Intermission Part 2

Thanks for dropping by 101 Very Short Stories... always good to see you! To coincide with the launch of my new book and game design The Trellborg Monstrosities, I've launched a full, brand new site over at John-Houlihan.net - I'll keep posting intermittently here no doubt when a new v short story slips into being, but by and large most of my efforts will be over at the new site. So do swing by and say hello for all the very latest including news, info, interviews and art. Toodle pip!

#28 Consumer protection

Caution: Hot beverage may be hot. Do not eat this cup. These nuts may contain traces of nuts. Processed in an environment that contains deadly nerve agents. This packaging is made out of recycled babies. This warning is designed to give the impression of concern for your wellbeing  –actually we don’t give a fuck; we just want to cover our arses. Please continue to consume until you expire.

#27 T and Cs – a cautionary tale for the digital age

The devil’s in the detail, so they say and so next time you’re flicking past pages of bumf before blithely hitting that Accept button, my advice is: take care.

On a whim, I installed a harmless little amusement and accepted the Terms and Conditions without even perusing the fine print.

The result? I sold my immortal soul for the princely sum of 69p. The devil didn’t disappear in the digital age, he just became a rather devious app developer – and apparently, he doesn’t do refunds.

#26 20-20 Hindsight

40 years, five kids, twelve grandkids, five houses, a fleet of cars, six dogs, four cats, umpteen goldfish and one fortunately undetected murder later, I think I can safely say, I married the wrong sister.

#25 Dumped

They were only two battered old stools, but unloading them at the recycling centre, I remembered how we had bought them together, how we had sat at that old breakfast bar in our first home and ate and drank and talked and laughed till the wine ran out of our noses.

Did we make a mistake I wonder? But then you can't be here and I can't be there and that will never change and sometimes, love is not enough.

Wearily I turn the wheel and head for the solace of home.

Yet as I drive away, I see a young couple pull them from the scrapheap and giggling, smuggle them covertly into their van. Their new journey begins, like our own.

#24 Time's Great Healer

"How I long for the ravages of time to consume me, to see the lines and seams steal over this angelic mask, a fine filigree of fleshly decay.

I yearn for the spread of crow's feet around these bright eyes, for time's arrow to whither these sublime cheeks, for this sultry Cupid's bow to bend no more.

Then this wondrous nymph's body will sag and fray and settle into a comfortable middle age spread.

And then, only then, will I be free of the cameras, the lights, the public's never-ending Gorgon gaze. Their fascination, like this beautiful curse, forgotten."

#23 Animals

"We're animals man, nothing more than fucking animals, smart ones sure, but the beast's skin tight cage can get stretched awfully thin.

"Don't you ever want to go on the hunt? Run rampant, run with the pack, stalk through the shadowed night, howling at that moon, embracing the beast within?

"On the prowl, senses primed, child of the inner dark. Your blood surges as you catch the scent and muscle, bone and sinew answer. Pulse hammers, the chase is on, then the catch, the kill and you tear, rend and feed on the fallen, snout bloody and red.

"Content, belly full, a new scent emerges, one that whispers of heat, attraction, desire. You circle, teeth bared, wary, until the first bite, the taste, then you curl, writhe, go at it, fuck like animals. After, you curl up asleep in your lair, dozing uneasy dreams of your lost human self."

Intermission

Just a quick break in the 101 very short stories transmission today to let you know my first novel, Tom or the Peepers' and Voyeurs' Handbook has just been published on Kindle, iPhone, iPad and Kindle for PC and Android. You can buy a copy direct here on the Amazon store, or why not head on over to the Facebook page here and show it some Like love? Thanks!

#22 You have a new message...

"It is you who create our heart of darkness. You with your unquenchable thirst for the new black gold. You with your LOLs, your Facebook updates, your petty Twitterings, the empty all-consuming social media addiction which passes for your lives.

"There is no connected world here, no network, just the tears of our brutalised women and the silence of our dead children. 'Never again' you said, but Africa is not Europe and our untold millions never part of that equation.

"Resource cursed, our wealth has become our bane and I should hate you for what you have done to my country, my people, my beloved Kivu. Yet instead I pity you, for the stain of your crime can never be washed away, only atoned for.

"Act now, otherwise this is truly what you will have brought out of Africa."

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#21 Light

"What do I know? Perhaps much, probably little. Human relationships? Ah yes, them. So complex, so fragile, each swinging precariously on a silken pendulum, translucent, almost invisible, in a world of sharp edges.

One cannot truly find oneself in another, but we must become a slave to be set free, be able to look each other in the eye, be able to look each other in the soul and be content, fulfilled by what we see.

So if you would see these tender threads survive, flourish, even mature, only one piece of advice would I give: always be a light to each other, for all else is shade."

#20 Lifescore

Wake (+5) bolt breakfast (+5 indigestion), delays into Euston (+20 frustration +10 rage) but make office in nick of time (+5 work kudos). Light flirting with canteen girl (+10 self image), chug five cups of strong coffee (+4 motivation +4 gibbering +2 paranoia).

Plough through latest round of witless emails and dull memos (-20 motivation) but organise minions successfully and bribe with cake (+20 minion standing). Heated encounter with twat boss ends in furious shouting match (-20 career development, +10 personal satisfaction, +20 homicidal intentions).

