Instalment One Hundred and Eight

Starting out I was lost, I never knew where to go or which way to turn. After bad decisions and a number of failures I became convinced life was a maze. A huge, complex maze but a maze to be solved nonetheless. Once you know you are in a maze however, it isn’t such a challenge, you start thinking about the problem like it has a solution. I’m in a maze I will make choices to solve this maze, you think. Carefully look left and right, weigh your decisions and head toward your goal. I was vigilant, I was alert and I was focused, life would not defeat me, I would conquer it. However the more I progressed the clearer things became. There were no hidden passages, no different paths. Success did not flow from choice but from perseverance. My decisions were illusions, the only thing that worked was persistence. So I trudged on. And on. Forever round corners, another birthday another corner. Still I pushed on. Only when I reached the centre, a dead end, did I see life for what it is, a Labyrinth. Without the energy to return to my beginnings, finally I lay down to rest.

Instalment One Hundred and Seven

By far the easiest and quickest way to insult the intelligence of a complete stranger is to walk up to a crossing they are already waiting at and push the button yourself.

That one small action says so much with so little effort.

It says, just from the brief glimpse I have had of you, based only on your appearance and how you hold yourself, I have made the decision that it’s entirely possible you are mentally incapable of understanding, let alone operating, simple pedestrian signals. So I am doing it for you.

BANG!

BANG! BANG!

Ridicule hits the button hard, three times while looking me in the eyes.

“Yeah, I had already done that,” I explain to him.

“Oh, well I heard if you press it again it thinks more people are waiting and changes quicker,” he replies.

“Firstly, it doesn’t think anything,” I say, “and second, if you believed that were true wouldn’t you keep on pushing it?”

Instinctively, his hand shoots out again.

BANG!

“I didn’t know if you had pushed it,” he says.

“What, am I waiting for a gap to run across?”

BANG! BANG!

“Well you know… I didn’t want to risk it,” he replies.

Instalment One Hundred and Six

Refrigerator sat in the corner and hummed. This was done to annoy me. The room would be silent, I would just be falling asleep when…

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

What? I would enquire.

Nothinngngngngngngngngngngngngngng.

Why do you do that, randomly make that noise?

It means I’m workingngngngngngngngng, came the reply.

After a while Refrigerator would randomly stop the humming.

Sometimes Refrigerator would start flicking the light on and off.

It was my fault, we had no privacy.

We lived in a house without a fourth wall, I had broken it early in the lease while drunk, exposing us to each other, the elements, the outside world and to anyone reading this story.

Is it a fridge or a real person? a reader asked.

I haven’t decided yet, the worried author typed unsure how this story got away from him so quickly.

I squeeze the pillow to my head in an effort to dampen the chatter. When I get too tired I forget things.

How this all started. My name.

“You’re a character,” my father would say when I was in trouble as a child.

You are a character typed the relieve author.

You are Character, he retyped as correction.

I’m Character I mumbled.

Instalment One Hundred and Five

The dead had risen. They were coming down Main Street before anyone spotted them. The first scream should’ve been a warning, by the time I was at the window that scream became a chorus and I knew something terrible had happened.

Mind you, I was busy with my own problems.

I had been up half the night sand-bagging the house before coming to town to protect the shop. The flood waters hit around noon. Sandbags at front and back doors, the stock on tables and the electric pump running to bail out the water. My first mistake, the power went, so I was down to buckets and brooms to save the shop.

It was dusk when I heard the screams. The flood waters had come from the south of town through the cemetery, a cemetery that serves five counties.

Coffins are full of air, polished pine and oak makes for a fine sea going craft and sitting water softens freshly dug soil.

As the last month of funerals bobbed down Main Street, carried by rising flood waters, the Town of Resurrection gather at our windows to farewell them a final time, each worried that we would soon join the parade.

Instalment One Hundred and Four

After years of name calling, cursing, in-fighting and outright hatred, we all finally sat down in a room to sort out our differences.

Yesterday Me, Current Me and Future Me, eye to eye at last.

I was supposed to be the mediator between Yesterday Me and Future Me, to keep it civil, but I had a horse in this race too, Yesterday Me is a screw up and I wanted to make a few points myself.

“Look, firstly no yelling. I’m tired because somebody decided to stay up watching ‘just one more episode,’ til’ three in the morning,” I said.

“Ha. You two are both as bad as each other!” Future me yelled, “You do the same thing again tonight.”

“It’s not like YOU get anything done,” Yesterday Me shot back at Future Me. “I will do the taxes on the weekend, you say to ourselves, and do you do it? No. You sit around on Monday morning blaming me for not doing something on Saturday, when I am hung over because mister live in the moment here had a huge Friday night.”

“We need to get organised,” Future Me sighed.

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Yesterday Me say in unison.

Instalment One Hundred and Three

Death protects the living.

