A life floated downstream

The remains of my life floated quickly away down the river in a suitcase, sent off to sea.

My body should have been with it.  Instead, I returned home without the possessions I had chosen to die with.


At that time home was a home between homes, a room lined with boxes hastily filled and sealed with tape. As I did so, I planned my own demise, filtering out the items I intended to take.

The room was in an otherwise empty and secluded block of tiny flats; one of many in one of the many abandoned parts of the city.  I wasn’t meant to be there so, on my return, I set fire to the boxes and began my return to your arms.


I broke into a car like I used to back when it first happened, but unlike then, I drove slowly and carefully away from the burning buildings and into the inhabited zone.  Along the streets that used to throng with people, buildings that used to be so bright, and tried to remember the sounds we would hear there.


Upon arrival at our home I sat outside staring at the steering wheel, the radio on, tuned into static, to try and get my head right.  Eventually I managed it and I left the car, walked up the garden path, opened the door, paused; climbed the stairs, turned the corner, walked past the bathroom and the spare room and paused again, for a long time, before entering our room to find you exactly where I had left you.

I laid down next to you and placed your arms around me, holding my breath against the stench, for you were not as I had left you, and closed my eyes, again remembering the sounds of before, hearing your voice tell me what I should have done.


I carried you out to the street and stole a fresh car, one with enough petrol still in the tank, and carefully placed you in the backseat.  Together we drove, this time listening to Amnesiac, though only in my mind, back to our bridge.  I spoke to you one last time, told you what I needed to tell you, before placing you onto a boat.  Finally, I pushed you away and watched as you floated calmly away.


Maybe I should have joined you, maybe our bodies should have floated down the muddy river together, but I didn’t just back out of my own suicide to do the right thing by you.  

As far as I know, I am the last human alive; 

but what if I am not?  

That thought, that single thought, flickers dimly in the back of my mind and keeps me alive.


Having cried once more for you, I left the riverbank and went back to the car.  I knew that our inhabited zone was empty so I picked up our old A-Z, still full of the markings we had made when we first made this plan and began to drive to the next nearest inhabited zone.  

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt, which is in the Public Domain:

Testimony and Statement

It had been so well barricaded that it took us a few minutes to get through the door.  The inside was was dark throughout as they’d cut the power from the inside so even though we’d had the power company hook them up again, we were forced to use torches and uncover the horrors piece by piece.

We entered through a small utility room that took us through to the staff rest room.  That’s where we found the enamel mugs.  A great big pile of old and chipped mugs, the metal showing in patches all over.

I thought little of it at the time, figured they’d been forced to stop washing-up and started to pile everything up.  Even when I looked closely at one, though, and saw a name scratched onto the bottom, I didn’t think much of it.  Just shrugged and thought they were a bit possessive of the company’s mugs.  

Guess that was a part of the reason they were protesting, I suppose, to try and gain back a little something to call their own.

Anyway, that’s irrelevant and I apologise.

We carried on through to the packing area and found it completely empty of people.  Of its goods, though, it was teeming.  Every machine had finished... < products >... placed all the way along; and they were stacked up at either end too, and along the walls.  

There were no... < raw parts >..., nothing in a semi fashioned state.  Not even boxes of... < raw parts >... or ... < raw parts >....  

It was very strange and unnerving.  I think because it was all so deliberate.  We expected to find an abandoned plant, not a modern art piece from before.  

I think the fact that there were no raw parts surprised me the most.  They had clearly not stopped work during the strike.  Which was just weird in a creepy way.

Anyway, sorry, what they did has clearly affected me too much.  

I led my team on toward the warehouse, where all these things should have been boxed up and ready to ship.  

It was there that we found what remained of them.  On every shelf in every bay their remains lay, eaten from the inside out.  Just the bones, albeit collapsed and eaten at, bubbled.  No one recognisable at all.  

We believe that they each drank this new poison from the mug bearing their name, and then added it to the pile before walking through to the warehouse and taking their place in on a shelf, turning the whole place into a tomb.  

Later found we their ID cards shredded and burned.  For whatever reason, those mugs were meant to be their epitaph.    


