tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34249627104019365292024-03-13T02:36:09.343+00:00Simon's Made-up StuffThis is where I'll keep my "Creative" stuff and it's all a work in progress and will often be soppy and whimsical.Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-57468857833516756802012-02-19T19:33:00.002+00:002012-03-01T15:46:21.341+00:00Jackie and the Suicide<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is my latest little story for the group and it's a bit longer than usual. I promise to one day write a story in which no children die.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The prompt I used was this photograph:</span></b><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7GVKVBhICCY/T0FH4wWg_pI/AAAAAAAAAR0/iapd5B_qtmU/s1600/size0-army_mil-87452-2010-10-01-111059.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7GVKVBhICCY/T0FH4wWg_pI/AAAAAAAAAR0/iapd5B_qtmU/s320/size0-army_mil-87452-2010-10-01-111059.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jackie and the Suicide</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.8067991365678608"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jackie felt a shove in her back as she carried her heavy cello-case off the bus. There was no way she could stop herself falling down the steps and onto the tarmac. She could hear the laughter and knew who was doing the laughing. She didn’t look up as she got to her feet and she ignored the pain in her knees and in her arms as she walked into school. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Spacky Jackie” came the taunting voices behind her. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Normally she would cry, but not today. Today Jackie only smiled to herself like someone who has been vindicated. She toyed with the novel idea that these cruel people were the ones that deserved pity. She couldn’t remember a time when such people hadn’t made her life painful, but today was the first day where she knew for sure that when she grew up they just would not matter at all. She had never felt so liberated.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was school sports day. Jackie would be helping out with the drinks stall as the headmaster thought it best not to have her competing in the games. That would just be embarrassing for everybody, what with her condition and all. Jackie went to class 9B for registration, leaving her cello-case in the cloakroom like she always did. She sat at her desk and the rest of the class did the same. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The teacher, a young blond woman named Miss Blue, called out the names on the register. Jackie, still feeling the echoes of pain from her fall down the steps of the bus, listened to the names and as each pupil responded, their voice triggered a flash of memory in her mind.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abigail Anderson - “Here” - leading a gang of girls hooting with laughter and pointing at Jackie’s piss-soaked skirt.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tom Brent - “Here” - sneering as he rifles through the contents of Jackie’s bag.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Benjamin Cordon - “Here” - punching Jackie in the stomach because he was dared to.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fiona Dombury - “Here” - standing in front of the class telling them all that Jackie had just confessed that she loves her.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">William Durfold - “Here” - always in the crowd, laughing along.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alan Epsilon - “Here” - kicking open the toilet cubicle door. No tissues.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The list went on - the memories of all the times this mob of classmates had ruthlessly used her as a human scratching post. Jackie had wondered for a long time if any of these people could possibly grow into humans that would really add something to the world. They were so happy to play to the crowd, to follow the herd. They seemed to like nothing more than showing off to the other idiots. Is that what grown ups were? Just nasty kids like this that had made it to adulthood? Is that why the world ended up so horrible and unfair?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Three months before the school sports day, Jackie had been involved in an incident that brought her a little bit of fleeting fame. She had been present at a suicide. What made it even more interesting was that it happened during a Prime-Ministerial visit - the PM herself was going to arrive at a church on the long road which passed by where the man had jumped. He had chosen the PM’s visit as the best time to hurl himself from the top floor of a car park that overlooked the church and Jackie had seen him do it. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the police and journalists interviewed her, they had all commended her for being so composed and mature about what must have been a harrowing experience for such a young</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> girl.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“He looked nervous and I saw him mutter something under his breath. The next thing I know, he grabbed the railings and just jumped over. It was awful, I didn’t have time to stop him.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oddly, the man had jumped more than three hours before the PM’s arrival, so nobody else had gathered at that time and only Jackie saw it happen. Even more strangely, it turned out that this was the only part of the entire shopping complex that was not covered by CCTV, so Jackie’s was the only testimony they had to go on. Nobody could understand why he hadn’t waited until the PM had arrived, if he wanted to make a splash, as it were, but then everyone agreed that the mind of the suicide is intrinsically hard to fathom and the matter was quickly put to bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was now time for the children to dress for sports day. Jackie went upstairs to the staff room to report for drinks duty with the other kids that couldn’t do sports. She was assigned the important role of making sure the jugs of squash didn’t run dry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The drinks stall had been set up near the finishing line and was supervised by Miss Blue. Jackie stood behind jugs full of orange squash, ready to do her duty. Parents began arriving, parking on the part of the field set aside for the cars. Teachers bustled around, moving groups of children to the correct parts of the field and starting races. The P.A. system squawked announcements and congratulations, punctuated by starting shots from the headmaster’s cap-gun. Ripples of applause came from the parents who were sat on rows of their children’s classroom chairs alongside the 100 metres track. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From their seats, the parents could see right across the field - with the impressive obstacle course in the centre - to the school itself. To their left was the temporary car-park, shimmering metallic blue red and silver in the heat. To their right was a high fence to keep out all the paedophiles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was a good, English June day, perfect for a sports day. There was no wind at all and this fact in particular brought another little smile to Jackie’s face.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What’s making you smile, weirdo” demanded Alan Epsilon - the toilet door kicker - as he refilled his cup of squash between races.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There’s no wind” replied Jackie, still smiling.