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.

500 Words: A Meeting on a Bridge at Midnight

I stood on the bridge at midnight as the clocks were striking the hour, the soup of the smog obscuring the views and blurring the city’s lights on all sides.  With my scarf covering my mouth, my collar up and my hat and head down, I waited for my man.  

In those days the centre of bridges were the only safe places to meet: pubs, streets, parks- all were full of ears and snarks, but bridges in the middle of night were known to be safe.  Even with the smog close in, you could see far enough to see you were not being watched or, more importantly perhaps, overheard.  Which was why this plan had been planned this way.

While waiting, I listened to the bells of various churches.  To my ears they were out of sync, though I could not say if they truly were or not.  As it was, and with each sounding its own tone, they made a strange tune that kept me distracted from my nerves and the cold.

He came from the south side, dressed just like me (just like everyone), his collar up, head down, scarf across the mouth to keep the smog out.  Individuality had been voted out by voting the party in.  

As he came out of the smog it seemed to be reluctant to let him go, strands of it looking like arms trying to hold him back and keep him hidden.  I never liked these meetings- my nervousness and paranoia would give things a sinister edge.

We greeted one another briefly before getting on to business.

“You have yours?” he asked me, this man I had never met- would never meet again.

“Of course,” I replied and we both withdrew test tubes full of liquid: mine blue, his red.  He took from a pocket an empty container, set it down on the pavement and emptied the contents of his tube into it.  I did the same to create a green smoking concoction.

We stood and moved to the rail.  “Do you think it will work?” he asked me.

“If it doesn't then we walk away and carry on until a new plan is produced.  I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

He nodded and poured the mixture out.  I never heard it hit the water, only saw it disappear. 

Together we waited quietly, hopefully; until a green smog began to rise, pushing the regular smog in front of it.  

“It seems to be working,” the man said.

“They will never see it coming,” I replied and we smiled at one another briefly before the gas reached us and put us to sleep.

*

I woke three days later in a hospital bed, the revolution having been peacefully secured, and soon returned to my normal life.  There were no heroics or glorification of those involved, just restoration and continuation.  We remembered and sought not to do it again.  

I look out for him always, though, that man.  I want to embrace him.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, from Longfellow's The Bridge, I stood on the bridge at midnight,/As the clocks were striking the hour

A Saturday Morning Mix-Up

Saturdays were always the same when I was a child: I’d wake up at some ridiculous hour to watch kids TV, often before six, before it even started.  I watched allsorts: Ulysses 31, The Shoe People, Mallett’s Mallet, Thundercats, Going Live!, Ramona, all kinds.  

Then breakfast and the wait for the mid morning highlight.

We had a paper delivered each day and, before elevenses (or drink and biscuit as we always called it), my dad would walk down to the newsagents to pay for them.  We would go with him, but not before we received our pocket money.  About 20p a week, at first, all of which would be spent at the newsagents.

Out the front door we would start, down the path, turn left, left again, down the hill, past the postbox, over the road, along to the bollards, turn right, up through the estate to the shops at its centre.  

In the newsagents, Dad would go up to the main counter, covered, as always, in the day’s news, and talk to the newsagent himself (who would, much later, get annoyed with me, but that’s a story for another day), while I would go to the back of the shop, to a separate counter- 

The sweets counter.

Behind were shelves of jars full of sweets, sold by the quarter- in the future, when I got more pocket money, when I would walk to the newsagents on my own, these would be for me.  During my first visits, though, I would concentrate on the boxes of sweets kept under a glass counter.  

A young lady, though old to me, I guess, probably still at school, would serve me: she may have been my first crush, at about five, but it may have had more to do with the sweets, my mind’s a bit hazy over that bit.  Anyway, I’d ask for a 20p mix-up and the choosing would begin.  

I would mainly go for penny sweets: Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, Cola Bottles, the small ones mostly- maybe mix in a Foam Banana for a treat, all of which the sweet lady would pick and place into a paper bag, probably with her bare hands- the eighties cared less for hygiene- keeping count as we went.  Oh, the decisions - how many penny sweets, two penny sweets to go for.  And what ones, of course.  

