Terry Pearce is better at writing fiction than bios. If you want to find about him, find out from his characters. If you see anything in them you don’t like, the inspiration for it was drawn from colleagues, family and friends. Honest. He’s tired of neither London, where he lives, nor life, which he visits occasionally.
The Long Watch (September 20, 2010. Issue 21.)
The stillness between blizzard and thaw is somewhere I could live forever. Like all beautiful things, it doesn’t last. I stretch out every minute of it, fleeing company, conversation, distraction. Alone, I stand at the end of the drive, a black shape in the whiteness, the red dot of my cigarette tainting the perfect monochrome. It finds its way to my mouth repeatedly, and the puffs of smoke merge with vapour breath and wider mist. My edges are a smudged blend at the limits of a pencil drawing, bleeding me into the white page that surrounds me.
Riding the conceit, I zoom out, taking a good look at myself in graphite and wood pulp. A sketch; my artist, it seems, has taken only minimal pains over me. I am a lazy outline, a passable likeness of a human being. Everything is seemingly in its right place, but look closer—turn the page—and I am foolscap-thin. I picture a forensic historian trying to piece together my life after I am gone, searching for clues among the traces I have left. His brow is furrowed and he has constant recourse to his toolkit, holding a magnifying glass here, scraping a tissue sample there. Of the weightier leavings you might expect from a human life, there are few.
There are good reasons for this. I don’t need a psychoanalyst to spell it out for me. In the comfort of my own skull, I can recline on my pre-frontal chaise-longue, separate right and left halves. Right, you can be Freud; left, Anna O. We go over well-rehearsed lines; Freud quizzes Anna about her relationship with her parents. Anna tells him how she was expected to be unseen and not heard. How she was never loved, how she learned to walk through her childhood without making the floorboards creak. Freud raises his eyebrows and considers the implications of a male nominating the female part of his psyche to speak up for him.
She doesn’t mention, of course, the other reason I tread lightly. About that, we do not talk. We know without words that I scan every crowd, search every face, waiting for someone to stand up, to point the finger, to say what they all know. The accusing cry will be taken up by more voices, fingers, pairs of eyes, spelling out my crime in screaming bold type which marches towards me and drowns out my pleas, until it in its turn is drowned out by the approaching sirens.
The car will open, and two impossibly tall policemen will get out. They will not even need to arrest me; I’ll go quietly. My guilt will be etched on my face—there will be no protestations of innocence. No trial. No parole. I will simply disappear, and the universe will expand to fill the space with hardly a shrug. After all, in a way, I was never really here at all.
I stare through my cigarette into the whiteness again. My stare covers the usual thousand yards, but also thirty years. I focus across the decades
on a milk carton clutched in my five-year-old hand; on it, a picture that could be a mirror. The resemblance between the face on the carton and mine staring at it would be uncanny, if we possessed a single distinguishing feature between us. Identically nondescript; the nobody twins. Still holding the milk carton, I walk over and peer into the crack left by the living room door. Inside, my mother is lounging with one of her special friends. The hush is broken by urgent noises. My father is away, again.
I step back, dropping the milk on the floor; the white liquid splashes and covers the grime, white blanket covering everything again. I walk out of the front door, leaving it banging open in the wind.
I still don’t know how I convinced everyone. I suppose they wanted to believe, maybe too much. Only when there was no way back did doubts creep in for them. The love they wanted to give, they held back, being nagged at by something they could not admit. I was petrified that they would discover who I was and where I should be. In time, living there became just like living at my first home; I could walk through a room without anyone noticing. They preferred it that way. The easiest way to live with a mistake is to let it exist in the corners of your life, never looking at it too hard.
Maybe it contributed to their final lack of care, that night. A night like this, snow and ice on the roads. Since then, I’ve been alone; an actor whose fellow cast members have all left the stage. It’s the third act, and I am left peering into the wings, looking out past the lights. Trying to make out faces in the audience. Terrified that they’ve left, realising I’m just the understudy.
At the back of my mind, there is always the expectation that he will come back someday, that I’ll come face to face with this identity’s rightful owner. A lazy smoke trail of thought wonders if my presence is stopping him somehow. Maybe if I just took the car out now, followed his parents’ lead, it would open a space he could walk into and reclaim his property.
The magic of the white carpet always provides a blank canvas for these wild, fanciful flights. It’s getting late. I could just stay out here all night, lighting each cigarette from the last. Maybe I could convince myself that I belong here, eventually.
