The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg
Page 1
Oliver Franks
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg
and other stories
First published by darkside fiction press in 2018
Copyright © Oliver Franks, 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
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Contents
About the author
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg
The Chair
The Dark Matter of Dreams
Without the Simple Science
Message from the author
Acknowledgements
Read the novel I am writing
About the author
Oliver Franks is an independent author from Brighton, England. With a life-long passion for reading, particularly science fiction, he writes a unique brand of dark sci-fi, magic realism and fantastical tales, filled with action, amazing situations and larger-than-life characters. His mission is to enthrall readers with unforgettable speculative adventure stories, and to tell stories with a point. Otherwise, what is the point? This book is a small collection of four stand-alone short stories designed to showcase Oliver’s work as he launches his career as an author. Visit Oliver’s website at https://oliverfranksauthor.com/ for more information on the novels he has planned for release in 2018 and beyond.
The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg
Joseph Goldberg is the wrinkled old man you often see wrapped up in a fraying scarf and dusty trilby hat, hobbling along the seafront promenade in the dead of winter. He does this for one reason and one reason only, and that is to observe the starlings above the old pier. Migrating in their thousands to roost in the rusty spires of that decrepit structure, the starlings can be seen on a daily basis, rising, falling and swimming through the air all as one. ‘Murmuration’, that’s the technical term, or so some busybody once told Joseph. A random, apparently spontaneous group activity, the purpose of which has long baffled scientific thinkers. Whatever the explanation, it’s nothing short of an endless, transcendent parade of shifting, shimmering, description-defying shapes, all metamorphosing across the sky as easily as the wind blows. As Joseph likes to say, it’s fucking grand.
Sinking his behind onto the usual bench, Joseph was pleased on this particular afternoon to inhale the crisp mid-winter air under a sky brushed with sunset-red clouds, full of starlings out in force (a right flood of them). Not as many as in past years, of course, and the pier was certainly a dark shadow of its former self, ravaged by neglect, battered by the untamed British seas. God only knew how many years now he’d been plonking his arse in that very spot. In good times and in shit. He really had had a long, hard life. Been through a hell of a lot of crap.
And so, with a certain distaste, Joseph realised that a rather dreamy, nostalgic mood had crept up on him. Certainly not something he ordinarily experienced (ordinarily he would much rather not). Sometimes one just can’t help these things.
And so, quite unable to resist, he found himself thinking of Lucy, of his mostly crappy life, of all the things he’d never done.
*****
Their romance blossomed as the war faded. She loved the starlings too (silly young Lucy). Sneaking past the barbed wire and pill boxes, all for a close-up view. That’s what she told him anyway. They had their first kiss in the winter of ‘45, roasting their bums on the pebbles, arm in arm under the starlings.
Life together soon developed its problems. Joseph slogged it as a language teacher to make ends meet. He hated it. The secondary modern system, students who couldn’t give a rats’ arse for all that ‘Nazi gobbledygook’. Ungrateful little shits, he used to say, though he did sympathize. For his part, he was a crap teacher, making as little effort as he could, being cranky and doling out punishments as often as he could. He sorely missed the flying. Flying is a much better mode, he always said.
After a few years of teaching, for a while things got pretty bad. He got seriously bored, drank a lot of cheap whisky, lost his job as a teacher, separated from Lucy. They got back together, eventually.
Life together was a small basement flat with a patio just big enough for two to smoke. They never left the town, although occasionally caught a bus up to Stanmer Park. Lucy trained as a nurse, but ended up as a GPs receptionist. She worked long hours for crap pay. Eventually Joseph quit the teaching malarkey for good, got a job as a department store security guard. He worked long hours for crap pay too. But nothing is as bad as those ungrateful little shits, he used to say. They never had children.
Some time later, he tried his hand at writing. He saved up, bought a lovely, heavy new typewriter and wrote hammy, glamourous war stories. Yet contemporary audiences were ever so changeable and fickle, especially after books like Catch 22. He read it, of course, secretly loved it, even though it made his own work pointless. Shot out of the sky by a Jew, he used to laugh. So he gave up writing.
It wasn’t long after that when Lucy developed breast cancer. She was only in her late forties. He read the Telegraph to her at the hospital bedside.
“Nixon really is a corrupt bastard after all,” he said to her, and she smiled and squeezed his hand with equal force.
Then it was all over. Then he was alone.
He kept on coming to the beach to watch the starlings, partly to remember her by, he supposed, because they had their best moments together doing that. Mostly it was because that’s what he’d always done.
