reader of your might / Alive at noon and dead by night.
Starts on the street. Outside like. Begins with Police searching a car, wrong car as it happens, and other footies holding this guy up against a wall while others is checking his jacket in doorway of adult store. Is my understanding they won't find nothing.
Is sunny day. Busy day actually. Bad atmosphere. And I's seeing looks being passed between people trying too hard not to know each other. Failing badly they is, they really should do better. So here's the story. Morning. Early for some, late for others. And someone, it would seem, is clearly not going to make it through the day and is already getting desperate and is needing some action pretty quick, like right away, right now. So. Quick snatch job is all, but bad call is what it is. Being watched see and being watched quite closely as it happens. Luckily, for all involved, footie wades in. There's a bit of running round, who doesn't like a good chase? Local security joins in too. Laugh that, though twats they is because people's quick round here. When opportunity arises. So, quick in and out is all. Even though they knows cameras got them and security'll be having 'words' later. Poor bastards. Like I tells you is my street. Reckon you knows rest.
It begins by the shallow path that slopes unevenly away from the shadow nut wood. Here, along the broken hill and towards the distant wet rock, corrugated cylindered tunnels, all built to hide and imprison, shelter straight back frightened animals.
Thick with the embrace of both mud and food, death stamps its mark into heated spot, as an acid smell of ripped air, fallen dead leaf and crippled motor oil twists open the unyielding buckle of weed.
