Postcard Wings above Blackpool Sands – Cate Gardner

Postcard Wings above Blackpool Sands

By Cate Gardner

Resting back on her heels, pencil held firm between her fingers, Olive scratched the echo of her tower onto the wall. The world shuddered, knocking her over. Plaster cracked, fissures tearing through all her charcoal, lead and ink towers. She brushed sand off her hands. Some days it was hard not to give in.

Her postcard and glue wings flapping against her shoulder blades, Olive stood. The apartment ceased its shake. Looking out of the bay window, grey nets floating through broken glass, Olive sighed. Corpses lay strewn across Blackpool sands.

She whispered, “Not again.”

Black metal twisted around the dead and dying forming cages. The weight of the wreckage pressed against their chests. Beneath them, the sands began to shift. Curling her hands over the edge of the windowsill, Olive looked down. Subsidence had relegated her third floor flat to the ground floor. If she reached over the sill, she could touch the beach.

The constant sun turned its glare to her corner of this world. Leaning forward, not daring to dig into the sand, Olive offered it her finger. In reply, a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.

At first, she thought the sands had decided not to wait for the submergence of her apartment. They would have her now and maybe she was of a mind to go. Shoulder blades tensed, her wings fluttered. Fingers dug deep into her skin, drawing her along the length of their arm to the boy clinging to the guttering. Having survived the fall, he’d crawled up the side of the building. Olive grasped his wrist and pulled him into her room.

He collapsed against her. Olive dragged him to her bed and laid him on top of the eiderdown. Hot air blew into the room, choking their lungs with sand. She removed his top hat and loosened his tie. She used the lilac handkerchief poking from his jacket pocket to wipe sweat and sand from his lips.

“Beth,” he said, trying to climb out the bed.

“Shush. The dead don’t hear.”

Olive pulled the eiderdown from under him and wrapped it around his shaking limbs. Mummy-tight. She thought of pyramids, how they didn’t sink beneath the sand, and wondered if her apartment building was pyramid shaped. She’d never been to the attic, to the floor above, to anywhere but this room. There was no door through which to leave.

Crossing the room to the window, Olive looked out at the remaining dead things and their scattered belongings: top hats, feathers, broken smiles and a girl wearing satin and lace. Olive pulled the curtains together, planning to stitch them tight until he forgot his dead. This room only held space enough for her dreams.

Kneeling on the floorboards, sand digging into her shins, Olive dug into the trunk of found things. She pulled out her sewing kit and closed the trunk. Above it hung a yellowing poster of Blackpool Tower. It had drifted in on the back of a dead clown some time yesterday. One day, she expected the tower to push through the sands and stand magnificent above her apartment. When it did, she would climb it all the way to the clouds.

Her visitor pointed at the poster. Perhaps he too remembered it. Her heart quickened.

“We were getting married there,” he said.

“I have pamphlets and postcards, all manner of things about the tower.” She twirled around to show him her wings. “It will return one day. Assuming it was ever here.”

She pulled out a chair, its legs unstable, and sat beside the bed. He coughed and struggled against his binds, but Olive knew it was best to keep new visitors tethered. They were apt to think it safer outside.

“I can help you,” she said, opening her sewing box. “Your wings will surpass mine and you’ll fly out of here on the strength of them. You’ll have no need for metal or memories.”

Rummaging through the box, she found needle, thread and scissors, but lacked a vital ingredient. Feathers. Recalling the ones scattered on the beach, she opened the curtains. Feathers danced in the breeze. Perhaps if she could pull the debris close to her window, she could run out onto the sand and scoop them in her palms.

“Is my Beth out there?” he asked. “Please help her.”

“When you have wings you can fly to her,” Olive said. “Sorry, I… Soon be better.”

Rushing across the room, Olive picked up her chimney sweep broom. It had fallen with a coal-covered boy circa forever ago. She crossed herself. May he rest in one piece. Reaching as far from the room as she dared, Olive prodded a loose piece of metal with her broom and hooked the bristles around it. At first, it resisted her pull.

“Please,” he asked.

Hands reached up from the sand, echoing his plea.

The metal creaked, slipping a few inches beneath the surface. The feathers settled on its platform. She turned to offer him a smile. He struggled within his nest, the eiderdown splitting and scattering its feathers across the bed.

“Oh, you clever thing,” she said, laughing.

Something pulled at her broom. Fearing the sand had taken a bite, Olive almost dropped it. Instead, on turning, she discovered the bride clutching the pole.

“Hold on. I’ll pull you in,” Olive said. For his benefit she added, “Beth.”

The girl grunted and dragged herself up the length of the broom. They were becoming quite a party. Olive looked to her beloved poster, its edges curling, its picture faded. Their many hands would rebuild it from the wreckage and they would reach the heavens in no time at all.

Olive pulled his bride into the room. The girl fell with a thump, filling the air with sand. On the bed, the man’s gasp sounded akin to final breath. Olive pressed her fingers to her lips. She would not make that sound.

Beth began to pull the eiderdown away from her man. Feathers choked the air. Olive rested back against the window frame, remembering how she had felt when she arrived in this place, having fallen from her tower. She would build wings for them both. One only has the strength to fly at the beginning.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, the man and woman hugged each other, pressing kisses to lips, cheekbones, hands.

“We all need something that is ours here,” she said. “You’ll survive because of it.”

“Are you mad?” the girl said, tearing off her veil. “Am I mad?” She turned to her man. “We were on the tower, looking out. Oh god, everyone fell. The tower…”

“Fell?” Olive asked, clutching the broom to her chest.

“What is this place?” the man asked.

“Here,” Olive said, looking out at the sands and the scattered metal.

She leaned out of the window, its ledge now level with the sand. The apartment couldn’t take their combined weight. It would sink. They would sink. Hoisting her broom over her shoulder, Olive pressed her toes to the window frame and stood on the very edge of the room. With a single leap, she was out, standing on metal and wondering on the emptiness of the place. Hers was the last building half-standing, to its right a chimneystack all that remained of the neighbouring hotel. The sand shifted. Metal groaned.

Using Olive’s needle and thread, the bride began to sew the curtains together. From outside, the thin cotton looked more shroud. Olive leaned forward, her broom catching around the nearest slab of metal. Together, they pulled it through the sand. Sanding on her tiptoes at the edge of her pedestal, she dragged the metal sheet onto her stand and constructed a platform. She’d build her tower yet.

The End

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Cate Gardner’s stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Postscripts and Shock Totem. A collection of her short stories, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits, is forthcoming this October from Strange Publications, and her novella, Theatre of Curious Acts, will be published by Hadley Rille next year. You can visit her on the web at http://fright-fest.blogspot.com.

Find an RPP miniview with Cate here!

© 2010 All rights reserved Cate Gardner

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