No More Cheek Kisses Pilot - Extract

 

Somewhere in Spain… 

 

Cloistered community convent, white cal walls stained dark by shadows and the sins of a bygone era. A sparse room, one bed, a large wooden crucifix nailed to the wall. 

Buttocks flashing white as they pump between the legs of a suntanned beauty, heaving breast atop a head of black hair as he motorboats her. She wears the habit of a nun pulled over her shoulders. This is no Bronte novel. He comes, she fakes – they arrive at their contractual goal. 

There’s a faint scream outside the room. 

“Go – dey vill kill you!” said the prostitute. 

“I’m here to help you get out,” said the journalist, snapping on his underpants with his thumbs. 

“Are youse stupid? Do I look like a Ukrainian sex worker?” Her ascent changes from quasi-eastern bloc, broken English, to scouse. 

“Actually, yes I’m remembering the whole – they have my passport and child hostage in Odesa thing.” 

“Fucksake lar, why the ‘ell would I want to leave ‘ere. I’m ten grand from buying a fucking house,” said the prostitute. 

“You’re an oxymoron,” said the journalist, incredulously.  

“I’m an artist, now come ‘ed.”  

“Con artist, luring unsuspecting, vulnerable old men into saving you from sex slavery with their pensions and nest eggs.”  

“Boo hoo,” said the prostitute. 

A flourish like some street magician she produces a taser, swipes at him. The journalist blocks it and pushes her onto the bed. He backs off, pulls on his hassock and opens the window, dithers, turns and spears her a look of self-righteous indignation, snatches up the cash he had left on top of a cupboard. He lurches in a leap of faith. 

The door burst open. Two, no-neck, gangsters rush to grab him. 

“Bastardo!” 

The journalist, Mat Sharkey, lands, forward roles and runs across the manicured lawn of this ancient monastery. 

He's got handsome but doesn't let that hold him back from not giving a shit. He will do whatever it takes to grab a scoop, but things don’t always go to plan. 

Mat ties his hassock stopping himself from spilling out as a black Wrangler Jeep pulls up and swings open the passenger door. A town called malice, by The Jam, pumped through the radio. 

He jumps in. 

“Gun it baby!” said Mat. 

The driver, an Iberian beauty, his sidekick, her name is Charlie, but she is no angel. She sniffs up. 

“I can smell vagina emmm… I though jew are on a crusade to save the oppressed, trafficked, enslaved,” said Charlie. 

He offers a baleful look. 

“I'm...” 

“Weak and pathetic,” said Charlie. 

“Drink, bar,” said Mat. 

“It’s...” 

“Not early enough,” he pauses and sees she is just wearing a bra and sarong. Off his look... 

“Work we were in the middle of a costume change.” 

“What you playing this time?” said Mat. 

“I’m tied to the mast and aboard the hero swings, saves me from the lusty pirates.” 

“Sounds erotic. I've got a touch on,” he said, holding his groin. 

“It’s a kids' theme park show jew perv, joder! Anyway, I can use your Jeep for the rest of the day?” 

“Sure.”

Wet Pet by Mark Shearman

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WET-PET-Stories-Mark-Shearman-ebook/dp/B017Z4LQSS

Piano Playing Dogs by Mark Shearman

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B091QF5N8C/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piano+playing+dogs&qid=1617714609&sr=8-1

 

Extract from Zorro's Last Stand by Mark Shearman

---

The crest of the hill emitted shimmering waves of heat, flickering and obscuring a figure. The dark silhouette against the blue haze of the morning sky, not quite in focus yet, resembled someone familiar. The waves of heat depleted the closer he came into view. A Cordebés hat was clear as he spun around — Zorro? A black cowl mask: it was El Zorro. The cunning fox was free, but why was he here on the Costa Blanca?

Zorro's long black cape trailed, flouncing behind him. He sprinted zigzagging in an exhaustive pursuit. Drawing his flashing steel rapier, leapt and spiked a piece of paper— stopped—lifted the note to admire it, and smiled self-congratulatory.

A scruffy grey donkey heaped with baskets of orange nísperos eyed him, chewing from a nosebag like he didn't care. His owner, a chubby, ragged farmer, flipped a pot to his crease-crazed face, pouring without touching his gurning lips. He smacked the rump of his donkey to elicit movement, multi-tasking.

A swoosh of wind fluttered and lifted the spiked paper from Zorro's sword, swishing and rolling in the breeze.

"Bastardo!" Zorro rasped.

He resumed the chase with more teeth-gritted venom. The paper hit and tumbled along the side of the torque body of his shiny, black and rigid stallion. The horse, made from fibreglass, was bolted atop his tired 1969 Volkswagen bus, two-tone creams, rusty and pitted with holes. The van was parked in a residential car park and the horse a prop to his unusual job.

He rushed the horse in a flourish of upward stabbing motions and missed skewering the paper by inches. The paper, a thousand peseta note, swirled off in the wind avoiding capture.

Inside this Zorro'd up van, he lifted his cape, sinking into the seat, flustered from the exertion. Flipped up the black mask onto his sweaty forehead, despondent, revealing a bruised black eye. He sighed, closed his blue eyes as his shoulders sank back deflated.

