Behind the Curtains

She pulled the curtains back ever so slightly and peeked out onto the cobbled streets. She stepped back from the curtains and looked the other way looking out for anything suspicious. Things out of place. Signs or symbols that might hint at a good or bad day ahead. She stepped back from the windows and then retired into her armchair sofa. The rest of the room was dark, and all the other curtains were drawn. It was eleven o clock in the morning and the sunlight outside was begging to be let in but that couldn’t be done until 12 o clock.

There was no rhyme or reason as to why this needed to be done but this was one of the myriads of checks and balances that Susan went through each day as part of her religious ritual. It never appeared religious to her, but it was. The way she had placed all furniture in the room to be symmetrically opposite each other. How each piece of ceramic pottery or brass statue was placed two inches away from the end of the shelves or tables on which they sat. And how the checking of the furniture and ornaments required an early rise each day.

The only thing missing were any references to a religious god or deity. Susan had no faith. Routine and order were her faith. Once she had checked and double checked everything in the house, she would go about preparing to get ready for the day. On her coffee-table lay a white business card and stamped in black letters was the name Michael Davidson: Grief Detective.

Michael lay on his bed. His quilt and bed sheets were wrapped unceremoniously around and through his legs. He slept in a position that said much booze had been consumed last night. There was an ashtray on the bedside table that looked like it belonged to a tramp. The ashtray sat in front of a photo of his long dead wife. The irony was astonishing. A man whose job was to help people through their own grief was still consumed with grief about his wife that had passed away ten years ago. But it was more than that. Michael seemed consumed with the grief of nearly everyone passing away. His last shrink said he couldn’t work out if it was death anxiety or a morbid way for Michael to seek attention. This hurt Michael and naturally he let the shrink go. Not because he didn’t know what he was doing but because he was too good and had hit a nerve.

Michael was great at seeking help from others but not so great at seeking help for himself. He was a car crash that had happened again, and again, and again. But today he was feeling good. He had received the call last week from the lady in grey and had to admit she had been the most beautiful, fragile woman he had worked with to date.

Michael never mixed business with pleasure but found it difficult to manifest the cool exterior he was supposed to when visiting Susan in her home. Most clients were broken in a visible and obvious way, but Susan showed no signs in the way she dressed but the attention to detail when it came to her house and her insistence on regimentally checking everything, showed classic signs of death anxiety. Susan was an astute aware woman who was watching every move Michael made and looked as if she was analysing every single word he spoke.

It was always a tougher case when the client had awareness about their own condition and in many ways one would have to play a careful game trying to unpick the remnants of psychological traits that had been taken on while the client continued to hide and add others.

Today would be their first walk and proper talk. Susan only went outside of the house at 12, 3 and 9 o’clock. Her first outing would be for two hours. The mid-afternoon stroll was 45 minutes and the 9’o clock time was a brief 15 minutes. Not a second more or less. She kept a keen eye on her watch. If she erred over the seconds a resultant panic attack would occur. She had arranged for Michael to call the bell at least five minutes before, and of course not a second less.

Michael made sure he had risen earlier and was waiting down the street leaning against a lamppost. He was unsure about leaning against the lamp post as it made him feel like a stereotyped character from a post-war movie. All he needed was a cigarette and a three-quarter length jacket. The cigarette he had. The jacket he didn’t. His kind of jacket was a black leather jacket that middle-aged men wore when they wanted to appear cool. He refused chinos and the expected checked shirt. He swore blind he would try to hold off from wearing the age-appropriate stuff even if it meant he would end up looking like a poor man’s Mick Jagger.

He flicked the cigarette into the bin opposite him and it bounced of the litter fine sign and into the bin. That made Michael feel cool. He decided on a walk as he felt the environment didn’t quite match a saunter. He sauntered in Central London. Paris. Rome. He walked briskly in suburbia.

He reached the door and checked his watch. He was three minutes early and knew that he would have to hang around idly for two minutes feeling like a local pervert or worse still a poorly dressed Jehovah’s witness. The curtains across the road twitched. Either a wealthy older woman, bored and lonely while her CEO husband played Golf after a business lunch, or an elderly lady or man bored shitless with retirement and counting the seconds till death came.

Michael shuddered. Death. The biggest bummer ever invented. Why oh why did he end up in this profession. The door suddenly opened which made Michael jump and owing to Susan’s fragile condition she screamed and jumped too. Michael calmed himself down and raised his hand for reassurance.

‘Sorry Susan. It’s ok. I’m here for our first visit. It’s Michael.’

She composed herself as well. She was about 5ft 2 and very svelte-like. Her hair fell in a low bob just above her shoulders which he noticed were showing before she placed the jacket on. Again, the grey dress. A white cream jacket, and this time red shoes. She also had pearls around her neck and a pearl bracelet. She dressed as if she was a very wealthy and classy woman and Michael wondered about her choice of residence. It didn’t seem her. Quite boring.

Maybe the entire house and neighbourhood was a kind of safety net. Each plot dived into the same parts. Each house looking the same. With a green carpet of grass out front the only connection to nature. She stepped outside the house and looked both ways. Michael stood around wondering what to do next, but the problem was answered when Susan placed her arms through his and said, ‘Let’s walk this way.’

Michael’s chest puffed with pride as he walked but he tried to readjust himself and appear relaxed so as not to show that he was too impressed by her presence. She walked with a little uncertainty and he could see her eyes darting to the left and right as if on the lookout for some spook or stalker. Her condition forced her to squeeze his arm a little bit which made him feel happy. It also brought back memories of his wife and the love they had for each other.

They continued to walk down the street for a few minutes not saying much until Susan stopped, ‘You see him over there. What does he want?’ Michael looked across the street to see a man leaning against a lamp post reading a newspaper. He looked like the burly type wearing slack blue jeans and a beige waist length jacket. There was nothing imposing or suspicious about him unless you counted the idea of anyone reading a newspaper during a day as grey as this. The man did look over briefly then folded his paper and walked away.

‘You see. You see. It happens to me all the time. Come let’s walk quickly to the cafe.’

Susan tugged at my arm and we were off at a quick pace further down the street. The street opened onto a small village green with empty benches and a poorly organised cricket match going on with the local youth.

‘I think you can slow down Susan. It’s probably nothing.’

But she continued walking quickly. Michael could sense her breath was quickening and hoped she was not about to go into a panic attack. Luckily, the cafe was not too far away. I quickened my pace to match hers.

Michael opened the door for her and as soon as she went in one of the waitresses recognised her but didn’t say anything. She just walked over to a table in the far corner and pulled out a chair. No looks were exchanged as Susan started to take of her jacket and sat down in the chair pulling the menu up to her face in almost a comical fashion. Michael nearly laughed as if he hadn’t seen the palpable expression of fear on her face and the modest smile coming from the waitress.

‘Thanks.’ I said to the waitress as I sat down composing myself. I could see she was breathing quickly, and I thought the best thing to do was just order a drink and distract her from the panic.

‘I suppose a coffee is out of the question?’ I offered a smirk but was met with a stern look so dropped it.

‘Actually, I do like a coffee. Black no milk or sugar. As you can see, I’m sweet enough.’ She smiled at Michael.

‘Paranoid, but sweet.’ and she smiled at Michael and Michael was taken back and blushed.

‘Not so tough after all Mr Detective. That’s alright, vulnerability in a man is a good thing.’ Michael composed himself and ordered a black coffee for Susan and an espresso for himself.

The waitress brought the coffees to the table and placed them down. They both reached for their cups and there was a quiet moment in between. The cafe was a very neat and tidy place. The kind you would expect in a town like this. Most of the other people drinking were about ten years older than Susan. Another oddity that added weight to my argument that she was looking for safety and comfort after her experience with grief. I thought I would ask her question to test my hypothesis.

‘May I ask you how long you have lived here?’

Susan continued to look at Michael for a while as if she was trying to read his thoughts.

‘Since my partner passed away. And yes, I agree that the monotonous visual appeal of the place drew me in after his death. I seek safety and reassurance in the world because I no longer have it in my life. But you are no different Michael, except where I seek safety in the bland banality of suburban mediocrity, you seek apparent danger to rebel against the uncomfortable feelings you can’t express.’

Michael pulled the coffee cup closer to his face and put on his poker face. She knew it all, but he was convinced that she was in a worse state than him.

‘You seem more trapped than me. I go when I want to you are trapped by your routine and need for order.’

Her face dropped. She didn’t like that, and he didn’t want to turn this conversation into a you against me.

‘Yes, I seek order Michael because I fear death but want to live. You care so little you dream of being killed. It’s not that you fear death but more like you don’t know how to live and dream of dying.’

Michael didn’t like that at all. He finished the last remnants of his coffee and got up to leave. He wasn’t too sure who was playing who.

‘It was you who called me. I never asked for an analysis.’

He was showing anger now. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

She got up and pulled a gift box from her bag and handed it to him. It appeared heavy and he took the parcel.

‘Now walk me home as it is nearly three o’clock.

Michael got up feeling unsure and wondering what was in the box.

‘Is this just a scam?’

‘No Michael it isn’t. Take the parcel and go.’

Michael walked her home in silence. His heart was beating faster than it should and was pissed to find someone more aware of him than he was of them. They walked to her door and she kissed him on the cheek and said goodbye. Michael walked home quickly. When he got home, he couldn’t wait to open the parcel.

He moved the ashtray to the side and laid the parcel on the table. He unwrapped the gift like a greedy child at Christmas and inside was a leather-bound case. He undid the golden clasp that kept the box closed and lifted the lid. Inside was a gun and to the right were six bullets. Michael let out a gasp of air. There was also a note inside.

‘I may fear living but I want to live. You however dream of death. So, go on and do it if you don’t want to live. But if you do decide to live. Come and see me again.’

Michael pulled the gun from the box and picked up six of the bullets. He placed the bullets into the chambers and then spun round the barrel. He sat down on the bed, but something wasn’t right. He placed the gun to his head, but he just felt sick with fear. He looked at the photograph of his ex-wife. It had been ten years since she had died and in that time he had helped a lot of people get through their grief. He got up of the bed and went into the kitchen. He placed on his favourite morose tracks. He grabbed the bottle of scotch that he had in the cupboard took down a tumbler and poured himself a large glass. The large gulped he took burned his throat and then he summoned up all the Dutch courage he had.

He went back to his bed and raised the gun to his head. He pulled the trigger and bang! Michael fell to the side of the bed. He pulled the trigger again, and again nothing. They were blanks. He laughed hard and then took another swig off scotch. He lay back on his bed and then he heard a beep as a new message arrived on his phone. He picked up his phone and read the text.

‘Are you ready to live?’

Dasein

The clock tick-tocked around the clock face as Michael lay on his bed watching the thin black arm jump rigidly past the numbers. One. Two. Three. Michael was obsessed with time. Then his phone started to ring and he pulled himself up quickly till his feet were back on the ground. The clock tick-tocked while the mobile phoned shrilled in short bursts. Michael just stared at the phone watching the digitized name flash over a luminous back-light. It was Dasein calling him again. The clock tick-tocked while the mobile phone vibrated across the floor. Michael watched the vibrating phone slide moment by moment across the bedroom floor while the clock tick-tocked. He picked up the mobile phone and answered it.

‘Leave me alone will you. Just leave me alone.’

Dasein answered.

‘It’s been a while Michael. Time is up. You know I will find you. Meet me tonight under the bridge at midnight.’

Michael slammed the phone across the room and it smashed into a trillion pieces. And the trillion pieces smashed into Michael. Each single piece was a single piece of time. A milli-second. Or less. One piece lodged itself into Michael’s eye which allowed him to see closely that single piece of time. And the single piece of time said to him,

‘Dasein!’

Michael screamed and ran to the sink and washed the single piece of time out of his eye and put it to the side. He then stripped himself of all his belongings and started to remove all the other pieces of time that were embedded in his skin. He gathered them all together into his hands and walked into the room and placed them on the floor. Floods of tears started to run down his cheeks. Each tear was a piece of time. And knowing this made Michael even sadder. The tears of time dripped onto the shattered pieces of his modern mobile-phone and slowly he started to try and piece them all together again. And then the mobile phone started to ring again. And Michael stopped crying.

The shrill sounds sang from every piece of time while the clock tick-tocked on the bedroom wall. He couldn’t answer the call but he knew who was on the other end of that call. He knew the bridge and where he had to go. Michael stood up slowly and the ringing stopped. Michael walked out of the door and into the night. There was a full-moon in the sky. The moon was incredibly beautiful. Words could not describe how large and beautiful it was. Can you see the moon? Try and see it using your own imagination. While I continue to cut up more pieces of your time. As Michael looked up at the beautiful super-moon. Two hands like the hands of a clock started to appear and Michael stared to groan out loud.

‘Please Dasein. Stop this. You will drive me mad.’