Death was tired, he slaved away every day and not one single soul was grateful. No one saw the good he was doing, they all cursed him.

So he appeared for a day.

“I will take this man’s life now,” he said standing at the wreck of a speeding car, “No longer will he have the opportunity to kill others.”

“I will take this woman’s life now,” he announced by the bed of a contagious woman, “No others will become ill.”

He let a fox kill a rabbit so fox cubs may eat. Latter he killed the fox so the corpse may provide food for maggots and worms, their waste enriching the soil. The soil growing life for food and air.

“I do this for all living things,” cried Death to the world, “You do not see my good work?”

“You take people we love,” the world cried back, “Victimise the weak. Starve the poor.”

“I take the old to save families more grief. My famines keep the world liveable for the rest, as do your wars. Greed makes you fat and I weed the greedy. Death helps life survive. Don’t blame me, blame each other.” 

And he was gone.

Instalment One Hundred and Two

When you die they say you live on in the hearts and minds of those that love you. That was a problem.

He never let me go, which was sweet but over time I hated him for it. I died young, we hadn’t been married long and he’d been inconsolable. So there I was, living on within him. And others too, my friends kept me with them for a while, but the day the pain becomes bearable is the day you truly die to them, and they had let me go. He hadn’t. Which made me love him all the more.

For a while.

He loves me so much, I thought, watching him grieve for a year, then two. My parents had died when I was young, so I had them in me, in him, so I was not one to judge.

I grew tired, I was dead, ready for peace. But he kept on pining, all the while sleeping with women he didn’t love. Forcing me to look on, my parents watching me. After some years I realised, if he died alone, we would all be free. But his sister and her kids loved him, and so it went.

Instalment One Hundred and One

200 Word Stories for Children
A bird flew into the Opera House

Illustration by Alex Douglas click to embiggen

A bird flew into the Opera House,
to hear the orchestra rehearsing Strauss.

Out of the pit, on to their toes,
sprung the string section using cellos as bows.

Bows became arrows shot into the air,
missing the poor bird’s feathers by a hair.

Up jumped flutes, oboes, clarinets and a bassoon,
they blew and they blew until they did swoon.

The sight of that failure sent the brass section to their homes,
taking with them trumpets, tubas, a flugelhorn and trombones.

“We’re useless,” they muttered, while their hands they did wring,
when in walked the cleaning girl, Melody, who they wouldn’t let sing.

“Don’t be so foul, this in no common fowl,”
“What you have spotted,” she trilled, “Is a spotted barn owl.”

She started to coo, she started to hum,
sprung from her lips, a beautiful song was soon sung.

Hoot, hoot, she sung, hoot, hoot, hoot,
while bird song was added by a girl on the flute.

The orchestra soon realised they had been wrong,
as they and the owl were won over by Melody’s song.

“Please join us,” they cried to the owl and Melody,
“Please joins us and make an opera out of our symphony.”

Instalment One Hundred

Getting older, he had come to realise, simply meant that things never got better. But it was his birthday and he was damn well going to get out of bed today, even if he hadn’t yesterday.

He swung his legs out onto the floor, gingerly testing his weight on them. His right knee yelled back that something was wrong. A persistent old injury.

Old people didn’t fall apart like people joke, it was more that nothing ever healed properly. It hadn’t for a long time. He had twisted that knee catching his son jumping out of the treehouse. That kid shot up so fast, it seemed like he grew bigger every breath he took. Funny, he hadn’t thought about that treehouse in years.

Taking a step his left big-toe howled. An even older malady, maybe 70 years, bent it backwards playing barefoot soccer at a BBQ and it never healed right. They were good times. He missed those friends and those drunken days.

These war wounds flared with every step, reminding him of years past. Centurion mourned all his fallen friends with a sigh, it was his 100^th birthday and with the next step he felt every day of it.

Instalment Ninety Nine

Lachrymose was the colour of rain, so pale as to be almost translucent. And like rain, she was liable to strike you in the face if you tried to look at her too long.

The ripples in her lips, if you examined them closely, were like waves. Or waves were like her lips. Cresting and falling, likely to drown you. When the blood ran out of her face, those lips were the colour of spray curling off the back of a wave, sharpened to a sneer.

She never used a mirror and refused to pass them by. She stood by puddles to catch her reflection. Glimpsing herself upside down with her head in the clouds was a rare joy. Sometimes, alone, when it all became too much, she would fill a basin with tears. Consumed by loathing, she would scrub the floors and counters to sparkling with those tears, entombing herself in sadness.

The one thing she knew was secrets need to be told, so she told them to the drain, which carried them out to sea, like a message in a bottle never to be uncorked.

“I am deserted,” she would sob to the sink, for none to hear.

Instalment Ninety Eight

They say you need a bushfire to create new life. That is what happened with my uncle and me.