He slouched into his ripped seat, wiped the sweat from his blinking eyes and turned the key. The tired engine flushed, that familiar water-cooled VW sound, ticked over and then died. He sat back, emulating the engine, fed-up.

Under that unusual work attire, a handsome, albeit rugged man, El Zorro ‒ Danny, when not at work, studied the rings of blue and yellow around his right eye in the mirror. Suddenly something flashed to his left catching his other eye. He oscillated his head, searching for the source and instantly recognising the person he was there to shame into paying her debt.

A breast heavy, rotund woman, the wrong side of fifty, but being Mediterranean could be a lot older, wearing a house coat and slippers, clutching a brown crusty loaf and pinch purse.

The woman peered over the bonnet of a blue people carrier from a crouching position. Her crow's feet squinted, desperation in her dark, Moorish eyes. Breathing became heavy, progressing into a pant. She abruptly stopped; her breath caught in her throat. She stole another glance at her pursuer and flinched.

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zorros-Last-Stand-Mark-Shearman-ebook/dp/B07879KQGJ

 

My Migrant Hostel South Australia by Mark Shearman

 

In this photo I am with my older sister Wendy, we are in Adelaide Australia fresh off the ocean liner SS Canberra walking across the street where we were first housed in prefabricated Nissen huts.

Pommy Town, a bushland-fringed housing estate. These corrugated huts were designed by a British army engineer, Canadian, Captain Peter Norman Nissen, as portable accommodation and to some, Ten Pound Poms, it was paradise because of its indoor plumbing, a large backyard and, in many cases, ocean views.

In this photo, I'm returning from the hospital. In the middle of the night, I had climbed out of bed in search of water in the stifling heat but couldn’t find any. I unscrewed the top off a French-made Fly-Tox fly sprayer and drank the caustic liquid. My sister saw what I had done and alarmed my parents. My father snatched me up, borrowed next door's pickup truck and drove to the hospital like a twocker.

My parents hated living in the huts and eventually, we moved into a house that was built, exclusively, covered by a mortgage which was also something amazing to them in the late sixties as we had moved from the Victorian slums of St Ann’s Nottingham

Ten Pound Poms (also ten-pound tourist), refers to people from the UK who migrated to Australia under the Assisted Passage Scheme, run by the Australian Government after the Second World War.

The fare for passage to Australia was set at £10. And they could return for free within five years.

Australians referred to us as “Poms" either because of the acronym for 'prisoner of Mother England' P.O.M.E), or from a rhyming slang term for immigrant, pomegranate (sometimes spelt pommygrant) abbreviated forms pommy and pom.

I was reminded often about the fly spray incident. Did it change me, no I still hate flies.

A Teapot by Mark Shearman

 

According to ancient Taboola, whatever it was you were touching when you die you reincarnate as. When somebody thinks of you, you get to come back for a day. I just put down the teapot, as I was having a eureka moment when my heart jolted to a stop. Hey, I can’t complain I could have dropped the teapot and ended up on some landfill or recycled into an obscure piece of art placed on a wall in some filthy bookmaker’s toilet/masterbatorium.   

Now I get to watch my widowed wife frolic and fornicate with all in sundry. She still hasn’t learned the etiquette of eye contact whilst having oral sex. Mavis, that’s her, no longer uses me for tea after buying one of those fancy coffee machines you order cartridges online which reflects our relationship in the last bleak, sexless years.  

I sit on the windowsill with wilting flowers protruding out of me. Sharing my shelf are various ornaments all who have their own reincarnations. This makes it all the more embarrassing watching her mooching around the kitchen in her flabby underwear and my daughter she’s just the same still living at home at the age of twenty-five, truly the fat grapefruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.  

Yes, I sound bitter, but they always ganged up on me sending me to an early grave with their complaints about my taste in music, how much money I bring home and how much alcohol I consumed to numb my brain from the anguish they bestowed. Now I get an eternity of a different type of torment was this some sick spin off-circle of Dante’s. 

When I’m feeling low, Brendan reminds me that depression is an anagram of ‘I pressed on’. Brendan has come back as a greyhound. Mavis bought him at a flea market for two quid he was an antiques dealer and unbeknown to my wife he is a rare Staffordshire worth a fortune. I shouldn’t take comfort in this but the conversation she had with Beryl, our flirtatious, naturist, sexagenarian next-door neighbour, has me flipping my lid.  

She was cheating on me with the paperboy – fucking paperboy. The worst of it is he is a thirty-year-old flunky who can’t hold a job down and has a drug problem. I know this because the cheapskate bought her a pink vase called Gemma, she’s to my left. He stole her from a charity shop on Greenwich high street.  

“Ain't that right Gemma.” 

“Yes Dave.” 

Gemma doesn’t speak much, we don’t hear from her a lot, I don’t think people think about her that often. Anyway, like I said it could have been worse. I could have come back as the second to last thing I was holding which was an unwashed, gnarly sex toy. A strong ass-smell pulled my attention to the back of the sofa where I found it. I think it belongs to my neighbour. 

“EWW,” said Gemma.  

 I shudder to think about that.