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So what? God you’re a freak” as he tipped the drink down his throat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’ll be better for you, in a way, Alan. Quicker.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I don’t know what you’re talking about” throwing the cup and what was left in it straight at Jackie’s face and running away squealing</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Haha look what I just did to spacky!”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She wiped her face with her sleeve and wondered for a moment if she might have been better off doing something to the drinks instead. No, opportunities like this do not come along for no reason. She would follow it through. An announcement came over the P.A. system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Would class 9B please assemble at the start line for their three legged race”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was her cue. Jackie asked Miss Blue if she could go indoors to the toilet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thinking about it now, she still could not believe her luck about the CCTV blind spot. But when she thought harder it made a lot of sense. He had obviously chosen that place for this very reason. It was not himself that he’d wanted to kill when he’d gone to the multi-storey car park that day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few steps further along from where he’d “jumped”, there is a door which takes you to the lifts. Next to the lifts there is another door that leads to the service room above, which houses the lift motors. The service room has a little roof all of its own, which is accessed by some steps against the back wall. The roof door opens outwards onto a gravel-covered rectangle with some air-extractors in the middle of it. On one side is a view down to the top floor of the multi-storey car park and on the other is the stomach-lurching drop to the road 8 storeys beneath. And a magnificent view of the church.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jackie had found this place by accident one day when she had tried the door and found it unlocked. This didn’t seem too odd to her as there was nothing in the room worth stealing. She had carefully stepped out onto the roof but there were no railings and she thought the wind would just blow her over the edge. After that first time she went back occasionally out of a sense of adventure but as it was just a noisy, dark room she eventually forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until the day of the PM’s visit. The roof of that service room would be perfect to get a view of the PM as she walked from her car to the church and no-one else would watch from there. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the day arrived, she left home early to make sure nobody saw her going up. The car park was deserted at this time of the morning. The door to the service room was unlocked, as ever and she crept in and ascended the steps inside which took her up to the door to the roof. When she pushed open the door, she felt it get stuck on something so without a second thought she barged it with her shoulder. This time the obstruction gave way and the door swung open just in time for her to see a pair of feet disappear over the edge. After two seconds of statuesque, eye-popping silence, she heard the sound of bone hitting concrete. She didn’t need to look down to know what she would see.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She sat in the doorway, clutching her knees tightly to her chest. Her mind was full of deafening white noise. No thoughts came to her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After about 15 minutes, she realised that there were no screams, no sirens. She could hear cars moving along the road far below. Nobody had seen it happen. The body must be somehow out of sight, behind bins or something. She let another 15 minutes pass until she knew for sure that she had got away with it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She stood and turned to run away but noticed for the first time that there was an open black case just visible on the gravel behind the door. This must have been what the dead person was looking at when Jackie had shoulder-barged him off the roof. She peered slowly round the door and saw that the case was open. It was a long, open case. Still no screams. Still no sirens. Jackie sat back down on the gravel on top of that roof and ran her fingers along the cold metal object inside the case. She knew she had to decide quickly.. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jackie walked from the sports field into the empty school building, past the girls toilets and into class 9B’s cloakroom where her cello-case was leaning against the wall at a careless angle. She guessed nobody would notice or care that she’d brought it to school despite there being no cello lessons on sports day, she just knew it. She took the case and went to the admin block where she climbed the stairs to the staff room as she had done only a few hours earlier. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next to the the staff room door, a sash window opens on to the roof and Jackie took this route - relying on pure adrenalin to drag her heavy cello-case out there with her. This part of the roof was flat but as it was a large building, nobody would see her up there until she got close to the edge. She walked and then crawled to the edge that overlooked the sports field. She could see the shimmering cars on the right, the parents on the seats at the back, the fence on the left, the field and the track in the middle. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The the right of her view, at the start of the 100 metre track, she could see class 9B squabbling in pairs as they tied their ankles together. She knew she had only a few minutes left before the start of the race, but that was fine. She had spent the last few months practising this in the dark and she only needed one minute.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few weeks after the fuss about the suicide had died down, Jackie had returned to the top floor of that car park - to the bars that Jackie had told the police the man had jumped over. She went into the service room, uncovered the long, black case she had hidden there and transferred its contents to the empty cello case she had brought with her. She went home and started watching youtube videos. She found that there’s a lot of information about the M24-A2 sniper rifle on there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through the telescopic sight, Jackie watched class 9B approach the start line in pairs, tied together for the three-legged race. She chambered a round and let the cross hairs rest below the left ear of Alan Epsilon. There was no wind so Jackie knew the bullet would touch him exactly there. She regulated her breathing, thinking only of all the practise, knowing she could fire 20 shots in 60 seconds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The headmaster raised his cap-gun. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“On your marks. Get set...”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Two minutes after the first shot, her empty cello case is back in the cloakroom and Jackie is in the toilet cubicle. She knows Alan won’t be kicking the door open any more. She didn’t hit them all, but the ones she’d missed were tied at the ankle to ones that she had not missed. What a scene that was! She could hear sirens now, and a lot of screaming.</span>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-33472193620324348172012-01-02T23:11:00.000+00:002012-01-02T23:18:40.181+00:00I found a rainbow in my pocket<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The prompt for December's meeting was "I found a rainbow in my pocket" and I came up with this festive little tale of joy:</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I found a rainbow in my pocket</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The last candle dwindled and died. The cupboard under the stairs, our