The super-moon disappeared from the sky until all that was left was its reflection in the river. Michael looked at the reflection of the moon in the river and was confused by how it appeared more real than the one that had appeared in the sky. And this frightened Michael. So he walked faster and faster as his heart started to beat wildly. It pounded so hard that he could hear it pound inside his head. And each beat reminded him of time. Michael started to run to escape the sound. To escape time. But can a human-being ever be free from time? As Michael ran faster his heart pounded louder while time screamed wildly. He could see the bridge ahead and Daisen’s strange figure.

And that wry smile across his face.

Michael went into full sprint no longer caring about his heart. And then it started to rain. And he collapsed onto the floor before he got to the bridge, before he got to meet Dasein. Every drop of rain that fell around him was a piece of time. Every breath he breathed was a piece of time. Every time he looked at Dasein. Dasein looked at him. As Dasein walked closer. Michael’s breath got shorter and shorter. And then time fell away. From his mind. From his self. All Michael could see was the moon’s reflection in the river as Dasein walked closer towards him. And when Michael’s last breath was sung and the world was presented to him. Naked. Beyond space. Beyond time. Daisen spoke to him softly.

‘How can one truly be free in this world. When trapped by space and time?’

The Diary of a Lost Boy

It’s been two days since the world ended and I have yet to pluck up the courage go outside. I grabbed another can of baked beans from the stack and started to twirl the can opener around the edges. I grabbed two slices of bread from the mountain of bread that I had stashed in the corner of the room, and proceeded to butter the slices. I must admit, it wasn’t the best survival plan I had in mind but then again I didn’t have much time. As soon as the second sun appeared I knew we were fucked and while the rest of the media mocked the lunatics for preparing for doomsday I knew the shit really was about to hit the fan, so I just dashed to the shops and grabbed what I could.

Baked beans, white bread, butter and about twenty bananas. It would hardly keep me alive for two weeks let alone the rest of my life but I suppose I could always hunt for rabbits. If there were any rabbits or wildlife; or even nature. It had been a pretty humongous crash when the end did come. The entire foundations of the house shook until I thought it would all come crumbling down on me but I just kneeled and prayed and for some miraculous reason, the house stayed up. I checked my mobile phone but there was no signal, tried to turn the television on, but nothing. I knew I had to go outside and see if anyone else was out there but I was too afraid.

I sat there in my bed room eating my baked beans and counting the cans I had left. Fourteen. Fuck this, I thought, I need to check. I hadn’t even bothered opening the curtains because I didn’t want to see the bodies outside. I mean I heard their screams. Too many screams, like birds burning in a cage. Their screams pierced my ear drums, that, and the sound of the world ending; the crashing of mountains, and the crunching of metal and brick, watching the street lamps behind the curtains all falling over, and going out, one by one.

I got up and walked towards the curtain. Slowly I pulled the curtains back to allow the immensely burning sun swathe my body in bright yellow light. I held my hand up to my eyes. It was not possible to be shocked by what I saw because the mind had no way of comprehending what on earth it was looking at. It looked like I was staring at some surreal painting or had awoken in the midst of a spectacular sci-fi dream. The road outside my house looked as if it had been sawn off, and over the edge was just blue space as if staring at the sky. It looked like half the world had just dropped off. There was my road. Then more blue sky and then nothing but empty space. Europe had gone. Maybe half of Australia too.

I rushed to the door and opened it slowly. I walked outside and breathed in the fresh cool air. I stayed close to the door to stop me from falling over the edge. I looked further down the road but that had been sawn off too. It seemed so far that all that was left of the world was my house and say one or two metres of the earth in front of it. I stayed close to the door and needlessly tiptoed to the end of the house. Again all I could see was the sea blue sky and nothing else. I peeked round the corner and yet again I was confronted by the same thing and now the terror was beginning to settle down. All that was left of the whole planet was my house, and the small piece of earth that it seemed to be sitting on top of. I went round back where the ground was a little looser and sure enough. No lawn to mow, but masses of blue sky, and fuck all else. Getting down on my hands and knees I crawled towards the edges of the earth and peaked over. It looked like I was sitting on top of some kind of turnip and all I could see was the V shaped earth mound tipping downwards. I headed back into the house to try and calm myself down. No people left. No food. No earth. What the fuck was I to do? I thought I would wait till night fall to see how I felt. Not that there was a night fall because there was no longer an earth mass to block out the sun as it moved away from me. I just saw the sun sitting there all night long. I went to sleep that night dreaming of all my relatives and loved ones, wondering where they were.

The next day I got up and packed my rucksack. I took four cans of baked beans with me a loaf of bread, two bananas and a selection of chocolates. I left the toffee one, I never did like toffee ones, and opened my front door. It was a good day as it would always be. I zipped up my jacket to the neck and put my gloves on. I walked towards the edge of the earth and just jumped off.

At first it was terrifying but then became exhilarating as my body acclimatised to the pressure and air battering my body. The sound of air passing by my ears was like being close to a jet engine. After accepting my descent into emptiness I fell into a peaceful slumber, outstretching my arms like a bird. I found if I tipped my hips I could change direction, and did so. Whoosh! Then the other way. Whoosh! I did three flips round and round upside down screaming with joy. This was the most elated I had ever felt since the world had ended.

I noticed the sky becoming darker and screwed my eyes into the distance to look harder. It looked as if I was approaching outer space so I decided to pull out an extra jumper I had brought with me to keep me warm. The cans of baked beans fell out of my bag and whizzed back home towards my house. The sky around me became even darker as I stared ahead into space. My descent moved from a hurtle, into a lighter free fall, as all around me became darkness. I flipped round to see the blueness disappear along with my home and the sun which became just another star.

In space I felt quite alone, even contemplative, as I floated in the nothingness. I wasn’t too sure of my direction, and had nothing to check my bearings with. It was more difficult to flip and twist like I could when hurtling through the atmosphere, so I imagined myself walking to nowhere, as if on a Sunday stroll, out for a casual walk, in deep space. Soon I noticed a silver fiery edge appearing in the distance as if it the universe had been cut in half, and then I noticed what appeared to be the bodies of other human beings. Were they dead or alive?

I changed my direction and floated towards some of the bodies. As I approached them I was shocked to see their faces smiling at me. I reached forward to grab their hands and we joined together like the space shuttle docking in outer space.

‘What the hell is happening?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know. We have all been falling since the earth ended but we are not sure where we are heading?’ They said.

I was aware of a multitude of other people all free floating around me. It wasn’t just one or two people but a thousand, hell, maybe a million or more. I dipped down into the masses of people that only continued to grow and grow. It seemed like the whole planet was here in outer space. All six billion of us were heading towards the edges of the universe. The silver thin line that looked like the end of the universe was turning into a dazzling silver flame, an insane streak of creativity that blazed a trail across our eyes. We all moved our hands and legs in unison. Our direction and intentions synchronized. All of humanity was on the move. Towards a new dawn.

Beer and Buddhism

They say that smoking is no longer cool. A guaranteed way to usher you along life’s path to an early grave, but in London you have no choice. You breathe in the smoke of the obnoxious car fumes every day. Gulp in huge bowls of the stuff. If it’s not the smells from the bullying traffic. It’s the way too personal smell of other people when being stuffed along the tube line at some unceremonious hour in the morning. So as you can imagine it was with great relief that I had received a letter from my friend Mara who had recently taken robes as a Tibetan Nun.

She had been tucked away in a monastery hidden amongst the foothills of some nondescript Scottish town. I had decided that it was a good excuse to get out of London and visit my spiritual friend, hoping that some of her accumulated goodness would wash away the filth from this belching town. It was convenient for me that this monastery, in the heart of Scotland, was just a direct train ride from London. This was my chance to stock up on some good karma. Revive my work ethic and make amends for the wrongs that I had done in this unforgiving city.  Before I could say, ‘Avalokitesvara’, which I couldn’t, I was off on a train towards the foothills of Dumfries.

After a few hours of pre-packed sandwiches and over expensive, non- branded coffee. I arrived in the small town of Lockerbie. Without thinking I was expanding my lungs to Superman size as my body greedily took in as much real air as possible. Real air. Fresh air. Scottish air. I drank in my surroundings and noted the lack of skyscrapers allowing me a reasonable panoramic vision of the area. Beautiful. I still had one more leg of the journey to go until I reached a small town called Eskdalemuir which was where the monastery was located. I hailed a cab and settled into the passenger seat allowing the view of the low slung hills of Dumfries to decrease the erratic waves of my city mind. The countryside was dotted with cows, sheep and small cottages. It was the kind of life I would view through Sunday night television programmes. Dream places I would never think of going to. I leaned my head back and smiled to myself feeling secure in the arms of mother-nature once again. The taxi driver was one hundred percent Scottish. Complete with an accent thicker than my winter gloves.

‘Where ya goin?’ ‘Samye Ling. It’s a Tibetan Buddhist place along the road. Have you been there?’ ‘Oh aye sure. It’s thon wee Buddhist place. Karma an all that. It’s a nice place,’ he said, and returned to his driving. 

A nice place I thought. The word ‘nice’ would get you a suspicious look in the city but nice was good enough out here far away from the self-centred competitive mentality of London. He continued along the roads at an uncomfortable speed as I tried my best to empty my mind of work. Karma. What actually was karma? It was funny to think that I had spent years sitting in a Zen centre in the middle of London and somehow had managed to escape any serious teachings on Buddhism.

Karma. Action. The ripening of seeds that would have been sown, not just in this life time, but the many lives we have had before. I wondered for a while about my previous lives. Indulged myself with delusions of some grand Egyptian Pharaoh, and then settled for a marauding Saxon Viking. As I pondered on the ever more elaborate and glamorous lives that I could have lived, my eyes caught the fluttering of multi-coloured flags. Bright colours of red, white, blue, and yellow were flapping from the washing lines outside of the small cottages that lined the road we travelled along. The flags were flying not just from the washing lines but the houses and trees. Just as we turned a corner I could see a large golden turret sprouting into the skyline. I suddenly felt I had been transported into some dream land with all these colours shouting at me. The golden turret was part of a white monument known as a stupa. A ceremonial building used for worship.

Things almost took on a more surreal shape as more gold from the Tibetan Temple rose into view fighting space with the blue sky, and white clouds.

I was reminded of the first stanza of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Kahn’ as the taxi turned into the gates of Samye Ling and parked up.

‘In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn a stately pleasure dome decree.’

This miracle dream was rudely interrupted by a not uncommon London phrase. 

‘Oi Dave you asshole.’ 

I turned to see my friend Mara’s bald head and welcoming smile beam at me through the taxi window. I got out and retrieved my suitcase paying the taxi driver for his service. ‘Are you allowed to swear? Aren’t you supposed to be holy?’ I enquired jokingly.

‘I’m struggling. I’ve only been in robes for four weeks. I need to practice more.’ I went to give her a hug but she pulled back. ‘Oh so you can swear like a trooper but I can’t hug you. Nice one Mara.’ She looked at me funny.

‘I’m not Mara anymore. Sorry if I sound a bit anal but can you please call me Ani Padma.’

‘Ani Padma. Bloody hell. No problems Ani. Let’s drop my stuff of and go for a beer.’ 

‘Dave there’s no intoxicants here. This isn’t the world of Zen where all is allowed. You need to refrain from a few things when living on, or near a Monastery.’

My heart sank as Ani Padma led me to the Tibetan Café. Clearly there were some big differences between the world of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. While in the Café I was introduced into a very different crowd of people from the ones I knew at work. They used names such as Planet, Ranjung and Sky. They were all well-meaning modern-day hippies who lived and breathed the organic lifestyle. They were a million miles away from the friends I’d spend a Saturday night in with; all engrossed in popular game shows, a medium Chicken Tikka, and a couple of beers. This lot had spent years following the Buddha, travelling to India and Nepal for Buddhist teachings.

After a couple of cappuccinos I was given the A – Z of Tibetan Buddhism. In Zen it’s simple. You sit on your ass and one day you’ll become enlightened, or maybe one lifetime.

Tibetan Buddhism uses all things on the path to enlightenment; sight, sound, and colours are utilized to support and transform the thoughts and emotions of the mind from negative to positive. While in Zen you have Zazen. In Tibetan Buddhism you have mantras, visualizations, mudras, and prayers. Anything to get you there. After way too much coffee I joined my friend for a walk around the courtyard and into the main shrine room. I was immediately struck by the riot, splendour, and magnificence of all the colours that were displayed inside the shrine room. I watched as my friend fell to her knees and then spread her arms out in front of herself and then came back up again.

‘What’s that for?’ I asked. Almost whispering. But she hadn’t finished and kneeled down a further two times. 

‘They’re called prostrations. The same as bowing. It’s about offering respect to the Buddha, but ultimately about bowing to the Buddha within yourself.’

I considered doing a few myself but was conscious of ruining my clothes. I continued to look around the shrine room while Ani continued with her duties. The beauty of the place made me feel uneasy. It wasn’t just the two foot high golden statue of the Buddha that put me in awe. There were hundreds of other smaller golden Buddha’s encased in glass, either side of the main statue.

