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Weekly Contest #281
People are strange. They really are. That’s why I’m drawn to them. What’s fascinating is that some of them are drawn to me too. It’s a match made in heaven. Only that’s a bit of a fib. Part of the strangeness of people is in the language they use. Half the time, they don’t really know what they mean. Sometimes they don’t mean anything at all. Sounds innocuous doesn’t it? But it’s a dangerous as hell. I like to visit during the Christmas holidays. Or the Holiday Season as it’s now called. A rebranding aimed at being inclusive, when all it rea...
Weekly Contest #280
The grass waves to the breath-filled song of the wind. No, wait. That doesn’t sound quite right. Maybe just the voice of the wind. The luscious grass dances as the wind sings. Something like that anyway. I look around me. Casually, like I’m taking in the view and not at all looking for a sudden change in the landscape that would signal my end. Should I admit that I’m scared? I’d be mad not to. But then this is madness. I’m narrating my life because my life actually depends on it. The moment I go quiet, it’ll come for me. I know that much. Sn...
“At the end of the day,” I look out over the vibrant, green valley and I take it all in. I read the landscape and I listen to it. I feel it within me, and not for the first time I wonder whether it is real, or just something my unconscious projects before me in order to make this life bearable, “it’s a beautiful world.” I sit in the noisy silence of the hilltop and allow myself just to be. The rest of the words spill out of me with my next exhalation, “at the beginning of the day, it’s also a beautiful world. Trouble is, we busy ourselves to...
Weekly Contest #279
Wilfred woke up one morning to a boiling sea of change. This was very disconcerting. He had recently entered the fifty second year of his life, and any damp feeling as he surfaced into the day left him feeling ashamed and inadequate. Even his night sweats disturbed him, perpetuating the anxiety from which they came. He lay there for a moment before he checked his watch, phone and wallet. For good measure, he gently and unobtrusively patted the mattress around him. The numeracy of his age was often a myth, but occasionally he had a nauseating...
Weekly Contest #278
Belief is a weird and wonderful thing. It sees us through life. It also ends lives. So often, it breezes through borders without any checks, never having had its passport stamped. We don’t question belief because we rely upon it far too much, and we do not want it to desert us in our hour of need. That hour is long enough as it is. There will always be a reckoning though and life has its own ways of asking the questions that must be asked, even if it leaves it until very late in our day. It turns out that the substitute for belief is t...
It wasn’t the first time. Memory is a tricksy old thing. Rehearsed until they stick. Edited selectively. We seldom get the director’s cut, and yet we’re the director. So yeah, I feel short changed by memory. But then I’ve been cheated by far more than memory. And memories are all I have. Memories are all we will be one day. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time I began to see. Eventually, despite my unwillingness to acknowledge what I saw, let alone accept it, I discerned the patterns that had been there all along. C...
Weekly Contest #277
No one likes a winner. It has always been, and always will be about the underdog. That and the happy ending. They all lived happily ever after! Cut! That’s a wrap! Well done everyone! Ever wonder what happens after that? No, of course you haven’t. Nobody ever does. Why? Because we just don’t care. We settle for less. We stop when the music stops. Sad statues of lost meaning with no prospect of the music ever starting again. In the end, which is not even our end, we settle for nothing and we walk away with the illusion of happ...
Weekly Contest #276
It wasn’t her. That was the lesson. The obvious truth. But even once I was presented with the truth, in my apparent acceptance was a rejection. I mirrored her denial. I was drawn into that collusion with very little effort. Denial and naivety is where we reside. We climb into bed with a watered down reality that promises us an easy ride, but is never there when we wake up to the cold light of the truthful day. I loved her. Being with her hurt. Being without her hurt. I was never good enough. She pushed me away, even as I pulled i...
Weekly Contest #275
The world is full of broken people, and I’m one of them. Right now, I’m as broken as it gets. Broken beyond repair. Some things creep up on you. Life has a habit of doing that. An inexorable movement that ceased to be noticeable via our ignorance of the very nature of our existence. An incessant flow that carries with it sticky flotsam and jetsam. All that crap accumulates and wears you down. Weighs you down. Until you sink without trace. Laying there on the riverbed of reality. If you bother opening your eyes, you’ll see life pass you...
Weekly Contest #274
Danny slumps on a park bench and watches the world go by. It’s an October morning, but the weather hasn’t yet made its mind up as to whether it wants to tip a nod towards the approach of Winter. The sun shines and conveys a lacklustre warmth. The breeze gently ruffles his unruly hair and licks his face. There are regretful leaves on the ground. There has been no frost and no winds to speak of. They missed their cue and fell anyway. Falling to the concrete with no safety net. There was no need for this. But then there is never a need. Not for...
Weekly Contest #273
I saw her several days ago. Only I refused to accept what I was seeing. She was careful, but not so careful that I wouldn’t be afforded the sight of her. Some of that care added something to her steps. She was slowed by her caution. I didn’t have such a burden, and so I closed the distance between us over those days. That was when I had to do something about the sight of her. Think about what it was that I was seeing. She was older than me. Something in her gait spoke of those years and there was a weariness in every movement. I ...
Weekly Contest #272
The pub was noisy, but to a level that wove a cocoon around the two friends. A log burner churned out a lazy heat, there was the promise of more from the dance show behind the glass, but that promise was breathless and lacklustre. Besides, Jake found the temperature suited him just fine. He’d undone his coat, but not bothered to take it off. Toby however, had shrugged his coat off like he was shedding skin, and now the coat lay around him on the bench. A marker, so no interloper would attempt to take his place. Not that the two of them would...
The bookends to Winter are drab and dismal. The branding of Spring lifted it to a position of renewal and positivity. The poster boys, lambs disco dancing in green and pleasant fields. But that is the end of Spring with the promising warmth of Summer already on the horizon and underwriting the proceedings. Equally, the vast majority of autumn is miserable, grey and wet. Seldom are there crisp mornings decorated with banks of artfully crafted leaves of every hue of brown barring the awful beiges sported by geography teachers. Nor the alarming...
CW: This story contains themes of emotional neglect, childhood trauma, mental health struggles, and unhealthy relationships. Reader discretion is advised.The You Are Here sign and accompanying arrow was nowhere to be seen, but then neither was the map upon which it would have been situated. She wasn’t even looking for the map, but had she been, she’d have looked in all the wrong places. The confusion of that unborn search was not helped by the fact that it would never be clear whether the map was one of life’s paths or of her mind itself. We...
In life, one action leads to another and another. A single domino can topple a thousand. A seemingly insignificant ripple can encourage and cajole her brothers and sisters to join her in a dance that brings colossal waves to crash upon the shore and cause fatal devastation. The causality in life is due to connection. Connection cannot be avoided, for if it is, the destructive nature of isolation is even more vile. The dark ingenuity of an isolated mind is truly evil. The hateful intent that finds the button to press or the lever to pull, abs...
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