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.

Error message

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the refresh button, took a drink of wine, and lit the cigarette.

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the refresh button, took another drink of wine, and lit the cigarette (it had gone out).

404 – page not found.

“Damn,” I said, hit the wine, took another cigarette (it had gone out), and lit the refresh button.

404 – page not found.

“Refresh,” I said, lit the wine, took another damn, and hit the cigarette (it had gone out again).

404 – damn not found.

“Wine,” I said, took another page, lit the damn, and refreshed the cigarette (it had gone out).

After this I gave up.

Eternal Return

As he drove to work that morning, Collins experienced a vivid and prolonged sense of déjà vu. It began at the last set of traffic lights. Just when they turned green, and he hesitated, his car stalled, as he knew it would. At that moment the boy in the blue cap appeared and scooted across the road. If I hadn’t stalled, he thought, restarting the engine. At the security gate the guard began saying something about the car park and Collins, the hairs on the back of his neck tickling, realised he could have recited the other’s remarks, word for word, as he spoke them. Shaken now, he made his way to the office and, sure enough, the large-scale map of the complex had slipped its supports and lay crumpled on the floor.

A scientific man, Collins would normally have sought out the rational explanation for these bizarre sensations, but today there was no time. He had to remain focused. Today, in its inaugural run, they would activate the Super-Large Hadron Collider.

Blood at the Palace

By afternoon the crowd filled the streets. We were mostly women, all walking in the same direction, all chanting the same slogans. When we got there, the tired October sun was going down behind the palace and the air turned cool. I stood near the gates. People were shaking them, shouting and screaming as if possessed. The guards drew back and watched from the other side. Their faces were pale with disbelief, agitation, and fear. No one could believe what was going on. Even the rain couldn’t calm the mob. As the evening drew on, hunger and cold fed the rage. It was around six when we broke through. I saw a guard go under. He never got back up. We ran into the palace calling for the Queen’s head, drunken on the opulence, the blood, the mad rush of unexpected power. Had it not been for Lafayette’s theatrics, the royal family would have been ripped apart that very night.

///3-little-words///

Begin – fail – restart.

Begin – pronoun – fail – restart.

Begin – nominative singular pronoun - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb – second person singular pronoun – win.

Not since

When they had no other choice but to move, he found the photographs. With dust clouds and fits of sneezing, the cardboard box was retrieved from the back of the attic. Under its weight he tottered on the cantankerous metal ladder that led from the top floor. He dropped the box on the bare living room floor. When he opened it, time shattered into little shards of frozen history. In his mind the entire family woke up, one by one, or in smiling groups. The living and the dead. Behind them the empty room appeared full again. It jumped through decades, sofas styles, and carpets. Half a century of life. He had stopped looking at photographs after his first digital camera; stopped looking at his past. He saw a photo of a child and saw it was himself. He would keep these.