Got up in the half light. Found half a mouse on the bathmat. Stepped over it. Found another mangled corpse on the living room carpet. Didn’t know we had mice. Remembered, too late, we don’t have a cat.
Short story
Cold chips
On my icy late way home, in the orange urban light, I drop my chips. Bag splits; chips spill. Fortunately, the pavement has been salted. Dino was less lucky. He dropped his fresh-shucked oysters on the freshly gritted hill.
The first time I shared a box set with you
The first time I shared a box set with you, it was play play play all the way. No hold, no pause, from disk to disk and day to day, episodes one through six without eating or drinking or sleeping. No thought. Why should we rewind when we’re forwarding so fast? What’s next? What’s next in our cliffhanger story? Next disk.
Then one day I watched a show without you and our stories parted. I was sorry, we paused and thought, then one of us rewound, rewound so far I could never catch up. I found myself spun off then deleted, episodes nine to twelve still in their shrink wrap, tidied away in the cupboard of unfinished dreams.
A chalkstripe suit and a Santa hat: Statement parts 1 and 2
I was wearing a chalkstripe suit and a Santa hat, climbing boots and a fluorescent orange bib that read “Yes baby, baby”. I wasn’t comfortable, especially with that comma in the wrong place. I had the feeling that everyone on the tram was looking at me.
I got off at Haymarket, the story of my life, and walked up the hill, past the toilets and the conference centre. By now I was sure that people were looking at me. I was sweating. It was hot for Edinburgh in April.
I crossed the road by the Malaysian takeaway just as the lights turned green. The bus driver revved the motor with what sounded like impatience but gave me a little wave, I think of apology, when I jumped a step and almost tripped over my feet. I walked on. He lived.
Can I have a glass of water, please? Half still half sparkling?
When I turned 34, I realised people weren’t taking much notice of me. So I had my ear tattooed. Yes, I know what you are thinking. People always ask me the same question. How did you decide which ear to tattoo? Well, I found it quite easy, in fact I didn’t have to decide, it just came to me, it was clear, it was obvious, it was balance. I’m left footed and I’m right handed so it had to be my left ear. Otherwise I would have felt unbalanced. I wouldn’t have known which foot to start walking with, or which hand to use to push the shop door open. Except for this morning of course.
It’s pretty unique I think, the shapes and the lines I chose with my skin art consultant – now that’s a job title – graceful, elegant, but perhaps somehow a shade menacing? I think it’s slimming too. Not that I’ve got particularly fat ears but there’s something antelope-like about it now…. Both ears now, that would be ridiculous. It’s a bit like… like rollup cigarettes. One very thin hand-rolled cigarette perched somehow on your bottom lip, near the corner – now that’s what I call cool. Two? No. Definitely not.
I never got on with rollups. It was the gum or the paper or my saliva or something. I once kept one balanced, unlit, on my lip for quite a while but then it somehow stuck there and I tore my lip skin when I peeled it off. And real cigarettes? No, no thank you very much. And I don’t suppose I could smoke in here if I wanted to, could I? No, I appreciate the need for rules. Rules are important, they shape you. But what was I saying? Oh yes, cigarettes. I once met a man who had got the sack from a cigarette factory. I didn’t take to him at all. I wouldn’t smoke. Drinking? Well, that’s a different question. I wouldn’t know where to start.
Perhaps I could have a top up on that glass of water? No ice.
No cape, no escape
No cape, no escape. The words thundered round his head. No cape, no…. The flames crackled, snapped. The smoke choked his thoughts and watered his eyes. Adults screamed as the 5-year-old carefully climbed onto the window ledge, his baby brother tight in his arms. And again when he jumped, eyes squeezed shut. Later, when it was quiet and he was alone with the smell of smoke, he knew he would not need his cape again.
Statement part 1: A chalkstripe suit and a Santa hat
I was wearing a chalkstripe suit and a Santa hat, climbing boots and a fluorescent orange bib that read “Yes baby, baby”. I wasn’t comfortable, especially with that comma in the wrong place. I had the feeling that everyone on the tram was looking at me.
I got off at Haymarket, which was the story of my life, and walked up the hill, past the toilets and the conference centre. By now I was sure that people were looking at me. I was sweating. It was hot for Edinburgh in April.
I crossed the road by the Malaysian takeaway just as the lights turned green. The bus driver revved the motor with what sounded like impatience but gave me a little wave, I think of apology, when I jumped a step and almost tripped over my feet. I walked on. He lived.
Can I have a glass of water, please? Half still half sparkling?
Trim the tree
Stevie was hacking straggly branches off the Christmas tree with a bread knife when he got the idea. He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and yelped as the tree sap stung. He jumped up from the floor, knife in hand, and ran to the bathroom to rinse his eyes. He leaned on the sink, looking down at the knife, then blinked red eyes at the mirror. Water ran. The idea had gone.
Kitchen sink drama
The washing up done, Tina drew a heart on the steamed up kitchen window. Her rubber glove squeaked as she wrote her lover’s name. A vegetable knife glinted from the bottom of the sink. Tina rinsed it and stared at the heart and the name. Then she opened the window so that the steam, and the name, disappeared. It was gone. Until Tina’s husband did the steamy washing up the next day.
http://www.paragraphplanet.com 25 November 2013
The Sound
It all started the day the BBC put out the appeal for listeners’ recordings of old radio programmes that the Corporation, under pressure to save money, had deleted in the 80s.
But we don’t yet know when it will end.
They asked listeners to send in original CDs, cassettes, even reel-to-reel tapes and thousands did. Most of what was sent in was duplicate of what the BBC already had in its archives, a little was new and useful and filled a gap. Only one CD had been – lovingly? no, not lovingly, but very carefully – filled with an old old radio comedy programme. Previously thought lost and very valuable. Halfway, more or less, through the comedy show, someone had added…. Something had been added. The Sound.
The Sound didn’t have a capital letter then: it was just a sound until you heard it, or met someone who had heard it. Then it had a capital letter and then sometimes, later, it was all capital letters because that’s how we who hadn’t heard it thought of it, thought of it sounding in someone else’s head.
And that’s how it all started. But we don’t yet know how it will end.
Starting a story
A steampunk Tudor house flies in, tilts and settles gently, steamily, next to the manor, nipping a corner from the tennis court. The dog howls and chases its tail. The door opens and the couple walk out, waving to the crowds they thought would be there throwing orange blossom. They soon realise their mistake.
simonsalento 