Another effort from the grandad and grandson team … don’t have nightmares!
Jack and Lucy went up to an old house. Jack knocked on the door and it opened automatically with a loud creeeeeak!
They stepped inside and saw a large cobweb.
They went upstairs. They heard a low growl and went into a room to explore.
There was a lion!
They ran from the room, down the stairs, through the cobweb, out the front door and all the way home.
Stars fill our view-port, so many they hang like swathes of Velurian fog. It hurts, now, that none will be a destination.
The starship drifts on, mortally wounded, her ills beyond our skill to cure. We spend whole days watching re-runs of the departure, in which our faces appear torn between sadness at leaving our lovely planet and relief at escaping its catastrophic collision with the giant asteroid.
Nights we can’t sleep for cursing our gross scientific incompetence. Our ship’s breakdown was a corporate failure.
What really rankles, however, is knowing that the asteroid missed Veluria by a million miles.
Image: Live Science
But one of us stood apart from our mad stampede towards terror, greeting each fresh outbreak of panic with a gentle smile and kindly eye.
We came to regard this saintly person as a confessor who would listen to our anguished outpourings without judgement or censure but with a sympathetic shrug or understanding nod. Few words of advice were offered. This meant any alleviation of pain must come from within.
This lesson was lost on our patient saviour who we found early one morning hanging from the yard-arm. There was no note but the message seemed clear: suffer in silence.
Image: walldevil.com
Stimulus: WordPress Daily Prompt Saintly
And so I come to the end of my little story sequence – or perhaps, sequence of little stories.
I’ve enjoyed the challenge of cramming a quart into a pint pot. Said it before but I find self-imposed constraints paradoxically liberating. Restricting word-length, making thematic connections and fitting in prompt words all seem to narrow down the possibilities – help stop me agonising over ‘Why this rather than that?’ and other pusillanimous quibbles!
Anyway, here’s the final offering after a little poetic preamble:
My tree is gone, a crow’s nest lost in space
Though found in time: perspective ever mine!
One way the church, its harvest festival
Just beans in tins and withered leaves on stone.
Another way the wood, its tangle wild
Forbidden fruit: temptation to a child …
We trod the hero-path to gold: a glint of treasure in each flower. Up every tree was knowledge without a fall. We knew the wood was ours, though shared with many children seldom seen. We saw their little marks, soon overgrown.
But these were nothing to the wounds we saw one sunny morning. Through trees, a glow brighter than sunshine. The first pool held a metal barrel, half-submerged, leaching luminous chemistry into living water. Every Leaf in the glade a ghastly day-glo yellow. The next pool awash with purple. The last pool acid green.
Too much information: cruelty, criminality, careless indifference.
Image: Green Living – LoveToKnow
His problem, the would-be writer observed, was that anything really worthwhile could only be said if there were no constraints of word-length. One hundred words was scarcely enough to tell a simple story, let alone imply a whole world that could be communicated before it was understood.
Nothing for it, he concluded, but Scamper hell-for-leather toward completion in the hope that something significant would emerge before the dreaded cut-off point. The nearer he came, however, the harder it was to focus on his ending.
With ten words to go, out of the wild blue yonder floated the astonishing idea that …
Image: Halogen Software
‘Helmet For Sale. Owner Forced To Sell. All Offers Considered.’
Intrigued, I phoned the number.
“Yes?” She sounded tired.
“Five pounds?” I suggested, chancing it.
“Whatever … I’ll bring it round.”
I stood at the window, curious, but saw nobody. On a whim, I opened the door. There it was, inside an old shopping bag, a mighty weight.
The hall mirror beckoned. The helmet was a perfect fit … but the mirror melted, the wall was a weeping waterfall, the town became trees … an unbearable vision, a long-vanished world.
In mourning, I cried all night.
Next morning, I phoned my advert in.
a nomad in cyberspace 