The city outside of The Seventh Circle was a furnace whose incomplete combustion rendered spent, fetid air. Each time the bar’s door opened, squalls of ash and heat punished One Ball. He ignored the oily soot that coated his skin and leathers. This was where he sat. His headaches bloomed every day and were getting worse.
Sorry – glitch in the works – accidentally published a little teaser of a story that is coming soon – you’ll have to wait though.
I was on the Northern Line a while back, from one of the Finchleys. I was listening to loud music, a thing my doctor had warned me not to do, and yet it was drowned out by nearby conversation. You get to after East Finchley, around Highgate, and wherever, up around there, and there is nearly always this kind of decibel-creating person gets on.
So week 148. Who would have thought it? Probably any normal…Nay, individual who had read Week 147.
That’s a nod to Nik as he likes Frankie Howard although I should have typed three ‘Nays’. (I hate the word normal. I hate the idea of normal even more!! We are all individual! And I only wrote the word to make that particular point which I have done on many occasions but it needs repeating every now and again)
Continue reading “Week 148 – GMT, Halloween And Who To Blame For Everything.”
Enrique studied the faces around the table. The purchase committee dispensed their limited resources with utmost care. It was no surprise that the investment in another “staff” member should arouse such discussion. They didn’t object to using androids in schools, especially in the internment facilities, where the headcounts of students exceeded all conscionable limits. Within the southeast sector alone, an android already functioned efficiently as a janitor and two, female in aspect, doled out cafeteria food. The machine vetting the kids’ thin, government-issued bags at the building entrance possessed some enhanced intelligence. Three monitored the scrappy stretch of ground called a play area. But to order one with a limp, for the lower grades…
Week 146 is a very special posting for me. It’s my hundredth. I started at week 46 so that makes 101 but Nik covered for me when I was on holiday.
It’s strange trying to get your head around the inclusive numbers so that 46-146 is actually 101. It’s like the days of the year, I still can’t work out why we have 365 (Forget the leap years.) There are fifty two weeks and there are seven days in a week so that adds up to 364. It must be a bank holiday that employers don’t tell us about and more importantly, don’t pay us for!
Continue reading “Moses, Stevie Wonder And A Hundred Pieces Of Pish”
We went as far as his car would take us, driving past the smoking blue mountains of north Georgia and Tennessee, the hickory sweetness invading the cracked leather of our 1995 Chevrolet Cavalier, which was an indistinguishable red-brown-orange depending on which angle you looked at it from. We sped through the once-treasured nightmare of Detroit, the neglected chaotic sunset of Dallas. Yellowstone, freshly scorched and withered from its latest cleansing.
The barber-striped blades of the level crossing fell and, one breath later, civilisation fired past like a bullet from a gun. I waited, Rum tensed at my side, and then continued on, releasing the extension lock on his lead, the swish of his ribboned tail communicating his pleasure at this small freedom. At the crest of the road, I stepped, and Rum bounced, over the sagged section of fence wire and into the field. The land lay fallow, my Hunters squelching in the waterlogged grooves of the soil, dull and lifeless in the shadow of the fir forest. On rare summer days, when heat distorted the air into ruffled fabric, the line of firs shifted and undulated, an emerald curtain revealing another world – which, for me, it did. Every morning, I came to learn more about its indigenous race of insects – gods of nothing, my husband called them – while Rum conquered the undergrowth with a raised hind leg, each of us in our element. My latest academic paper was on the Andrena fulva – the tawny mining bee – due for publication in the forthcoming volume of Entomologist’s Gazette. I never used to believe that I had the intellectual capacity for science, but time taught me that brains came second to commitment and, after six years married to Paul, I was more committed to my work than ever.
I stare into the fire, tendrils of heat swirling around my face.
It is the first time I will do this. I had anticipated growing inherent wisdom, like that of the elders, but here I am at a ripe age and still rendered witless by the task ahead of me. Adulthood is a farce.
That night was still. I heard the silence of all those lost souls. I considered myself being one. I dismissed the idea very quickly and drank another gin. Straight gin was allegedly, the drink of alcoholics. Specifics for some reason outweighed quantity. The gin wasn’t really a choice, it was simply what was there.
Continue reading “Going Through The Motions by Hugh Cron – Adult Content.”
literally stories 