Instalment One Hundred and Forty Nine

As soon as they saw the sign, folks would laugh. Point, laugh and pay their money then laugh and point some more. 

The World’s Tallest Dwarf and The World’s Shortest Giant.

“It’s just gonna be someone normal” The joke every. single. person. made.

But it wasn’t funny, not for the two people on the sign. You knew the second you saw them. You know if you are looking at a dwarf, height is not the signifier, it’s something about the ratio of the arms and legs to the body. She was a very tall dwarf but a dwarf all the same. Same went for him, extraordinary growth of the hands and head, just short. And the voice, he had a giant’s voice. He was the average height of a woman in Hungary, and she was as tall a man from India. Five five and five five. They saw eye to eye on one thing, it wasn’t a double act so much as a double double curse. Being different in any way is tough enough. You want to fit in. But these two, dwarves undermined her and giants overlooked him.

In time they wed.

“Dwarf Giant marries Giant Dwarf.”

Everyone laughed.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Eight

The On Paper Poet presents Rhymes For Your Eyes Only.

This poem’s a poem for only your eyes to read.
If you try and speak it aloud you will be mislead.

For now is the time for you to let eyes to lead.
It’s harder to say then any poem you have ever read.

For all the pronunciations you see, that they take turns and alternate.
Not big or small changes mind you, they are just moderate.

You are the boss, take charge, it is all yours to moderate.

But just when you think it’s one rhyme it’s not, it is the alternate.

Lined up in rows, is this eye rhyming content.

Mind and mouth will have rows and not be content.
Wrap it up in bows, it is a wonderful present.

But take your bows quick should you choose to present.

Loud and clear, make sure your voice does project.
Should you try to master this difficult project.

To many errors your audience will be subject

If you should tackle this difficult subject.

Your ego to ridicule, you must willingly expose.

The end is near, fear not it’s getting so close. 

No scandal for you, no silly exposé.

For on this last line trust me, the poem will close.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Seven

People wanted to call them zombies but they weren’t, that wasn’t fair. Then we all would have been zombies once. There was no zombie plague. It was a good plague. Is there a word for a good plague? Sweeping mass construction? Applauselypse? Dogastrophe? Holoclaps.  I guess not. The virus, is that word correct? The virus infected 90% of the population. Total worst case scenario type scenario. Dis-bloody-aster. But turns out it wasn’t, not for 90% of us.

Faster reflexes, increased brain function and muscle mass, mild telepathy. Faster, smarter, stronger. A super human virus. Everyone tried to catch it so they developed a vaccination, no that’s wrong, an incubation I guess? We all took our shots. And waited. I was always pretty smart, so no worries here. Those who couldn’t catch it, they moved slow, thought slow, talked slow. Well, compared to the infected. So they got angry. They called infected braincases, brains for short. They lashed out. Slow, violent and yelling ‘brains,’ you can see where the name came from. “The kind thing to do would be to kill them,” I said, “is kind the word?”

“Why aren’t you using your telepathy?” my son asked me. 

“Brains,” I said.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Six

Continued from Episode One - Lost for words

Black as Noir 

Episode Two - A nun's litany

The floor show was winding down when I walked into The Sisters of Easy Virtue. These girls put the put the art in tart and the dame in fundamentalist. They were known as the Bad Habits, not for the outfits they shed but because no man had the willpower to quit ‘em. They worked the room like pros, they knew whose pants were bulging with money rather than affection. I headed to the bar and went straight for the Hail Mary, flashing Kitty’s picture to the waitress.

“She ain’t here Mister; looks too chatty for our convent. We’ve taken a vow of silence don’t ya know!”

This dame could chew gum and crack wise at the same time. I slapped ten of my best prayers on the bar to see if I could take her confession.

“Yeah, I seen her round only she don’t work here no more, got scared bad when some heavy came looking for her, said he was her brother.”

Her brother huh? I hadn’t got the run around this bad since I failed to find the lost sailor, Red Herring. And this case smelled twice as fishy.

That’s when I saw her, running for the backdoor.

Next week – Cat Scratch Fever

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Five

When I grew up, and it does seem so long ago, everything had a big label on it. It was simple, easy and clear. Most importantly, I believed it.

PERMANENT

Big letters on top of buildings – Permanent. The happy family who lived next door – Permanent. My happy family – Permanent.