Years passed. He was very lonely. Nothing much happened. He retired onto a measly state pension, the world changed all around. The town fell on hard times, the pier itself was closed down, falling into disrepair. Still he made a point of walking down there every day, through rain or shine. Dunno’ where else an old gimp like me should go, he always said.
Really, he wanted to fly again. Just one more time.
*****
Sitting there on the bench on that cold winter afternoon, the chain of thought brought him to the brink of tears. Painfully self-indulgent the whole thing was, and only with great luck and speed did he manage to cough it away into his handkerchief.
The intention was for the usual brief cough and a spit, but he found that once he had begun, he couldn’t stop. Something tickled and gnawed at his rusty old throat, creeping down into his lungs. He just kept on coughing.
After a couple of minutes, he became dizzy and keeled over onto the pavement. The starlings crossed his field of vision up above, a thick boomerang of black lumps, their calls like wind chimes, the rainy grime smell of the pavement penetrating deep into his hairy nostrils. Curled up and helpless, he felt like a small child again.
Only at this point did he realise he was dying. He’d been dying all day. That’s why he’d felt so… crumpled.
Things then proceeded to melt. In sepia, the pier slid drunkenly from left to right. In monochrome, the birds whirled around and around. They flew so fast and so close together, it almost seemed as if they were merging into a single being.
Then something really strange happened. One moment he was watching the fading, flickering flock of birds looping here and there; the next he somehow was the flock of birds.
*****
Of course, it took a while to figure out. It was very confusing at first. Being a flock of starlings wasn’t easy. It was certainly not a thing one expects to be.
*****
At first, everything was a cacophony of disorientating, head-spinning, erratic movement. Transferred into a thousand fast-moving pairs of eyes, he ebbed, flowed and whooshed like a roller-coaster, only able to catch a few brief, distorted glimpses of the people standing around the body and the ambulance that arrived in a blur of blue flashing lights and piercing sirens. The way he was flying around, he wasn’t able to make out the expression of the corpse as they took ‘him’ away. Perhaps they’ve covered my face? He hoped so.
After flapping hither and thither for an uncomfortable spell, he managed to control his movements. It was a bit like learning to dance or to swim, it seemed. At first it was impossible to get the hang, but once you nailed it, you didn’t think about it too much. Soon, though, he was ducking, diving, spinning and swooping, up to the clouds and down to the stones again and again and again, wet salty sea air lapping on his thousand tiny red tongues, icy winds like silken cushions under his wings. This is a piece of piss! he thought, and so much fun, he squealed for joy (although it sounded nothing like that).
Eventually he calmed down, gliding along the coast for a while. He took his time, watching the sea roll its white spray onto the stones. Serious, disturbing questions then began to enter his head, such as What the bloody hell is going on? and Has old Joseph really croaked it and transmigrated into a beautifully murmurating flock of starlings? Was it possible he’d gone mad, or was it possible that this is precisely what happens when you die? Surely it was impossible. He tried to pinch himself, to force himself to wake-up from this crazy dream. He failed miserably. His claws just didn’t have the manoeuvrability, he couldn’t even manage a peck at his own wings.
Fuck it, he eventually took to thinking. It’s just bloody marvellous, that’s what it is. A real chance to do amazing things. Probably the first codger in the history of the world to become a flock of starlings.
So he attempted a thing, a world’s first. He tried to spell out ‘Joseph’, using all the winged instances of himself.
He failed, of course. The ‘J’ was just a dark blob, not even vaguely or remotely a ‘J’ (squawkers breaking formation, blown about like dust in the wind). And why in God’s name should you be able to do that? Like trying to consciously arrange your own brain cells to spell out the word ‘brain cells’. Impossible. Stupid old goat.
So he meandered up and down the beach, trying to figure out what to do.
*****
A thousand unexpected plops and a sensation of unencumbered lightness brought him out of his deliberations. Ah, that’s nice, he thought. This was followed shortly by many splatters below. Aha! he thought, hearing the screams of unfortunate cyclists passing beneath him. He could almost believe he’d timed that particular bodily function to perfection. Don’t ever get me started on flippin’ cyclists.
But then one white strafed pair came to screeching halts next to one another. Splattered helmets were removed, followed by exclamations, laughter, the breaking of ice. “What good luck!”, he could hear them joking. Mobile phones were pulled out, numbers exchanged, twinkles-in-eyes. Christ al-bloody-mighty! Joseph could have screamed.
In despair, he tried to force more on them, finish the job, but his little tanks were all spent. Not knowing what to do, he whisked himself away.
