It is a Gift - solo

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It is a Gift

My fingers were poised over the keyboard as I looked at the screen in disbelief. That damned computer was doing it to me again. I swear that I will throw it away and go back to one that only runs with the original Word. That, at least, did not have auto-fill algorithms.

I had splashed out on the latest one I could buy, thinking that it would speed up my writing and what do I find? I am going back to find all the places where I may have typed ‘that the’ only to find that silly me must have put ‘the the’ and the computer does not like it. The subject of my wrath now was that I had started a paragraph with ‘One wet’; and when I looked again it now read ‘one wet and windy weekday Wednesday’. This was certainly not what I intended but was, however, a snapshot of my life, come to think of it.

My name, in itself, is a study in alliteration. I am Bryan Baltimore Ballard and, funnily enough, I am sitting here in my bedsit in Bermondsey attempting to write a best-seller book. There it is again! I studied writing in High School and was doing pretty well with it but, so far, no earth-shattering opus has eventuated. Instead, I eke out my paltry existence working as a shelf stacker at Sainsbury’s. It does leave me the daylight hours to write by natural light as my electricity comes from a pay as you use meter and not needing lights at night is a real saving. I had a couple of mediocre serials that one of the pulp magazines had run with but nothing serious had flowed from my keyboard yet.

I decided to give up for the day when I saw that the screen now had ‘the weak wordsmith was wondering about when he would get his weekly wages’. I am sure that my fingers had not left my hands but, as I ruminated, things got typed or else I was just going mad. Perhaps madness is a state of mind as a lot of writers were not known as being totally sane. I mean to say, no person with all their faculties could write some of the stuff on the shelves. No, you needed to be slightly bonkers or hung up on some fetish in order to make it to the best seller lists. Maybe I should put a blindfold on and just let my fingers do their own thing. Who knows, if a thousand chimpanzees can write Macbeth I may be able to turn out ‘Seventy-Two Hues of Magenta’ and become famous.

I switched everything off and cleared my brain of anything about the book I was trying to write. Actually, this was not a hard thing to do as I had absolutely no idea of what it was about. I was waiting for the main character to grab it by the scruff of the neck and the story would then write itself. A lot of authors have said that this is what happens but I am yet to experience it for myself. There is one basic problem with that; I had not yet written about the main character, nor has a name been given or even the glimmer of hope about an occupation or even if it is a man or woman. Let’s face it, I had hardly written a line in the past week.

I had a bite to eat and boiled up some hot water for my thermos and made ready to go to work. I always left a little early so I could go by the local post office and see what bills I had been sent. I had set up a P.O. address as I had been moving every six months before I found the place I now called home. Today, when I looked in, the lady behind the counter told me that there was a large parcel for me. I was certainly large, about three foot by two, but not especially thick. I asked her if there was a senders’ address and she read it out to me. It was from my mother, back at home –oop north. I told the lady that I would come in early to pick it up tomorrow as I couldn’t take it into work and she put it back down behind the counter.

The evening session of stacking was, as usual, totally mind numbing and the only thing that woke me up was when I dropped a can of corn while dreaming about a life where someone else did this and I just wrote my award-winning stories. At last we finished everything and my wage packet was, indeed, waiting for me when I clocked off. At least I will eat tomorrow.

As usual, when I got home I switched on a low wattage night-light to get undressed by and had a cold water splash before sliding into bed to drift off to sleep. What was different that night was that I dreamed that I was, indeed, well off and owned a house and a car and was on holiday by the beach. Of course, the crashing of waves in my dream had me sitting bolt upright and in need of an urgent pee. It was only the early hours and, when I went back to sleep I found that I was lazing in an easy chair while a handsome guy was telling me how well I was being received and that a signing tour was being organised. I listened to him waffling on and only showed interest when he was silent. That’s when he bent to kiss me and I woke up again, this time with a morning glory.

After I had relieved myself and had a shower I put on some jeans and a tee and got myself my breakfast. I sat and talked to myself about the weird dream. I had not had a dream quite like it as I was not gay, had never had a crush on another boy and certainly did not even swing slightly that way. In actuality, I did not swing either way and had friends that were both male and female but they had remained just that, friends. Once I tidied up I went out and down to the post office to pick up my picture, because that is certainly what the shape looked like.