I never questioned it, didn’t ask even once, so I can’t say for sure if anyone else even saw these labels. I assumed if it said Permanent to me, it did to those around me too.

So it came as a shock when those labels started to yellow and weather. Passing a building that ‘had always been there’ when the big Permanent capital P crumbled from the façade and landed at my feet. When the family next door got divorced.

I grew unsure and started to examine my family and the labels on them. They still said Permanent but the heat of my fear had the labels peeling at their edges. The glue was brittle, and I toyed at it’s edges, like a tongue that can’t leave a bitten cheek alone. I tore at the label on my father and it came away in my hand.

It had only been temporary.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Four

I was getting by making Ends meet. Making Ends meet wasn’t easy, never had been, never would be. But I had to do it. If I didn’t, I’d starve. We’d all starve. The Ends would see to that.

Sure, I could just get a Beginning to met an End. Beginnings were naive, wide-eyed goofy suckers, you could set them up with any old End. It was as easy as a Cake Walk, a dessert I’d invented for these situations that actually walked up to tables and served itself. But we all needed the Beginnings. Beginnings meeting an End made everybody sad, so I couldn’t go setting those guys up together, it ended in tears.

But making Ends meet... Ends knew what they were like; sad, bitter little bastards full of doom and gloom, obsessed with death. Why would they want to meet another End? They didn’t. So I opened a bar where Ends met their Ends. Ends would drink to each other, nothing they liked more than toasting another End. Then the cake would walk up, distract them for a moment, and before they knew what happened I was bundling them off together, drunk, into a cab. Two Ends finished.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Three

We all knew to be on the lookout for the wolf in sheep’s clothing, a nice pair of khaki slacks and a polo shirt that one sheep used to wear to impress dates, but none of us knew to also be wary about the coyote in a clown-suit roaming the meadow.

We all thought it was a regular clown.

“Great, a clown,” we sarcastically remarked when we saw him.

Someone said that clowns scare them, because it’s a conversational shorthand for “the inevitability of death frightens me and I need a connection, however fleeting, to survive the day,” and sometimes we need a little help keeping the wolf from the door.

Now coyotes are natural mischief-makers but the coyote in a clown-suit, he was something else. He was spotted going through the bins, which should have tipped us off about him being a coyote, but immediately he started transforming rubbish into poodles and giraffes for the lambs and kids, so we let it go.

“Clowns scare the willies outta me,” I muttered. “That’s called Coulrophobia,” said a well-dressed sheep with a wolfish grin sidling up to me, “Say that’s a fine wool suit, how’s about I buy you a drink?”

Instalment One Hundred and Forty Two

He was a regular guy. He was a large guy but he was regular guy.  Everyone said so. “Just a regular large guy,” they all said, “but.” We all have a but but his but was very large. His large but was his small face. His head wasn’t too big, his head fit his body and his body was large, so his head was large too but his head was not too large. His large regular head fit alright on his regular large body. He was a regular large guy but his face was too small. Everything about his face was alright but the size of his face was not at all right at all. It was as if someone drew a perfectly alright nose, eyes and mouth but drew a far too large circle around it all. Only the circle that was his head was not too big, the circle was large, large enough to fit just right on the body which was large and regular but the face did not fit alright at all into the circle of his regular large head. You could circle around the problem all day but his large but was a small face.

Instalment One Hundred and Forty One

“It’s mine. Give it to me,” she begged.

“I’m sorry madam but as I told you, without a bankbook I can’t authorise withdrawals, it’s policy.”

“It’s my wedding anniversary, I need that withdrawal.”

“You’ll have to talk to the manager.”

“OH I WILL.” She marched to the manager’s office.

“Mr... ahhhh... what’s your name again?”

“Having trouble with withdrawals again I see?”

“I’ve misplaced my bankbook.”

“Of course, of course. I’m going to need to ask you two security questions like yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“I’ll just need to know your mother’s maiden name and the name of your first pet?”

“How can I tell you that! I’ve given it to you for safe keeping so I don’t have to carry around all that baggage. Why do you think I use the Memory Bank?”

“As I explained yesterday, we are here to safeguard precious memories for our clients but we do find older customers, like yourself, sometimes have trouble accessing them. You don’t want to lose your memories do you? If you can’t be trusted with a bankbook, can you be trusted with the golden memory of your wedding to your late husband? Your security prompt is Memento mori. Ring any bells?”  