Officer Jones is now recuperating at the new luxury holiday home meant for the workers he found.

The mugs and the bones have been removed, everything has been cleaned and made new.  

Production will never stop again.  

Do not think that we are weak and can be fooled anew.  

We know the source of this poison and have stopped it.

We will stop every further attempt at insurrection.

Just as we did the nepenthe.  Just as we have this new poison.

You harm only yourselves when you struggle.

We Give You Life.  Do not take it away.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

Image from Wiki Commons taken by Steve Evans and used under the Creative Commons Agreement

Mind the Gap

“Mind the gap,” he used to say, “Mind the gap.”  Never anything else.  I had always thought he’d lost his mind at Bank Underground Station during a particularly nasty rush hour but his story was much worse than that.  And much more rural, too.

No one ever knew exactly why and that’s why I had to go there myself and find out.  All anyone would ever say was that he had never quite been the same after he came back. 

“From where?” I would ask but get no answer, the speaker having already tailed off mysteriously into silence, turning away.

It took the death of his mother for me to find out anything more. 

Upon her deathbed she whispered to me once more, “He was never the same after he came back, poor soul.” 

“From where?” I asked again. 

“He was the only one who did,” she replied, “The only little cub from his pack.” 

This was new to me and took me quite aback but, before my mother returned, I was able to ask one last time, “From where?” 

*

I travelled there not long after her funeral, determined to try and find out what had happened during that ill-fated trip.  Having looked into it more before leaving I couldn’t believe something so huge had happened and then been buried away and forgotten.

A whole pack of Cub Scouts had gone missing except for one who had returned quite different and this had somehow not become a local legend.  Neither was there any kind of memorial within the town or at the Scout hut where the pack still met. 

I could understand the family of the surviving victim not talking too much about it but, given the scale of the event, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard a single thing about it growing up.

*

I stood at the place looking down at the small crack where the rock split.  It was such a small thing, really, but it was big in local legend.  A demon was supposed to live there, which had given it its name.  If you did not receive warning to “mind the gap,” it would grab you, it was said.  Hence so many lone walkers tended to go missing in the area.

He had known this.  I went through his mother’s belongings after she died and found his diary.  He’d been looking forward to this part of the trip, in particular, was looking forward to warning his friends and keeping them safe.  So what had gone wrong?

I saw them as I stood there, coming along the path.  “Mind the gap,” the first cub trilled happily and one by one they started to cross, each in turn warning the next.  He was last and never reached the crack.  The only one lifted to safety, he watched it all and began his eternal litany, repeating the phrase again and again even as the pack were torn asunder.  Forever he would believe that this had saved him and so forever he would repeat it, to ward off the memory as well as the wolves.

No one ever got it out of him.  I only know because the same thing happened to me. 

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt:  'Mind the Gap' Instruction in a Railway Station

A blindfolded woman playing a lyre with one string

I knew the first time that it would not work, that the tides would keep bringing my SOS back to the secluded island I was stranded on.  

But you have to try.  

And, though it never worked, the simple act gave me something real to do, got me up and active every single day that I was there.

By the end I couldn’t even remember what I had written on the message inside.  At one time I had thought about the content everyday, fretting that I had not written the right thing/the necessary text /not given the necessary data, the correct information or imparted the right knowledge to be found.

It didn’t matter in the end, of course.  And it never really had.

As my rescuers came ashore, I smashed the bottle on the rocks, my tears streaming just as the the now redundant ink did into the sea.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

Courtesy of WikiCommons

The Knight's Shadow

The Knight cast a long shadow; one we all had to live in.  His entire existence was by the book and his example loomed over us at all times, showing us how we should be.

Knowing we could never win favour such as he, we naturally all became massively jealous and sought to do away with Sir Perfect Pants.

But how?  We knew from training (and battle, too) that he would be able to defeat us all in a sword fight. 

He barely ever drank, and when he did it had no effect, so we couldn’t drink him into submission. 

He was far too clever for us to ever outwit in anyway; and always he was too alert to ever be pushed down the stairs. 

