Thursday 26 February 2015

100 Words: Untitled

The experiment changed him far more than he desired.  He had merely wanted to live forever but a few unexpected conditions had reared up, snapping and snarling.

An insatiable desire for blood sent him out to kill each night (now allergic to sunlight, he hid in pitch darkness by day).  Once a serial killer, he fled far from the labs he needed to fix himself.

Far he fled, away from people, eventually, to Australia, and a secret bunker under a cattle ranch where a cup of cow’s blood a day had to suffice until he could find the right cure.


Written for 100 Word Challenge #415 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Cup.

Tuesday 24 February 2015

500 Words: We live on the leash of our senses

“So our bodies are just cages, right.  They keep us from truly experiencing the world.  I mean, think about it.  Sure, we can smell, feel, see, hear and taste.  We can sense temperature, balance, pain, we're aware of where each of our body parts are.  Other stuff too, I think, I forget.  But this isn't enough.  We're slaves to our senses, they keep us on a leash.  It's like we're all living in a bubble.  I met this guy he showed me a way to escape- no don't give me that look, not drugs, I've tried that, tried altering my mind, tried altering my perception, but it didn't work.  This is something else.  A machine that changes everything, let's you go beyond the edges of your own consciousness.  It's like when people talk about having out of body experiences during operations, they say they fly above themselves, see what's happening, describe everything the surgeon did, things they shouldn't have seen.  It's like that but times a thousand.  It scatters you across space, maybe even time, shows you life from the point of view of others, people and creatures all at the same time.  In an instant, as well as watching myself like the surgical patient, I saw what a robin sees as it flies about, sung the whale's song, experienced a myriad of global experiences- sold snacks on a Bombay street, hot dogs in New York, cleaned toilets in Brazil, sat on a throne somewhere, I’m not sure where (Norway, maybe), and listened to a lecture on theoretical physics at Harvard.  I took off the leash, bent and went through the bars, burst the bubble, stepped outside myself.  For real, no lies.

“Hmm, don’t believe me, eh?  Well, look at this!” 

John pulled up the sleeve covering his left arm and hand to reveal, first, his missing thumb and then the place on his forearm where it now protruded quite uselessly.

“See.  Doesn’t work perfectly yet, can’t put you back together quite right.  Better than when they tested it on dogs, though.  Sorry.  Hopefully it’ll go back next time.”

The barman appeared to collect pots at that moment and remarked, “Talking to the guide dog collection box again, John?  What on earth do they give you up there?”

“They don’t give me anything, I’ve told you that.”

“Yeah?  Sure they don’t.  Makes no matter to us, anyway, long as you use the place to get beer tokens.  Artificiality in any form is best.  It’s what we thrive on.”

“Oh this is real,” said John, raising his eyebrows and finishing off his pint.  He handed it to Steve in his left hand, stump out, a terrible smile on his face. 

The barman, seeing the missing thumb, retreated quickly, fearing the worst for John.  There were far too many nasty rumours about that place. 

Steve giggled to himself and thought about the journeys he might make tomorrow and how no one would ever believe him or ever know his place in history. 


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following written prompt: "We live on the leash of our senses" - Diane Ackerman.  

However, after looking into the quote, I found the following paragraph and, pasting it at the top of my document with certain phrases made bold, I used these also as prompts and tried to work them in too.

''We live on the leash of our senses,'' she says. They ''define the edges of consciousness.'' Yet we haven't treated these voluptuous faculties of ours very well. It seems to be the essence of the modern attitude to distrust the natural, even as we proclaim it. Our senses are callused, covered with the scar tissue of our sophistication. There is a tendency now to condescend to nature. As Marshall McLuhan said, we've begun to prefer artificiality.

Thursday 19 February 2015

100 Words: Love at The Exxon Hall of Minerals

Admittedly, it was the last place I’d have thought to find love.  Minerals is the least sexy of all pastimes.  And it wasn’t mine anyway, I was dragged there by a friend.  As was he.