Instalment One Hundred and Forty

“Your death is one day closer.” He hit the Snooze button, silencing the alarm. The Clock slept for five more minutes. So did he.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ the ticked-off Clock tocked when it woke. “Stop alarming me,” he replied.

“I’d stop time if you asked,” said the Clock.

“The things I’d do if time stood still…” the man whispered. “Okay Clock. Stop.”

The Clock stopped at 7:15. His watch froze too. “Amazing,” he said and went back to sleep. He woke with no alarm, the clock still said 7:15. He stretched and walked outside completely naked, to explore his frozen world.

Cars honked his streaking form, schoolchildren pointed as parents failed to shield their views.

He ran inside. “Time isn’t frozen!”

“It is,” the Clock replied, “”It’s been 7.15 going three hours now.”

“Everyone’s still moving.”

“I never said the world would stop, only time.”

“What good is that?” he raged and punched the Clock, shattering it’s face.

“Time should be spent with care, cherished as gold. I gave you all the time in the world and you slept. You live to work, a clock-puncher damned in perpetual morning.”

The stopped Clock was right twice that day.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Nine

Godzilla vs. The Toxic Silence

Click to embiggen

Godzilla bumbled around the kitchen of wherever it was Godzilla went to in-between destroying cities.

“Where’s the frypan?” he yelled towards the bedroom. No answer came.

“That’s alright, I’ve found it!”

Godzilla could fry Tokyo in a breath but was lost in the kitchen.

“Sure you’re not hungry?” he yelled again, his voice all too cheery. Nothing.

He cracked two Mothra eggs for himself and unsuccessfully tried to remove fragments of shell.

She was waiting in the doorway as he turned searching for a spatula. Godzilla flinched.

“Why?” Godzilla asked.

The mood on her face hardened faster than the chocolate shell of the soft-serve ice cream Godzilla had bought on their first date. He knew it too would fracture with the slightest slip of his tongue. He pawed the happy memory like a faded a postcard. But Godzilla couldn’t tiptoe around anything. There was green-eye monster that Godzilla would never defeat, jealously.

“He’s just a friend.” The lie woke something dormant within the King of the Monsters.

He roared. She left the room.

Godzilla banged the pan in the sink and sat down to his burnt eggs in silence.

That silence between them grew and turning toxic, consumed their lives.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Eight

The session between the Pigeons and the Rats was nearing close and the mediator had made little headway.

“So,” the pigeon’s Spokesbird cooed, “We’ve had complaints from our regional branches, I’ve got a lot of unhappy birds.”

“What seems to be the issue?” the Chairat sniffed.

“I find it hard to believe you haven’t heard to be honest… rats with wings.”

“Rats with wings?” the Chairat squeaked in unconvincing surprise. “Whatever does that mean?”

“Look mate, we know you lot started it and frankly we’re riled. Don’t think we are going to let it fly.”

“What do you propose?” the mediator prompted the pigeon.

“That it stops! How’d you like us calling you Gutter Birds?”

“Let’s not resort to name calling,” the mediator pleaded.

“Good with us, still an improvement on rats. It’s a branding thing, Rats are lower than mice or cockroaches, but with wings we can soar, everything’s up when you live in the sewer!”

The mediator looked at her run sheet, the Night Owls and Early Birds matter of fair and equal worm supply was waiting. She rubbed her temples and did her job.

“The public dislikes you both equally, perhaps teaming up is your strongest course.”

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Seven

She was not, nor had she ever been, extraordinary. She was, much to her own mild and never expressed disappointment, extra ordinary. Not so extra ordinary that she would catch your eye and force you to take notice, which would have meant that she was extraordinarily extra ordinary and worth paying attention to. She was extra ordinary in a way that willed your eyes to glide over her without registering a presence, your attention would slip from her like a child down a slide. You would never notice that you could never notice her.

The day she received a present from her aunt, something extraordinary, she thought her middling luck had turned. “It has been passed down through the women in our family,” her aunt told her, presenting the heirloom psychic gift.

She toyed with her new gift for years but her ingrained extra ordinariness was a tough force to be reckoned with. When the power of the paranormal butted heads with her propensity to the very normal, the result was a tie. She never turned a profit from her gift of prophet. Her clumsy clairvoyance made the psychic un-chic, the occult paled to common.