Post-work extended drinks with lads (-60 sobriety, +20 camaraderie) results in unexpected but welcome sex with random attractive lovely (+50 serotonin boost, +30 ego, -10cc seminal fluid, +10 STI vulnerability). Blissful post-coital unconsciousness sets in (+20 rest & recuperation, +40 freaky dreams +5 dribbling into pillow).

#19 Acts of War

They go from house to house, rounding up the innocents, while we stand, safety catches locked, doing nothing. It's orders, policy. Doors are kicked in, wailing villagers extracted, herded like cattle into a corral by the market. Even up wind we can smell their sweat, their fear. Peacekeeper, I spit and the word seems to settle there in the sand. Still we do nothing.

The sun scalds, bleaching the mud brick streets the colour of bone, so that even the shadows hide. Muzzles are raised, bolts drawn back, ready for the slaughter. The lieutenant mutters 'stay focussed' but there are orders and there is what is right. I am a man, before I am a soldier. I raise my rifle, the first butcher dies and now we are truly weapons free.

#18 Tripping on trains

Some people enjoy drinking in parks, I like tripping on trains. An off peak ticket, a mild(-ish) psychedelic and a window seat and the trip begins.

Beyond the verges of the city, we hurtle through the veins and arteries of the land, spectators in the midst of a moving feast, yet I'm the only one who sees. As the rush kicks in, the countryside unfolds like a rolling blanket, a verdant green wet dream of frolicking hills, gamboling rivers and dozing hamlets.

Colours, people, bleed into each other in a most euphoric way and even the very air seems pregnant with rapture and dreams.

Lofty skyscapes stretch toward eternity, like my mind it seems.

#17 NPCs

“Here e’ comes, make ready.”
“Alright I know. It’s only a line, it’s not like we actually have anything else to do except stand here and look rustic.”
“Sush! e’s here!”
“Noble peasants hail! I am Vortigen the Revenger. The land groans under the yoke of the evil Vortigrax, quick can’st tell me the hidden path to his fortress?”
“Aar well you don’t want to be startin’ from ‘ere. Ow!”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t mind him milor’ he’s a bit simple like. Straight on, right as the path bends through the Darkling wood, left past the Direwolf’s lair an’ it be right in front of ‘ee.”
“My thanks to you good man and to your er simple friend. Away now Lightcloud!”
“What I have told you about improvising?”
“Well there was no need to hit me …”
“’Only a line, you said, ‘all we’ve got to do’ you said… ”

#16 Night Sky

The mysteries of the heart are like the deeps of space, untold and fathomless. Love explodes like the birth pangs of a star, or blinks out in a moment, leaving only the void. Yet most just decay slowly, until, like the light from a distant sun, we glimpse only a remnant from a thousand years ago.

#15 Long Service Award

Face wizened, seamed, like rivulets cutting their way through a cragged mountain pass, your dark button eyes regard a world of shopping centres, sales and Starbucks.

Khaki has given way to Surawal, parade ground to waste ground, Kukri has been long sheathed.

You are present but almost forgotten, your reward for a life-time’s devotion, a broken bench by the Thames in the sunshine.

#14 Empire of the six gardens

I rule the empire of the six gardens, three roofs and two sheds and all therein unto the boundary of the great wall. Five wives are my harem, twelve fat neuters my courtier-slaves and here my dominion is absolute, unquestioned and unchallenged.

The providers, in their great wisdom, left me intactus to rule this domain and here I fear no-one, not great ginger Achilles, nor killer ear-torn Buttonchops – I fought and conquered them both and even the great hell hound Megan was sent whimpering from the garden where the pleasure plant grows.

Now, I bask in the glow of the warming orb, allowing a provider to ear-worship me, one-eyed, battle-scarred, my head a bumpy patchwork of ancient rents and overgrown wounds. Battles have been fought, will be won again, until claws and teeth and cunning fail…

Topsy is my name.

#13 Retirement Plan

When I get older, I’ve decided I’m to go to go a little mad, not quite stark staring bonkers or anything but peculiar, eccentric and strange. I’ll develop weird obsessions and phobias, hoard bin bags or dig tunnels in the cellar. I’ll mutter in high streets and exude a malodorous smell.

I’ll buy a walking stick with a metal end and shake it at life. Kids will run from my shadow and I’ll always say the wrong thing in shops – loudly – and be blunt to the point of rudeness and perhaps cultivate a line in casual racist remarks .

I’ll force young mothers to give up seats on buses and make damn sure I get the sympathy vote. I’ll milk state benefits and cause doctors to shake their heads, as I stay just on the right side of certifiable.

I think it’s the only thing that will keep me sane.

#12 Beyond the cheese course

“Hello, nice meet you, we didn't get a chance to speak during dinner, I’m Letitia.”
“Brian.”
“You seem like a strong, handsome, charming kind of fellow Brian, tell me …do you swing?”
“Aye lass, but it usually takes a new ball and’t right overhead conditions.”
"I see …well not beyond the bounds of possibility.”

#11 Intruder!

“Hello, which emergency service do you require?”
“Oh, the police please, dear.”
“What's the nature of the emergency?”
“Well dear, I can hear strange noises coming from downstairs, I think we may have burglars.”
“Okay, okay, stay calm and stay on the line, I'm dispatching a patrol unit right away, they'll be with you in two minutes. Now don't worry, they'll see you safe.”
“Oh no, no, it's not me I'm worried about dear, it's the burglars. You see it's a waxing gibbous moon tonight and Eugene has slipped his chain ...again. You'd best tell them to hurry.”