But still, he reasoned to himself, I’ve discovered a new talent. A new weapon. And so the next move had to be to refill.
Gliding to the nearby beachfront, he soon located a cohort of nincompoops and their squealing children tossing breadcrumbs onto the shingle. A small company of seagulls were pecking at these morsels. Nothing compared to his thousand-strong horde though. Fuck it, he thought, diving right in.
It was largely a success. A small number of his flock were lost in the ensuing skirmish, a dozen or so fleeing to the four winds, several severely scratched and bruised, but the majority fought through, and he won out in the end. Indeed, much victorious squawking and raising of the beak was given to the bemused, retreating gulls, and the spoils of war were pecked up greedily by Joseph’s little squadron. All gobbled down nicely.
Whilst pecking and gobbling, he drew up further battle plans (with food in his bellies, he could produce more of the white one now, after all).
First it had to be the old school. Then the other schools. Fuck it. The schools it would be. After that, the park. They always went to the park to smoke and drink and snog and have fun doing whatever it was that pleased them these days. After that, why not the library? There were so many places really.
So he spent the next hour mastering the art of dropping the white one. It wasn’t difficult. He joyfully painted the pebbles white until the sky turned black.
Once night fell, the starlings seemed to take over. Joseph, rather worn out, found himself heading to the pier, draping himself over the entirety of that hobbled old structure, his thousand eyes spreading their field of vision wide across its length and breadth. They did so with such even regularity, it was as if he became the pier. I’m the bloody pier incarnate, he chuckled to himself (though it sounded nothing like that).
When a thousand eyes closed themselves simultaneously, he slept. For the first time in his life, he didn’t snore. He dreamt of being the pier, rambling out to sea. He was old and rusty, but still managed to do a little splashy dance. Then he rambled back.
He also had a nightmare which left him vaguely uneasy. He dreamed that his head was sliced off. Or rather, he dreamed that the sleeping flock was attacked by a sharpshooting, shadowy collector of birds with a slingshot. He threw the many carcasses into a huge plastic bag, dragged them home, cleaned them with fairy liquid and stuffed them with dust and fluff from old vacuum bags. Then he sold them on the internet to God knows who. Fucking internets, Joseph always said. They’ll be the death of us all.
*****
In the morning, a thousand little eyes opened one by one onto the world – on the choppy waters beneath, on the grey skies above, inward on the cavernous rusty spires, outward toward the pebbles. As each eye opened, his heart warmed by degrees. He shouted for joy, shocking himself with the ensuing orchestra of avian screeches that echoed and clanged between the grimy metal beams. He unfurled and rustled his wings, throwing off all the cobwebs of the night into the fresh sea air.
He wasted no time. After snacking on some tasty beach litter, it was straight off to school. To get there, he glided over many houses and streets, and up and down a few hills, the school being way back in the suburbs, amongst the semi-detached houses. Students roamed the streets beneath Joseph’s keen gaze, in their little groups, and he was more than once tempted to unleash a hail of white one, but he held fast, not wanting to squander his payload before he reached the primary target. He continued up onto the playing fields, swooping right across till he reached the main buildings.
The first lessons were underway, so the playground was empty and calm. So much the better, he thought. Soon the whole concrete space would be jammed full of screaming and giggling little shits. They’ll never know what hit them from the clear blue skies. He perched along the frontage of the school building, primed and ready to leap forth and to splat.
When the bell rang, his heart raced, all his hearts raced. At first just a gaggle or two rushed out into the playground through the creaking doors. He stayed put, biding his time. Soon it became a deluge, class after class dismissed into their frantic first morning break. Joseph focused all his eyes down onto the herds of noisy school children, feeling the model of a true hunter. Come on you little bastards, I’ve got you! he whispered to himself (but it sounded nothing like that). Most ran out, pushing and shoving, hanging onto each other, shouting, screaming (like monkeys...). From his vantage points, it almost seemed like he was watching an industrial spill. When the ground was finally choked with hops and skips and all manner of excited break time movements, and the babble had reached a shrill climax of cheers and goads and laughter, Joseph picked his moment and launched into the air.
He floated over the chi
ldren for a moment, easing himself down to just a few metres above the crowd. They all looked up, hushed, in awe of the huge flock that hovered above them. Then, with immense satisfaction, he grinned to himself and just let it all drop, expelling fully his collective bowels. The silence below was transformed into a screaming mess of plops and splatters, flailing arms and piercing shrieks. Some of the more sensitive were brought to tears, others were knocked over by the panic as many ran for cover, or just ran to and fro.