No, we all knew that we would have to undo him from afar, that magic would be our only course of action.  And, fortunately, at that time I was seeing a witch.

We discussed the possibilities with my witch lover at great length.  A favourite early contender was transformation.  We particularly liked the idea of turning him into a chess piece, a knight of course, so that we could move him about at our leisure for evermore. 

However, we knew that, should this Great Man disappear without trace, we would spend the rest of our years, trying to find him; and probably destroy the kingdom while doing so.

Instead, therefore, we opted to destroy him visibly.  His long shadow having always been our bugbear, we decided to separate it from him once and for all.  The idea seemed so delicious, we set my witch to it at once.

Some days later he went into a trance, and his own shadow did creep through the castle, the shadow of an enchanted knife in its hand, and caused the severance we desired.

Without his shadow, our champion knight quickly fell apart. 

At first he was just a bit anxious and unsure of himself- in itself a massive change from his usual confidence; and soon, all too soon we felt, his mind fell apart completely.  The healers killed him after a few days to put him from his misery.

His shadow, though.  That remained.  It disappeared entirely at first, waiting in the shadows until its former master was buried in the ground.  Then it returned.

Its first victim was my witch, my lovely, kind, generous witch.  The only link to our conscience and the only person who could have saved us.  At once we were undone and fraying as a group.

But before the infighting started, we had already begun to fall one by one. 

Sir Eric was dragged into the well, Sir Stephen got lost in the forest, Sir Gus drowned in the moat on the northern side of the castle while Sir Cuthbert simply dropped dead as the sun passed briefly behind a cloud.

Now only I am left. 

I knew him the longest of all.  Once we had been close.  Once we had been best friends.  Of all of us I was the most jealous.  I was the leader of the plot, the closest mirror to Brutus.


Soon I will lock myself in my quarters having emptied it of all belongings and flooded it with light.  There will only be one source and under it I shall sit, seeking to make my own shadow negligible.

For if there is no shadow, he cannot kill me.  Though is there a chance that if I have no shadow I shall follow him down his path of madness.  I think not, I hope not.

I do know, of course, that I cannot win.  That I will only be prolonging the inevitable.  For I will eventually run out of candles.  And I know the last thing I shall see is his long shadow; the one I lived in and will soon die in.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

 

Image by T. Al Nakib on www.freeimages.com

People's Dreams

I know some of my desires are unknown to me.  Some are vague, others are dark.  Some are possible, others lie in dead ends.  I imagine myself in a maze, wandering, following dreams ahead of me as they turn into blind alleys, lead me astray, wreck me, break me, raise me up, bring me ecstasy, or die and turn to ghosts imprinted in the hedge in one of those dead ends.

Our lives are mazes we spend all our time rambling on through.  We do not know where paths will lead unless we follow them.  To stand still is to go nowhere, to not follow dreams is not to live.  Where our mazes bisect with those of others we might see someone staying where they are and stagnating or we might see someone striving or come together to fulfil dreams and walk paths together.

Nothing along the way is certain (unless we are told otherwise), nothing on the way is for sure.  The only thing we know is that, at the end, we will find a middle where we will stop dreaming and rest forever.  

---

(More or less Auto-)Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, "A man's dreams are a maze even he cannot know" - Robert Jordan

Short

I think and look the same as you.  We have been moulded and styled this way. 

Have you seen a bee?  We are bees.  Or ants.  Those things work the same.  Like us.


Do you remember before the injections?  Do you remember things were different?

I missed the last one by mistake (theirs).  I can remember now.  I’m not sure I want to for long. 

I won’t miss the next one.  I recommend them.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt: In a society that tries to standardize thinking, individuality is not highly prized. - Alex Grey

Mask

I have never worn a physical mask to hide my face and features.  And neither have I ever worn my true face.  Or shown my true feelings.

I despise humanity, I would love to see it fade back into its own filth, I rue the day I was thrust into this jumped-up primordial dust.  If my finger was on “the button,” I would not hesitate to press it firmly and decisively.

Yet I walk the world smiling, gracious and charming; no one would know of my secret sneer. my disdain of all of “creation”. 