I managed to stagger home with it and left it wrapped while I dealt with an envelope taped to the outside. As expected, it was from my mother and she wrote ---

Dearest Bryan,

I was walking in the town doing my shopping the other day and a lad called out to me. He was that Jerry that you went to school with. You know, one of the crowd that used to call you Brianna. He has a good job with the antique store and he told me that they had just got in a portrait that immediately made him think of you. When he showed it to me I could see just what he was talking about. You will see when you look at the picture. Anyway, it was only a few pounds so I got it to send to you, hoping that it will give you some impetus towards that award winning story that you have said was inside you almost since the day you picked up a pencil.
The lady in the picture was, he told me, quite well known in her day but I do feel that she should have not scowled for the artist. The other odd thing is that your great-grandmother was a Gary.
Hope you are well,
Your loving Mother, Maisie.

Now very curious I carefully unwrapped the brown paper and then the cardboard that the picture was wrapped in. When I had it out I had to prop it against my bedhead to look at it. I really didn’t know what my mother was thinking about when she sent it as I just did not have a wall big enough to hang it on. However, looking closely at the face depicted I could see why they thought of me. The picture was an elegant lady of the eighteen hundreds, dressed in a satin gown with the appropriate accessories. On her neck was a rather curious chain from which hung three small silver skulls. I really could not see a scowl as her look was of a person who was intent on whatever she was looking at during her sitting. It was odd to see that her eyes seemed to gauge me as I looked.

Her hair was up in a bun and she had a small hat on with a feather in it that looked like an old quill. The name on the bottom said that she was Miss D. Gary and the date was 1846. What staggered me was that she could have been my sister, so close was the family resemblance. I decided, there and then, that I needed to find out more about her. As I was about to find somewhere to put the picture out of the way I noticed that she was holding a book and, clearly on the spine, it read ‘The Screaming Skull, Book Four’ by D. Gary. So she was an author as well.

I recovered the picture with the cardboard and brown paper and slid it into the gap behind my wardrobe for the moment. Putting a jacket on I left the bedsit to go to the library where I thought I may find out more, not totally trusting search engines to give me the truth.

At the library I looked up the books index and found that they had a copy of ‘Breaking Barbara’ by D. Gary in their rare books section, written in 1850. There was no mention of anything else. I then went to the reference section and found a copy of ‘Nineteenth Century Authors’ and looked up Gary. There she was, a brief listing which read –

Gary, Doreen Jennifer. B 1820 D ? Author of stories for a mainly female readership. Was once thought to use the nom de plume of Baron Bruce of Blairgowrie. Several good sales with her alliterative titles, such as ‘Breaking Barbara’ and ‘Minnie the Manic Moaner’ and was reputed to have written a trilogy that was possibly called ‘The Screaming Skull’ but no trace has ever been found of this.

Now that was strange in itself. My picture was her at 26 and she had the copy of the fourth episode of what history records as a trilogy in her hands. My hairs rose on my neck when I realised that she was then, the age I am now.

I asked at the counter about their copy on ‘Breaking Barbara’ and was told that the only way I could look at it was if I was an accredited literary scholar. Never mind, I had something to work with now, anyway. I went back to the reference section and called up the Ancestry data base, typing in Gary, Doreen. I found her birth record in York, in 1820 on a day, I noticed with amazement, was also my birthday.

Her father was listed as Gordon Gary, Gentleman. The mother was Geraldine Gary, nee Grange. I looked for siblings and found that a sister, born several years later, was my great grandmother Dorothy Gary, later to become Dorothy Dunstan. I could not find any marriage or death records for Doreen but she may have gone overseas looking for something to write about. I made my notes and then looked up Baron Bruce of Blairgowrie. He did actually exist, if only for a few years as he died in 1835, aged only four, the last of his line.

Being in town with some money in my pocket I bought myself a hot meal and ate while contemplating the coincidence of the picture being sent to me of a person who was vaguely related and shared the same birthday as me. When I got home I made ready for my evening work, even though I was starting to get the urge to write. Before I left I slid the picture out from behind the wardrobe and was amazed that she now had a slight upturn of her ruby lips that I had not noticed before; as well as more of a sparkle in her eyes. Before I covered it again I said, out loud, “Be patient, my girl, there is plenty of time.”

At work I made sure that I concentrated on getting everything packed in the right place, even though it was hard as I saw the opening lines of a story on almost every package I handled. I had ‘The sound of the milk on his muesli was enough to make Jack think about the crackle of the sheets as Jennifer rolled towards him’ to ‘Susan realised a little too late that it was not a good move to play sardines with six guys'. Like every journey that starts with the first step, every story starts with the first words and, if you can nail those, the story has a foundation.

