I’m not sure where this comes from. Just more idealistic pacifist bullshit, I suppose.
Is it just me, or do these ghastly displays of military hardware and rows and rows of robotically obedient marching adolescents make others sick to the stomach? Isn’t it about time we stopped comparing the sizes of each other’s dicks? Was Darwin wrong? Are we evolving at all?
Especially now when we witness one little boy’s ego throw the world into turmoil is it not time to simply say no?
Guns do not make us strong. They camouflage our weakness.
There’s nothing like telling people not to look at something to make them look at it. But it really does have strong language. That’s not my fault. I sometimes can’t control my own characters.
This comes from a series of little pieces concocted during a 3 day writing workshop. Each was done with a 30 minute time limit so …. a bit scratchy.
That’s my excuse.
***
Stumbling out the door. Ducking beneath the drooping branches of a decaying garden and into the sunlight. Tripping on a loose paving stone.
“Fuck.”
A bespectacled man in a suit, prematurely balding, with gleaming black shoes and leather briefcase, closing in from the right.
Turn left. Walk away.
“Sir! Sir!”
Walk on. Walk on. Just keep going.
“Sir! Sir! Hold up a bit! Sir!”
Answer back. Good strong voice of authority. “And who’d be asking me to hold up and what right would he have to interrupt my morning walk?”
“I am James Smythe-Jones, Dr Freedman, of Jones, Jones, Smythe-Jones and Jones, and I ……”
“Never fucking heard of you.” Attempting to increase speed, but the little prick is still making up ground. Before long the stench of his breath will be smearing itself across the back of my neck.
Shouting now. An attempt to incite fear. “And I don’t care what brand of Jones you are. There’s one of you on every street corner nowadays. I have no time for you. So fuck right off back to where you came from before I turn around and knock your lights out.”
“The matter concerns your uncle, Sir”
“My uncle is a cunt.”
Can’t keep this up for long. Struggling for breath. Old legs failing me in a crisis.
“I regret to inform you, Sir, that ….”
“He’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so, Sir.”
“But still obnoxiously wealthy?”
“Extraordinarily so, Sir”
Stopping mid stride. Stepping off the footpath and taking aim for a park bench. “Then let us both rest our weary legs a while, Mr Smythe-Jones. We may, indeed, have business to discuss.”
Here’s something a bit odd. I was fiddling with my phone and looking within MS Word and it presented ‘something you opened recently’ which, initially, I had no recollection of opening, let alone writing.
I’m not sure of even what it is supposed to mean. Is it a full piece of flash or is it a planned beginning? I honestly don’t know. But I hardly post anything these days, and since it sort of beckoned me I thought I’d give it some air. Make of it what you will ….
*
The Blocked Path
The first stones appeared almost imperceptibly, like the faint whispers of birds in the valley below, his attention to them initially subconscious as they gradually accumulated at a specific point on the well-worn mountain trail.
Jakob first properly noticed them on a crisp autumn morning, the small rocks carefully placed to narrow the path leading down from his high pasture. He nudged them aside with his weathered boot, still thinking little of it.
But as the weeks passed, the stones multiplied. Not scattered randomly, but positioned with an unsettling precision that spoke of intention. Branches now intertwined with the rocks, creating a lattice that seemed too deliberate to be natural. His sheep huddled closer to the rough-hewn sheepfold, their usual restless bleating replaced by an eerie silence.
“Nonsense,” Jakob muttered to his own imagination, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. But he’d lived on this mountain for twenty-three years, known every crevice, every wind pattern. Something felt different now. Something felt wrong.
The local constable in the valley dismissed his concerns when Jakob rode down one Wednesday. “Probably mountain goats,” the young man said, not looking up from his paperwork. “Or maybe some kids playing a prank.”
But Jakob knew. These weren’t random obstructions. Each day, the blockage grew more complex. Branches woven into the stonework like intricate tentacles, rocks balanced with mathematical precision. By the following Saturday, the path had narrowed to barely a shoulder’s width, the debris rising like a carefully constructed wall.
His oldest ram, a battle-scarred creature named Gunnar, stood at the edge of the flock, facing the blocked path. Alert and protective as always, but now unnervingly still. Jakob watched the animal’s ears—they twitched, not from wind or sound, but from something else. Something unseen.
Night brought no comfort. Sounds drifted up the mountain—not wind, not animal. Something deliberate. Scraping. Soft footsteps. The careful placement of something heavy.
On the seventh day, Jakob decided to wait. He positioned himself where the mountain trail bent, rifle across his knees, watching the blockage. Hours passed. The moon traced its arc across the star-studded sky.
Just before dawn, a sound. A snap of a twig. Movement.
“I know you’re there,” Jakob called, his voice carrying the weight of decades of mountain solitude.
Silence answered.
Then a voice. Familiar. A voice he hadn’t heard in twenty-five years. A voice that brought back memories of fire, of accusation, of a long-forgotten conflict that the mountain had seemingly swallowed.
“Hello, Jakob,” the voice said. “It’s been a long time.”
The blockage was more than stones and branches. It was a message. A confrontation decades in the making.
A silly creation of mine just came back to haunt me on another site. I think it was some time ago and in response to someone discussing the concept of ‘ghosting’.
I may have already posted it here. I can’t remember. So you probably can’t remember either.
So …..
*
One morning Eating buttered toast With the girl I like the most And with my chewing So engrossed Not noticed She’d become a ghost It’s not just that She didn’t care My darling Wasn’t even there The smell of perfume Everywhere But she had vanished Into air Oh the horror! Oh the pain All my love had been In vain She left me On the midnight train And she’s not Coming back again She’s gone forever Now I see A ghost is all Transparency Was it her? Or was it me? No matter What will be will be
Richmond Road 