I imagined myself bowing to all of them. Saying hello in my own way. I was surrounded by brightly coloured religious paintings known as Thangkas. They depicted a variety of deities that to me appeared quite terrifying. Some had four arms, and more. Some wielded swords. Some deities faces wouldn’t look to out of place on Halloween night. I was reassured by Ani Padma that the deities, some wrathful, some benevolent, were just manifestations of my own fears and poisons. They were here to help us on our path. I settled on one deity who appeared more cheerful. His name was Chenrezig. He only had four arms. He was the Lord of Compassion. Four arms I could handle.

Whatever my beliefs or motivations for coming here, Samye Ling had an air of goodness about the place. People came from all backgrounds. Some to learn Buddhism. Some just to escape from the stresses of their busy lives. It had the fresh air from the countryside and the fresh effort from the people who came here trying to understand themselves better. I settled in for the next few days taking walks around the grounds, and gulping up the fresh air. When you live in London you don’t realize how reluctant you are to fully stretch your lungs out. I had decided to stay a few days extra to gather my thoughts and try abstaining from beer for as long as I could. I sat in the café drinking my double mocha cappuccino with cream spiralling upwards, and a chocolate flake to the side. In no way was my increase in sugar relative to the decrease in alcohol. I think it was more boredom and the lack of everyday distractions that drove me to ever fancier and elaborate coffee drinks. I wondered briefly whether I could obtain nirvana just by increasing my sugar intake.

I had been attempting to read a book on the nature of emptiness and my head was aching. Of course I should have gone for something more straight forward ‘an Introduction to’ etc but just the name ‘emptiness’ drew me in with its esoteric allusions. It’s always nice to have something deep and profound to wave around while drinking coffee but if I was honest I was struggling with the introduction, let alone the chapters on the non-existence of the self. Lucky for me a more experienced Buddhist beside me noticed my confusion and came to my rescue.

‘That’s a fantastic book you have there. So lucid in its explanation on the meaning of emptiness,’ he said.

I smiled knowingly. Doing my best to hide my ignorance. I reached for the chocolate flake to take away the dull pain in my head. It looked like I was about to be enlightened by North London’s answer to Deepak Chopra. He leaned towards me as if he was about to reveal the mysteries of the universe.

‘Although the cup exists. It’s actually empty. What we mean by empty is the concept of the cup exists only in the mind, and the object that you see is made of many things which are dependent on each other.’

His voice trailed off as he started to look as doubtful as I did about his explanation. We both looked at the cup. I held its firmness. Observed its round curve. The fact that it was made of a base, and a handle, and on looking inside, he was right. It was empty. To save us any further embarrassment I ordered another deluxe chocolate drink, and it was very full indeed. After another super choc drink arrived my teacher had felt rejuvenated enough to try a further explanation.

‘It’s like this. We see the cup as a whole cup. An individual thing, much as we see ourselves as whole and separate, but in fact we are made up of many different things. All dependent on each other.’

We both stared at each other believing we had both grasped something quite important. This was actually the most focused I had been since I last took cocaine. He continued unabashed.

‘The cup is made of a handle, a base, the wall; much in the same way that you are made of your legs, arms, body, bones, blood, emotions, and thoughts. Together we see them as one whole thing when in fact they are many things taken as a whole. Emptiness on a relative level is seeing that the cup like yourself, while appearing whole. Is actually empty of these things.’

I stared at him quite stunned as my mind tried to understand what he was talking about. The best I could do was imagine myself as Mr Potato Head from Toy Story and each of the plastic parts falling of me one by one. I excused myself and went outside for some fresh air. My mind was being bombarded with teachings. To many teachings. Everything is empty but it’s not. Reality is just an illusion. Your ‘self’ exists but it doesn’t exist. Nothing was clear to me in this Buddhist world. Either things were real or they were not. I thought it was best to remove myself from the monastery for a while and head to a place no Tibetan monk could find me. The pub. I heard a rumour of a pub existing a couple of miles away, so when the rest of the camp was involved in meal time prayers. I jumped ship and headed to the waterhole.

‘A pint of lager please.’ I asked. Plonking myself on the bar stool. I watched the golden syrupy liquid bubble its way to the top. I felt myself refill just as quickly as the glass did.

‘Are you here on holiday sir?’ asked the barman.  ‘Sure. Just staying at the local Buddhist place for a while,’ I said.  ‘Oh yes I know it very well. In fact I’ve been reading this book about The Two Truths.’ ‘What do you mean two truths?’ ‘You mean they haven’t told you about the absolute and the relative truths?’

I excused myself very quickly before I was about to be enlightened again. I sat in the alcove studying my pint. Noticing the glass. Its roundness. The fact that it tasted so good. Then ordered a second and gave myself a pat on the back for abstaining for so long.

Frankenstein’s Ubermensch

A whiplash of dark blue lightning from the conductor burst into the veins of the human body, as if it had been stolen from the Gods themselves. The flesh rippled like subtle waves shimmering across a steady ocean. Dr Frankenstein pressed the button that would start the process of genetic manipulation. He injected the serum into the human body then waited as the flesh and bone of the creature convulsed, contorted and slowly formed into a new being. Bone formed from tissue, blood formed around the bones and through the veins that grew, like unnatural vine leaves creeping up the outside walls of a dead man’s house.

Dr Frankenstein went back to his notes and continued to scribble away at his thesis. Soon he would have finished his project and created the first ‘supreme being’. A man of physical and intellectual perfection, with a brain created using the DNA from some of the greatest minds history had ever known. In the background the computers fell silent and Dr Frankenstein moved towards the incubator to look at his creature. The molecular transformation was now complete and the body lay lifeless inside the casket. He turned on the electric current to a low amp and then started the computer programme. The software would download every bit of knowledge from the greatest works of science, art and language into the brain.

Dr Frankenstein watched in awe as the programme ran and the electrical currents pulsed through the creature’s brain and into its heart. He noticed the fingers slightly twitching, as if playing a piano recital. It would be another two days before the body would be fully energized and he could wake this man. Frankenstein walked across the yard to his cottage to see what his wife Mary was doing. Mary had been by his side since the beginning but had turned away from him as soon as his project had started to near completion. Her beliefs held her back from encouraging her husband in his pursuits.

As she reminded him often ‘God had already sent his one and only perfect son, who are you to do God’s work?’ But Michael was convinced that he ‘was’ doing God’s work, and believed his man would be able to help the world. Mary was busy laying out the plates for lunch. Michael sat down, sensing the atmosphere. He got up to help Mary finish laying the table.

‘He’s nearly finished Mary and so far all the tests have come back positive.’ Mary laid down the last plate and sat down herself.

 

‘He? I love you Michael, but what you are creating cannot be called a ‘he’ in any normal sense. This creature, you so stubbornly created, despite the warning from your own colleagues. Is an aberration of nature. Some kind of genetically modified animal, dare I say, beast.’

Michael looked crushed. He loved his wife very much and wished she could see the beauty of what he was doing.

‘I understand that this man was not born in the natural way but I still feel he is God’s work, in as much a way that I, and we, are born of God, so surely what I produce is also from God. Dare I say inspired.’ There was just a dash of smugness smudged across Michael’s face.

They both started to eat in silence while the rain outside the cottage fell in fist loads from an angry sky. Michael’s thoughts were on his creation and the computer programme downloading every sonnet, every syllable and every calculation into its brain. His creation would not exactly lift whole buildings, but its beauty, grace and intellect, may well lift the world and all its people.

‘It’s always a tough call knowing whether you are doing God’s work, or the devils. Only time will tell,’ said Mary.

Mary finished eating her dinner and got up to leave the table. Michael sat there chewing on her words. He remembered some of his earlier experiments at trying to modify the structure of his own brain to increase his own intelligence, but it only resulted in him spending six months in a psychiatric ward.

He had taken a sample of blood from his own arm and then injected his own semen into one of Mary’s eggs that he had unscrupulously taken from their failed attempts to induce a child of their own. This would literally mean that the man being born soon, would be their son.

Two days had passed and Michael had dared not take a look into the laboratory. The machine and programme had stopped running. The storm outside had gone away, and the sun offered a partial glance across the blankets of grass, that were the endless fields outside his window. He reluctantly opened the door to the laboratory and walked over to the incubator. He slowly pulled back the glass casing and a light smoke escaped revealing the face of a young man.

His forehead was smooth. His skin was white, almost too white, like a gypsum alabaster God statue, and his eyes shockingly blue and wide open. They just stared ahead at the ceiling not blinking. His hair was blonde. Michael felt sick. He moved closer to the man’s body and then touched its arm. It felt cold and wet like a snake. Still the creature did not blink but just kept staring ahead. Michael could see its chest rising and falling slowly. Its heart beat was faint but discernible above the server’s harmonic hum.

 

‘Hello,’ said Michael, and Michael stood back as if the creature was about to jump out at him. Slowly the man’s mouth started to move as if it wished to say something. Michael quickly grabbed the glass and straw and did his best to feed the man some water. It drank in greedily as if it needed something more real to kick start the final awakening. Suddenly it sat up and gasped, and Michael took two steps back. The man tried to move his lips but no sound came out, just a faint rasp.

‘Can you hear me?’ said Michael.

The man turned to Michael.

‘I need more water. I need meat.’

Michael fetched another glass of water, and from the fridge, some freshly prepared chicken, with fresh fruits and vegetables. He handed the plate to the man and the man sat and took the plate. He started to eat hungrily from the plate with his hands and fingers. Michael was frozen to the spot.

A mixture of raw sickness and excitement was running through his guts and veins. He couldn’t believe he was watching his creation sitting up and eating.

‘I knew you would be hungry so I prepared the food.’ The man looked at Michael.

‘Who am I, and where am I?’

This caught Michael by surprise. He had been so consumed with creating his creature that he had forgotten to give it a name. He plucked one instantly from the back of his mind.

‘Your name is Khristian. And you are in Oxford.’ The man seemed to think about it for a while then looked outside the window as if to confirm his location.

‘Oxford is in England. Home to a famous college called Christchurch. Christ was a great man but just a man nonetheless.’ At this point a butterfly flew in from the window and landed on the table beside Khristtian. Dr Frankenstein noted the butterfly with marvel, considering it a beautiful sign until Khristtian slammed his hand down on top of the insect causing Michael to jump back.

‘You can’t kill one of God’s beautiful creatures, surely you know that?’

Khristian wiped the remnants of the butterfly from off his hands onto a handkerchief and got up to wash his hands at the sink. Forgetting the man’s nakedness, Michael grabbed the clothes he had bought for him, and placed them beside the sink.

‘Please put some clothes on and I’ll show you your room. But you don’t go around killing things Kristian, surely you understand that?’

Kristian started to put the clothes on that Michael had bought for him. He took another glass of water while still thinking about Michael’s last question.

‘You kill other human beings. Don’t you?’

‘Well, no, not intentionally. Some die in accidents. Some people die in wars, but we don’t go out of our way to kill people deliberately, and that is the difference.’

‘What about the Jews?’ Michael looked at this creature he had created and sweat was starting form on the back of his neck.

‘The Jews were massacred by a mad man. Killed by one man’s false belief in a perfect race. He was very wrong in what he did.’

‘But if they were not perfect beings then why allow them to exist? Surely it is ok to wipe out the things that are broken. The things that we deem not beautiful.’

Michael was now terrified by what he was hearing but knew he would be able to train his creature to understand empathy and compassion. He could see why Kristian was acting like this and knew he would have to work hard over the next few months to shape his creation into the perfect being, not just a cold human being. He tapped Kristian on the shoulder and ushered him towards his room.

‘It is not for us to make those decisions. We leave that up to God.’ Michael sat the man down on the bed, and Kristian lay down on the bed and started to yawn. ‘Am I not a God?’ asked Kristian.

Dr Frankenstein laughed.

‘No you are not a god but in a way created by God.’ Michael tucked Kristian into bed as if he were his own son. He felt a strong affection and sense of duty to this man as if he were a small child. He turned the light off and closed the door. Kristian stared ahead of him looking into the side table mirror. Michael closed the door. Kristian whispered to himself.

‘Then why do I feel like one.’

Suckered

At last Planet Earth had communicated with alien life. The signal was coming from a planet not so very far away in the galaxy next door, much to the surprise of the scientific community. It seemed they had been using the wrong kind of analysis tools. Apparently the alien life forms had been shouting, ‘We’re over here,’ for quite some time, and eventually the aliens decided that they would have to make the first move.

At the NORAD control centre deep in the Cheyenne mountains things were getting quite heated.

‘What the hell do you mean don’t know where?’ barked the president. Jim nervously shuffled the data reports in his hands.

‘We’ve checked the data and tried to translate the best we can, and so far we only have a date and time, and the words: we will come to you.’

The president was someone to be feared. I mean he was fearful enough in the movie Terminator but in real life he was bigger and used more words.

‘How the hell can we prepare for their arrival when we don’t know where they will land?’ said the president. Jim went over to his screen and quickly shuffled his UFO-shaped mouse.

‘Well, we did manage to unscramble some of the data and worked out a rough area.’ Jim pointed to the map on the screen and the area known as the Mojave Desert. President Schwarzenegger leaned into the screen.