It was years ago, my Dad’s family had a boat, a wooden thing called the Phoenix. Dad and his brother would sneak out onto it to drink and smoke. They were just kids really. One night my uncle passed out with his cigarette still lit.

Unlike bushfires, flame can only destroy so much of a boat before the water claims it.

The water claimed my uncle too.

The boat went down just off the dock in shallow water. My dad spent the next two days diving down to salvage fittings before the water ruined them. Deep breath, dive, hour after hour.

He took an ad out in the local rag, same day as the obituary, to sell everything he had saved. They had to pay for the funeral somehow.

Someone offered to buy the lot, so my dad took it round. He opened the door, this old bloke, and behind him stood his daughter. 

Dad couldn’t keep his eyes off her, he says, my mother.

So the flame from the cigarette that took my uncle’s last breath gave me my first.

Instalment Ninety Seven

The whole town lived in fear of it.

They wouldn’t talk about it, not anymore.

But they kept feeding it.

They had brought it on themselves.

They made a deal, hurried and fevered, fuelled by greed.

A stranger had appeared one day from the fog, as certain types of strangers often do.

He was cold, wet, in a bad way yet no villager offered him kindness.

Until his coin purse appeared. Then they offered. What could have been a smile briefly crossed his lips.

They all took turns, gleeful and eager. One coin for shelter. One for food. One coin for drink. One coin to take his dirty clothes, one to return them clean. They all took a turn.

“I have no gold left to give but feel you deserve something in return for your treatment of a stranger. Would you like a gift?” he asked.

The villages nodded in excitement.

“You must promise to look after it.”

“We do,” they cried.

He produced a small animal, the likes none had seen. And then he was gone.

They fed it and it grew fast, rarely moving from the Village square.

The Oh-Beast was grotesque creature, created by their own greed.

Instalment Ninety Six

Illustration by Alex Douglas  Embiggen

Much to everyone’s surprise, it was not the robots that fired first. The first shot, in the only Robot Human war ever fought, was fired by a man worried about his job. There was a strike you see, with a full picket-line of workers, so the bosses decided to bus in scabs. Only these scabs weren’t guys from the next town. These workers had been shipped in from farther afield and assembled out of state. Next generation strike breakers, The WageSlave Blue was programmed for industrial production functions, rested only 10 minutes in the hour on indefinite cycle and didn’t take sick days. The striking workers could offer no such benefits to their employers.

As The WageSlaves marched in a voice was heard, “They don’t call us battlers for nothing.” A crack rang out and a Robot fell. Archaic stared through the cyclone fence, smoking gun in hand, “They took our jobs,” he mumbled.

Following the war and its bloody aftermath, Governments decreed no robot could take a human job. An outcome none welcomed. Industry redefined robot.

HumUns were soon working custodial and service jobs. But every job is one some human needs.

Thus began the first Human HumUn war.

Instalment Ninety Five

Necessity is the mother of Invention.

Repetition is the father of Learning.

They meet. He walks up to her. “I normally don’t come to these single parent things, normally I don’t come,” he says. “I don’t either, not unless I have to,” she quickly replies.

Taking turns making fun of other attendees, their hands bump as they laugh.

Apart from both being single parents, the only thing they have in common is a shared love for the same types of music, but sometimes that is enough. And for Necessity and Repetition it was.

The courtship is slow, dates at the same restaurant, ordering the same meal, Repetition’s choice.

They introduce the children.

Learning does not take well to the change in his usually regimented day. “I should be studying, I should be,” he yells into Invention’s face.

She pauses in her work at straightening a paperclip.

“I think I can fix your calendar,” she says reaching past him to reorder his timetable.

“Nup, can’t do it,” she shrugs, giving up.

“You must try more, try more,” Learn admonishes her as they set to work together to make the perfect schedule. Repetition and Necessity now have a happy family, happy family.

Instalment Ninety Four

The King was a very smart and powerful man. He ruled his Kingdom fair and true. None doubted his reign.

“This enchanted ring gives me my power,” he once said after too many ales.

Over the years, this scuttlebutt caused many a scoundrel and some members of his court to remark, “With that magic ring, I could be King.”

One day, his lay-about son stole into the King’s chamber and took the ring. Striding to the throne room where the King sat alone, he announced, “Father, I have your ring, I am now King.”

“Take my crown too,” the King replied, “The ring is my might, the crown my reason.”

The crown, forged too large, slipped over the boy’s eyes.

“I feel the same,” the son complained.

“These robes provide my poise,” the King said wrapping his son up in cloth.

“Mal, scores before you have tried to take my place,” King Adroit sighed. “Thinking greatness comes from possessions, they give themselves away stealing trinkets rather than coming after the real source of power in the Kingdom. Me.”

The son drew his final breath, from a throat his father had slit.