I attend work, perform diligently and with due purpose, even sometimes going beyond my remit; I sit at pub bars and talk to the staff, to fellow drinkers too, as if I were one of them; I married and had children as if I were just like anybody else (easily the most difficult role I have played). 

All the while dreaming of society’s rot and decay; all as I wait to unveil my true self.  I smile inside thinking about it, that day when I will shock everybody I know by revealing my true being.  When I reduce them all with my words, send them snivelling away ashamed to be human.  Turn them into the grovelling dogs I know them to be.

And that’s when I will break the seal and send us all to hell.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt and the written prompt, from Oscar Wilde: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.  Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

 

Courtesy of WikiMedia creative commons

250 Words: Tempus Fugit

Oh yes, son, Time really does, quite literally, fly.  He lives in the Moon, you see, because, well, he is The Man in the Moon.  And he flies it around the earth, causing the earth to rotate and makes time flow.

That’s right, yes.  It’s all true, your father wouldn’t lie!

There’s a hollow in the middle, you see, that’s where he sleeps during the day.  Then, at night, well, at dusk - in the gloaming he be a’roaming, if you...
no?
Okaay, well as the sun is going down, Time gets up because, well, at that point the earth is slowing down, so he has to get into his cockpit, start up the motors and get everything going again so we can build up momentum again over night and have another day.

Of course it makes sense. 

It’s a bit like a bike, winding up and letting go, there’s an invisible band linking the Moon and Earth, how else would the earth rotate?  How else would we get day and night?

Oh... you’ve covered it at school. 

And you prefer the story of Ra, anyway?  Yes, I like that too, poor old Ra, but you asked if time really flew, so I told you about Time living in the…

Oh.  I’ve already told you the story of Mother and Moon, thus contradicting this sorry tale.  And Saturn starting time, too? 

Well, there are different tales, different myths, my boy.  Perhaps we shall eventually work through them all.

Sleep well.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt: "Tempus Fugit."

Modifiers

They say it’s very easy to get horribly addicted once you start getting them but I never thought it would happen quite so quickly.

Like most of us I started with something (well, a couple of somethings) genuinely necessary but liked it so much it led to another and another.

The first were most definitely necessary, really quite vital, in fact.  I lost the use of my right hand during the war and had the damaged parts replaced with machinery that made me stronger than I had been before.

This allowed me to fight on with only one more short pause- a tiny piece of shrapnel later taking all sight in my left eye.  Until, once again, I was restored with state-of-the-art robotics, my eyesight not just becoming vastly clearer (so much so that they had to do my right eye too) but allowing me to zoom in and out.  Before long I was up ahead of my unit scouting the territory and warning of dangers.

In those inconceivably, or so it seemed at the time, long periods of downtime between actions (most of war is waiting) I would sometimes sit and think about other parts of my body I could wound and have born anew.  Because it is such a huge rush to have replacements, to get upgraded, I can’t tell you just how amazingly wonderful it is.


When peace came I didn’t think for even a second that I would carry on modifying my body but, as I struggled with both finding work and settling into civilian life, I found myself with more and more free time to miss the thrill of discovering what new parts could do.

So when modifications started to go commercial, I quickly signed up when they asked for volunteers to test new ones.

Before long I could run faster than Bolt, lift more than Geoff Capes, see further than a sniper.  It made me incredibly happy for a time, boosted my confidence.  I was a poster boy for the new world, forged and fast forwarded by war.

But it never really took off.  It kept going but never became huge.  There was always a steady trickle of the enhanced- those by complete and independent choice and those modified by the military, both for strategy and to patch up those wounded in the wars- it continued.

Those who’d been modified were looked down on and, after the company discarded me, I found it completely impossible to get hired.

You can guess the rest, for now it is our turn to live.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following prompt:

Instead of the quotation I suggest you write a piece without adverbs. 

Sorry I've written and blogged this incredibly late.  Sorry, also, that I misread the prompt so horrifically too.  I read it as a piece about adverbs.  Probably I misread it because I was reading an article about robots at the same time, which I fused to what I thought this prompt was to create this story.