‘The desert in three weeks. Do we know anything about these aliens? How will they be coming? I mean I take it they won’t be coming by bicycle.’ He grumbled.

‘Not unless it was an intergalactic bike.’ Said Jim smiling. He immediately realised he had said the wrong thing. You didn’t want to mess with the most aggressive president ever, especially one who was on the brink of launching attacks on China and Iran. The president looked Jim squarely in the eyes.

‘Any foreign object bigger or more powerful, than anything the USA has got, must either be on our side, or shot down.’

Jim tried to plead with the president.

‘I can assure you Mr. President these creatures are highly evolved. We’ve translated as much data as we can. It seems they want to bring a message of peace.’

The president was busy checking his pecks in the window’s reflection.

‘Peace? Yeah sure. We’ll give them some peace. A piece of my ass.’

And the president started to walk out of the compound. Before he closed the door he turned to Jim and said, ‘I’ll be back,’ and then smiled and walked out the door.

Jim smiled briefly then immediately admonished himself. How the hell can one man go so far with such a dumb catchphrase? It was twisted around for his poster campaign, ‘I Am Back’ for the presidential election, and a few million Arni fans could not resist it. Jim mumbled his best Arni impression whilst analysing the rest of the data.

‘I got some peace for you. A piece of my ass, hur hur hur.’

Meanwhile, in a not-so-distant galaxy on a not-so-distant planet in fact right behind our own but just on a different vibration. Aliens were preparing a surprise visit.

The Lizurethians used to be a violent race just like human beings but that was all in the past, about a thousand years in the past. As well as evolving technology they also evolved their minds. They used control of sound and mind to travel, and as highly evolved beings knew that you didn’t have to bend space and time to travel, but just pop in and out on a different vibration.

They also looked like lizards, which was the main reason for never visiting Earth. I mean if human beings had difficulty in dealing with their own people because of colour. How the hell would they handle a six-foot, highly evolved, intelligent lizard? The high councillor Mara rubbed her smooth silky scales with cream.

‘Gosh don’t you just hate dry skin,’ she said. Her attendee Malcolm, a council adviser, looked on in admiration.

‘You are a true example to all Lizurethians, Ma’am. You make me proud.’

Despite looking like lizards, the Lizurethians had a strong female shape, even the men. It was a bit like crossing an Anaconda with Beyonce Knowles. Mara was powerful, sexy, and very strong. She held up her three-fingered hand to Malcolm. The palm of her hand was covered with mini suckers which opened giving a slightly mild sigh.

‘Oh God. No thanks Mara. If you don’t mind I need to keep my mind focused at the moment.’ Mara moved closer to Malcolm.

‘Oh come on, Malcolm. Just a small orgasm before we take the journey. You know you like it.’

The Lizurethians made love quite a lot. Unlike like us humans, their erogenous zones were placed in the palm of their hands. When put together, their juices flowed, and it was said that the experience had the ability to render the male lover incapacitated for several weeks. Albeit several weeks in the most heightened orgasmic state of ecstasy.

The Lizurethians hadn’t always been this way. Much like humanity they too were involved in petty aggressive wars with themselves, until what they termed, the summer of love, occurred.

This was like the sixties on Earth only this time it was experienced by the entire race of Lizurethians. Imagine one whole planet involved in non-stop lovemaking for ten years. After that they had completely transformed into a loving peaceful race of lizards. Mara took her seat in front of the other councillors with Malcolm by her side.

‘Now what’s the update on the human problem,’ she asked.

‘Well it seems they are on the brink of total annihilation. We can see a mass of troops in two main areas and we have decoded all signals from their governments. It seems they are ready to launch nuclear strikes,’ spoke one of the councillors. An elder lizard, Damas, spoke up.

‘Let them destroy themselves then we can go in and take over. One view of our giant ships and lizard eyes, and they will freak out. It will be a piece of cake.’

‘If they launch the weapons they will destroy the planet and its natural resources and we will be left without water for millions of miles. No other planet within this galaxy is capable of sustaining life with all the right nutrients,’ said Malcolm.

The Lizurethians had been popping in and out of Earth for thousands of years. They used Earth’s water supplies to replenish their own bodily systems. And dare I say steal the odd dress from the latest fashion line.

‘You mean we should neutralise them?’ spoke Mara. An elder lizard stood up.

‘There seems to be a handful of men with an overabundance of male testosterone running that planet into ruin. I believe a quick injection from our suckers will realign their behaviour, and bring the rest of the planet to a more peaceful state of being.’

Mara stood up looking at the high councillors.

‘So let’s just get this straight. You want me to go to Earth and screw the most powerful men on their planet. In the name of peace?’

The councillors remained silent as Mara headed out the door towards the sound chamber.

‘Well those suckers better be ready for these suckers, because I am in the mood for love.’ She sashayed out of the room and started to prepare herself for travel to another dimension.

In the sky above the desert, jets flew past, and helicopters whirred above the recently erected buildings. Packs of soldiers armed with the latest weaponry drove around the base shouting their military songs. The USA was ready to greet the alien visitors on their own terms.

In the command control centre Jim was scanning the radio waves for any signs or warnings of their imminent arrival. The president stood by the window looking out into the desert puffing on his cigar.

‘I wonder what their ship will be like.’ He turned and walked towards Jim.

‘Did you see Independence Day. I mean I didn’t like Will Smith’s rubber performance but that was some spaceship.’

Jim just stared at the president in disbelief. He tweaked a few numbers and ran the algorithms again.

‘They could arrive by a different means other than a gigantic spaceship. They could just appear in some kind of vessel out of nowhere.’

The president looked at him. ‘I’m sure that if they are highly evolved beings then they will arrive in a highly evolved manner.’

The time was getting closer. They were due to arrive at 15:00 hours. Everyone in the command room was busy doing something, but in reality no one really had a clue what to expect. Troops outside were positioned around the stadium with their weapons pointing in the air. Anti-aircraft guns pointed menacingly towards an empty sky. The president was thinking exactly the same thing as everyone else. What the hell will happen next?

At that point out of a very clear sky a visible crack of lightning struck across the sky frightening everyone in the command centre.

‘I thought the weather reports were supposed to be clear today,’ shouted one technician.

‘Check the weather maps again. That looks like one mother of a cloud coming up,’ said another pointing in the distance. People started to look out of the window at what appeared to be a very dark cloud with flashes of light bursting out of it, heading towards the stadium.

‘Holy shit this must be the mother ship,’ said Jim as cameras around him started to capture the momentous event.

Outside, soldiers aimed their weapons, and helicopters started to move towards the cloud. Everyone in the room was becoming visibly nervous. The atmosphere became warm and sticky as if they were in the tropics. The cloud moved closer until it hovered above the stadium. The lights inside grew brighter and people could start to hear a deep, booming sound.

AAUUMM.

You could feel the vibration of the sound through your entire body. Soldiers were given orders to get ready to fire into the cloud but no one could move. It was as if they were all being held in place by some invisible force. The soldiers just stood there grinning while the cloud drew closer. The lights flashed faster and the sound grew deeper. AUM! came the sound again, deeper and louder.

For a brief second Jim wondered whether they were about to be attacked by the Hare Krishnas. Suddenly it stopped. Everyone in the command centre rushed to the window to catch a glimpse of the mother ship but nothing was there. The cloud had gone. The sound had gone. The soldiers all pointed their guns towards nothing. Jim checked the signals but all signals were dead and then behind him he heard.

‘Well, hello boys.’ It was Mara.

The president and everyone else turned round to be confronted by what appeared to be a very tall and sexy lizard-like being, in a slinky figure-hugging dress. Everybody was completely numbed with shock. Their mouths were wide open and they were all thinking the same thing, even the girls. She’s quite cute.

‘So, which one of you boys is the president?’

The president still in shock managed to lift his hand and said, ‘Hi. I’m the president. Do you come in peace?’

Mara swayed towards the president. The security team thought about moving towards the president to protect him, but they were completely numb.

‘Of course I come in peace. We Lizurethians have been living in peace for a thousand years. We are all about peace. I believe you human beings tend to greet with a hand shake.’

The president stared into Mara’s snake-like eyes utterly hypnotised. She held out her hand to greet him and those baby suckers opened up and started to sigh. She gripped the president’s hand.

At first he let out an ‘ah’, and then he let out an ‘ooh’, followed by another ‘ahh’, and then one long sigh, and a really big smile. The president crumbled to the floor where he lay for a few minutes and after he had recovered; just wasn’t himself anymore. He was all about peace, love, harmony and you know what.

It wasn’t too long before the Lizurethians were popping in and out all over Earth. Previously brutal dictators suddenly demanded peace.

Greedy CEOs and Hedge Fund Managers suggested a fairer means of distributing wealth, even the Chinese Premier was seen running around in a multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt demanding that everyone be free.

It seemed the whole planet had changed overnight. All these once powerful people. Suckered into peace.

The Great Santa Delusion

The children of Finger Moon village were an excited lot. Historically they were nervous anyway because they always had a sense of expectation about themselves that had been encouraged by their parents, and their parents’ parents, throughout time and space; to believe that one day in the future a mystical hero would come from the skies to save all of humanity.  To celebrate this future-coming another myth had been created. A kind of semi-myth in which the children had been told that once a year a Santa would arrive and deliver gifts to all of the children as a kind of run up to the main event. This spiritual gift bearer flew through the skies on a sledge made from oak wood pulled by reindeer’s and would somehow magically deliver all the gifts that the children had requested. As long as their behaviour had been exemplary throughout the year. This parable was similar to the main myth, just swap gifts for fish, reindeers for angels. And a chariot instead of a sledge.

It was this one particular year when a young girl called Emily was approaching her eighth birthday that an unscrupulous older child told her something that shook her belief system to the ground.

‘There is no such thing as Santa.’

Emily turned to Paul. Who appeared a very rational and grounded fellow and slapped him hard across the cheek. She then went home with Paul’s words whistling around her mind. No Santa? Parents who lie? This could not be. But as it was the last night before Christmas Day. Emily was about to put the theory to test.

‘Did you leave a carrot for the reindeer and some milk for Santa?’ asked her Mother.

‘Yes Mother,’ said Emily who understandably was a little bit tetchy.

Emily placed the milk and carrot beside the chimney as she had done every year since she had been born. Only this time she felt like a prize chump.

‘Oh I hope you have been a good girl this year. Otherwise, Santa will not bring you any gifts. Have you been a good girl?’ said her overbearing and somewhat dominant father.

‘Yes Father you know I have. I mowed the lawn. Cleaned the dishes each Sunday and washed your car till the hubcaps sang.’

Emily went upstairs to bed trying her best to hold that grin. Emily’s Mother tucked her into bed and kissed her on the cheek and said good night. Naturally Emily was unable to sleep. Deep down in her heart she hoped that Paul was wrong. All her life she had believed wholeheartedly in the Santa story. It underpinned how she acted as a person throughout the year and gave her faith in the world knowing that however dark things got there would always be Santa to rely on.

A few minutes later the door opened, and Emily quickly spun round and pretended to be asleep. Her worse nightmare was about to come true as she saw her parents tip-toe into her bedroom. She watched them as they carried in the gifts and placed them at the feet of her bed. Her heartbeat fast and loud as she witnessed the greatest deception she had ever known. Just as they were tip toeing out of the bedroom Emily could contain herself no more and threw the covers from her bed and jumped out onto the floor.

‘Mum. Dad. What the hell is going on here?’

Her parents froze on the spot.

‘There is no Santa,’ said Emily forcefully towards her parents.

‘Now my little darling. We are Santa’s helpers. Now just you go to sleep.’

‘If you are his helpers then you should be tried for aiding and abetting a known felon.’

Her parents stepped back and this time her Father became angry.

‘I’m sorry it had to be this way but it’s just a little game of imagination. It brings joy into our lives and it’s just a little lie. What’s the harm in that. Now get to bed.’

He shouted the last bit forcefully and Emily was reminded of her place as a child in this family.

The next day at the breakfast table there was complete silence. After Christmas Emily tried to focus on her studies but she was fuelled with hatred for the adults that were teaching her. If it was a lie then how did she know that what they were teaching her was the truth? The break time bell sounded and Emily decided to do something radical. She grabbed a soap box from the corner of the playground and stood on top of it.

‘All the children please gather around. I have something important to say.’

The children started to form around Emily. She then recalled the story of the last few days and told them all about the lie which didn’t go down so well.

‘You’re lying. I got all the gifts I wanted this year. And the carrot and the milk were gone by the morning,’ said one kid.

‘What about the gifts under the bed or in the living room? They just appear over night by magic don’t they.’

Some of the children were becoming distressed and a few were in tears. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing. A teacher had spotted the crowd and came closer to inspect. Maybe she sensed rebellion in the air.

‘How do we know you are telling the truth?’ asked one brave child.

‘Go home. Look for the receipts. Confront your parents.’

During the day and the week word spread about the Santa delusion.

Hundreds and thousands of young children were confronting their parents about the great deception and then bursting into tears. The balloon was popped. The dream dead. And Emily still was restless about the situation. That night she decided to speak to her parents. One on one. The atmosphere was tense round the kitchen table.

