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Weekly Contest #377
We are all made of stars and yet we make of ourself ghosts. This is the game that is played all about us as we enter this existence and it is the game we are doomed to play unless we awaken to the absurdity of it all. There are other games to be played. The game of ghosts is just one of many games on offer. We are after all inquisitive collectors of clues and we make of those clues what we will. The most important of our creations are the discards. Everything that we dismiss and ignore has far more value than that which we clutch at. In thi...
When she moved to number 23 I should have known. What am I saying? I did know. Not at first. That’s not how these things work. There’s a time delay on the bad things in this life. You don’t know they’re bad until well after they’ve done their thing. That’s not to say that they cease their nonsense at the point that you get wise to them. The worst times are what I’ve taken to calling Onion Shit. There’s layer after layer of the stinking stuff and you sure do cry. Mostly inside. Tears are bad employees. They don’t always turn up for work. The...
Weekly Contest #376
I remember. I have dreams of how I once was and I know myself in those dreams. This is how it is when you are almost an angel. Wings are earned via the blood, sweat and tears of living many lives. We grow our wings as we ourselves grow. This is the way of it. How it has always been. This world has remained God’s Garden, it was we who changed when we stole what was forbidden to us and lost ourselves in the mists of newly found shame. We left the confines of eternal childhood and suffered the necessary fall. Seeds thrown into the winds and sca...
Weekly Contest #375
He sees it whenever he closes his eyes. The fragments of his life. A thousand receptacles containing lost meaning. A jigsaw he doubts he’ll ever piece together. Once you’ve seen what lays between the gaps, you can never go back to the ignorance that once ruled your days. One conquering moment suspended in a sea of millions. That’s all it takes. The scales fall from eyes blinded for safe keeping and vengeful hoards storm the castle of the mind. These are the lurking, vile creatures that once seen can never be unseen. They pierce human unders...
Weekly Contest #374
Evans takes one last look around her and sighs deeply. Jones places a hand on her shoulder. Squeezes, “it’s going to be OK,” he tells her. Her smile sits in the midst of momentary pain and confusion. The way Jones reads that expression of hers is; it doesn’t have to be this way. He’s had more than his fair share of that sentiment in his life. Wonders sometimes whether that’s the way it’s meant to be. An ongoing conflict that provides the movement necessary for people to live. The illusion of peace a pipe dream that if ever attained would l...
Weekly Contest #373
Being unable to remember was a big problem for me. But then, we’re so selective when the buffet cart of life wheels past. I mean, I don’t remember the vast majority of my life. Who does? We’re so intent on the next big thing. So many of the small things pass unnoticed. And they’re the things that count most. Or at least they adorn those things that matter and should be noted, so when we’re standing at the identity parade of our lives we might actually recognise ourselves. The loss of potential memories at source is a death of sorts. A wilfu...
Weekly Contest #372
“This is progress,” Karl strokes his chin after he utters these words. Caroline is undecided as to whether this is an affectation or unconscious habit. Either way she does not like it. He did something similar and once the association was established she was haunted by the act. “I don’t think you’ve heard me,” Caroline’s tone is hard. Karl does not pick up on this, as she is often harsh in the delivery of her words. There was a point early on in the sessions where she was charming, but that time is long gone and lingers only in Karl’s notes...
Tap! Tap! Tap! I’m walking down an unfamiliar high street. I know it’s a high street. I know its kind. And so there is the familiar about it. Familial even. This is the sister I have not yet met. That makes me think I’m in a city. I’d say London, but I don’t remember the train journey preceding this moment and there’s something about this place that differs from the London I know and tolerate. The unease I’m feeling goes beyond my not quite knowing where I am. My compass spins but my inner voice isn’t criticising me for getting lost. The b...
Weekly Contest #371
Summer is long gone and the sun is lacklustre in its efforts. A choking lightbulb casting a dim halo in a liquid sky. Shivering, he climbs into his car. Starts the engine before using the wipers to remove a veil of tears shed secretly overnight for a world that no longer cares. The road is damp and grey. A ribbon of rotting meat observed from the false safety of a tin can hurtling from pointless A to pointless B. He sighs a begrudging breath, the stock of which is in short supply. There was a time when he would deploy an auto pilot to take...
The projector comes to life. A single eye lighting up as its body shudders. Clack! Clack! Clack! It grinds and hisses with a dry insect symphony that is both terrible and beautiful. Down in the room they named Screen One, the huge velvet curtains swish silently apart and the projector’s secrets are revealed. The Odeon is a barely living antique that has never been subjected to restoration and probably never will be. Age has withered it, but somehow it keeps plodding along. Things were made to last when it was born. Imbued with a grit and st...
Weekly Contest #370
Garth watches dispassionately as he takes one of her favourite CDs and returns the case to the shelf. He repeats this two more times for good measure. He does not know what her favourite album is. She changes this preference almost as many times as she changes her knickers. This has always annoyed him. Not that she would know that. Later, he will discard the CDs he has taken. The first that he removed sits on his desk at work. A coaster and a trophy. Removing the artwork denoting the band and album was a chore but there was reward in the ap...
Weekly Contest #369
This then was the dark period of my life. I’d heard of such things just the same as I had heard of tigers. Saw one in a zoo once. Didn’t touch me or my life though. Wasn’t much more than a curio in an antique shop. I didn’t relate. Turns out that I didn’t relate to much of anything. The day that Arthur Higgins died was as unremarkable as the man himself. A late September morning hove into view and Arthur was not there to see it. They say he died in his sleep. I took to wondering how that may be. Whenever I had an issue with my health I awak...
Weekly Contest #368
I call myself the Restoration Man. Doing so amuses me. I find what I can to fuel this amusement of mine. To keep the flame burning is to banish a little of my dismay at a cancerous world that is coughing and wheezing its way to oblivion. The good are supposed to die young. I say these words and then I let them fall to the scorched earth so I can kick them around. Another game. A casual search for meaning in a world where meaning is bleeding out. There was a time when I told myself it didn’t need to be like that. And before then I used to s...
The shop sits quietly and anonymously amongst rows of red brick terrace houses. Two up and two down. Houses built for workers. Living space for the flesh and blood that was used to power a revolution of industry that now lays broken and bewildered in the weeds. Another illusory promise of glory that stole away youth and dream. Blink and you would miss this shop. The windows dwell in the shadow of the high factory wall opposite. A wall that was painted to mimic the dwellings that surrounded it. Somehow the dark two dimensional outlines of ho...
Weekly Contest #367
The door was unremarkable and yet as he closed it on the world it was his shield. It was the final element of the fourth wall that encased him in the novelty of safety. Even so, he did not dare to breath freely. He noted this as he would note the library of knowledge that he now had access to by virtue of the choice he had now at last executed. The tightening of his chest as though he were bound tightly was a reality he had been oblivious to until now. The enormity of his decision weighed heavily upon half of him. A choice that was a lifeti...
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