Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Eight

There was a time when I couldn’t wait till the end of the week. I loved working five days because those five days led to the best night of the week. It was our night, my girl and I. Date Night.

Look after her I did, fine wine and wine dinning, drinks and dancing, we painted the town red every god damn Friday night. 

Young and in love. We couldn’t get enough of each other. I would fly through the week, bulletproof, just to get to those precious hours. You only get 52 of ‘em in a year, they can’t be wasted.

Glory days they were.

It’s more of a battle now, the days are longer but less time to rest. By the time I reach Friday it’s all i can do to make it onto the couch. Same goes for her. Both exhausted. But still in love. Just tired. So very tired. Friday could no longer push us out the door. But we still put aside one night a month, to relive old times. Not so big, not so bold, baby sitter booked in advance.

And that is how the night after Friday got its name. Sadder Date Night.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Seven

She had to break up with Apostrophe, he was too possessive. And so Full Stop put an end to their relationship, it was over, period.

“You always do this, don’t you know?” her girlfriend Question asked. 

“Don’t you see how you are always looking for the smallest fault to use as a reason to escape from all these guys?”

“You said it yourself last time, you said “I can’t keep finding an excuse to finish things off,” that’s what you said,” declared Quote.

Their Sunday brunches were always like this.

Which is why they were so taken back when Full Stop got back together with Exclamation, who she had dumped a year ago.

“This is not like you at all, are you feeling okay?”

“Don’t you remember telling us you were “tired of all the surprises”?”

They were right in their incessant interrogations and recitations, it never lasted, she killed it off quick smart.

But then she found one, one she couldn’t quite find a way to bring to an end. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“You’re in love right?”

“You said I could be Maid of Honour, you promised.”

Full Stop and Ellipsis just were too alike...

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Six

Your vote will be determined for you, based on your answers.
I would rather watch an action movie than a romantic comedy.
Strongly Disagree. Disagree. Neutral. Agree. Strongly Agree.

100s of questions flashing past. Democracy failed. People couldn’t be bothered learning about issues and started ‘going with their gut.’ Votes followed whoever scared the public the most recently. So you could no longer vote for who you wanted to vote for, your answers voted for you. Answers chose who you’d vote for better than you would.

I like to be surrounded by people.
Strongly Disagree. Disagree. Neutral. Agree. Strongly Agree.

People were outraged, but given the opportunity to vote against it, their answers showed deep down they were happy to shrug off their responsibility of choice. So they did. The test didn’t even tell you your result.

“I strongly agree that I seldom worry about things beyond my control.  Do you?” Candidates soon realised even they wouldn’t vote for themselves and they might be campaigning for the other guy. All election advertising stopped.

I often phone friends just for a chat.

Personality beat Substance in a landslide everytime, and was a foolish and callow leader. The answer to our answers.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Five

“If you thought about eating meat for too long you’d stop doing it!” her father joked from the barbecue. It was a family tradition going back years, the getting together and the dad joke.

But this time she thought about it, she thought about it for however long too long is. And she stopped eating meat.

So she thought about other things until she had thought about them for however long too long is. In case there were more things to stop doing.

There were.

She thought about cars for too long and never got in one again. Too dangerous.

But you can’t think about things for too long for too long.

Because the next thing she thought about for too long was friends. Friends from school, friends she spent every waking hour with but now couldn’t even find on Facebook. They’d not even met up like they agreed after hearing that Pulp song. Time’s gentle breeze had blown until they drifted apart. Friendships were sorrowful, she thought, so she stopped.

Then she thought about thinking about things for however long too long is for however long too long is. 

So she stopped thinking. Only then did Ignorance find bliss.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Four

Always get me in a full night’s sleep. Heard that preacher once say how you is when you die is how you is in Heaven and I'll be damned ‘fore I spend all of eternity beat as a badger.