Once the mix was complete we would go home- sometimes via the baker’s for an extra treat to take home, the drink and biscuit becoming a drink and Doughnut or Chelsea Bun.  But the main treat for the way home was the sweets, of course, a different order each week, perhaps, or always saving the best until last; again I am hazy, no doubt lost in a sugar cloud.

When home and finished, it would soon be lunch.  On a Saturday it was always fishfingers and chips followed by semolina because Saturdays were always the same when I was a child.  And they were wonderful indeed.

---

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

Picture by ciscopa on rgbstock.com

A Dream with the power to poison Sleep

Asleep I saw a man, tall and thin with a mass of black curly hair, clad in a long leather coat.  I followed him down a street much like the one I grew up in to a house similar to my childhood home.  

I followed him in, up the stairs to the attic, floating all the way to the top of the house.  

There I saw the man crouched over a hole, up through which shone a little light, but not enough for me to see his face.  Over the hole he dangled a long wire before threading it through to the room below, removing a small bottle from his pocket and carefully applying drops of its contents via a pipette onto the wire, allowing them to travel slowly down.

Some part of my mind remembered something and I jumped back down to the landing and rushed toward my old bedroom and bunk where I found my young self asleep and dressed as Wee Willie Winkie, a candle burning on my bedside cabinet.  I was too late, or, rather, just in time to see a drop enter my mouth and the candle gutter out.

As the dream began to end and I fought between waking and sleeping, I turned to see the figure I had followed standing in the doorway.  

He wore my face with darkened eyes, paler skin and a wicked, twisted grin that mocked me as I lost my battle to stay there.

I have not slept since.

*

Initially I stuck to my normal routine and stayed in bed, tossing and turning, yet never getting tired enough to fall asleep; but that passed and I got more annoying.  

I had this weird horny phase and started to bother my wife for sex several times a night. Some of the time this was fine and lovely, fantastic in fact, but mostly I was nothing but a sex pest. 

So I tried instead to keep myself busy at nights, moving from one activity to another like fads: watching box sets, writing stories, reading, building models, jigsaws, DIY, even.... as quietly as I could, until I disturbed my wife and neighbours too many times.  

Almost always alone, of course. By day I made the most of human contact because by night I was completely alone.  Each little hobby was a necessity to keep myself busy and sane until morning.

I suppose I could have worked two jobs- a cabbie, perhaps, but the safety of home seemed preferable. A creature of the night I had become but the night outside was something I did not trust and did not want.

Eventually I came almost full circle to a state where I would sit in the dark all night remembering my last dream and wondering if there was a way to cure Sleep, assuming he wasn’t gone forever, or to find Dream and gain the answer.  But he does not come to me and I think of nothing.  Perhaps always I’ll be afflicted.

---

Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, from Shelley's Mutability, A dream has power to poison sleep.

250 Words x2: The Merlion (Parts Twenty-One and Twenty-Two)

Shortly before midnight the Merlions left Singapore, swimming out in all directions, in pairs, each pair heading for a ship.  Upon arrival at their allotted vessel each pair quickly set to work underwater, gripping and prising away the boards that held the hull together.

Onshore, on Singapore and the nations surrounding her, the people waited for the first signs of trouble on the water.  This would be their signal to attack and capture the ships in port to deal with the pirates enjoying port life- for, as the pirates had had an easy time of it in terms of opposition to their rule, many of them spent their evenings in establishments selling alcohol- and this night was no exception!

The first sign came in Singapore and Johor Baru when shouts were heard from a ship stationed between the two.  It’s rear was starting to sink and pirates onboard were starting to panic, some abandoning ship only to find themselves face to face with Merlions. 

In both cities the people made their move- some blockading the bars, trapping pirate reinforcements inside, while others made their way to the docks.  Gaining entrance was easy- some guards were half-drunk on rum while others were distracted in another way.  