Barry and the Creature

We spent a lot of time ignoring those triple-SI signs.  Somewhere in the backs of our minds we knew what they meant, or their significance, rather, but felt, as self-righteous teenagers who wanted a quiet place to sit together and drink, that the restrictions didn’t apply to us.

This self-judged exemption gave us many amazing nights out there as we unwittingly disturbed the habitats of rare creatures and plants through trampling and littering.

There was one night in particular, though strangely not our last, that stands out.


We were drinking and smoking around a small pool in a slight divot some 200 metres from the layby.  Often we’d camp here for the evening, believing that any light or sound we generated would be shielded by this natural feature.  Later we would find out this wasn't always the case when our children were caught there and we realised how lucky we had been.  Or, perhaps, how foolhardy.  After that night there was always a little more security on the perimeters.  We probably caused our own children’s capture.

Anyway.

At around the point when we were drunk enough to think it wasn’t real but not so drunk that we didn’t realise it was happening, someone finished a can of lager, crushed the empty in his hand and threw it into the pool.  It floated for a few seconds and then it suddenly disappeared below the surface leaving only a few bubbles. 

A moment or two later a five foot green body jumped out of the pool and landed in an angry stance pointing at us shocked drunkards.  “What is this?” he hissed, shaking the can in his other hand.

“A beer can, num nuts,” said Barry in his dur voice. 

“Well I don’t want it,” the creature screeched and threw at his head.  “I’m supposed to be protected by your government, I shouldn’t be woken by loud cretins throwing tins at my bed chamber!”

As he said all this, Barry’s face had turned from one of gormless happiness to pure anger.  Barry was always the loose cannon of the group, the idiot who could easily ruin everything.  But he was our idiot and we loved him. 

We hadn’t known until then that he had a gun, though.  He removed it from his coat pocket and shot the creature clean through the head.  “Fucking idiot won’t tell me what to do.”

“No, Barry.  None of us will.  Ever.”  I said and we all remained quiet while Barry walked forward and returned the creature to where it had come from.  Once it was gone from sight we carried on partying as if nothing had ever happened.

And we kept going back there and drinking at the same spot despite the rumours of the army removing an alien body.  I’m pretty sure we all thought that it hadn’t been real.  Certainly Barry never pulled a gun ever again.  And none of us ever asked him about it, either.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

 

Image from WikiCommons, taken by David Anstiss and used under the Creative Commons Agreement

A Clothbound Book

The book was always a little rough to the touch from its cloth exterior as I turned it over in my hands.  It had changed my life, that book; its contents had started me off on a road I would never be able to come back along.  Yet it looked completely innocuous, plain even, as if it could be of no interest to anyone.

The spine held the answer, of course, showed the subject that I had not, at first, held as the ultimate key to my dreams and goals.  It had merely interested me at first, caused me to return to that library again and again to learn more. 

I avoid looking at the title now, though, turning the book so as to keep it away from my sight.  What is left of the me that first picked up the book is ashamed of where it took me.

But then, as I have to keep reminding myself, I had already taken a dark turn and that was why I had gone to Oxford.  I made sure I got into that university so as to seek out the wizarding library I knew was hidden there, and to seek ways of undoing that mistake. 


Once I had gained entrance I devoured all the knowledge the librarians would give me, learning everything about this strange world that the legacy of my father and grandfather had led me into. 

I had this feeling while studying there, though, that the library’s guardians and keepers, the Book Worms, knew exactly who I was and what I would become.  There was something in the way they guided my reading and kept me away from certain parts of the decimal scheme.

And yet, if this really was the case, it was also a little half hearted, like they knew they couldn’t mess with fate; that they could try and stop what would happen but knew, deep down, that it would happen anyway.  But then perhaps I am just putting that spin on things as I look back, trying to find someone else to blame.

However the Book Worms approached me, I found it anyway.  One afternoon, having grown tired of The Complete History of Merlin, I waited for the Book Worms to disappear from view and went wandering through the stacks freely.  This wasn’t the first time I had done so, by any means, but it was the first time that I found the sections on Him and the Underearth, subjects I knew about and didn’t care much for at the time, thinking that they were but mere myths- as I say, they were not why I was there, only later they would come to obsess me. 