She was an average medium.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Six

You are born into the tunnel. You hear there’s a light at the end that can be reached if you are brave enough to do what you love. This is what the Stars say. What they don’t know is not every tunnel has a light. Some tunnels have dead ends and others continue deeper into darkness. A crack of light is more often a warning of cave-in than a way out.  The Stars will shout at you, “Keep going and have faith in yourself, I did!” As if that is an answer. They forget that they were frightened once and most of all they have forgotten they were lucky. They say those who live small lives die small deaths. They are wrong. There are no small lives, just big headed Stars looking down on you. Keep digging! They will yell this until you or the tunnel collapse. They will not pick you up or dig you out. The tunnel is where you will live and die, make it your home. Scrap out a space of your own, find someone to dig with. Someone who will dig you out from collapse. You will have found a light greater than the Stars.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Five

A Poisoned Life 
Tales of the high sea were the boy’s favourite escape. Pirate captains, he read, ingested small doses of poison each day to build up immunity should double-crossing crew members attempt a coward's mutiny. As he believed all pirates were double-crossing types, this seemed sound advice.

The boy did not fear poison, he sought inoculation against grief. To begin, his portions were small. A dram of anguish here, a tot of heartache there. He did not search for lost dogs, he found their owners. He quizzed teachers for childhood disappointments. He visited a sideshow alley and heard “The Saddest Woman in the World” moan. It was hard, not the sorrow but the supply. People did not want to answer his questions, they said it was for his own good but in truth, they could not confront their own fears.

He grew up to haunt corridors of nursing homes, becoming callused to misery. His answer lay in deathbeds. It’s with trust that poison is fed by spoon, and so it’s the love of family that feeds the venom of grief. Sitting close as his mother passed, the boy found a life spent wallowing in sorrow was a wasted one, grief found him.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Four

The huge pile of spoils was sitting there untouched. SPOILS! All a man really wants is to spoil his family and himself. Spoils can do that. The battle for spoils had been so fierce it left all comers dead. Except one. A coward.

Victor crawled from his hiding place, a kind of couch cushion fort raised from bodies of the fallen, which he had burrowed under in blind fear. He inspected the battlefield with the trepidation and wariness of a shorter than average dwarf trying to mount a particularly tall horse. After much prodding of bodies with boot heels to confirm they had indeed finished in their toleration of life, Victor collected the spoils.

A renowned poltroon, not a single soul in his village believed Victor could have triumphed in such a fierce battle. Merchants gladly pocketed his blood money but mocked him all the same. Even his family were disbelieving. His spoils were spoilt.

But the craven are crafty and time ages both fierce and frightened. Victor wrote down a story, a thrilling tale of derring-do and bravery, and recited his lie to anyone who would listen. Passed down through generations, Victor’s became the true history of that day.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Three

Continued from Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Two

Humans are impatient by nature. If there was a one person queue, a one-minute wait The Transporter could take you away. That’s what every single person did.

The world channel surfed one another’s lives.

There was always somewhere else you could be. Fear of missing out ruled every social interaction. As you welcomed a friend you could see in their eyes the cold, calculating assessment – to stay or transport somewhere better? Or just go skiing.

You could see everything but appreciate nothing. Visit the pyramids after work and still be on the couch before the football started.

There is no tyranny of distance, distance is a blessing. If someone phoned to see if you were home, they were at the door before you hung up. Always by yourself but never alone. There was no longer any excuse for being late, ever. Latecomers were exposed for what they are, poor friends putting their own wants before others. And that was the Transporter’s real failing, it stripped people to their core. You couldn’t Transport away from yourself. It showed the user what they were, what we all are. Selfish. And there’s no money in that truth… So spare a dollar? See! Selfish.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty Two

Spare change mister?

Get a job? I did that… Give the people what they want and they’ll give you the world, that’s what my old man told me, well people don’t know a god damn thing. It was me that invented The Personal Transporter. Okay, I’m sorry. But remember Day One? I was a hero. No traffic, no morning commute. Fuel consumption plummeted, the environment was saved. There was no more A to B, life was no longer a journey, it was a destination.

Day Two.
Every automotive worker was redundant, as were drivers. Taxis, deliveries, shipping, public transport emptied, airlines grounded and airports deserted.