Silence reigns in me for a time, broken by a noise external; a distant sound, half-screech, half-growl. It sounds like some kind of cat. They say that there are Pumas on the moor, escaped from a local zoo. Somehow, it doesn’t make me scared to be out here.
The wind is picking up, but over its jagged howl, I hear engines. Headlights round the corner, up the lane at the top of the hill. I watch them for awhile before I realise that it’s two motorbikes. They must be crazy, coming out here on bikes, in this weather. It must be something important.
Maybe it’s him, come to reclaim his life. Or maybe it’s the two police officers, having crashed their car but still determined to reach me. Maybe it’s my real parents, come to apologise and ask me to come back.
I watch the lights get closer, wondering. The snow is so beautiful. It covers everything; everything is equal, everything looks the same. Looking back to the two impending beams of yellow, I think: At least, if the riders were for me, I wouldn’t have to watch the thaw.
The Sonora Home for Wayward Girls (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)
A new day brings a cold man, watercolour insubstantial and taciturn, but he brings a new pretty just for her. She pays him in grain, although she can sense he wants payment of another kind. She's getting too old and tired for that now, and besides, he smells even more godforsaken than this place. He leaves as quietly as he arrived, getting smaller and even less substantial until he joins the haze that passes for horizon.
Melody brushes the little one's hair carefully, one hundred strokes exactly. She places her with the others, making sure the poor dear will have a good view of the sunset to the East. She hopes the other girls won't get jealous of the new arrival's beauty, or her front row seat. She knows how girls can be. But their eyes are fixed avidly on the horizon, as always; she's so proud of them, never fidgeting or fighting.
The girls she had before the sundering used to cry and squeal and make such a fuss, but they were real girls, and they died, like real girls do. Like so many did. Her new girls are as well-behaved as she could wish for, and they'll never leave her. Of course she'd like more of her own little babies, but her womb is barren now, like everyone’s. She doesn't mind; there will always be more little plastic orphans in need of mothers, and if she has to give a favour or a little grain to the kind folks who bring them to her, well what of it?
She fusses for a little while, cleaning a dirty cheek here, re-tying a pigtail there, before settling into her deckchair under the awning. Around her the neat and tidy rows of her charges wait silently for the sunset. A smile that is her only means of survival sets itself hard upon her face and she gazes towards the light, wondering idly what tomorrow will bring.
Letting Go (May 20, 2009. Issue 5.)
The wind blew Natasha’s lace skirts dangerously high as the priest droned in the gloom of the churchyard. Making no attempt to push them down, she stood at the back, a single tear poised on her cheek, replaced each time her dark hair brushed it off. Her head was held high. Let his mother take centre stage, wailing at the front. Natasha knew, and all of Matthew’s friends knew, who Matthew had been closest to, who had most cause to miss him. Her thousand-yard stare spoke louder than a shoulder wet with sobs.
“Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower…”
Matthew lay in the coffin, saying nothing, as he so often had. She wondered if he was watching somehow. Would he be impressed at the stricken figure of his lover keening for him? Or would he just be darkly amused at being compared to a flower? She tried to imagine him making some laconic quip. His wit was hard to summon.
“…In the midst of life we are in death…”
The midst of life. The mist of life would be more appropriate; clouds of smoke wafted around her hazy memories of parties and clubs. Flashes of lights and flesh, flares of music and nostrils marching along lines.
“…Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts…”
The secrets of her heart? She doubted it.
Afterwards, she drank his favourite, Talisker, straight up. Wet eyes regarded her across the rims of dry white wine glasses, waiting for her to cause a scene. Words were exchanged, a dance of politeness; steps of barely concealed loathing. She was to them everything about his life that had ended it too soon.
She found Jake in a hallway, his gangly frame propping up an arch. He knew. She fell against him.
“This wasn’t the party he would have wanted.”
“That wasn’t the funeral he’d have wanted.”
“We should do something he’d have appreciated. Something that would roll all these dusty old corpses in their graves”
His eyes danced. “What are you suggesting?”
“Let’s go be with Matthew.”
One hand held his, the other the whisky, as they stumbled across the graves, the path pristine and unused to their left. The full moon gaped.
“Here. He would’ve wanted some of this.”
