19-Infinity by Fraser Sherman

Author:Fraser Sherman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, historical fantasy, intrusion fantasy, short stories, anthology
Publisher: Behold the Book
Published: 2023-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

1969: SHADOWS REFLECTED IN DARKNESS

I picked up John Brunner’s Black Is the Color because the premise—black magic and espionage set against the background of “swinging London” jazz clubs—fascinated me. The book didn’t live up to the concept, but I still liked the setting. I started this tale with the idea of an underage girl and her friends sneaking into a jazz club, then followed where the story led me. The Merryman was inspired by an episode of the 1960s Saturday morning cartoon Shazzan.

If being a seventeen-year-old girl in 1969 London had been easy, Prudence and I wouldn’t have met Death’s Jester and obviously he wouldn’t have almost killed us.

That year would have been a lot easier for me if my family had stayed in the neighborhood I was born into. I was Maud Binks—hated my name then, not fond of it now—working-class girl, but my Dad’s business made him a boatload of lolly. He’d insisted on moving us into a posh neighborhood where everyone seemed upper crust to me. The kids my age took great glee in pointing out I was nothing of the sort.

Happily, this was back when Michael Caine and Albert Finney were proving the working class could be cool (Michael Caine, oh god, Michael Caine, how I loved you!) so I went that route. I let the other girls know I was street-smart—not that the word existed back then—and tougher, wilder and more daring than any of their lot. The city was “swinging London” back then and Maud Binks knew how to swing.

The Maud of my fabrications was a daring bird who snuck out at night to visit bars and Soho jazz clubs. She’d tried sex, she’d tried pot, she might have done something erotic with a Negro boy. All lies. If my father even suspected I’d done any of that he’d have given me, as he liked to put it, “a clip round the hear-hole.” But the lies did the trick: the other girls were intrigued as much as shocked, which was close enough to acceptance. The boys were intrigued in a different way, but I made it very clear they didn’t have what it took to bed a girl with my experience.

It was stupid, of course, but stupid’s what seventeen does, right? The facade I showed them concealed a bookish girl I was certain they’d despise. My idea of a fun night was smuggling a few Players cigarettes out of Mum’s pack and smoking in my room while I read. Enid Blyton. John Fowles. John Wyndham. John Creasey. Virginia Woolfe. Occasionally Valiant, Diana or other comics. My tastes were nothing if not catholic.

I could probably have kept up the masquerade until I entered college if not for Prudence White. Bespectacled, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, she was one of the brighter girls in my school. She didn’t seem particularly adventurous, so I was gobsmacked when she suggested I take a few of us along to one of those bars I hung out in.

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