Tag Archives: Flash Fiction

Catchphrase

Flash Fiction, poetry, Words, , , , , , ,

“So you see, i think you’ve got the long end of a very short stick!” Said the man.

“You mean the wrong end of the stick!!” Replied the woman.

“Listen, you’re misunderstanding me!”

“Believe me, i’m not, but your phrase is all wrong and frankly, quite ridiculous!”

Little did he know that she was a veteran contestant and all time winner of the Catchphrase television show, and would’nt let this man off the hook easily (tragically, much later, the man felt the sharp end of one and finally had his chips!!)

Sky Dependency Unit

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories, Words, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

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Daryl hadn’t seen a full open sky for nine, whole, working years; un-retractable visors had been fixed above his eyes to protect them from the elements, to focus his attention on his work. His perfectly symmetrical, amber, tear-shaped eye-slots were unable to look up; limiting him to sporadic glimpses of a pixelated horizon.

It seemed that the sun set and rose perpetually, kaleidoscopic in their beauty but increasingly cruel to Daryl (something incomprehensible to human thought).

Over the recent days, gradually Daryl felt oddly distant, and a coldness had bred; invading his core, it was like he was viewing himself slipping away, into ever-more denser, industrialised fog.  He felt his visors would soon be taken off him, only to be fixed upon another; his younger brother.

Seemingly, his hardship was nobody’s fault, just the way things were, part of growing up as a simulacrum; in a brutal, un-empathising, nonsensical world.

By his calculations, he would be free in hours, to take in as much sky as he had desperately yearned for — only that moment never arrived, because he broke down that very moment his visors were to be removed. He was left in numerical order amongst faulty prototypes, lying against his predecessor, in a stuffy, dark, windowless room; to desperatly decay without burial or ceremony, to be replaced by a newer and more advanced unit.

One of Daryl’s amber eye-slots still inexplicably flickers in the otherwise overwhelming blackness; momentarily revealing some evidence of limp limbs that filled the room poorly.

Visors were never to be fixed upon his brother…

 

Today, I Buried the Car

creative writing, Flash Fiction, short stories, , , , , , ,

Today, I buried the car under the garden, or enterrer la voiture sous la Jardin; it makes no difference to me. As I sit on its corroded roof of raised ochre paint and brushed steel. By coincidence, I sit at sea level to distant oceans that are full of old weather and distress.

I know there is never a sea that’s forever as level as this laid lawn, and so I recall, on purpose I left the engine running. So it is that I’m repeated to fade as time delays the dream in which I sit, statuesque, waiting on my cars dented roof, for something to erase what I didn’t mean.

Then, suddenly the car drives through the soil, searching for oil. I’m destined to travel with it. With consummate ease, I’m driven forwards, for I assume that is where I face, and above an underground road, with all speediest motion of the most stubborn small hand of a basic clock, through terrain as varied as the subconscious memories of the recent dead.

My progress never slows until I discover the edge of this world dissolving like an old cake from age, churned from its constant turning. Now I’ve slipped into another world, of some sense. As I arrive, seamlessly through a subtle zipped window, I’m suddenly driving through dull traffic, so dense; with the clumsy authority of a process mounted car on set. I’m steering the wheel, it’s looser than I imagined, it’s no use, and the scenery is a little disjointed from the direction I steer in. Maybe the next world will find me before I find it! Or before I find the brakes.