home for the last few days, was now completely black. The sound of grenade
blasts and machine gun fire had faded and been replaced by isolated rifle shots
as they went house to house. It would be us soon. A bullet for me and for the two kids who were sleeping in my arms, too weak to cry or
complain.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I kissed them both on the head, being careful not to wake them and then
I clamped my hands over their mouths and noses until they stopped breathing. It
didn’t take long. I reached in to my trouser pocket for the tiny razor I was
going to use on myself but instead of thin metal I felt a spongey object. I
pulled it out and the cupboard was filled with light as if someone had shone a
car headlight into it.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Both kids woke up and covered their eyes <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">“What’s that, mum?” asked the boy. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">“It’s a present I made for you both, it was hiding in my pocket” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">“What is it though?” asked the girl</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">I threw it into the air as if releasing a bird “Why it’s a rainbow of
course!” and it burst out of the cupboard and on into the garden. We tumbled
out after it, laughing. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The little baby rainbow was sitting on the grass, spinning and
shining white as it prepared itself for that thing rainbows do. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">“Mind your eyes! It’s going to..”</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">It exploded in a glittering burst of blinding red, filling the sky with
an electrified neon glow. As we looked at each other’s amazed faces, everything
turned emerald green, including the neighbours who had come out to watch the
show.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">A flock of seagulls, painted green by the embryonic rainbow, flew in
circles overhead. Their favourite part of rainbow-birth is the violet stage,
which came next, transforming them into glowing, winged blackcurrants which,
for seagulls is the funniest thing imaginable. They laugh so hard at this that
they can’t fly, so they all landed in the garden and rolled around, squawking
their helpless laughter as they looked at each other’s stupid purple bodies.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">As each of the colours was ignited into existence, the rainbow itself
took shape, planting one end of its self firmly on the lawn and stretching up
towards the sky. As the world went from solar yellow to inky blue, the rainbow
was tall enough to lean over and form the giant arc that is their mature stage.
</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The kids and I sat on the grass together and gazed at the giant rainbow
that sprouted from our garden, stretching to goodness knows where. I kissed
them both on the head.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-90969065625302318882011-09-07T21:54:00.000+01:002011-09-07T21:54:36.989+01:00<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The prompt for this was these words: Lament, Accept and Remote. But that doesn't matter at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><b>Remote.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She sat on Wilmington
beach in North Carolina, near her parents home, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes
and sipping red wine from the bottle. She had kicked off her sandals and her
feet baked on the sand as she looked at the horizon. Beyond that horizon was
England, and Rob.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She knew that Rob
would be lying in bed with a new girl by now. She wasn’t sure which of them it
would be but it would certainly be one that she had met before. Probably
somebody from his office that she’d been drunkenly introduced to at the
Christmas party. She’d probably even hugged and kissed and said something
harmlessly sociable to her. And Rob was probably fucking her right at this very
moment. The arms and legs that she’d so adored were probably right now propping
up his swooping pelvis while his mouth, whose kiss she still daydreamed about,
pressed at the mouth of some faceless whore. Some dead-eyed wraith. Some cold,
breathless, gasping slut.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She could feel her
heart beating as she roughly scrubbed the images from her mind. The air-raid
sirens in her heart were at full wail. The pitch rising and falling with each
wave of murder-soaked blood that boiled through her lungs. She lay down on her
back. It felt like her eyes were spinning. Holding her clenched fists into her
stomach she pushed down inside herself and crushed whatever feelings were
there. Good or bad, they all hurt right now. They all burned and she wanted to
be rid of them completely.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She wiped some tears
onto her sleeve and sniffed. The sun was high in the sky, straight up above
her, against the blue. Letting the sun scorch her eyes, she recalled a fantasy
she used to have in which she would make herself believe she was flying over
the clouds, looking down at a sky- blue ocean, empty except for one fiercely
burning island. Heaven is on that island. Only heaven could be that bright.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Looking down at
heaven through the clouds, she felt it was real. This is what it felt like to
see it with her very own eyes and to know it’s really there. Any doubt of its
existence wilted and she bathed herself in complete relief. There was no fear,
no death.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Another tear ran onto
her cheek, spoiling the illusion. Now she was not floating in the sky but
pinned to a ceiling. The ceiling at the edge of space that all the stars are
stuck to. She was pinned to it by one big nail in her stomach where all the
pain oozed from. Or she was stuck to it like a swatted fly - guts smeared and
dried.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She snapped out of it
and sat up, riding nausea as her senses swivelled back around into reality.
Still the waves came, rolling in from the horizon. A horizon that was keeping
her away from Rob while he fucked. A new cigarette. A mouthful of wine. The
quenching of fires again. Think of something else. Think of the future. He said
that he was going to be the future. Plans had been forged and dreams had taken
root. Stalks were entwined and blood had been mixed. They were one, they were
unique together, there was magic in the world. </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She had walked in
their garden as a wonderful Summer had drawn to a close. Ripe peaches and
apples hung pendulously all around. Bright yellow flower buds barely held
themselves closed while honey flowed from the base of the bee-hive, forming
rivulets amongst patches of strawberries which were themselves the size of
fists. The bees slept, their work done. There was honey for everyone, the
garden was almost bursting.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Gemma had reached up
and plucked the softest peach. It was so heavy and seemed to almost hum with
the power of its imprisoned sweetness. She closed her eyes and lifted the peach
with both hands to her mouth. As she raised it in slow motion, she could hear
tiny muffled, tearing pops as the flowers began to burst open behind her.
