Already there

The children gathered around it, thick with inquisitiveness and wary attraction. It lay on its back, rocking slowly from one side to the other, a mockingly mechanical motion, one leg in the air, clawing at the void that was already there, yet approaching at the same time. They watched, those children, eyes showing wonderment - terrified and excited and repulsed all at the same time. The chick, a swallow I think, one of those fallen on first flight, was them. Simply them: young, helpless, at mercy. A mother shooed them. I caught a glimpse of it. Best not look. But the children would. They looked because they had to know.

But what do I know?

Fugue No.1

SUBJECT - Antonia was running. Johan chased her.

DEVELOPMENT - Antonia was running along a dried out riverbed. She ran over stones of every size and shape, slipping on drifts of pebbles, skipping rocks, and clambering boulders. Johan trailed her from the air, his eyes running over these stones, and pebbles, and rocks, and boulders.

- As Antonia was running, she realised it had always been thus; she ran, Johan chased. Along pried out streams of consciousness, over stories of every size and form, tripping on shifts of meaning, the ticking clocks, the clamouring elders.

RECAPITUALTION - Every time he was just about to catch her, they began again. But roles had been reversed. Johan ruined, Antonia chaste. He would never catch her. She would be forever alone. Tired out. With only reams of stories left, sifted for meaning, stammering, elderly. Antonia was running away from herself. And Johan chased her there.

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The Spiralling Story

>>>

Stars … stars … stars and stars. So many stars. Everywhere I look is stars. Turning and turning, in widening circles, the stars spin out in an endless sky. A sky with no horizon, only stars, a non-sky, absence of up and down, no reference, no sense of progression or return. I am made of the stars.

<<<

Stars have created me. I am at every level: galactic, atomic, particular, all at once, and forever, and again, and of stars, sometimes becoming singular, an independent consciousness that thinks itself unique – as all stars unthinkingly are unique in that collective of stars that is the non-sky, stars, absence of stars, and stars … stars … stars.

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Unreality Television

I was told, take him round the back and deal with him. I mean, there’s no ambiguity in that, is there? Everybody knows what that means. He knew what it meant. He didn’t struggle, didn’t plead. He was meek as a lamb. Hurrying almost, as if he couldn’t wait for it to be over. He was leading me. All I could think about was how tight the cord was on his wrists, that it must really hurt, that his hands were turning white. It was my first day, you know? I wasn’t gonna go making a scene. I mean, this is what we signed up for. Really.

Funny, though, cos I saw him a week later on Al Jazeera. Somebody must have moved him, cos he was face down when I left him. Seeing him on TV helped, actually. Made it more unreal. Anyway, I’d already quit by then.

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The Man Who Ran

He was running and running and running, and when he thought he couldn’t run any more, he carried on running. And all the people came out onto the streets to watch him running, and they said, there he goes, running and running. And he ran right out of this country and into the next one. But they don’t care about running in that country and I couldn’t say what became of him.