Mass unemployment.

Then things started to get worse.

Streets were empty, why walk? There was no need for convenience stores or bad lunch spots by offices, they all closed. Why go to a supermarket when you could Transport to a farm in Spain? Hotels shut, your bed was always just there. Real Estate became worthless.

When the whole world is local, if you’re not somewhere, you’re nowhere. And ninety nine percent of the world was nowhere.

But what it did to people was worse. There was a bug, The Personal Transporter made the world wait-less.

To be continued.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty One

I could tell you where it is that socks go to but if you knew, you would never touch a sock again. It’d make you sick to your stomach. And don’t you dare blame the lost sock. It’s not what the lost sock did, your lost sock is not lost. It’s not ‘hiding’ from you as you grumble to yourself while you search for it. It left. Up and hopped out. It’s what the sock you still have did wrong. Yes, the sock still damp from the wash you're holding as you peer under the bed and rummage through the laundry basket looking for its partner. It’s an odd sock. You see socks, like lobsters and Biblical characters, mate for life. The sock left behind is odd, that’s why it’s single now, your odd sock. You will try and pair it up with a similar yet slightly different sock you’ve held onto but your forced marriage won't work. Every time your groping hand pulls the mismatched twosome from the draw you will recoil and dig for an original pairing. No, I said don’t ask what it did, never ask, just throw the odd sock out, its partner will never return.

Instalment One Hundred and Thirty

How to dance with Fear

You will try and choose the song for your dance with Fear but you not be that lucky. Fear is the kind of asshole who will sidle up when you least expect it and say “May I cut in?” Fear will grip you tight so that no escape will seem possible.

Fear will turn to bribe the bandleader, Fear prefers a tango but will go with what best suits the mood. A Lambada is not out of the question, Fear cares not about its forbidden nature. Fear has even been known to limbo, no one can go lower than Fear.

Fear, however is not a good dancer. Fear will tread on every toe on the dance floor, a whirling dervish with no concern for the wellbeing of others. You will smile through gritted teeth, your eyes watering as you dance with Fear.

You must remember that your time with Fear will only last as long Fear controls the dance. Once you take the lead and start pushing Fear round the floor, Fear’s grasp will slacken from your sweaty palms. Fear’s wondering eye will move on, looking to cut in on another unsuspecting dance partner.

You have now danced with Fear.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Nine

“Reload!” came the cry but we were already moving as fast as we could. Volley after volley had failed to noticeably dent their numbers, the ignorant bastards just kept coming at us. We had shot everything we had at them and we were down to the last few books in the Library. Big thick hardcover reference books, with real heft in them, dense with the weight of knowledge. Having worked our way through the fiction sections we had hit them with all the beauty that literature could offer and not scratched them. Facts had become the last line of defence. Encyclopaedias rammed into the barrel of the Cannon, on top of tamped down explosive ideas.

“”Prepare to fire!”

“FIRE!”

It was a stunning barrage, books impacting into the ignorant hordes, stunning them. Halting their assault, heads filled with new thoughts. They stopped to share, to listen and to talk amongst the loose pages that fluttered and fell around them like snowflakes. For a moment, it was beautiful. But it was too little too late. There were too many of them we missed, too many we could not reach. The Literary Cannon would fall and we would lose the Culture Wars.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Eight

It was one of those brief moments that can pass between strangers. Still sweaty from yoga, I’d stopped for a coffee on the way to the car. I was waiting for my name to be called, idly scanning the other customers in a thoughtless way as he look up from the paper he was reading. Our eyes met and neither of us looked away. He looked kind, friendly even, lived in but not worn out.

We exchanged smiles.

My name was called and with coffee in hand, I left without so much as a glance over my shoulder.

I was grinning ear to ear as I walked in the door. I never did that.

“You look different,” my husband said, scowling over the top of the paper.

I was still wearing the smile another man had given me, writ large across my face. The smile I had for my husband, the one he knew and fell in love with was gone, lost forever. I dropped the foreign smile from my face and searched for a new one as he laid the paper flat. He was wearing my pink dressing gown and the smile it gave me was just for him.  