‘Now about this Santa thing. Tell me the whole story.’

Her parents seemed perplexed. Emily had assumed the role of a film-noire detective character and was enjoying grilling her parents.

‘Well you know. It’s pretty straight-forward,’ said her Father.

‘Once a year Santa delivers gifts to all the children of the world.’

‘From where?’

‘The North Pole.’

‘Where exactly is the North Pole?’

Her Father sheepishly looked at Emily’s Mother who seemed as sketchy as a mouse with its nose in the refrigerator.

‘I think It’s near Iceland or is it Finland?’ said her Mother.

‘You mean you’re not even sure?’

‘Well, that’s the point of a myth. Everyone is really unsure about the facts but as long as a rough narrative is formed, people are content. And usually don’t bother questioning the story.’

Her Father looked away. The enormity and ridiculousness of the lie was now starting to bare down on his shoulders.

‘That’s really about it Emily. We are so sorry about this. It’s just how things are on this planet. Her parents shuffled nervously in their chairs. There was a painful pause while Emily contemplated her next action.

‘I want you to lend me your credit card.’

They both looked at each other.

‘What for?’

‘I’ve decided to go to the North Pole and see for myself.’

‘Of course there is nothing there. It’s just a myth.’

‘I know but when one wishes to verify the facts. It’s best to go and check them out for yourself. Direct experience trumps hearsay every time. Wouldn’t you say?’

Her Father handed over his credit card to Emily and she accepted it as a form of recompense. She got up from the table and went upstairs to plan her journey to the North Pole. A journey to seek the truth. And end this farce once and for all.

Children were amazed at how brave she was at standing up to her parents and started to stand up to them themselves. They had decided that they wanted to join Emily on the adventure to the North Pole. Within a week all the children of the village and had decided to go and the shops had run out of thick woolly socks, duffel coats and maps.

The parents had gathered at the airport to see them off. They held back the tears and also held a strange kind of hope. They too had never forgotten about Santa and even though they knew it to be highly unlikely, wished deep down that the children would bring something back with them.

The plane journey flew by quicker than the storyline, but with so little patience in the author, and a story-arc with less bend than David Beckham, things had to move quickly.

After the plane had landed. The kids stood outside the airport with all their belongings. Everyone was looking towards Emily for guidance and leadership. Emily didn’t have a clue what to do next, so she decided to look as if she did have a clue and walked over to a security guard to ask a question.

‘Excuse me sir. Do you speak English?’

‘Ja. For sure. English I speak.’

‘We want to go to the North Pole.’

The security guard looked at Emily with a look of pity in his eyes.

‘You know there’s nothing there.’

‘I know but it’s nice to check things out for yourself.’

‘Nobody goes to the North Pole anymore. Not since Neitzsche famously declared that Santa was dead.’

‘Who is Neitzsche?’

‘Oh. Just some crazy old fool.’

‘But if you insist on going. There is an old bus that has been out of service for a few years. You can take that if you wish.’

The security guard took Emily round the corner to an old yellow school bus covered in dust. Emily looked at the front of the bus which was more rust than yellow. More dirt than clean.

With the help of the security guard, they pulled the bus door open and went inside. Emily went to sit on the driver’s seat and played with the steering wheel. The security guard showed Emily how to work the pedals and the gear stick. All the children, luggage and chaos, boarded the bus. Emily released the clutch, the bus lurched forward, and everybody felt the fluttering of wings in their stomachs as Emily placed her foot on the pedal.

Emily didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking for. Occasionally she would see a sign for the North Pole this way or that way, but as far as she was concerned she just stuck to the tracks in the road in front. If the wheels followed the grooves then so did she. Soon she came across a sign that said ‘Santa. This Way’ She quickly pulled the bus round to the right waking up the rest of the children on board.

After what seemed like eons a small fiery dot appeared in the horizon and then came another, like two eyes. The other children came to the front of the bus to see what the lights were. The dots started to form a shape of arms, legs and a rather large round belly. The figure was at least a hundred foot tall and as they drew closer other colours started to fill in the space between the dots. A red suit. A black belt. And a long white beard. It was that well-known figure that adorned the lawn and roof of many a home in Finger Moon village. Santa!

The children started to whoop and holler. It all seemed too true. Emily stopped the bus and the children ran off excitedly to see the great and true Santa. He was in fact taller than they realized and waved his hands and legs around like a maniac escaping into the sky. Emily stood peering into the eyes of the Great Santa and knew something was up. His smile was a bit too fixed. His continuous laughter far too mechanical. She grabbed a rock from the ground and aimed it squarely at one of Santa’s eyes. The rock flew straight into the eye and the sound of glass crushing was heard followed by a small explosion. The children stopped to look at what was happening and again she picked up another rock and aimed it squarely at the other eye, and again another flash, and boom. One of the kids started to rush towards her and grabbed Emily.

‘You leave him alone.’ He cried.

‘That’s not Santa. It’s a fake.’

And then another kid came forward. The kid threw one straight into its mouth. The laughing stopped and the game was up. His limbs, beard, and head all came crashing down until all that was left was a broken pile of plastic lights and clothing. The children stared at the broken machinery in dismay but Emily had noticed something in the distance. Someone running away.

‘Hey. There’s someone who has been pulling his legs. A man in the distance running away.’ 

Emily dashed off after the man with a gang of them in tow. The man appeared to be wearing no clothes except a shawl wrapped over his shoulders which was unusual for these parts. He was bold and skinny and very old. She could hear him puffing and panting and wheezing. It wasn’t too long before she caught up with him and then threw herself around his spindly legs. They both came crashing down in the snow with the other kids behind Emily. The old man scampered away and shielded himself from being hit.

‘Who the hell are you and why are you playing tricks on all of us?’

‘Where is the real Santa?’

Emily had to hold back the other kids from tearing the man apart such was there disappointment. And then the old man spoke and his voice felt so smooth and warming that it melted the hearts and minds of all the children standing around him.

‘I am so sorry to disappoint you. I never meant to harm you. Of course there is no Santa but he seemed ideal for where you were at in your life. A little hope never hurt anyone.’

The kids fell to their knees in awe at the soft tones of his voice.

‘So then. This is it,’ said Emily.

‘Yes. This is it,’ said the old man.

The kids sat in deep silence. Unsure what to say.

‘What do we take back home?’

‘Just take back the truth.’

And with that the old man got up and walked away into the darkness. Emily and the kids got back onto the bus and started to make the journey back home. As you can imagine the parents were none too pleased with what the kids had to say. So the children started to gather sticks and build a fire. They consoled each other with stories about the journey. Every year a celebration was held around the fire out of greatness for the beautiful world they had found themselves in. A greater appreciation for all living things had been born in the minds and hearts of all the people that lived in Finger Moon village.

The Birthday Gift

It was coming up to Emily’s sixteenth birthday and Alan marvelled at the gift he had bought his daughter. ‘She’s going to love this by a mile’, he thought to himself. Alan jumped up and down with excitement at the size of the elephant and then reminded himself to phone the local Zoo to ask exactly what does a large grey African elephant eat? The elephant shuffled and moved around. His big floppy ears hung playfully by his head. His tail whisked from side to side. The elephant’s huge body swayed gently while Alan imagined the shock on Emily’s face.

Alan could hear a car crunch its way up the farmyard drive. Probably a taxi to pick his daughter up. Emily had been leaving the farmhouse more and more recently hanging out with her friends. Going to parties and genuinely growing up. She had mentioned moving into town to live with her friends before the start of her college-term, and Carol seemed fine with that, although Alan had been concerned about her safety.

Alan walked up the driveway to wave her goodbye and inquired about their cinema date next week. ‘I’ll try my best Dad but I’m just so busy at the moment.’ Alan was gutted but he knew these were the last few days of her childhood as she took another step out into the world of adulthood. She waited for her father to arrive before jumping into the cab.

‘Hi Dad.’ ‘Hi Emily.’

‘Of out with your friends?’

‘Sure. Just shopping and gossip.’

‘Don’t forget lunch this Sunday with me and your Mother, and of course I have your birthday gift.’ Emily shrugged her shoulders unconcerned about the gifts she just wanted to hang out with her friends.

‘You don’t have to worry about gifts. As I said before a donation to a charity would make me happy.’

Emily was a rambunctious and self-less girl who had the spirit of a tomboy with the grace and glamour of an emerging popstar. She worked hard for everything and laughed always. Which is why Alan believed an African Elephant would be the perfect gift. She jumped into the taxi and waved good-bye. Alan quickly dialled the local zoo and inquired about the dietary habits of an African Elephant. The elephant gave a loud hoot and Carol walked out of their farmhouse wondering what the strange noise was.

‘Did you hear that noise? It wasn’t a fox? and certainly not the Geese?’

She walked up to the fence looking as if she was looking for something. She then approached Alan, gave him a warm hug as she always did and a kiss on the neck. Alan still had his hands in his pockets pretending to be cool and aloof.

‘Maybe it was just me. I must be going mad.’ She said.

‘Or maybe it was the large African elephant I bought for our daughter’s birthday,’ said Alan.

Alan stood back in surprise mode with hands out splayed acting like an over-aged entertainer. Carol looked at him with a wry smile knowing that he was joking.

Alan was always joking but the wry smile changed into a concerned look as his star hands remained fanned out, and Carol’s smile became more rigid. She remembered the last mini breakdown Alan had when Carol returned home one day to see Alan and Emily had adopted a chimpanzee, that he had stolen from the zoo.

‘You always said you wanted another child,’ he said.

‘He’ll change the nappies and cook the food. No more expensive than an au pair.’

Her smile relaxed briefly, comforted by the knowledge, that it was all behind them, until the next toot from the barn came loud and clear.

‘I’ve yet to name him,’ said Alan. As if that would make her happier.

‘Alan you haven’t gone mad again have you? It sounds like an elephant but of course there is no way you could get an elephant around here.’

Alan’s star-arms dropped quickly into his pockets as Carol walked towards the barn hoping that her hearing was being deceived.

‘It only eats grass,’ said Alan as he followed Carol to the barn.’

Carol opened the wide-and-high barn doors to see a large grey African Elephant.

‘Oh God. Where the fuck did you get that from. Waitrose?’

Alan stood there in the barn, man-child extraordinaire.

‘A zoo. It was surprisingly easy.’

Carol went to walk around the elephant and marvel at its shape and size. She felt its rough texture while it moved from foot to foot as if treading in water.

‘Surely there must have been checks. You can’t just run it through the till.’

‘No. There are lots of checks but also a company that will handle the checks for a fee.’

Carol looked at Alan. ‘This is wrong, very wrong. We have to take it back.’

Alan looked at the floor and touched the side of the elephant. He felt profoundly grounded by this celestial animal. Felt a surge of gratification running through his body when he was near it. The elephant waved its ears around as a kind of hello to Alan.

‘Let’s keep it till Sunday. Just to see the look on her face.’ said Carol.

Alan gave a defiant smile. Carol looked at Alan and the light bulb went on. Through Emily the child in him had permission to exist, without her, his playful presence might die or so he feared.

‘She’s sixteen Alan. She would rather go to a Puff Daddy or whatever you call it concert, sorry gig. This is about you is it?’

‘No. It’s about her. I’ve bought her a great gift. A moment she will cherish forever. To remind her to keep her child-like side as she goes out into the adult-world.’

This time Carol kept quiet and was reminded of Alan’s clever insight. If only we could all shut up for a brief minute and recognize the playful intelligence at play in all human-beings.

The Elephant made another loud toot and Carol looked on in dismay. She wondered if Alan was about to have another breakdown.

‘You’re not going wonky again are you Alan.’ Alan looked bemused, uncertain why the purchasing of a large grey African elephant, would suggest a loss of sanity.

‘I am more than fine. It’s just an Elephant. She’ll probably play with it for a few weeks and then we can take it back.

‘What does it eat?’ Carol inquired.

‘Shoots and leaves, I believe,’ said Alan.

‘Do you fancy a ride on it?’

Carol burst out laughing,

‘Don’t we need lessons?’

‘It can’t be that hard, like riding a horse only larger. Elephants are supposed to be intuitive so maybe he will lead us on a journey.’

Carol being that sort of girl decided to give it a go. They both managed to cajole the elephant out of the barn with large tufts of grass. Alan quickly went in to get some bananas and other pieces of fruit and placed them in a shopping bag. Carol pulled the stepladders down from inside the barn and placed them beside the elephant.

‘Maybe we should talk to it first and introduce ourselves’ suggested Carol who was warming to her earthly divine being.

‘Good idea,’ said Alan and they both went to the head of the Elephant and placed their palms on its forehead. The heat from the Elephants head rushed into their palms and seemed to warm their souls. Their entire bodies filled with a beautiful warm glow. Carol looked at Alan and Alan looked at Carol and felt the love that they hadn’t felt for years. Carol looked into Alan’s eyes,

‘She’ll always be our little girl you know?’ ‘Of course, I do’ said Alan.