Splashes of whisky moistened the fresh earth. They danced, then, around his grave, on his grave, and told each other stories about him that the eulogies could not have borne, stories they knew already, but that seemed right, here, now. Finally, they sat, side by side, resting against the headstone.
“You cut quite the tragic figure at the service, you know.”
She smiled. She’d known that, but hearing it made her feel good. And then, suddenly, her breath caught in her throat. She saw herself, here on his grave, thinking about what she’d looked like during the funeral of the only person she’d ever loved. Who was she? Was there anyone under there? Suddenly she was furious at Jake for seeing her so clearly. She threw herself at him, beating ineffectually against his chest. He started at first, then sat and took it until the blows subsided, his soft features blanched in real surprise.
“Natasha?”
She wiped her nose. She said nothing, then again. Then she spoke.
“You’re right, Jake. All day. I… You know me. I don’t know any other way. But now… here, with everyone gone. The audience is gone now… it’s just me and him-”
“And me.”
“-and everything up until now has been preparing for today, and I’ve not really had to think about what would happen afterwards. And now… This is really goodbye, and…” – a huge sob shook her – “…and I can’t believe he went and fucking died without giving me a chance to say goodbye.”
He took her shoulders and stared into her face, then, and he saw the lost little girl that she’d never allowed herself to be, peering, frightened, from the back of her eyes.
“What would you have said?”
“Does it matter? I didn’t get the chance.”
“You can say it now.”
She shook her head, then stopped. Her eyes glazed some kind of crazy, a kind Jake had never seen before.
“Yes,” she said simply, “I can say goodbye.”
She got up, held her cigarette between her gritted teeth, and started to tear at her dress.
“Natasha, what are you…”
“Shut up,” she breathed, taking the wide strip of lace that had come right off her skirt in both hands and moving towards him. “This is what I would have said, and I’m going to say it, so just shut up and listen, Matthew.”
With that she tied the lace around her eyes, taking a last drag and flicking the cigarette away. It bounced off the headstone and glowed briefly in the damp grass, a single desperate spark in a field of darkness. She fell on him and blindly clawed at his clothes as he sat atop the grave. His resistance died quickly, and she soon had him undone and was climbing on top. He slid into her, and she felt like a knot had been undone. The day flashed in front of her at the arm’s length she watched life from. She watched herself measuring every pace, every gesture, every look. She recognised herself from the mirror every day.
Where was she? Where was the real her?
Now. Here she was, now, saying goodbye.
“Matthew,” she breathed.
She felt him inside her. Felt him home, for the last time. She was really crying now; there was no audience, just the two of them. She wasn’t thinking about the outside, there was only inside. Reality hit her like a right hook. She felt death, so near. She felt alive, maybe for the first time. Most of all, she felt.
“…In the midst of death we are in life…”
Tears wracked her body; floodgates opened in every part of her. She collapsed on top of him, sobbing, knowing nothing would ever be the same.
“Goodbye,” she whispered, not only to Matthew.
God Bless (April 24, 2009. New Moon. Issue 4)
“Mind if I sit here? Thanks. Say, does that say… oh, no, sorry. ‘God Bless You’. I see.”
“What’d you think it said?”
Hal took his time answering as he slid into the seat with his tray. He looked up from his too-crispy fries and too-rough steak into her pretty-enough face. She had some of that shit in her lip, and one of them funny so-called haircuts where the sides were shaved up high with a shock of midnight black hair on top, but she was a damn fine piece of work. Man, those curves took your eyes in. Casual now. 
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Shoot, I’m hard to offend.”
“You insisting?”
“I’m insisting.”
“I thought it said ‘God Blow You’.”
She angled her shoulder to show in the mirror which ran the length of the wall against which the table was set. She seemed to be deep in thought for a few seconds, then a broad grin climbed her cheeks as she looked at the tattoo in the mirror. Thing was, it did look that way if you read it wrong.
“Ha. That’s funny. Ha ha. Gee, wouldn’t that be something? A blowjob from God?”
Hal could tell she was finding something funny, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it was. Hal found people hard to read pretty much most of the time. This girl, well all he could tell was that she knew her own mind. But she didn’t seem to want to let anyone else in on it too easy.
He swept his brain for a snappy comeback. It didn’t necessarily mean anything that he was ten seconds into a conversation with a hot young thing and they were already talking about blowjobs, but it couldn’t hurt to be quick with some patter. He slid his left hand under the table, out of sight.
“We’re assuming that God’s a chick here, right?”