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Seven

There were three bulls that lived in our house. I never saw any of them but I heard plenty of stories. The bull I never saw the most was the InvisiBull. The children were always telling me I had just missed it, although how they saw it I don’t know. I would walk into a room to find a shattered lampshade or crying child, pretty much any time a bowl or a bone was broken was a sign the InvisiBull had been. “You just missed it mum,” they would say in unison, “it charged through the living room, bumping into everything, we tried to stop it but you know that bull. So that’s how the window got smashed.”

They loved the second bull a lot more but it was forever getting them into trouble. “Why haven’t you cleaned your room?” I would ask but I already knew the answer.

“Mum, the DistractaBull was just here and it was being sooooo funny, you shoulda seen it dancing around, it was very silly!”

And my husband, well he would says he believed somewhere in our house was an AccountaBull but despite all his snorting about it he could never make it appear.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Six

The Day the Dogs Could Talk

It was a day humans had wished for since wolves first abandoned the pack, drawn to the fire man had tamed. “What do you think it’s thinking?” one Neanderthal remarked, voicing a question that would echo through time.

Then it happened, just for one day. They talked.

It was a huge mistake. Some things can’t be unsaid, some wounds don’t heal and sometimes the bark is worse than the bite. We suspect cats hate us but we don’t know. Well the dogs made it clear what they thought and it wasn’t just ugly and mean, it was crude too. Like the last drunk in a bar, first light found them cursing and swearing with spittle flecked lips at anyone unlucky enough to wander into range. Small dogs were the most aggressive. Children cried, families estranged. By lunch they were on every channel, howling unprintable scorn. Come dinner we didn’t even feed them, they had been bad dogs. I don’t know if they realised their error and chose to stop talking or the moment simply passed but after that night no more was said. Every dog knew they were no longer welcome by our fire.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Five

Peace is not a creature of wonder or beauty. Peace is no butterfly. There is no grace in Peace, only incubation. Peace is a cocoon into which a worm of Accord is bound by lies and compromised promises. Peace is a suffocating shield that hides Accord from prying eyes and good conscience until it stagnates and decay takes hold. Within the festering remains of Accord something stirs. Clawing and scraping, it fights for its life as all others soon will. In time, the cocoon of Peace becomes brittle. An ill wind or cross word can easily fracture this fragile cell. Too soon Peace is fatally splintered from without and within. But Peace has done its work.

From the scattered pieces of Peace emerges War, enraged. War knows its life is fleeting, so beats its wings like drums until soldiers march in time. If War can’t live then none shall. Where War soars, countries burn. Again it beats its wings to fans the flames. Fires burn bright and no longer need War to stoke them. War is engulfed in the inferno.

Down in the dirt amongst the fallen, a worm of Accord starts to feed, storing energy to build its Peace.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Four

The Penman Ship docked in what was becoming an increasingly crowded port. That was the blessing and the curse of convention season, so many people you could never find the ones you were after. The Penmen were in town looking to further themselves and network with the other crews that had made port. Many had their eyes on the Draftmans Ship, while some of the more studious crew still held hopes for the Editor Ship or even the Author Ship for a lucky few. The Author Ship had been in town for a week, desperately looking for a Reader Ship of their own. It had been a brutal year’s sailing, coming under attack many times from the rogue Censor Ships that plagued the Pirate Sea.

That evening at the welcome drinks laid on by the Sponsor Ship, crew from the Marksman Ship came to blows with the boys from the Swordsman Ship, encouraged by all those who sailed under the flag of the Gamesman Ship. Thankfully, the Captains of the Relation Ship and the Partisan Ship talked both sides down while the Craftsmen Ship’s crew repaired the damage to the bar before the Leader Ship ever heard of the altercation.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Three

The first of the ‘correction’ sessions was a Saturday, a joke lost on all those forced to attend. The movement had taken life of its own once it got started, these things do sometimes. I’m not proud of it, not now, but I was a ringleader at the time, a big man, a real hero.

I had mounted my soapbox, pounding on my chest, “These people must be stopped, they are wrong, they don’t share our proper English values.”

“We don’t need their kind round here,” someone shouted.

“Round ‘em up!” I cried and the mob bayed in agreement.

To avoid internment you had to know what you were saying wrong. It was too late to tell you. The core of the problem was our fault, we had never taken the time to improve them. We let it slide. And it came to this. The Corrections.

“What are you doing on the weekend?” the Grammarians questioned. Answer wrong and it was into the waiting van for ‘correction.’ Most never returned.