Opening her smiling mouth she held the warm, vibrating peach to her lips and
held it there. This moment is perfect and all is well.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Her teeth tore
through the skin of the peach and, eyes still closed, she waited for its
perfume to fill her nose and for juice to run over her chin. No juice came,
only wasps. Wasps filled her mouth and wasps filled her nose. Breathing in to
scream, wasps filled her lungs. Coughing and gagging, she fell into the
strawberry patch. All the strawberries burst open at once, releasing their
hidden bounties of fire ants into her clothes and hair. They swarmed over her.
Peaches rained down and burst all around, some full of hornets, some with more
wasps. The flower-buds blossomed, unleashing spits of vinegar and instantly
shrivelling. Gemma rolled and screamed, covered in wasps and honey and vinegar
and hornets. Ants crawled into her ears and gnawed.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br />
<br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And here on the beach
the last few ants were still roaming around her body. Stinging her and
reminding her, every few minutes. Another cigarette. Another mouthful of wine.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-19476459192125191152011-08-03T14:48:00.000+01:002011-08-03T14:48:37.125+01:00<div style="background-color: transparent;"><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This month it was my turn to suggest a prompt for our little group. I chose a photo of a tornado that swept into Brighton in 2006. I wish I'd seen it. </span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qEY4eoJ2Smc/TjlRHF7Bn4I/AAAAAAAAAI4/baSh5jmBc-A/s1600/brighton+tornado.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qEY4eoJ2Smc/TjlRHF7Bn4I/AAAAAAAAAI4/baSh5jmBc-A/s1600/brighton+tornado.jpg" /></a></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here's my 1000 word story:</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Tornadoes</b></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.07392775570042431" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oh my god we were laughing so hard! Our castle on the beach was now complete. Golden walls formed a soft-edged square and we were in the centre of the courtyard. A turret at each corner and battlements atop the walls. The four of us lay on our backs or rolled from side to side, in absolute hysterics as we used to say.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There were no sandy steps to the tops of the crenellated curtain walls. No doorways leading to spiral staircases inside the turrets. No rooms at all, just a square space inside four walls that we couldn’t see over. An arch had been formed in the southernmost wall, facing the sea which was a distant blue strip across the horizon. So much sand. What else would you do? You build a castle, of course you do, but this one is ridiculous! It’s bigger than my house and we’ve spent all day making it. We are four grown-ups and we’ve spent the hot day building a castle that would shortly be washed away. It felt wonderful. Look at us! Look how stupid we are! See what we did today?!</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A deck-chair flies high over the courtyard as if hurled from miles away. Its yellow and orange stripes blurring into the colour of flame. It leaves a smoky trail in front of the blue sky.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I roll onto my face to stifle my laughter and sand sticks to my eyeballs and fills my mouth. The laughter leaves me and I just cough into the ground. The others are growing motionless too as we forget what it was we were finding so hilarious. We blink sand out of our faces and sit in silence. As the silence grows, we become aware of the sound of a kettle whistling. Grains of sand tumble from the battlements as the whistle gets louder. Is nobody going to take it off the stove?</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My girlfriend crouches by a wall and I stand on her back to look over it, my hands clinging to the drying sand as I get whatever purchase I can in the crumbling structure. I fling an arm between the battlement teeth and pull my head up. The beach is deserted as far as the eye can see, except for the usual longboats that criss-cross its irrigation channels - they drift from the beach to the ash-covered fields and back again as the wind turns.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the nearest longboats has a man standing on it with one of those poles they use to push themselves along. The whistling sound is coming from inside his boat and he opens the cabin doors to see what’s happening there. He disappears from my view as a spinning funnel of dense grey cloud bursts out of the doors and envelopes him. I describe this to my companions.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My best friend wants a look, so he stands on my back. In a very calm voice, he says “Oh my god there’s hundreds of tornadoes out there all over the fields”. We all run over to the farthest turret from the whistling sound. There is a door here now and we all run inside. It is dark and the floors are wooden and brown. We rush up some dusty steps to a room with broken windows in every shadow-covered wall. Through these windows the sky is the colour of tarnished lead. Its weight crushes and sedates our words, which come out too slowly and quietly.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Run away” I say in a slow motion moan. We all stand and stare at each other, eyes wide. More words are spoken and ignored. Desperate for something to deliver us from this terror, I switch to the past tense and third person.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The whistling was by now a roar. The whirlwinds were closing in. They heard glass shattering upstairs and ran over to a window. They were at street level, looking along an avenue of fire-gutted buildings which lined a cracked concrete road. Smoke and glass drifted through the air. I saw them climb in turn through a broken pane. I saw my best friend come through last and as he did so the fuzzy black edge of a tornado loomed across the gaps in the wall. Splintered timber and lumps of stone smashed into the room like bullets. Broken steel cables tore through the walls and whipped through the air - neatly slicing off my best friend’s head which fell onto the floor and looked up at me stupidly.This almost forced me back into a first-person present tense perspective, but the terror was freezing my blood into sharp little rubies tumbling through my veins - reminding me to stay safely outside. I felt angry with the look on his face for a moment. This helped me to ignore what had actually just happened.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The three of them ran away, along the wrecked street. As they ran they could see crowded tornadoes stumbling drunkenly across the landscape, smearing black all over the fields and igniting wild animals. Blades of shattered glass rained down on them. Flaming birds screamed and flew into their faces. I saw my girlfriend apologise and leave them there. I don’t know where she went. I saw myself and the other friend (whose face was not familiar) run on until they reached a green field. They caught their breath as I reverted back to first person, present tense.