Alan knew his daughter was growing up and this meant a certain kind of fun would disappear. The fun of having adventures, and the cinema, and plays in the park. Silly conversations as opposed to serious ones about socialism or the environment.

Alan and Carol climbed onto the elephant and straddled across its thick wide back. It was like sitting on a small earth. The view from the top was stupendous thought Carol. The only thing missing was a glass of Merlot and of course their daughter.

They allowed the elephant to amble for a while through the unkempt fields that were left empty because they no longer killed their animals. Alan managed a right turn back to the barn. The elephant walked with ease despite its size. It was a regal animal that transcended the land through which it moved. They slid down from the elephant in an inelegant manner and then coaxed the animal into the barn where they fed it apples, bananas and grass. Alan closed the doors and said good night and went into the barn excited about the next day and his gift for his daughter.

Carol and Alan went to bed that night and made love. It was a sweet and touching kind of love with lots of fumbles and mistakes. Kisses, slurps and gentle tussles from one to another and then they both fell into a deep pleasant sleep.

The next morning the cock did not crow because they didn’t have one and Alan was already sat up in his rocking chair with his laptop typing out a new idea for a story. He was getting used to the idea of his daughter changing and leaving but was also a tad nervous about how she would view her gift. Carol started to wake. Her pyjamas more crumpled than they were used to being.

‘Morning tiger.’

‘Morning Hare.’

‘Oh god,’ thought Carol. That fucking elephant.’ ‘Is Emily still in bed?’ ‘I think I heard her getting back in about four this morning.’

Alan decided to go to Emily’s room and wake her up and did his usual rap on the door that always wound her up.

‘Fuck off Dad.’

Alan winced at this but knew she was just kidding and opened the door to find her sleeping in bed.

‘I’ve got you an amazing 16th birthday gift. It’s big and needs lots of care and attention.’ Emily was smiling underneath. One of her friends was already taking her driving lessons and she was thinking of getting some lessons herself, but it seems her father was a step ahead, at last. She jumped out of bed and this made Alan feel happy but Carol who was half-awake was praying knowing full well that when Emily sees the elephant, she might just go ballistic.

‘What’s it like?’

‘Well. It’s large and is the colour grey but moves quite nimbly for its size.’ Emily quickly pulled at her furry boots and grabbed a warm jacket over her pyjamas.

‘It’s in the barn so let’s just go and see it. Carol are you coming?’

Carol was starting to get ready but decided she would wait for the first scream of ‘oh yes’ or ‘oh no.’ ‘I’ll be there in a jiffy.’

Alan and Emily headed towards the barn and then Alan got to the barn and just opened it and swung open the right wing of the door.

Emily was in a state of shock her mind not quite processing what she could see.

‘What the fuck Dad! What is it? Am I still dreaming?’ Alan was prepared for a shock response.

‘No you’re not dreaming, I, err, bought you an African elephant. Sort of a parting gift. It’s actually on loan from the Zoo.’

Emily stared at the elephant in disbelief. She felt anger but at the same time the anger was quelled by the absurdity of an elephant in her barnyard.

‘I don’t know what to say. It looks cool but I would have preferred a mini. I can’t really take it anywhere.’

By now Emily was walking beside the elephant. She was much smaller than her father so the elephant towered above her.

In her mind she thought she heard a quiet whisper that brought a warmth rushing all over her body. ‘Touch Me.’ It seemed to say. She placed her hand onto the side of the elephant. ‘Let’s go for a walk Emily.’ It wasn’t her father speaking but the elephant.

Emily continued to marvel at this beautiful creature from nature.

‘I told you that I was happy and don’t really need anything. I love you both as parents and I carry you both in my hearts wherever you are.’

Alan’s heart started to burn. He loved it when his daughter came out with profound statements like that as if she was an older and wiser person.

Again, Emily heard the Elephant say, ‘Let’s go for a walk. Climb up.’

Emily grabbed the step ladders and placed them beside the elephant. Carol turned up beside Alan and Emily mouthed the words ‘Is he alright. Not gone mad again.’

‘Your father’s fine he just wanted you to have some silly fun before you left the world of child-hood behind.’

Emily had already climbed on the African elephant and it was now walking out the back of the barn.

‘Be careful Emily’ cried them both and the elephant turned around full circle and once again headed towards the field. Emily was buzzing from being on top of an African Elephant in the English Countryside. It certainly was the biggest surprise she ever expected. She got out her phone and started taking shots. While walking towards the edge of the field the elephant asked,

‘How old are you?’

‘Emily just thought 16.’

The elephant continued to walk and then got to the edges of the fields where he kneeled down and allowed Emily to slide of his back. The elephant sat down on its hind legs and Emily took a few more shots then sat down beside the elephant. She placed her hands onto the animal’s side and listened to the sound of its beating heart that shook through her body.

‘16 is still young,’ said the elephant, ‘And the world can be a fabulous but dark place. I think your father wants you to hold onto the child in you and maintain that spark of creativity. You don’t always have to follow the crowd and sometimes it’s better to be boring than to appear cool.’

Emily placed her head and hands on the Elephants side such was the pure feeling of contentment that was coming of the elephant.

‘Yes I know. There is such an onslaught of information these days it’s overwhelming. And so much choice. Society ages us too quickly and there is no room for play. It’s part and parcel of this consumerist society we have created.’

‘You see,’ said the elephant,’ Very clever but still so young.’

‘That’s from being with my parents. I see through their eyes.’

‘Well. I’ve seen through their eyes and I understand their concerns.’

The elephant started to get up and stand up on its four legs. Emily climbed onto its back and the elephant started to head back to the barn. As the elephant crossed the fields heading back to their barn Emily sensed the primordial energy that came from the animal. As she tuned into the elephant’s force field, she could also see the abundant energy and interconnectedness of all things around. The elephant wasn’t just a gift for her birthday but a lesson from the Gods. A lesson to keep her ground as she enters into the adult world.

Star Bucked

Jack huddled in the basement with the other residents. Above them sirens wailed across the empty skies while everyone below was sat down on the floor hugging their knees. Their faces filled with fear. The unbelievable had happened. A nuclear strike from a rogue state was heading towards their town.

Jack pulled up the collars on his leather jacket to keep him warm. He rubbed his hands briskly and smiled to the lady that was sitting beside him. She looked at him with bemusement. Didn’t he realise the country was at war? But if Jack was honest, he really didn’t give a damn. He may have been huddled with the rest of them, but it wasn’t fear on his face but a sick sense of satisfaction.

‘Hi, how’s it going?’ said Jack. The lady stared at Jack thinking he was quite mad. He had to be mad smiling at a time like this.

‘My daughters are at university and my husband is in London. I just hope they are safe.’ She said with tears forming in her eyes. Jack put his arm around the lady to comfort her.

‘And I’ve lost my pet poodle.’ She burst into tears. Jack did his best to console her whilst quietly imagining the poodle disappearing in a cloud of smoke. Less yapping on the streets when he next goes for a walk, he thought.

‘Now, now. Please don’t cry. The chances are that with crude Iranian technology. The missile will barely make a dent.’

‘Oh you think so?’ said the lady while wiping the tears from under her eyes.

‘Sure. It’ll maybe just knock out a few shops, and schools, but everyone’s underground, so we’ll be back on our feet tomorrow, cleaning the streets and working together.’ She smiled and rested her head on Jack’s shoulder and tried to sleep. Above the sirens continued to wail.

Jack sat in the darkness of the basement listening to everyone’s concerns but he had to admit. He wasn’t sure what kind of missile was heading there way. What if the missile was crap? Iranian technology wasn’t the best technology around, and the last thing he needed was a weak missile that made a loud roar, but minimal structural damage. He prayed they had taken no chances and had deployed only the best they had. In a few minutes’ time he would know for sure.

Jack’s rather pessimistic attitude wasn’t entirely his own fault. You should have seen his mother. She would often be sat at the kitchen table, cigarette dangling from between her fingers, ash falling like snow onto the table saying,

‘It will all end over the black gold. The final days. Nostradamus predicted it, and so did the Hopi Indians.’

It seems the Hopi Indians were good at predicting everything but their own demise.

Jack was not afraid of his mother and would often retort.

‘The Bible has been rewritten that many times that nobody knows if anything in it is true,’

But his mother would just continue to stare at him as the burning embers of the cigarette beat a hasty retreat from the tip.

‘Just you wait and see. Just you wait and see.’

Of course his mother wasn’t entirely to blame for Jack’s cynical worldview. There were also the two failed marriages and the piles of rejected manuscripts that lay stacked in Jack’s cupboard. It wasn’t surprising that Jack took his vengeance out on a small provincial suburban town set up as an answer to the London housing crisis. Not to mention the endless rows of identikit, corporate branded clothes and food shops that now littered the high street. Maybe a little war would bring people together, Jack thought. Just like society after the Second World War.

Jack sat there imagining the missile blowing up the high streets. He could visualise the melted yellow sign, moulded like the food it sold. The red tick insignias flying into the air as fast as the expensive products were supposed to carry their owners. Jack, obviously unsure of the complexities involved in the construction of a nuclear weapon, especially one capable of destroying an entire city, hoped that at the very least it would take out Star Bucked. If there was one high street chain he had come to loathe. It was Star Bucked. It seemed to sum up everything that was wrong with today’s tacky, throwaway, have-it-all society; and the frothy choccy lattes were nearly five pounds!

The sirens suddenly stopped wailing and it was some hours before the army guards gave the signal to go upstairs, but no one wanted to move. After all, wouldn’t the radiation kill them? But Jack jumped up and tore past the residents who seemed slightly taken aback by his eagerness. He donned the dark green suit and rubber head gear and some of the residents started to stand up and pat him on the back.

‘Look after yourself, son,’ they said. ‘Be careful out there,’ said another. But Jack was no hero. He knew exactly what he wanted. He climbed the steel ladder to the top and started to unscrew the bottom of the drain that had encased them. He pushed the door trap up with all his might and the drain fell to the ground. Jack climbed up the ladder and hoisted himself to the ground.

He stood up and stared around at the devastation. Cars were tumbled on top of each other. Mashed as easy as potatoes. Lampposts melted to the floor like ice-cream in the sun. Entire buildings had been flattened. Luckily there were no bodies as they had all escaped underground. For a while Jack felt sick. If there was a hell, he would be heading straight for it. He had wished for the devastation of his hometown and now he had it. He was gutted, but then suddenly he spied out of the corner of his eye. His main arch-enemy. Star Bucked.

All grief was suddenly forgotten and rage had taken over him. If there was one thing he had hated over the years it was seeing the death of a traditional Italian cappuccino poured to perfection in a mid-sized cup, now replaced by over-sized mugs of shoddily poured, apparently free ‘fucking’ trade, Star Bucked coffee.

Gripped with anger Jack strode towards the enemy picking up a chewed piece of metal from a now moulded flat Pizza Hut building, and running at the front doors straight on, he threw the twisted pipe and smashed down the doors. He walked behind the counter and as luck would have it, or thanks to inferior Iranian nuclear technology, the coffee machine was still alive. He did what he knew how to do, ‘of course he used to work as a barista’, and poured himself the perfect frothy latte, with a dash of caramel flavouring, then poured it into the largest takeaway cup he could find.

Grabbing a plastic lid he slammed it on the top. Stabbed a straw through the heart of it, and left a coin on the table top. Jack walked outside sipping his latte and then defiantly stuck his hand in the air. He held his frothy latte aloft like Excalibur’s sword and shouted.

‘There’s your fucking money Star Bucked and I have paid you exactly what it’s worth. One pound!’ Jack walked off triumphantly. Latte in hand. Sipping away. The scenery around him was total devastation but at least it was quiet.

Hojosan

As I arrived in Uithuizen a cold winter’s day greeted me as I stepped of the train. The wind’s sharp teeth bit into my bones. The flat farm fields that swept across my vision were an open playground for my troubled thoughts. The air around me was fresh and crisp. On opening the solid wooden doors to the temple warm smiles came to greet me from residents who were preparing for the arrival of a Japanese Monk. They whipped around me with their brushes and dusters, excited children eager to please. Zen Monasteries are cool places. The Dojo with its thick lacquered wooden floors. Bare feet that step lightly towards empty Zafus. Black kimonos worn like solemn gowns and the sound of the wood that wakes you in the morning. Gleefully I joined in the cleaning of the monastery in preparation for his arrival. We cleaned the Dojo from top to bottom. Of dust, of leaves, of ourselves and the need to cling to things. Then waited for his arrival. We stood in the hallway chattering amongst ourselves like robin redbreasts lined up on a tree branch in mid-winter.

At first I could not see him as he entered through the wooden doors. And then I caught a glimpse of him and he was oh so slightly built. Walking with purpose. Walking with grace and humility. He placed one foot in front of the other as if each step mattered. His body was taut like an archer’s bow. He offered everyone a warm smile and a bow. He put his hands into Gassho with each person he met. One of his hands was slightly deformed making him appear more fragile. We filed into the Dojo attempting to mimic his lightness. Shuffling like paper soldiers towards our Zafus. Waiting for Hojosan to sit first. He moved towards his Zafu his feet barely touching the floor. He offered a bow to the statue of Amithaba and lit an incense stick out of respect. He then went to his cushion and sat down and folded himself like a lotus flower into his meditation position. The abbot tapped the bowl indicating the beginning of Zazen.