Back at home I did all the usual things and went to bed, dropping into a deep sleep. For once I had a dream that was almost a story in itself, full of derring-do, sword play and adventure; as well as quite a lot of sex, seen from a womans perspective. Just before I woke up I saw a sign on a building that proclaimed it as an inn called ‘The Screaming Skull’. I did not bother with breakfast but powered up the computer and started writing. This became a normal day and I found that I needed to force myself to eat so that I kept up my strength. As it was I lost a fair bit of my chubbiness. Every night I would dream the story as it unfolded and every day I wrote it down. I had finally broken the seal on having my characters telling me what to write.

Six weeks later I had finished book one, an adventure on high seas and strange lands set between 1760 and 1800. I sent it off to a publisher to look at and got a very nice email from them to come and see them. They offered me a contract and an advance which allowed me to finish with the stacking and concentrate on my writing. After a dreamless week the story started again with book two, set a few years later. This time it was the son of my previous hero, who was killed off in book one, who took up the adventure. This time, however, the swords and black powder were replaced by early revolvers but the main location was more centered at the ‘Screaming Skull’.

This one took two months to write and I sent it off to the publisher. He emailed me back saying that they loved it and would sit on it until the following year, the first book being just about ready for printing and, when he asked what my writing name would be I said Doreen Gary without a moment hesitation. This made me think of the picture and I pulled it out from its hiding place and had to sit down when I looked at it. She still held the same basic pose but two of the three silver skulls were now gold instead of silver and there was the faintest outline of a fourth on the chain. What floored me was that she was smiling at me with such a look of happiness I almost cried. I took a picture on my phone as I now wanted to document the changes.

The following morning I woke from another dreamless sleep and studied myself in the mirror. I realised that I had changed slightly as well. I, too, was smiling more but the odd thing was that I didn’t need to shave any more. When I smiled at myself I saw her looking back at me, as she looked in the painting. My hair was a fair bit longer now as I had not had time for a barber so I pulled it up and held it to the top of my head. Unsure of what I saw I went and pulled out the picture, placing where it would be behind me when I looked in the mirror. When I looked again we looked like sisters and a voice in my head heard the boys from school with the usual greeting of “Hello, Brianna.”

The following day the publisher emailed me to say that they wanted to do a photo-shoot of me for the cover. I made the appointment and when I got to the studio they were not happy to see me. The photographer expected Doreen but, when he looked at me he said “I can make it work so that the punters will see the person they expect to see.” His assistants got me sat down and did things to my hair and face and, when I went back for the photos, he called me Doreen and said that I looked just like a successful authoress.

After the session I walked out of the studio and found a café where I could get a drink and a sandwich. The guy behind the counter called me Miss and smiled so I smiled back. There was a big mirror on one wall and when I looked at it I thought I saw a shadow of Doreen behind me, in the satin gown. The ‘me’ in the reflection just looked like a modern version of her, though, just dressed in jeans and a tee. Actually I was still wearing the satin top that they had put on me at the photo shoot and my hair tumbled around my head from the work the ladies had done to it.

When ‘Baron Bruce and the Buccaneers’ came out as an instant success the publishers wanted me to go on a signing tour. For some reason, every new person that I met now was referring to me as Miss Gary and the publishers decided that I was far too much like a tomboy for their liking and put it to me that they would fund a slight change in my wardrobe, for the tour only. As they were paying for everything, including my travel and accommodation, who was I to argue. One of their ladies took me to various places where I gained a new look, new clothing and a new appreciation of what I had let myself in for.

It was a ‘proper lady’ that set out on the signing tour and it was quite successful, if it was the offers of marriage that you counted. I looked the part that I was playing, if a bit flat-chested, and tried to maintain a soft voice with a York accent which eventually became my normal speaking voice after a month on the road. Back home, at last, I pulled the picture out from its hiding place and, when I looked at it I saw that the smile was now quite joyous but also a little victorious. That night I had another book dream and this one did not take very long to write as it was not part of the skull set. I sent it off to the publisher and a month later The Lust of Little Lilly” hit the shelves, followed a couple of months later by a much more modern book titled ‘Suzies Supermarket Surprise’.