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We catch our breath and look back at the city. It’s smaller than it was before, about the size of a red car. The tornadoes are only as big as my fist now, and they track up and down the windscreen of the car. I pick one up and let it spin on my hand. It feels like a toy gyroscope, whirring and leaning around like they do. I hold it near my face - I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a tornado, so I peer in and it’s just like in that film where it’s all watery blue spirals and peace.</span></div></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-88431920458606025642011-07-26T22:36:00.000+01:002011-07-26T22:36:00.142+01:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">To get the made-up-shit ball rolling again I resorted to interpreting a dream into a sequence of words and here it is. I have called this one "Bee".</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>BEE</u></b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: transparent;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.18454184965230525" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A bee and a small fly are fighting at the base of the windscreen, inside the car that I am driving. The fly takes a bite out of the bee’s abdomen, with jaws that are rather spider-like. They lock legs and tussle, buzzing and tumbling up and down the glass. It’s hot in the car and I notice a tiny flash of flame on one of the bee’s wings. The two insects fall down the gap between the dashboard and the window.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I follow the signs for the car park, and am led down a residential street. The white wooden houses jut out into the road and and I navigate between them very slowly. A final sign leads me on to a private drive outside one of the white houses. Paint on the ground leads me into the garage, where I turn right into a parking space right next to the kitchen. It seems an unlikely place for a public parking space, but all the signs and road markings led me here and nobody is complaining.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I get out of the car I look to see what the fighting insects are doing. I can’t see them, but there is an orange flicker behind the centrally mounted air-vent. I lean closer and between the plastic bars of the grating there are flames. No doubt about it. The flames are only the size of my fingernails and I decide that they’ll go out soon. I leave the car and walk into the now busy street. I’ve got to be somewhere but I’m not sure where now. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I start worrying about the fire, and I snatch a bottle of water from the hands of a Chinese lady who was about to drink from it and then I run back into the garage. I’m sure the water bottle lady will understand when I come back out and explain things to her, but for now I must douse the little fire so I can remember where I was supposed to be going.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I open the car door and pour water into the vent. Steam rises from the gap where the windscreen joins the dashboard. Orange flames lick out too. I find a watering can, half full, and pour water all over the dashboard, trying to force it down the gaps. The fire really takes hold now.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of my friends has joined me and I ask her to go and find more water while I warn the people in the house about what is happening. I bang on the front door and shout. An elderly lady answers. “FIRE FIRE” I say. “ FIRE IN YOUR GARAGE”. She starts crying and frantically running around the front of the house as smoke pours out of the garage. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My friend has called the fire brigade. I am in the kitchen, pouring water on the walls, when they arrive. The old lady and I lead them through the kitchen towards a door to the garage. The old lady wrings her hands. The fireman pokes his hose through the door and sprays water at the car which is now fully ablaze.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the fire is put out, I go to the car and pour water on it to cool the fiercely hot metal. The fireman stops off the hose, but I can feel that the passenger door of the car is still too hot and I hear hear a little fire inside it. He doesn’t like me telling him what he should do, but we wrench open the door itself and douse the remaining flames.</span></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-91331362778332269532011-06-18T18:08:00.001+01:002011-06-18T18:10:21.532+01:00Marius<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A1mKOCz3ibs/TfzaMM7MLII/AAAAAAAAADs/kH0XHmWQ41g/s1600/prompt2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A1mKOCz3ibs/TfzaMM7MLII/AAAAAAAAADs/kH0XHmWQ41g/s320/prompt2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This month's prompt for the writing group was this photo. I wanted to write an actual self-contained story for this one and to include a bit of speech in which some substantial idea was conveyed. So I made this - it's been tweaked after a couple of comments from the group. </span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(There's another version where I go into more depth about the history of the thing, but it was a little bit too much. This is the one in which I stripped out all the explanatory stuff)</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Marius</b></span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6310834889300168" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sun was red in the clear, noon sky. Marius looked up and held his hand in front of the inscrutable disc – barely covering a quarter of it. His visor darkened, cutting out the radiation which had begun pouring into his eyes. He lowered his hand but continued to look at the red circle. The visor had turned opaquely black over the centre of his view of the dying star, revealing its mane of writhing flares, looping and falling, gigantic and slow around its circumference. His mind glanced back to the archives where he had been shown whales bursting from the surface of the sea and crashing back in again. Were there whales on the sun?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His thoughts were pierced by a squeal of delight from the speaker by his right ear. Turning to look, he saw his sister waving at him from beside a brown boulder. Although the suits were identical, Tinga’s still had the green hue of infancy, marking her out from the rest of the older children whose suits had all reverted to their natural, reflective silver-white.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius left his spade poking out of the sand and walked across to see what she had found.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Marius! It’s a curly shell!” Tinga shouted through her beaming face. Although he was still a few paces away, he could see her wide eyes through the visor’s tint.