 - Surely you can take a catnap in Heaven, it’d be plum Hell if you caint.
Didn’t hear no tell from the preacher bout napping but sure as tarnation he don’t allow it church.
 - If what you say is so then I hope I die as half way through my second glass of beer of an afternoon. If I went and died after suppin' just one beer I would spend for all time wantin’ a second. And well if they don’t allow naps they sure as heck won’t allow me a second beer. And if I died two beers deep, you just know I’d be all full of gas. And can you imagine me burpin’ up there, I’d rather die right now. But if I got to die after one and a half beers, well I’d be nice and giddy, just how I like, forever more.
Tired and Drunk boozed till dawn like they’d live forever, which they did not.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Three

It was the kind of a day that made people want to do better.

Be better.

It had come from nowhere, predicted by none of the weather seers. What was meant to be a frosty early spring day had been trumped by a balmy tropical beach honeymoon afternoon that escaped to the city for a change of scenery.

A gift of a day.

Each person warmed by the rays or refreshed by the breeze knew they were lucky to receive the unseasonal gift. They sucked in a deep breath and thought to themselves, “I need to be the kind of person that deserves a day like this. I’ve got to try harder.”
Unseasonable.
The shy of work swore they would knuckle down, get a job and save some money. Starting tomorrow.

Students begged teachers for class on the oval.

Office drones updated resumes.
CEOs gazed out floor to ceiling windows across their city promising themselves they would try and take the kids out on the boat this weekend.
It was a day bought and paid for by Promise, who lived to produce such gifts for people. Beautiful boxes topped with bows. Empty boxes of course, that you must fill yourself.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Two

A pain scale. It seemed such a stupid thought. I laughed it off through gritted teeth when I first heard of such a thing. 

Until I developed one of my own.

Of course it grew out my own suffering, a suffering no one understood. Agony really. I was never one for yelling and screaming. A cold fish some people called me. I stayed silent and internalised it, swallowing it down until I was bursting. 

Full to my gills with pain.

And that’s when I developed my pain scale.

It came to me in a shiny blue flash, a quicksilver fleck of armour that would protect me from the world.

My pain increased so much that one scale no longer contained my suffering; I floundered around like a guppy on a dock gasping for air. That is when I developed another scale. 

A second scale that worked in tandem, overlapping and fortifying the first. But I needed more, to deflect my agony. Until I was consumed, in my pain scales.

Freak, people yelled at my pain incrusted form.

I was not saddened. I was not thin skinned.  I was numb to such sensitivities, I had developed an emotional callus years before.

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty One

He wasn’t sold, I could tell.

“I can come back at anytime?”

“Anytime you want,” I reassured. “Wanna look around?”

I gestured to a large green field with 10-foot fencing.

“It’s empty?”

“Look again, squinting helps.”

I could see realisation crawl across his face.

“They’re so fast.”

“They move quick when you give em air.”

“So how does this work?”

“I don’t know who each belongs to but once a day I listen to them all. It feeds them. Warning though, I don’t know what you’re looking to tell but some of them in there, well they are dark.” I opened the gate and grabbed at air.

I held one up to his nose.

I used to poison my baby sister, just a little, to keep her sick.

“T-t-that’s awful.”

“Can’t ever tell if their true but yeah, that’s the hard part of the job, listening to them. That’s what you pay for if you can’t keep your own Secret.”

“What are those ugly trees?”

“Side business. You ever plant a kiss one someone who didn’t want it. That’s what grows. I take em free of charge, but come autumn they sure drop some Secrets. And those I charge for.”

Instalment One Hundred and Fifty

History repeated herself.

It was something she’d only recently become conscious of doing.

It added emphasis to the point she was making, she felt.

People say a lot of things, always talking and filling silences.

But you say something two three times in a row, people think you're a politician or a preacher. And they are ready to laugh or listen.

Well History was a teacher who would do anything to get her students to listen.

“As I said, those that don’t learn in this class are doomed to repeat it.”

There was not a single passing grade present in the class room.

They did not learn from History.

History’s students were failing her.

Or was History failing them?

Well obviously, in a very literal sense History was failing her students by marking them.

But she worried she was failing them as a teacher.

There were already a lot of familiar faces in this class from last year, who were familiar from the year before that too.

She had taught the same classes every year and it had not occurred to her that maybe the lesson was wrong.

History had not learnt her own lessons but she kept repeating them.