All the while I was changing in myself. At the odd time I looked at me and the picture in the mirror the more we looked like twin sisters. I was now starting to get an itch on my chest and my manhood was shrinking. I looked far better in womens clothes now than in my old male attire so my wardrobe was slowly changing as well. By the time that the second Skull book came out I was far more Brianna than Bryan and a much valued client at the local salon. The second book “Colin and the Cowardly Cutthroats’, was set between 1810 and 1860 and Colin was now the new Baron Bruce. It was again well received and I was again sent on a signing tour. My publisher was pushing me to be more ‘out there’ and to move to a better address but I told him that I was happy where I was and that I felt safe. Actually, I had the feeling that the picture felt safe as well.

With the signing tour over I started dreaming book three. This one started in 1880 and went through to the end of the First World War and followed the next Baron Bruce, Frederick, through life in the Victorian era and the horrors of the western front, before coming back to the village to find that the ‘Screaming Skull’ had been destroyed by a bomb dropped from a passing Zeppelin. It was titled ‘Frederick Fights Fearlessly in France’ and one of the reviews of the book remarked that, like the previous two, the scenes were so detailed it was if the writer is a fly on the wall.

This made me stop and think. There was no record of a date of death for the original Doreen and, if she was born in 1820 it would be unlikely that she had lived beyond 1900. I sat at my computer and realised that she could not have viewed the events depicted in these books, especially the sailing days of the first and the world events of the third. This, I realised, was from my imagination, rather than dreams generated by the picture. I pulled the picture from its hiding place and she looked back at me with a knowing look. When I looked closely I saw that I could now read a title on the ‘Screaming Skull, Book 4.’ It said ‘Neil against the Nastiest Nazi’ and the cover was the military patch they had with a deaths head on it and the double lightning strike.

The next day I made an appointment with a dressmaker, showing her the earlier photo I had taken of the picture. A week later, after the fitting, I picked up a long satin gown in the same peach colour in the picture. I had seen a jeweller and got him to make me a necklace with four golden skulls on it, showing him the picture as well. I then made an appointment with the photographer and, after his girls had recreated my hair and face, we did a portrait session for the cover of the last book of the series.

I had bought an apartment in a nice area by this time but was not living in it yet. I was in the process of getting all the furnishings that I wanted. I took the gown there and hung it away with the other new dresses I had obtained. Back in the bedsit I took out a picture that the photographer had printed of me and stuck it to the wall with Blue-tack. I then pulled my painting out of its hidey hole and when I uncovered it I saw that Doreen was now sitting with her lips pursed and one hand outstretched with the palm towards me.

I just could not help myself as I put my free hand against hers and leant into the painting to kiss her lips. As I did I felt a flow of energy pass to me and the feeling of absolute thankfulness before I blacked out. When I woke up again I was on the bed and felt different. This was brought home to me when I sat up and felt a weight on my chest that had not been there before, as well as an odd feeling of space in my groin. The painting was nowhere to be seen but when I looked around, my new photograph now had the frame around it and had been enlarged to fit. There was now a new picture which almost identical to the old one except for now having four golden skulls; and the nameplate now read ‘Miss D. Gary 2019’.

My Portrait of Doreen Gary was gone but I still had another book of the series to write and now had a move to my new apartment to organise. After the final book in the Skulls series I needed to start on a new era of more contemporary Brianna Barrett from Bayswater ones; the ideas were flowing like rapids through my brain. After that I just had to find that handsome man from my first dream as I now wanted him to bend over me and kiss me. I knew he would be out there somewhere, just like the ideas for a story.

Marianne G 2021

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Comments

One of These Days...

...I guess I'm going to have to get around to reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray". (Project Gutenberg has it online, since it's out of copyright.)

Anyway, a cute take here, especially since the expected ending didn't eventuate. For that matter, the start had me expecting the renegade word-processor plot, which happily wasn't where this went.

Actually, her publisher will probably want her to keep the Skull series going; there's still another 75 years to cover after WWII. I just hope the author doesn't die of COVID complications after volume six, "Doreen Defies the Dastardly Disease".

Eric

Cute

joannebarbarella's picture

A nice pastiche on Oscar Wilde's famous picture.

Do you know where I might find a copy?

This one has legs.

I too thought this might go in a different direction with the skulls representing other ancestors or the tavern being found and adventures to follow.

Very enjoyable.

The beginning is a wonderful

The beginning is a wonderful set up for a story you didn’t write. Along with the others who have commented, I thoroughly enjoyed the story you DID write, along with the twist you introduced to a standard story trope. Well done build up of the main character, plot set up, then skillful wrap up and ending.