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It was just under the pearls, where you said it would be” she continued, handing her net to him. Sure enough, there it was, in her net amongst the usual strings of ancient jewellery and polished stones.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well done Tinga, it’s important to take good notice of exactly where the shells are found. Has anybody found any above the Pearl Horizon yet?” Marius looked around at the other children, who shook their heads and said no.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Do we remember what it would mean if we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">did</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> find a shell that was at a shallower depth than the pearls?”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sertorius, a bright but serious boy answered immediately</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It would obviously mean that there were shellfish alive after the Paradise, but we know that’s not true so I don’t see why we have to bother with this stupid exercise.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius had been expecting somebody to raise this point. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The reason,” Marius answered, “is to demonstrate the power of evidence. Any idea that is worth having will also define its own downfall. A good theory will answer questions but it will also tell you what evidence would render the theory obsolete. The evidence may be in the next hole that you dig”.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sertorius rolled his eyes and whispered something to the boy next to him, forgetting that whispering wasn’t much use when microphones picked up every word for broadcast to the group. Marius ignored him and the children carried on digging with their little spades and filtering sand through their nets. As they busied themselves, Marius, walking amongst them, said</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“In this case, we are testing the theory that during the Age of Paradise, shellfish were simply wiped out. Most other animals were destroyed forever too, but in the case of shellfish we have the unique possibility of proving this theory wrong. If we found a shell from a creature that was born after the Age of Paradise, we would have to revise our view of history, wouldn’t we?”.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius decided he’d taught enough for now. He left them to consider his words as they scrabbled in the ground and rejoined Tinga. She was crouched next to a hole, looking closely at the shell she had found. Two of the boys stood in the hole up to their waists, as they tried to clear away more of the stones and sand. The Pearl Horizon here was about a metre under the surface and every now and then some of the formerly precious orbs would be flung out along with the sand.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having cleared enough sand away for now, the two boys climbed out of their hole to sit and rest. Tinga slid down the side, plunged her hermetically sealed feet into the pearls and giggled as she kicked excitedly at them for a few seconds. She dragged her net through them so that it was full, shook the sand out of it and sat down to remove the pearls one by one - throwing them over her shoulder and out of the hole so they wouldn’t have to be filtered out again.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius sat on one of the brown boulders and watched. The two boys reclined next to the hole they had been digging, clad in their closely-fitted silver bodysuits, each capped with a sphere of tinted glass, always darker on the side facing the sun. Between these two, he could see the top of Tinga’s head through the glass of her own helmet, jerking back with the force of her arm as she cast out worthless pearls onto the sand. Similar scenes were played out among the rest of the group as they dug and searched. Fleeting skirmishes would break out as one child or other would fail to resist the urge to fling an ancient necklace at one of their friends. He’d give them another half hour before taking them back to the refuge.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius looked back up at the sun, and again his visor compensated out the brightest part of the disc. As it turned opaque, he saw something in the dead centre of the red just before it was obscured. He thought he’d momentarily seen a lop-sided, yellow smile there. His brow furrowed and his lips pursed as he stood up, eyes fixed on the darkened centre of his view of the sun. He was about to instruct the visor to reduce the opacity so that he could have another look, but instead sat back down and blinked a few times. He looked over at his sister once more and saw her entirely occupied, gleefully throwing pearls out of the pit.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sertorius, standing by another pit, was also looking up. He had clearly seen it too. As the boy raised both arms to point, Marius remotely deactivated his comms unit. Sertorius’ mouth was visibly open and screaming but nobody could now hear him as they sifted their pearls in the sunshine. Sertorius dropped to his knees, still looking upwards, and held up both his hands to shield his face.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marius instructed his own visor to cancel all protection and looked up towards the sun once more. The tiny yellow smile had already outgrown the red disc of the sun and was now stretched right across the sky, widening rapidly. Marius thought briefly of whales splashing down in the sea.</span></div></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-76986321254333675462011-05-07T10:57:00.000+01:002011-06-18T13:25:21.280+01:00Azaleas exercise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZeIiUyfJ3d0/TcUWE82f_FI/AAAAAAAAADA/A59b2xosx1w/s1600/Vine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZeIiUyfJ3d0/TcUWE82f_FI/AAAAAAAAADA/A59b2xosx1w/s320/Vine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<i>For the Writer's Group I'm with, we all had to do 1000 words using this image as our subject. The flowers are Azaleas. Here is my contribution.</i><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">These pink-white petals, caught in the mess of a shattered beam of sunlight, remind me straight away of your neck and how it curves into the top of your white shoulder. I recall solar shards lying wearily across the cool expanse of your flesh; the patterns swaying with the slow rhythm of your breathing, and flickering with the pulse I can see in your skin; a bumblebee hovering among the leaves of a wind-worried bush.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Yet, these captured rays and their luminous displays are bought at the price of the shadows beneath. For each illuminated lobe, basking and shining, there is a world underneath, robbed of light. White turns to grey when the sun is removed and the leaves and the stalks are just so much green plumbing; although as the sun traverses and shadows pivot, such functional limbs are themselves set ablaze with reflected celestial splendour and life. Each imprinted point of sunshine on the pale face of the flower seems to awaken a brilliant, self-evident purpose within: it must glow. Even the supporting elements are afforded their moments in the brightness, providing some contrast to the general scene as the flower bathes oblivious always. The permanently highlighted flowers and the shifting green shadows beneath form the picture we see when we recall a flowering plant. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">You see, I thought of your beauty not as some merely two-dimensional photograph, but as a vivid, three-dimensional hologram. When tilting this image to one side or other in my memory, new facets of sigh-inducing jewels take their turn in the light and they flare. I ask myself if angel’s lips might be the same colour as these sunlit petals, this blazing flesh. And it’s usually about here that I start to wonder if I’m lending too much importance to the way I feel when I look on you, or on the memory of you.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">(The difference between a flower in sunlight and a flower under a cloud is the same as that between the eyes of the living and the eyes of the newly dead. A flower in the sun is clearly living, even if it has been plucked from its roots. A picture of a flower without its accompanying foliage may be pleasing at first, until we admit that we are gazing at a beautiful severed head, as it dies.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Beauty is still only beauty no matter how richly manifested it is. Physical gorgeousness drags me towards you as it drags a bee to a set of petals. The seemingly transcendent nature of the flower’s beauty is as functional as the structure of its stalks. Flowers are lures for pollinating insects. Prettiness is a lure for those humans who mistake it for beauty. I am just a firefly, barely sentient, careering across the evening sky towards the oh-so-alluring, greenly glowing specks of light in the shadowy hedge. There is no beauty in a face or a body, or anywhere. Objects can be literally attractive, but only in the same dumb way that a magnet is attractive to iron. It is nature. Why do we confuse prettiness and beauty so readily? Have we not, as humans, conquered such primal illusions yet? Or are we doomed to forever remain the slaves of lust? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">This is how I talk myself out of those pangs of loss that grip me from time to time. If I blame beauty for luring me to you, then I must learn a lesson and flee beauty whenever I think I encounter it, as it is only a portent of forthcoming pain. No amount of wishful thinking will transform our flawed, pretty lover into the perfect human that we believed would fit their face. An illusion of hope evaporates when we realise that the target of our amorous affections does not possess any of the magical virtues we’d attributed to them, and which we had loved all along: we were in love with a model form that we created in our head and no human will ever fit this template perfectly. It’s not their fault they aren’t really magic, is it? They never said they were magic did they? You wanted them to be magical and wishful thinking did the rest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Thus I am delivered from my moment of nostalgia, having distracted myself. Now I can re-evaluate the image of the azaleas with my mind freshly retuned to calm, objective reality, can’t I?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The burning white reminds me of the colour of a blast of pain as it flashes through my eyes on its way into my skull. Hell is not red, it is as white as these sun-kissed petals. Just a few seconds of unfiltered sunshine on your retina has you begging for an eternity of glowing red no matter how, painful and permanent it is. A sun-struck petal is a tiny fragment of hell; launched into your eyes by a fiercely malevolent star that will one day consume every atom of you. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">The sunlit, flower-sprinkled bush is a snapshot of vegetation right on the very point of flashing into flame during a nuclear explosion. Each bursting flower is a large-calibre, high-velocity bullet hitting a sleeping horse. It’s the fireworks at the end of the world, exploding over and inside the burning jungles. The white flames, the pink, scorched skin, the green smoke and the black, black eternity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-15088708738458255252010-11-21T22:45:00.000+00:002011-06-18T11:58:14.853+01:00Gig Review: Part 1<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div id="internal-source-marker_0.6084114923141897" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I arrive inside Hector’s - a pub on Brighton’s sodium-lit London Strip. It is a straightforward hollow cuboid in the conventional style. You will find it to be about 17 paces wide, with the stage offset and balanced positionally with the door which is located in the same wall. Mounted speakers pour the sound of recorded electric guitars into the room, filling it slowly like a bath.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While the void fills I am at the bar catching both eyes of the barman intermittently for several minutes. We swap glances; I think he thinks I am trying to mate with him but I just want some beer. I point at the beer, he blushes and pours me a pint. He must do this a lot as there are several other men with furrowed brows (and no drinks) standing around the bar. Maybe they will learn from me.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are about forty humans here now, of both sexes. Groups of various sizes and made up of varying ratios of male and female speak with each other. Some laugh uproariously with their tongues hanging out and others clench their jaws and twitch their necks. They are all expressing the same thing. I cannot help but notice that some of the girls are drinking fluorescent purple cocktails and I wonder where they bought these. Only the girls have them, but both boys and girls hold shining silver cigarettes in their mouths, like white-hot thermometers. The glowing drinks and the luminescent cigarettes make for a distracting light-show as they cast shadows of laughing jaws and waving hands onto the walls and the ceiling.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The stage area hosts some activity as last minute preparations are concluded. Three humanoids in black overalls and welding masks are hunched over a fountain of blue sparks. I stand on tiptoes so see what they are up to and it becomes clear that they are tuning the bass guitar. On another part of the stage I see the strings of the non-bass guitar still throbbing red hot from their own tuning routine.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the back of the stage, mechanical arms drop from a gap in the ceiling and assemble the drum-kit. The drums are prepared by machines in the upstairs chamber so as to avoid excessive discomfort for the audience while the components are tensioned and buffed. I could watch the machines assembling and disassembling the drumkit all night long and indeed, for many, this is the only reason they come.