After a few minutes of silence Hojosan began to talk. His English was slightly broken so I leaned in further towards him. 

‘When I was soldier during the war. I was Kamikaze pilot. Funny to think. Now that I am Japanese Monk. I was ready to die for Emperor of Japan. One day when I am in my cockpit message come through tannoy. Japan had surrendered and Japan was no longer at war. I sat in my cockpit and did not know what to do. I was ready to die for my country and now I was going to live. What to do? I got out of my cockpit and like the other pilots stood silent in disbelief. We were all stunned. I decided to walk into town. In town many people wandered around lost, unsure of themselves, aimlessly wandered around like hungry ghosts. When I looked around I remember seeing this chair. Untouched by the ravages of war. Standing amongst the rubble. It appeared fragile. It was empty. I went over to the chair and sat on it. Now the chair was full.’

I waited for the punch line. The rest of the story but he just returned to his meditation. A flower in full bloom. We continued to sit in silence. The only sounds were of the birds outside chirruping. And the occasional ruffle when someone folded their Kimono. My thoughts remained on the empty chair until the Abbott rang the bell. The bell’s sound washed over our minds as we started to stretch our legs and unfold ourselves. We broke for lunch and began preparing the food for our guest. Warm freshly baked bread was placed into baskets. Cheese, grapes, dates, and wine were placed on the table. Knives, forks and spoons arranged around cork mats. It was a frugal, earthy banquet that came from the heart. We sat down taking the bread and wine and waiting for Hojosan to join us. As he entered we all bowed and then recited a short prayer thanking the Buddha for our food.

All eyes were on Hojosan and most people remained quiet and peaceful. To break the silence, the head monk went around the table asking questions of various people to get the conversation flowing. Hojosan out of the blue turned to the girl beside him and said,

‘Why are you so beautiful?’

The girl was shocked and a rush of blood headed towards her cheeks. The redness in her face now matched the wine until she burst out,

‘It must be due to the Irish in me.’

Hojosan gave a childish laugh and everyone else gave an uncertain chuckle. The air around the table relaxed as our elder statesman did his best to reduce our stiff expectations of him. We fell into our personal conversations and the communal noise was as natural as nature’s rustles and breezes. Bread was chewed. Cheese nibbled. And the wine disappeared. After the food we stood and carried on talking while Hojosan introduced himself to the others with that same question.

‘Why are you so beautiful?’

‘Because I am,’ said one.

‘Am I?’ said another.

‘Oh. Thank you.’ 

Hojosan and the Abbott retired to the conservatory where a couple of talented volunteers had offered their musical abilities on the violin and the piano. After the food and wine we fell into a slumber as our teacher and the Abbott relaxed on a dog-chewed sofa placed in the corner. The music from the violin strings and piano keys were an extra dessert to be nurtured by our senses as we all battled hard to stay awake. Sleep was calling. Hojosan went first. His head resting on the Abbott’s shoulder. His hands and arms curled up like a baby. It was hard to think that he was once ready to be a Kamikaze pilot. Ready to die for a cause. A handy experience for a Zen teacher. It was to be a brief visit and the following day Hojosan was due to leave. We gathered around him. This time sweeping him into his car with the leaves. Friends not students. As the car drove off we all waved goodbye to him. He shouted out the window one last time. ‘Why are you all so beautiful?’ and disappeared into the distant road. The leaves flipping, twisting and twirling in the air.

Running Away

It seemed everything kicked off that year. Financial meltdowns, war with Iran, and the year that conspiracy theorists were no longer called conspiracy theorists.

Trust no one, was the global mantra creeping round the minds of most people on the planet these days. And that is what Michael did. Trust no one. He glanced both ways down the street ignoring the CCTV drone that flew overhead. He could throw the mobile phone away but they could still track him down. Either through the satellites, or the CCTV systems now monitored by the very loyal, and fearful, Joe Public.

Millions of the faithful British public would log on to the Internet in the evening using their favourite software program, Neighbourhood Watch. They would sit for hours watching grainy images of people out shopping, or driving down the road, or tune into the unidentified voices of their fellow citizens. Any suspicious activity; an awkward shuffle, a dangerous word, and they would alert the local police straight away. People did anything for money these days.

Michael cursed to himself as he headed home. How the hell had society managed to flip so quickly? Fear was a great motivator these days, and after the atrocities of last year people no longer trusted each other. Sheila opened the door with a worried look upon her face.

‘Bloody hell Michael, where have you been?’

He went inside quickly checking the side streets before he stepped in. Sheila looked both ways down the street as well. Michael headed towards the kitchen out back. Sheila filled up the kettle and switched it on while Michael sat down at the table, again glancing out of the back window, for any suspicious activity.

‘You shouldn’t have gone to see that film,’ said Sheila, placing the cigarette in her mouth, its tip trembling along with her lips.

‘It was only a film against capitalism, nothing to do with terrorism. It’s still a free country. Isn’t it?’ said Michael.

‘It doesn’t matter. With a war on they are looking for any excuse to put people away. You don’t know what kind of people are at those meetings.’

The kettle steam bubbled into the air as Sheila took another drag on her cigarette. Michael’s crime against society was to go to a private screening called, The End of Capitalism. A documentary that suggested armed struggle against all politics was the only answer to the current crisis. Michael wasn’t your average revolutionary, or even that political. He was quite apathetic, but there were so many things wrong today it was hard not to want to do something about it.

The problem was no one could be bothered to do anything about it. The film had shown him that there were three kinds of people in today’s society. The ignorant, that followed the government mantra whatever it was; the scared, who knew it was all lies but didn’t want to rock the boat; and those that stood up and fought for what they believed in. If you were the latter and engaged in anything considered slightly anti-government, then it was highly likely you would be imprisoned by the police for being a state terrorist.

‘It was just a film. A fucking film. They can’t get me for that.’ He took the cup of tea from Sheila and allowed the very hot cup to burn into his hands. The burning heat acting as some kind of penance.

‘And the mortgage, what the hell was that about?’

Michael looked away from Sheila and out the window. He wondered whether he could even trust her these days. She was sounding more and more erratic. She belonged to the second group, the scared.

‘These banks have stolen millions. Why should they suddenly give a fuck if I refuse to pay my mortgage? They can have it back as far as I am concerned.’

Not paying your mortgage was considered quite revolutionary if you were part of the anti-capitalism movement. They didn’t want society to recover from the current turmoil, but they wanted to use the opportunity to build a new society without politics, money, or control. It was considered a great sacrifice to the cause to just refuse to pay the mortgage and bring the system crashing down. The banks were aware of this, and in collusion with the government, could now force you to pay the bills or face imprisonment.

The phone rang and Sheila picked it up.

‘Yes he is here.’ She took a drag from her cigarette. ‘Sure I will let him know.’ She put the phone down.

‘Who was it?’ asked Michael.

‘The police,’ said Sheila.

‘Great. What did I get? Ten years for watching a film.’

‘They wanted to ask you some questions. Maybe you should just pop down the road and visit them. It will look better.’

Silence descended between them as they both nurtured their own thoughts.

‘Nobody pops down the road to visit the police anymore. At the meeting they said that people were being taken to correctional facilities where they were either forced into work camps, or forced to join the army.’

‘It’s just rumours, Mike. You’ve become to paranoid. This security is for our protection. The terrorists now have hold of nuclear devices; just look at Iran, the world’s gone mad.’

There was a knock at the door. Michael looked towards Sheila, and Sheila just smiled.

‘It’s Mark. I invited him over to talk to you.’

He breathed out a sigh of relief as he went through the living room to the front door. Mark was one of his best friends. One of the few people who could be trusted. As he opened the door he was met by the fearsome sight of the Anti-Terrorist Branch.

Long gone were the days when you were greeted by a tall blue hat, with a silver badge and a face that smiled. Now it was a black rubber mask with glass eyes, that reflected your own image back, and a rifle barrel that was pointed directly at your forehead.

Michael did what he wouldn’t normally do, and ran. Instinctively he went upstairs and into the small bedroom.

‘Stop now or we will shoot!’ screamed the officers as they swarmed into the house. He ran as fast as he could. Sheila stood terrified in the kitchen as officers photographed and scanned her details into the system.

As soon as Michael was in the bedroom he closed the door behind him, and dropped the cupboard onto the floor to block the door. He opened the window and climbed out, quickly jumping into the alley below. He could hear the shouts and screams as he jumped onto his bike and cycled down the alleyway and onto the small path beside the river. He was glad for his years as a conspiracy theorist. He had already thought of all eventualities. Within a few minutes he was already far away from the police, cycling down dirt tracks they could not reach.

After a few hours of cycling he got off his bike. He could see a motorway station up ahead with a field and a forest behind it. He threw the bike in the river just under a small bridge so it couldn’t be seen.

As he hid in the bushes, he could hear the drones passing overhead. It was one thing to have seen them on the news in Pakistan, or Iran, but to see them on your own turf was strange. At one point it seemed like the whole world was heading towards some happy place, and then boom it was like World War Three.

It was dark now, and the only sounds were of birds tweeting, and the river’s water flowing. Michael walked towards the petrol station to make a call. He figured he had a few minutes before he was tapped, and then he would have to run. He walked into the kiosk aware of the locations of the CCTV cameras and dialled the number. The phone rang a few times.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi Mark. It’s Michael.’

‘Bloody hell mate. I’ve had the cops round here asking all sorts of questions.’

‘I thought so, and I know I don’t have long but I had to call someone.’

‘It’s not safe mate and I have nothing for you. I suggest you go on a long holiday, a very long holiday. Now fuck off.’

He put the phone down, and looked around him. That was bad. He knew Mark well and he didn’t rattle easily. He needed to find an escape route quickly before the helicopters arrived.

Behind the petrol stations were a couple of lorries. He walked up to the rear of one. The signage said ‘Scottish Whiskey’ and he crossed his fingers hoping that it was heading up north. He looked around and pulled back the tarpaulin and jumped inside before the driver came back. Just as the truck driver started his engine he could hear the whirr of a helicopter overhead. The lorry drove off just in time.

Where he was going he didn’t know, but anywhere was better than home. He sat in the back of the truck, his head leaning against one of the whiskey barrels. He wondered what to do next. Whilst at one of the meetings he had heard of camps set up by activists. They were far away from cities, mainly near the coast around Wales and Scotland, places that were harder to reach. He had one more number left to call. A girl he had met at the meeting. Maybe she would know.

Michael fell asleep after a few minutes, exhausted. He woke up the next day with a sore neck, and daylight peeking in through the tarpaulin. The truck had stopped and the driver must have fallen asleep. He looked outside at the road signs which read ‘Stoke on Trent.’ He jumped out and went to the shop to buy some more food then went into the phone booth and dialled his last number.

‘Hello.’

‘I have to be quick. I met you at the meeting and you mentioned a great place to go for holidays.’

He hoped she would click. She did.

‘The Bay,’ she said briefly, and the phone went dead.

He went back inside the garage shop and checked the maps for Wales then went outside and started to thumb a lift.

By nightfall he had made his way to Colwyn Bay. The town seemed deserted. A lot of people had left for jobs in the cities. Most work had dried up since the collapse, and the only benefits that were left were tied in with ‘community jobs’ in the cities. This mainly meant next to nothing labour while working for large corporations. But who would question it. With a ‘war’ on, that old propaganda tool, ‘British Spirit’ was fully utilised to shame society into accepting the conditions, or else.

‘Is there anybody here,’ shouted Michael, but his words were kidnapped by the wind’s howl.

‘Is there anybody here,’ he shouted again, and a person appeared at the bottom of the street. He walked quickly down the street towards the person. She looked scruffy and dirty, wearing clothes that were too big for her. She looked terrified.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘My name’s Michael. I’m on the run and I heard there were camps here for activists.’

‘How can we trust you?’ she asked, looking intently into his eyes.

‘You can’t, and I can’t trust you. So we have to take a risk. What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Rebecca. Come with me.’ She turned and he followed her into the darkness.

He expected to find some band of fearless warriors ready to fight for justice but she acted like the war had been lost. The girl led him to a country barn and he knocked on the door. The door opened to an angry face.

‘Who the hell is he?’ asked the guy.

‘He’s running from the police.’

‘How the fuck do you know?’

‘We don’t. I just have to trust my instincts,’ said the girl. The man opened the door and allowed them both in. Michael walked into the barn and into a warm room. There were about fifteen people sitting around the house with a smaller group huddled around a fire. Some were watching a film on a television powered by a car battery. One person was strumming on a half-tuned guitar, ignored by the rest. The rest all looked at him with that look of dread in their eyes. This wasn’t what he expected but he did his best to appear hopeful.

‘So this is where the revolution’s at?’ said Michael with a half-smile. The man who appeared the strongest and most vocal came forward.