Now, in my dying moments, my mind running backwards, running my hands over the clothbound book, I can see that its contents came to change me, even more so than the Pixie event; and that it destroyed me, piece by piece, and brought me here. 

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge: the prompt was "Instead of a quotation I would like you to imagine running your hands over fabric.  It could be silk, or soft cotton, or rough sacking, whatever sparks to mind with the idea of running your hands over fabric - and have fun!"

The Old King

High on the hilltop the old king sits as he rants about the disasters and backstabbers that befell him.  Once upon a time, he was coherent, and maybe even could have convinced one of his innocence.

Now, though, his speech is staggered, his arguments reduced to the repetition of his favourite phrases from within them.  Before long it would turn to nothing but grunts, hand gestures to which only he would know the meaning and piercing looks that were meant to convey his anger at never having realised the greatest of his ideas that had fallen by the wayside.

Upon a plateau only accessible from below the old king sits above his former castle dreaming of the days he lived below and his predecessor rotted up here with only sheep to hear him speak.

Fed by the butcher, who each day leaves him a basket and takes one of the former king’s companions back down the shaft, he has long since stopped trying to converse with his only human contact.  Leaving the old king to grow madder as he grows closer to death.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from both the written and picture prompts:

High on the Hill Top the Old King sits - William Allingham, From 'The Fairies'

 

Image from Wiki Commons, taken by Janko Luin and used under the Creative Commons Agreement

The Test

I felt that I had to try and test this idea.  I mean, I knew it had to be true in that you will undoubtedly touch the life of anyone who meets you as a baby, but could you live in a way that could be called “simply existing” and touch no one’s lives at all?

I stopped work for a few months to try.  Certainly I couldn’t help but interact a little.  I kept it to a minimum, though, by ordering essentials online and saying as little as possible to the delivery men.

I had no telephone, no other internet interactions.  Others touched my life, through reading and watching TV, but I sought to touch no one else’s.

Three months was my aim.

I think I made it a week, though it was years before I found out.  I thought I had succeeded for so long.  But...


I was quite the night owl, then, working, via the net, from home to meet deadlines for my editor.  So much so that it destroyed my sleep pattern and, when I didn’t have deadlines to meet, I would stay up all night watching films or box sets.  For the experiment I thought this situation would be perfect- simply existing through the night couldn’t touch any lives, surely?


Ten years after my experiment I answered my door to a teenager selling biscuits for charity.  I bought a few packets and throughout the transaction, the kid had this look on his face like he had something to say.  I thought little of it until, as he began to turn away, he stopped and turned back to me.

“You now, I never thanked you,” he started.  To my bemused look he replied, “When I was a child, I used to get ever so scared of the dark.  Sometimes I would be up all night scared of one thing or another.  Just lying there, so, so afraid.

“I remember one time, just after my fifth birthday- so about ten years ago, I turned fifteen on June the fourth- my parents had booked a clown for my birthday but they had had to get rid of him halfway through his act because I got so scared.

“It then continued that night.  I lay petrified, convinced this clown was going to come in and kill me.

“And then you switched on a light and somehow everything became alright.  My parents were tough- they wouldn’t leave lights on for me or allow me a night light.  But you gave me one instead and, slowly, I stopped having night terrors.  It’s funny.  It must have been there before but it was that night, at my worst, that it first helped.

“So.. thank you.  Really, from the bottom of my heart.”  He then shook my hand, nodded and left.

What he didn’t realise is that he had dated the event to my experiment and showed that, simply by existing, or maybe just living I’ll tell myself, I had touched someone’s life.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt: by JK Rowling, "We touch other peoples' lives simply by existing."

100 Words: To live out one's life in peace and comfort

Every day she sits staring across the grounds of her retirement home, her knees covered by a patchwork quilt, whatever the weather.  She might not communicate much now, but she always insists on this.