Not great, but he had to start somewhere. He twisted his wedding ring off and dropped it in his pocket.
“Well, either way, maybe. If it was God, really God, giving you a blowjob, I think it’d have to be motherfuckin’, horsewhippin’, jawdroppin’ good, no matter which way you swing. Surely the creator of everything should know what he –“
“- Or she –“
“- Or she – is doing, right?”
This was good. Dirty in casual conversation, dirty in the sack, far as he could make out. Now, if he could just inch things round…
“Well, I guess so. Or maybe not. I mean, if she’s the all-powerful creator of the universe and all that shit, well then maybe she’s never had to give a blowjob. Maybe she’s one of those blowjob virgin types that there are on this earth. Maybe she don’t know the first thing about what a guy likes. You know, it takes a bit of experience, or a good teacher…”
He smiled to himself. Oh yeah, this was the way to go with it. He thought of the stories Jack told, most of which he’d always assumed were bullshit. Maybe, if he played his cards right, he’d be the one telling Jack and Jim and Nate about how he got blown by some chick he’d only just met in the toilet of a diner. Still trying to play it cool some, he bit into his steak.
“But surely… if she was all-powerful… and all-knowing… well then she’d know exactly what a guy likes. She’d know what you wanted her to do.”
Was it just him or was that a heavy ‘you’ there? And that playful look in her eyes… she couldn’t be talking like this, looking like this, and not wanting what was on his mind, could she?
“Besides, you think chicks only give blowjobs because they have to? Really? You never come across any who just like it? Chicks who give head because they love it?”
Paydirt. Gotta be. This little hussy was gonna be getting a piece of Hal real soon, if he knew anything at all. Maybe he could give it to her without even finding out her name…
“You sound like you’re talking from experience, doll.”
Her eyes flashed – amusement? – but she said nothing in response. Then, after a pause:
“Maybe I am. Maybe I know about what God knows, what God wants. Maybe, just maybe, God likes giving blowjobs so much that she hangs out in diners waiting for guys who love getting ‘em. Maybe all she needs is the askin’…”
Oh man, this was a dream. She was maybe taking the God stuff in a weird direction, but he didn’t care. He looked at her ruby lips. She could be his God.
“…and she’ll go down on any trucker who wants it.”
Hal opened his mouth to tell her he wanted it, but she wasn’t finished, and her voice rode over the top of his, getting louder: “Even if-“
She paused and started again after the clash of voices.
“Even if,” the words dripped from her mouth now, soft promises from softer lips, and man he was hard, “…his wife Mary is back home wondering what time he’s gonna get there and whether he’ll maybe finally sleep with her for the first time in six months when he does, or whether he’ll black up her left eye to match her right instead, and then go out and spend the housekeeping on some hookers who haven’t gotten old like she has.”
What the fuck? In twenty seconds a down-dirty whisper promising him everything he wanted had raised to a vicious shout spreading his shit all over him and the diner. He felt like a dropped round of plates. How did she know this shit? Purple bloomed and spittle sprayed.
“What? How do you-“
She cut across him. “And, even if she does only look old enough to be his daughter. Not that being his daughter has stopped sweet little Sandy from ‘getting a piece of Hal’.”
“Now you wait a goddamn minute there! You don’t know what you’re talking about. How could – You don’t – How could you even know that any of them things were true?”
“Well Hal, If God did hang out in shitty diners looking for kicks, then maybe she would really be all-knowing, and as well as knowing exactly what you liked – everything you liked – she’d know all your dirty little secrets. And maybe,” each maybe was snarled now, but with a smiling twist at the corner. “she wouldn’t find anything to get turned on about in a fat old loser who can only get it up when he’s The Man and someone else is the bitch, and who’s got cancer of the balls in any case. Oh, you didn’t know?” Sweetness beamed from her pursed lips and flicking lashes.
“And maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, Hal.”
She got up and only then did Hal notice the girl who had just come up to the table; she must have been in the toilet. She was rake-thin and leather-jacketed, with the same shit in her face and a shock of pink hair. Black-hair put her arm around pink-hair’s waist.
“’Cos maybe She prefers pussy. D’you ever think of that?”
Hal couldn’t begin a word, let alone finish one. He slumped back into his chair, a hurricane survivor, as the couple turned and walked away. She turned back at the door and flashed a grin that no God or anything holy should’ve been able to front.
“Night, Hal. God bless.”