So onward they ran to the ships, only half-manned, their distress calls not being answered by comrades-in-arms but angry folk trying to keep their feelings from boiling over as they didn’t want to sink or burn these ships and clog up their own docks.  Boarding and overtaking would be enough.

And that they did, easily.  The pirates could see there was no point in struggling- the look in the eyes of their attackers told them that much.  Their time was over, they were marched to jail.

For his part the Merlion ventured out with the female Merlion the boy had seen him chat with during the journey home.  Together they swam in silence to that ship between Singapore and Johor Baru and, near its stern each ripped boards away until they could feel themselves being sucked into the ship.

The Merlion pulled away easily but the female couldn’t and needed him to release her from the forces trying to drag her inside the already sinking ship.  They quickly surfaced and after a quick kiss in thanks the two Merlions began to disarm and drag pirates to the shore to be arrested by waiting civilians.

Meanwhile the boy watched what proceedings he could see from his home.  His father was storming the docks but he had not been allowed to join in.  “You’ve played your part,” his aunt had said, “This is too dangerous for you.” 

Instead he watched and wondered what would happen next.  Would the Merlion leave, once the pirates were finally defeated?  He would have a mate soon, perhaps they would prefer to live on their island. 

Of such issues the boy thought as the battle continued, the pirates having been caught off guard and where they fought, they fought a losing battle. 

500 Words: Tales from the City: Red mist

I’d always wanted to join the Force.  Ever since I’d had to try and stand bullies down on my own.  I saw those smart guys, in pairs or larger groups, and knew that was where my future lay.  I wound up in training and that’s where it all began. 

I’d always been a weedy little fuck, hence the bullying, and that didn’t change.  I could barely manage the assault courses, couldn’t fire anywhere near accurately.  It seemed I was destined for a desk job.

Until one strange afternoon, for some reason, I closed my eyes before firing on the range- figured I couldn’t get any worse.  Instead something real weird happened.  It was like I became someone else and I put a whole clip through the centre of the target. 

I had to quickly pretend I’d been putting in a lot of secret after-hours practice.  (Some shit about tin cans with my uncle’s pistol, I think).  The same on the assault course.

I couldn’t explain it- every time I closed my eyes I became this kind of super man, every sense becoming more acute, every movement becoming no longer that of a clumsy idiot but that of a lithe athlete or something.  Everything just clicked into place because I could see better with eyes closed. 

Once on the streets all the filth and the grime the city was covered in started to rile me as never before now it was down to me to clean it up.  A few months in, me and my partner came across a gang raping some poor young woman in an alley.  We called to them to stop.  They pulled guns on us.  Quick as a flash I closed my eyes and blew every head away.

Over time similar incidents occurred- once I even entered a building and rescued a hostage with my eyes closed, dodging bullets and taking out several gangsters.  Apparently such skill is considered weird, though, and my partner, then the rest of the Force, started to look at me funny, stopped talking when I entered the room, and looked at me with fear in their eyes. 

And soon I was alone again.  Sort of.  I could always close my eyes and see a field of red that seemed to make more sense or make things easier than in the real world.  I started to walk the streets at night, cleaning-up any mess I came across: drug dealers, gangs, prostitutes and their pimps- even a bent Forceman or two.

And it became addictive, this second life.  I got transferred (due to spreading poor morale) behind a desk during the day and fought crime at night, getting all the power and none of the paperwork.

My life was great.  Until Homicide started sniffing about and I began to see the grime on my own hands, the shit embedded deep under my fingernails.

They interviewed me.  And they knew.

Until the army came to call I didn’t know what I was going to do.

---

Note: I originally tried to make this a two part 250 Words story but failed - I think one half was always going to be too long, the other too short, and it probably works better this way anyway.  Also: I wrote it before I knew anything about Kick-Ass - I can remember being pretty annoyed when I saw the trailer and discovered another Red Mist out there.