Because she spent fifteen years preparing it by building a quilt of memories, knowing that one day remembrance would be more important to her than anything else: each patch sewn, ingrained, with an element of her life, so that, eventually, she would be able to sit and simply relive her life through, a square at a time; so she would remember everything to the very end.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt: "Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age" by Christopher Morley.

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. 

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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.

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.

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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."

You have to laugh, though, haven’t you?

There are many bad things about suddenly having with x-ray vision; high up there being that you cannot see books.  I was happily in the middle of Gormenghast when it happened.  I had to wait an agonisingly long time to discover the conclusion (though, largely, it should be admitted, because I stubbornly refused the audiobook). 

Artworks have become a mess as all versions and corrections, and sometimes another painting altogether, appear together with the finished piece.  I am forced to see something unintended which, though interesting in its own right, has, quite simply, taken a former pleasure away.

So too with football.  I could go and sit among the sedentary skeletons to watch the athletic ones but without a ball it has become a horrific parody of Spot the Ball.

On and on I could complain about it destroying one thing or another- like not being able to see food; I can find it with my lovely clear cutlery (or less clear hands) but find it difficult to eat without help.  But I don’t like to complain because I really don’t think this is as bad as being blind, yet it does still cause horrible and painful problems- those things beyond everyday complications like trying to get from A to B when walls and other obstacles blend into your path.

Because one of the worst things about being afflicted with x-ray vision is that I find it near impossible to recognise anyone.  I’ve had to try and rely on voice and gait recognition, the configuration of metal objects within clothes and pockets or constellations of piercings and fillings.  Indeed, Samantha’s braces is sometimes the only way I can tell the twins apart.

The worst thing, though, is trying to be intimate.  Not being able to properly see my wife’s face, arms, or any part of her skin, means that I often press too hard or stop short when I try to stroke her face or arms, or kiss her lips.  I feel emasculated in the way that she has to lead that part of our life. 

Again, there are worse hardships than this.  And, in time, I should learn.  But I miss her face.  All faces.  I feel like all I look at is death.  But you have to laugh, though, haven’t you?  To find the comic side in everything.  To imagine Funnybones rather than The Evil Dead, and to learn to enjoy life once more, in this new way that I see it.  If I can’t find it, I’ll go insane.

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Written for Light and Shade Challenge from both the following picture prompt and the written prompt, which was  "If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane" - Jimmy Buffet

 

 Image courtesy of Wiki Commons taken by Nevit Dilmen and used under the Creative Commons Agreement 

100 Words: On the ship between the trains

On the ship between the trains, I thought about how we must be sailing right through Awdry’s imagined island; that, if it existed, we would rather be crossing it within a carriage that had a life of its own, pulled by an accident prone talking locomotive. 

Lost in dreams, I saw the southwest corner before me, my namesake, James, puffing along the mainline, whistling a greeting to us.  But, alas, it was not real, just a flight of fancy remembered from my formative years.

At Douglas I disembarked heavy of heart.  I was not looking forward to the return trip.

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

 

Image courtesy of Wiki Commons and in the Public Domain

100 Words: Green flashes amongst the grey (Ideas 1 & 2)

Green flashes amongst the grey raise my head and my spirits.  I smile, my heart lifting a little, as I continue onward towards my wife’s grave.

I pause briefly, standing tall over her headstone, as I once did her own head, thinking of how I would look down into her beautiful eyes, before crouching to lay flowers.  Then I sit and talk, tell her about my week, about work, our families and friends; drinking tea together, often the precursor and underlay of our conversations. 

Then I leave, looking out again for the parakeets.

Next week I’ll tell her about her.


**

Green flashes amongst the grey raised my head and my spirits.  I stopped, smiling up at the bright invaders of an often grisly space.  I’d always liked it, though, hence why I always walked through it, even though doing so lengthened most journeys.

Looking down again I noticed the door to the chapel was open.  A man and a woman, each in Victorian dress, stood in the doorway beckoning me forth.

Only once inside did I notice the cold; and realise I didn’t know how I’d got there.

I’d been downtown... 

A man stepped forward and asked me my plans. 

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt:

 

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, taken by David Berkowitz and used under the Creative Commons Agreement