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.”