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.

Instalment Eighty Eight

Growning up I learnt quick who my friends were, who I was. Me against the world, alls I had with me was my Pride. My Pride was a huge, hulking mass. My Pride sure got me into a lot of trouble. Guy that size makes you rub some people the wrong way. My Pride bought me a busted lip or two.

That Pride of yours is going to get you into strife.

I didn’t care, Pride made me happy.

That is, until I grew up.

I got a job.

I remember the first time someone made me swallow my Pride. That’s crazy, I thought, I can’t swallow my Pride! It couldn’t be done, my Pride was too big.

They stuffed my Pride down my throat.

Swallowing my Pride hurt. Tears stained my cheeks.

Over the years, it happened again and again.

Sometimes you just have to swallow your Pride, people laughed.

It took something out of us.

My Pride withered, shrinking before me.

Yet each time, my Pride was harder to swallow. The less of Pride that remained, the more it hurt to swallow. What was left of my Pride stuck in my throat.

Again?

Swallow.

Just this once..?

Swallow.