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The robot arms place the last two cymbals on their stands and retreat silently into their compartment. A few guys without drinks leave the room.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t notice the welders leaving the stage. The recorded music is turned up and the footlights are ignited, sending thick acrid smoke into the eyes of the most eager fans, who gag and collapse, coughing up bile; their faces pressed against the floor.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conversations stop as a lady in a blue and black striped robe walks toward the stage. Her hood is pulled over her face. Her hands are each tucked into the other’s sleeve. The recorded music takes on a funeral-march aspect, playing out on a hundred lamenting guitars. A visible chill follows her, conjuring a freezing fog into the air she passes through it. Frost settles onto the wooden floor in her wake and it sparkles in the silver and purple lights of the audience’s refreshments.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The hooded lady steps up to the main microphone. From the shadows of her hidden face, red lips appear, and split like a mouth. White teeth, still closed, approach the microphone. A wave of quiet washes through the room, snatching breath from the throats and muting the speakers. At the centre of a frozen silence, her teeth barely part and a hiss slithers out of them. The hiss is held for a few seconds; we hear it through the sound system. An amplified beam of white sound - as delicate and as hard as glass shards - is slowly lanced into the soft inner ears of those who thought themselves strong enough to forgo ear protection. As the hiss fades, we see the foolhardy fall to their knees, clutching their dead ears as blood seeps from their clenched eyelids. Five bodies slump to the floor and are concealed by the unsympathetic crowd.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“One.” The sound lady speaks. The air reverberates in thickening pulses. “Two.” the ‘tuh’ of the word slaps our faces; the ‘ooo’ stirs our loins. “One...one...two two two, one.” A few more people collapse, convulsing as the rest of us focus on each other’s faces to avoid losing our balance. The hidden eyes of the sound lady sweep back and forth once. Seemingly satisfied, she floats off stage to her booth of sound. A murmur of expectant conversation trickles back into the room, though the recorded guitars are now absent. It is nearly time. I return to the bar.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The barman sees me straight away and leaves to collect glasses. I follow closely behind him. We get back to the bar and I grasp his elbow. “You know what I want” I whisper to him. He can’t look me in the eye but nods and fetches a bottle of the beer. People look at us and talk behind their hands. I take up a position behind everybody and watch the band take the stage.</span></div></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3424962710401936529.post-51602332632482709042010-10-06T00:15:00.000+01:002011-06-18T11:58:14.853+01:00Migraine<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">She would appear without notice, her eyes like new black flint. I would bump into her in the street, or I would find her on a website or on a page in a book. She would interrupt me in mid-sentence. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">She glides up close behind me, her heavy black locks cascading over a black velvet cloak like lava solidifying under the sea. I taste her breath first; a sour vapour hovering in my mouth. It makes me think of bold ideas which never again occur to me. I try in vain to convince myself it’s a fume on the wind or a remembered flavour. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I know she’s really there. I attempt resistance by keeping her at my back. She blows on my neck. She’s made of white lead. Her breath tastes of a promise of torture. I would tell her anything but it wouldn’t make any difference.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Her pale, irresistible fingers lift the hem of her cloak and she brushes it onto my fingertips for an icy minute. She smirks briefly as she hears me saying to myself that it’s not happening, that it’s a false alarm. She pushes a fold of the thick velvet in between my thumb and my index finger and makes me hold it. Numbness grows where I touch the velvet. Taking another handful of her cloak, she wraps it around my other fingers and twists the fabric in her fist. This poor, dense, crushed, black hand. Smothered and numbing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Holding my velvet-clad hand in hers from behind my back, her free hand takes one of her long, curled strands of hair. She drags it mockingly over my ear, across my cheek and holds it in the corner of my mouth. My lips fizz with the absence of sensation. There’s a dark empty patch in space where my lips usually meet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Her cheek is against the nape of my neck. My blood draws away from her; the emptying muscles become dusty old oak, my neck a dead trunk. A dull brittleness grows into the base of my skull. She pulls the dead corner of my mouth with a hooked finger to twist back my head towards her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Into my ear she whispers intolerable descriptions of impending nausea. A transparent worm drops from her nose and wriggles into my eye through the pupil. I see its jagged glass body flex at the edge of my vision, writhing and refracting the world behind it like a string of diamond prisms. I close my eyes and the worm undulates in purple and red and black ripples. A tormented rainbow against the black.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Two iron moons orbit my right hand in its velvet casket. Tides and weight revolve and impart their sheer magnitude. There are no spaces between the atoms in this hand. It is only dense and orbited now by a dozen iron moons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Her finger tears open the gap at the corner of my mouth and the empty space arcs onto my tongue like a slow spark of syrup. My numb cheeks surround a tongue that isn’t even dark. I am more gap than substance and a glass worm swims in my eyeball, radiating its inscrutable purpose across my vision.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">She puts me face down on the floor and kneels on my back. The cloak is pulled away from my right hand. The gigantic weight lifts. The moons recede into space. Her left finger slips from the space in my face. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The refracting worm finally passes from my eyeball and bores into my brain. I didn’t notice it happening but a passing fellow has lanced the worm dead where it lay and is now leaning heavily on his sword - the point of which he has yet to remove from my head. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The cloaked lady rises from my back. She looks down at my prone form for a moment, then steps over me and walks away. When I'm recovered, she'll catch up with me somewhere.</span></div>Simon Clarehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01326883617951992573noreply@blogger.com0