Our eyes met across the cluster; eyes laughing at the same thing.  The mineral lovers around us were not laughing, of course, they were admiring this particular arrangement.  All we saw was a field of phalluses, bright, shiny and purple.  How could anyone do anything but laugh?

Our friends angrily dumped us, we had coffee and started something.

We just had to get married there.


Written for Velvet Verbosity from the following picture prompt; and as an answer to the last line of the entry by J Hardy Carroll- though I hope there is no further relationship:

 

Wednesday 18 February 2015

100 Words: The Protest

Resembling a field of flowers, overlapping round circles of colour stretched along the streets, the only colour on a grey day.  From our offices we saw the advancing protesters holding aloft their umbrellas and the policemen, a dull mix of blues, standing firm, waiting, their cannons ready. 

From above it looked comical- the cannons squirting, the flowers dipping in a futile attempt to shield their stalks.  Instead they flew, beheaded flowers littering the street.  To us it didn’t seem real.

Only after, seeing my brother battered and bruised did it sink in. 

Now I stand among them, my umbrella aloft.


Written for 100 Word Challenge #414 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Umbrellas.


Tuesday 17 February 2015

100 Words: Untitled

Crouched down deep within the hedge, a small sharp knife in hand, my feet slowly edging their way into the mud as the rain streaks down.

How did I wind up here?  Over thirty years of meekness created by him.  Never could I rise to his peak, never was I strong.  No matter how good, how much I have succeeded, I am still unable to lead.  And he is why.

The front door opens and two people walk down the path, away from me. 

The weak will never forgive and the weak will never act: only seethe and blame others.


Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

Friday 6 February 2015

His Last Daydream

There’s a story about a man who stole a look and was given a strange punishment, a story Andrew thought about every time he’d crossed the square to work.

This time, as was usually the case, Andrew found himself imagining how it would’ve looked that fateful day as the man had casually made his way.

In his mind’s eye Andrew saw, superimposed upon the modern scene, all the trappings of its former self from the muck strewn ground, to the old town hall and stalls of all kinds.

It became more real as he walked, the sounds and smells appearing too, until Andrew imagined the cart as it approached and, as it drew alongside, he thought about what, if he’d really existed, that poor man might have seen.

In an instant he was there, Andrew left the dream and entered reality.  The cart was in his peripheral vision, its occupant reaching down to adjust a shoe.  Out of curiosity, Andrew turned and saw too much.

A voice whispered, “Thank you,” another condemned him and Andrew found himself cursed to ever walk across the square, resetting as he reached the far side back to the first.  Always he must walk, always with his head firmly down.

Until another imagined strongly enough.


Written for Flash! Friday: the prompts were the following picture and the required story element of a fleeting moment.
Rain (Liberia, Guanacaste, Costa Rica). CC2.0 photo by NannyDaddy. 

100 Words: The Creatures in the Maze

There were definitely creatures living in the maze in our garden but only one person ever agreed.  Our gardener informed me, with a kindly smile, that he’d grown the maze to keep the creatures trapped, too stupid were they to find the way out.

I would watch others enter without a care and giggle their way into the middle and back out again.  Never would I enter myself but instead give people a look of doubt when they suggested it:

They could tell me what they liked about allergies and bees, I knew what had really happened to my sister.


Written for Velvet Verbosity from the following picture prompt:


garden maze 
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Melanie Greenwood

100 Words: Quick Dissolve

Niel moved the fur quilt aside, walked away from the bed, from her, and left the cabin they’d been sharing for… however long it’d been.

Outside, he looked around one last time at the beautiful scenes that surrounded them before they dissolved away, along with the plains, to pure white- the way the sky had been when the man had made his promise.

Niel went back inside, he wasn’t yet ready to let go of the entire construct. 

As he returned to her, Niel couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised sooner.  Furs backed with soft, simple tapestries- no such thing existed.


Written for 100 Word Challenge #412 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Quilt.

An aside: As I went to blog, I didn't have a title but I did have a song in my head.  I took the title, Slow Dissolve, from the lyrics but then realised the dissolve didn't seem so slow here and changed it.  The song?  The Road by Simple Kid.