250 Words: Improv aka Ramblings 5

Terence walked down the road wondering about the weirdness of the day that had just passed. 

He’d woken as normal at 6.52 but, abnormally, a white rabbit sat at the end of his bed and spoke to him. “Don’t follow me to wonderland but see the fat man at Dreamland before lunch.”

So Terence went to Dreamland as it was his day off and he had nothing else to do.  A fat man manning a hot dog stall greeted him like an old friend and gave Terence a ticket for the Scenic Railway.  “A very special ticket indeed,” he announced.

So Terence rode the railway and as the car went down one of the dips he was transported to another world, one beyond Margate, where, like in Oz, everyone wore coloured specs to distort reality, but here it was blue because that was the despotic king’s favourite colour. 

Soon after arrival Terence was arrested as an illegal immigrant and jailed.  The white rabbit, now blue, told him he must kill the king at his trial.  Which Terence obviously did because by now he was so bewildered by everything that it made sense to kill.

So a death sentence was passed, “The only way back,” whispered his fat, familiar, executioner and, as the axe passed through his neck, Terence saw the world of blue change to the multicolour of the street he lived on.

So Terence walked down the road wondering about the weirdness of the day that had just passed.

≤140 Characters, or Tweet Repeat: 8

Rabbie the Robot doesn't just tell you the time. He also tells tales  and amusing anecdotes. In your imagination. 

250 Words: Tales from the City: Blood donor

Don’t ask me how I knew.  I’ve no idea- guess the knowledge was just there.  Maybe because I’d never been ill.  Maybe I was born with a God complex.  Maybe it was just a childish notion because I could do nothing else. 

It was my cousin I first saved.  She was ill, terminally, with leukaemia and, somehow I knew my blood could save her (even though my marrow had failed).  And so I learned what to do on the ‘net, stole a syringe and donated my blood.

Since then I’ve become more obsessed with this power, first donating like a normal to help randoms before slowly escalating to my final state (via a doomed period as a nurse)- a pro beggar and a prowler, finding my way into hospitals at night and spending my time healing all sicknesses present. 

I lived on the streets to keep from the law, sleeping and earning in the day, my face becoming that of a down and out, a nothing.  Soon no one knew me and I couldn’t be found.

Not that the authorities cared.  They knew what I was doing all along but never sought me out.  Unlike some of the others, I never appeared in the papers.

And so, known as the Angel of Life, I continued to stalk the hospitals of the country, occasionally returning to cities to cleanse anew.  But always in the back of my mind frustrated I could not go further.  That is until the government intercepted me.

≤140 Characters, or Tweet Repeat: 7

The Headmaster could plainly see the guilt on the faces before him but couldn't help but respect this lot. They were really very clever.

250 Words: Tikkun olam

“Lend us a hand, friend, as we pick through this rubble here.  As we find the pieces so we can put them in some semblance of order so as we might fix them together again.

“What happened?  Time, friend.  And man.  Or his actions over time I should say.  Not nature this catastrophe but minds and hands that think and thump and lead us here to this scene.  This world in pieces.

“How can we reassemble it?  Well that, friend, is the question.  That is the heart of the problem.  That is why we are here, why we do what we do.  Because we don’t know how, our ideas so far have not given fruit, or nothing that doesn’t soon rot anew.  Onward ever the struggle!”

“Perhaps you are looking at the problem from the wrong angle, mate.  Perhaps it is not these pieces that are broken- not the world physically- perhaps it is the people you need to look at.  Maybe that’s what it all means.

“I mean, mate, you say man did this yet you are here with the pieces, at the end product rather than at the root.  Perhaps that’s your problem.  You’re looking only at a fraction of the picture rather than the whole piece.  Or the whole gallery of pieces, perhaps.

“Maybe you need to unite all of the peoples, like the UN but better, rather than focussing on this community that only beats itself up.  Or something along those lines.  Something with more scope.”

---

Note: I wrote this after watching the film, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist during which Norah talks about the Hebrew phrase, Tikkun olam, meaning "repairing the world."  

≤140 Characters, or Tweet Repeat: 6

The Burning of the Collection had a valuable cathartic effect. The more painful memory balls could start to be archived, a fresh start made.

250 Words: Moth on the underground

The guiding lights are awfully confusing tonight; so long and thin and quite impossible to navigate by.  I keep going wrong, swooping here and there and flying forward and back like a demented thing (not unlike some of the humans I can see).  And it got suddenly so bright and then so stuffy after the cool breeze I’d felt before this shining area appeared before me and I was so sure this would be the way.  Now its too much like day for my liking, I feel like I should be finding a spot to nod off but my body clock says otherwise.  It’s all too confusing tonight, too much for one little moth.

*

Hey there little fella, how’d you get so far underground?  Work your way from light to light along the tunnels, did ya?  Dazzled and perplexed into the carriage, huh?  You chaps are funny things, continually flying into lights like they’re food or you’re besotted or something.  And you look funny, too- furry, ugly-beautiful creatures of the night.  Mad as hatters you are.  And bloody annoying buggers come bedtime.

*

The moth that had boarded at East Finchley found cool air once more at Morden but got confused  further by the lights of south London.  “It’s just one headache after another,” he thought as he flew around and around each light, never quite knowing where he was.  “Oh dear, if only I lived in the country like my cousin,” he sighed as flew up toward another streetlamp’s light.