The King was a very smart and powerful man.

Instalment Ninety Three

Why had Aural left people?

He was sick of hearing them. He was tired of listening to what people were saying. He was tired of listening to himself reply. Tired of complaining about what they said. Listening to them chew, walk, sit, snore, breath, live.

He found a cave and crawled, spiralling deep into the centre of the earth. To at last find peace and quiet.

Sitting, crossed-legged in the dark, he kept as still as possible, trying not to make a sound.

Even then, the silence was deafening.

He heard his own breath, rushing through the intricate webbing that was his lungs.

Trying not to breathe meant he heard his heart beat slowing due to the decrease in oxygen, the roar of blood through his veins become more of a swoosh silence whoosh.

In each of those silences, he now heard his nails growing, like a long, sad, creaking mountain settling into place over hundreds of years.

Very softly he hummed to himself, to block out the noise.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

He was at peace.

When you are tucked up in bed at night and the silence is all you can hear, throbbing in your ears, know it’s coming from below.

Instalment Ninety Two

“No, no, you’re right, it’s spelt funny.”

It felt like Mtthew said this ten times a day.

“I’m missing it. The first letter. No not the M, the first letter in order, the one before B.”

Mtthew wasn’t missing the A in his name, his parents weren’t stupid. He was missing the A from his life. 

It disappeared one day and left him in this mess. He couldn’t say it, he couldn’t write it and he couldn’t use it. He even had trouble thinking it, he knew it was something he should know but couldn’t nail it down, like when you can’t remember someone’s name, you know there is a hole in your knowledge but you don’t know how big.

His A had left when he had remarked that A was almost never a silent letter and maybe it should take its turn. So his A did just that.

Without an A he did not and could not feel Alive, he had no Air, he enjoyed no Affection. He was About nothing, And had nothing to Add.

Worst of all, Mtthew Hrrison sounded like a Cockney when he said his name, as his Hs had also become silent in solidarity.

Instalment Ninety One

On her very first day of school, everything was big, there was so much to do and so many people. It was all so strange.

“If I stand by the front gate for long enough,” she said to herself, “I will meet everyone in the school. No one will be strange to me then.”

That is what she did. The first bell rang and she stayed in place until her teacher came looking for her. She explained her plan, the teacher giggled and told her to come inside. She refused, insisting she was going to meet everyone. Because she was so little and the request so cute, the Principal decided to march every grade past her, it was fun.

This was a mistake.

The little girl grew up with the belief that if you stood in the same place long enough, you would meet everyone.

Oh her sixteenth birthday, she went to the largest train station in the largest city in her country and stood there, saying hello.

She wanted to meet everyone.

There she stayed for 50 years, finally catching her Death from cold. Lone had met everyone but didn’t know a soul. No one stood by her grave.

Instalment Ninety

“We have a corpse to dismmmmember.”

Trouble and Woe never walked anywhere. They sauntered, swaggered and strutted.

Even so, to stroll into the roughest bar in the city crowing their dirty work was a new low, or high, for them.

All eyes in the bar examined their drinks, as if they had never seen a domestic beer before and suddenly needed to understand exactly what it contained.

There was a cough and a chair leg squealed as someone shifted uncomfortably.

“Mister, we ain’t looking for no problems here,” said the bartender.

“You’re new,” chuckled Woe, “because you’ve got Trouble right here.”

“I’ll do it,” Misery called from the back of the bar, emerging from the bathroom.

Wherever Trouble and Woe went, Misery was never far behind.

Misery loved company, which was a shame for poor Misery as no one wanted to be in Misery’s company. Misery wasn’t their friend, Misery was Trouble and Woe’s wake, anyone left bobbing behind found their head held under by Misery.

“Out in the car,” Woe said to Misery, indicating to the door with a nod of the head.

“You looking at me?” Trouble screamed at a nearby drinker, who was not looking for Trouble.

Instalment Eighty Nine

Illustration by Alex Douglas - click to embiggen

Time is not relative.

You do not lose track of the time. Minutes do not disappear, you can’t waste hours, days do not pass and the years do not fly by. Time does not go by unnoticed.

“What happened to the time?”

You were in a daze, a trance just before you noticed you were missing some time. For a moment you were not in your present. But someone was present.

Time was taken from you, stolen. Beof Getimian, The Thief of Time, has struck.

Your time is an unbroken thread and you are a spool in its loop. You spin as the world spins, trailing out your time as an unbroken thread, following weft thread forward.  

Beof creeps to your side, slipping his Mask of Absence onto your face.

With his blade Chronophage, an ancient curved machete, he trims your away your time, your life.

He wraps your life around him, spinning your thread of life into his own.

You awake with a bump, a knot tied in your timeline. He is gone.

The more time he takes, the more time he has to take it.

And he is rampant for he has all the time in the world.