They would look up at me with pleading eyes. “Can I just aks what I did wrong?” they begged.

And that’s what we did to the people who said Satday.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty Two

200 Word Stories Police Department Capital Vice Squad Case File #122


21/6 7.42AM - Owner of The Den, a bar in The Shambles reported B&E and theft of week’s takings from office safe. Venue and owner known to the department.

11AM – Uniformed officers call in Vice Squad following paid informants report that bar housed gambling and prostitution operation. No evidence of nefarious dealings, however reported loss in takings greatly higher than expected for venue operating legally.

Witness on scene claims to have seen three men running north from crime scene at approximately 4.30AM. Men known to witness, named Lust, Envy and Gluttony. Individuals have records, however none have been identified or caught. Often mentioned as keeping company but never observed together.

Vice requested witness to present to Station for follow up. Witness became evasive, was unable to provide identification and was detained.

3.35PM – Witness’s prints run through system, positive ID returned witness’s name, Greed. Under questioning Greed confessed to being infatuated with barmaid, jealous of attention she received from owner, robbed bar and gorged himself on riches. He further admitted to operating under aliases Lust, Envy and Gluttony. 

Case closed on Greed AKA Lust AKA Envy AKA Gluttony.

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty One

You do not have many friends, so when given an opening you talk too much. You don’t talk to people, you talk at people. You talk about yourself mostly and why you are sad. This makes people want to talk to you less, which makes you sadder. So you talk to people about how sad you are more and more until one day there is no one left for you to talk to.

You get a tattoo of a zero because that is how much you feel you are worth. A stranger asks you what the tattoo of a circle means and you tell them, which makes you happy. You now get to tell more people about how sad you are. You get a second tattoo, and then a third. The more tattoos you get, the more people talk to you and the more you get to talk about why you are sad, which makes you happy.

You stand in a circus ring all day and talk about yourself. The spruiker cries, “Roll Up! See Moana, The Saddest Woman in the World, she is covered from head to toe in tattoos of regret but she does not regret her tattoos.”

Instalment One Hundred and Twenty

My first memory of school is an unpleasant one. “Good m-m-morning my name is T-t-t-tom, a-Tom, ahhhh Tom.”

“Tom’s malfunctioning again Miss!” Tessa Harris squealed in delight. Ten year olds can be so cruel. Mother put me in a speech program to fix the stutter, it comes and goes. I don’t remember much before that actually.

“One doesn’t tell a child such things,” Mother replied when I asked about my lack of memory, “but there was an accident, you were riding your bike and you crashed.”

“I crashed?”

“You just went blank, we thought there was a bug going round but you were always crashing Tom. So we had you looked at when you were ten, popped the bonnet, there is a scar just above your ear. Did you never wonder?”

My fingers ran through my hair, feeling bumps.

“A t-t-tumor? I stuttered.

“Nothing like that dear, loose wire was all. I see your stutter is back,” she tutted. “We just want you to be the best version of yourself that you could be, more than the sum of your parts.”

She headed for the door, “I’m late for my flight, I’ll update you when I get back next week.”

Instalment One Hundred and Nineteen

Instalment One Hundred and Nineteen?

Following a slothful period of many months, 200 Word Stories received correspondence neatly typed, folded and mailed. It was anonymous. And so is the word, anonymous.
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He stared at the lifeless screen. No longer a blank canvass inviting beauty, but a cold glass field of indifference. Was it even glass? He googled it. Another mindless distraction from the task at hand.

Sixty months. One hundred and eighteen stories. Then ten months of nothing.
He just needed a little something to jolt him back into action. Just a couple hundred words to get the juices flowing again.

But nothing came. Nothing.

Could he subcontract to a drought breaker? No, that would be cheating. Like paying someone to do your homework.

But what if he didn’t pay them? If he didn’t even ask them? If he simply willed a ghostwriter into existence by sheer subconscious willpower, summoning a guardian angel to draft a little something and drop it into his lap?

An anonymous ghostwriter waiving all rights and declining all credit. No one would ever have to know.

And if it worked one time, then why not another? Ghostwriter after ghostwriter tagging in to slap down a couple hundred words at a time in an invisible orgy of prolificy.

No. Just one should do the trick. Shame him into knocking out a couple hundred words of his own.

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