‘There’s no revolution here. There’s no revolution anywhere. We’re just trying to get by. We have enough food, and live a quiet life.’ He was surprised by the hostility levelled towards him.

‘I thought there would be some activist camps. You know trying to kill capitalism and change the world.’

‘We thought that too but the forces we are fighting are far too strong to fight. They’re evil,’ and the man turned away to watch the television.

Everybody went back to doing their own thing, and ignored him. He was baffled by their reactions. It was late and maybe everybody was tired. He would ask more questions tomorrow. He found himself a place and decided to get some sleep. The imperfect guitar sounds soothed his exhausted body as he fell asleep.

Michael woke up the next day with a cup of coffee in his face. As he sat up he noticed the room was empty except for the big guy. He sat up wondering where the girl had gone.

‘I’ve made you a coffee. We are all moving, and I suggest you do too. Stay away from the beaches. You are better off back home. You are better off pretending to be part of it all. Play the game, because you can’t win.’

‘I’m sure we can gather some people. There are many groups involved in London. It’s not all lost.’ said Michael.

The man looked at Michael again. It looked like he wanted to cry. He looked as if he couldn’t take it anymore.

‘Just stay away from the beaches,’ and the man walked out the door.

Michael sat there with his coffee feeling a little confused. He finished his drink and went outside. It was a windy but sunny day, and the sea was not more than five minutes away so he decided to stroll down the path towards the beach. As he walked down the path he noticed a body lying beside the path. As he got closer he realised the person was in fact slumped over as if he had just fallen asleep.

He tapped the body on the shoulder but he did not move. He pulled the man back, and saw the red hole on his forehead and Michael froze. He looked up ahead and saw that there were in fact more bodies. He felt the urge to run but what if some of them were still alive?

Michael walked farther down the path and closer to the sea. With each body he touched, his legs started to turn to jelly. They were all dead and with the same red hole in the forehead. He looked across the beach and froze with revulsion. Hundreds of bodies were stretched out across the sands on their sides as if they were trying to run somewhere. Just as he went to turn and walk away he heard a buzzing sound like a dragon fly, and out of the corner of his eye a black creature, or should he say a beast, came into view.

Shaped like a dragonfly, its metallic silver wings whirred in unison, as it hovered from left to right. It was a creature not born from evolution but made by the hands of man. He stared into its glass eyes and felt the miniature orbs scan him, and relay the data back to HQ somewhere.

Michael was hypnotised by fear as he observed the sleekness of the beast, stood transfixed at the great evolutionary leaps human beings had gone through to produce such technical sorcery.

A tiny smooth hole sat at the centre of the drone’s glass casing. A slight pfft was heard, and he collapsed to the ground. A single rivulet of blood dripped out of the hole in his head, as he lay lifeless on the ground, with a thousand other bodies. The drone scanned the beach for other signs of life, then zipped up two hundred feet, turned south, and made its way back to the City of London.

Shit Happens

The people of Planet Grey were a very fastidious and tidy lot. They liked to keep things clean, very clean indeed. In fact they insisted so much on all things being neat and tidy that they wiped out all forms of nature; trees, flowers, animals and insects, and then set about terraforming the entire planet with concrete, and painted everything grey. As if that wasn’t enough, they genetically modified their own DNA so they no longer had to shit.

That’s right, instead of shitting, they sweated. In buckets of course, which saturated the sheets they slept in, which of course was not acceptable, so they ensured the sheets were replaced every night and disposed of in the sea. The Great Big Dirty Sea.

It was a day like all the other days and the residents of Planet Grey remained in bed fast asleep. They no longer worked during the day because that was when the sun shone and they didn’t like the colour yellow. Although they never talked about why, deep down in their bones they knew the colour yellow reminded them of the past. Of a time when the planet teemed with colours and sounds, and wild untamed animals; and sticky insects.

As the sun was going down Janet started to wake up. She took the usual vigorous shower every day and exfoliated the best she could because ‘dead skin was an ugly sin’ or so went one of the many mantras that peppered the conversation of many a fine dining house in town. Janet got dressed in her usual grey tunic and went down stairs to meet with her boyfriend at the breakfast table.

‘Morning Matt.’ Said Janet.

‘Morning Janet.’ Said Matt.

They greeted each other by touching each of their palms and looking intently into each other’s eyes. A smile was not needed.

‘How was your sleep. Did you sweat much?’ Asked Matt.

‘Sure, buckets.’ Said Janet.

‘Did you dream about anything?’ Asked Janet.

‘The sacrifice. I’m really looking forward to it.’

‘I’ll never understand that custom. It is an ancient and barbaric practice.’

‘Of course it is dear but sometimes we need to be reminded of the past, and besides. It’s just a break from the monotony of it all. It’s fun.’

Considering the people of Planet Grey were a squeamish lot, it was surprising that they engaged in such violent and blood thirsty ceremonies.

Every month when the moon was at its fullest. All the residents from Quarter One would gather at the foot of a wooden stage while the Chief Moderator would drag out a screaming human being. The person was then strapped to a wooden cross and when all residents had their palms facing towards the moon, the Chief Moderator would drive a spike into the person, and the audience would applause until the person was dead. This practice had continued for many years and no one could even remember why they did it, but still they mimicked the ritual every month as if it were appeasing some unknown entity.

‘Sacrifice and sweat. Is that all we have to look forward to?’

Matt fixed Janet a look as if to say, don’t rock the boat. Things are good for us all. It’s safe here on Planet Grey. But Janet couldn’t help feel that something just wasn’t right with their world.

‘If you are having a mood issue then you should go for a boost, or work more, or take up another activity. Janet looked at Matt without a clue about how she felt. She just felt like this and knew that she had to take, or do, something to make her feel better.

‘You’re right. I’ll pop into the shop and get some extra pills, and maybe increase my work hours.’

As Janet walked down the streets she was struck by how horribly flat the world she lived in was. Her mind was filling with bizarre ideas of screaming, and dancing. Colours and music of the kind that had been banished from earth for years were ping ponging between the spongy grey masses of her hardly-used brain; a scream of yellow, a florid of steps, a deluge of oranges and blues.

Janet had to find a way to contain this craziness. Fear was rising inside her and she hurried to the medicine shop to buy some more drugs to take away the madness. After purchasing the drugs she swallowed two immediately and walked slowly back home waiting for the effects to kick in.

That night while the residents slept, a murmuring sound was heard from outside. It was like a loud whirring, buzzing sound, that was growing louder and louder as it drew nearer. Annoying sounds were considered a nuisance on Planet Grey, ‘Why travel around, when you can stay in town.’

‘Maybe we should call our friends and double check.’ Said Matt who was wide awake.

Matt tried contacting a few more friends but didn’t need to confirm anything because the ‘murmur buzzing thing’ was now sounding like a very loud poorly tuned cello. Still the residents of Quarter One refused to leave their houses in fear of what lay outside, and a communication was sent out from the chief moderator to stay in the house until night fall.

As the last rays of the sun quickly scarpered over the dull horizon and the delicious night time oozed its way across the land. The residents, at last, decided to go outside to see if all was clear.

They all tiptoed in comic fashion towards the open fields with a sense of weariness. As each one turned the corner, the first cries were heard.

‘It’s horrendous!’

‘Oh the horror!’

Matt wasn’t about to run. Janet certainly wouldn’t. Not with the neighbours behind them anyhow. With forced stern looks and ever widening eyes that formed creases on their brows. Janet and Matt turned the corner and looked.

The ‘thing’ stood one hundred metres high, and its head seemed to scrape the clouds above it. If you could call it a head. It had giant long hairy antennas that reached out even further into the sky and were covered in unclipped hairs. It had eight long arms that dangled by its side in a gangly manner. And those eyes, those many eyes that looked in all directions. Its body was a shiny brown and black and looked almost hard like plastic.

The ‘thing’ didn’t move. Just sat there. Waiting. A massive lump of ugly mass, littering the landscape of Planet Grey.

Some of the residents vomited at the site of it. Everybody else started to inch forward as the beast sat there swaying its bulbous shape.

The Chief Moderator had composed himself and returned to the scene to look at the beast. He approached Janet and Matt in a sidestepping fashion, doing his best to ensure fear did not register on his face.

‘What on earth is it?’ He asked.

‘It must have something for us.’ Said the Chief Moderator with ever growing confidence.

‘Normally things that have travelled this far come baring gifts.’

‘Chief Moderator. As representative of Quarter One you must go and engage with this beast.’ Offered Matt.

The Chief Moderator looked sheepishly around while everyone else looked back at him.

‘Fine. I will go and speak to the thing and see what it wants.’

The Chief Moderator, with the weight of the town behind him, reluctantly went to talk to the beast. He breathed in deeply and puffed his chest and pulled a face of defiance not seen since, well since whenever something had happened that required a face pulling of this kind. He walked until he was at the beast’s feet, and then tried his best to look at it, in one of its eyes.

‘Now look here dear fellow.’ He Shouted.

‘We keep a pretty tidy place here and we don’t like unclean things disturbing our planet. What is it you want?’

The beast just sat there. Swaying slightly. Its arms and tentacles billowing around, hopelessly offending the locals. He waited another five minutes then shouted again.

‘Now look here I’ve told you already.’ And then came a sound. A rumbling. The thing started to shake and so did the ground. The chief moderator stood back slightly but the rumbling and shaking became more violent and then came a giant.

‘PAAAARRRPPPP!’ followed by a, ‘FFFRRRRTTT!’ and another, ‘PARP!’ and the beast unleashed a foul smelling, utterly disgusting, never in a million years, or somewhere near that figure, seen, pile of SHIT.

The town’s residents were terrified and fell to their knees vomiting and puking at the horror they all had to witness. Never before had such atrocities been seen by so many. Janet and Matt were writhing in agony holding their noses. The Chief Moderator had joined the residents behind the building as nose pegs were handed out as an emergency measure. The beast now sat atop an enormous pile of poo like some unwelcome, rather muddied, alternative celestial visitor.

Clearly this beast brought the kind of gift no person would ever want, and certainly no wisdom. There was only one thing to do and that was kill the bugger. The residents started to chant.

‘Kill. Kill. Kill.’

‘Let’s kill the thing.’

‘It’s full of shit.’

Janet, Matt, and The Chief Moderator, with a few thousand angry residents carrying sharp handles, walked towards the foul smelling beast, chanting and cheering for its death. They arrived at the base of the poo on which the beast sat, and with one hand covering their mouths, and the other holding their spears, pulled back their arms and let the implements fly into it. One after the other the spears flew into the belly of the beast until it looked like a porcupine. When the last one had been thrown they all stood there while the humongous blob just swayed in silence.

Then little drops of rain were felt on the faces of the residents. They touched their faces and could see that it was blood, but the deep, dark, vibrant red colour seemed to shock them. Colour hadn’t been seen for a while in these parts. Maybe some dark ones were seen, but bright red pulsating colours, that seemed to force the irises of their eyes to magnify beyond the required necessity when living on a dull planet, had caught them by surprise. The residents didn’t run. They didn’t scream. They just kept looking at the rich smooth red that was now pattering onto their arms and legs.

The pitter patter of blood became a gush, as blood came spurting out onto the residents, and the body of the beast; and the shit on which it sat. Unexplainable broad smiles were wrapped around their faces as people started to dance and laugh. As more blood gushed from the thing, its body slowly disintegrated into the shit, until the pile of shit became a huge mound of red.

The sun was starting to come out and the residents were becoming weary from the inexplicable excitement that they had not felt for many years. The chief moderator suggested that everybody go home and try and sleep, and that maybe tomorrow they could discuss what had happened. So off they went home in an incomprehensible state of confusion.

Janet and Matt went home too, but they couldn’t sleep, no one could. They were intoxicated by each other’s skin that was now covered in blood. There was a bitter acrid smell that creeped into their noses and seeped its way into the brain. Janet and Matt touched each other, bit by bit, with only their fingers first. Then they gently played around between each other’s thighs. They were nervous like teenagers in their first rush of love. No one else slept that day in Quarter One and nobody waited until the sun disappeared before they went to the sacred mound, to gaze lovingly at the red and brown mound.

The following morning they all walked out while the sun was still shining, shielding the bright sharp yellowness from their eyes. People walked in communion as if they were all vibrating on the same energy pattern. Everybody went back to the mound. They all walked slowly holding each other’s hands staring at the sun but as they turned the corner they were shocked to see that from out of the mound a stupendous flower had now grown.

The flower almost blocked out the sun, so high it stood. The base of its stalk measured hundreds in width and the texture of the stalk had a shiny wetness that fooled the eyes into thinking it was flickering and pulsing, as if it were the skin of a newly born baby. The lustrous vivid green stalk grew several hundred metres into the sky, until the residents eyes met the first of six petals that hung over the landscape like the hem of a Mother’s skirt. And the colours, oh what colours, that did not only shine, but seemed to sing or hum their presence.

The people of Planet Grey just dropped to their knees at the sight of the flowers undeniable beauty. The flower radiated a powerful energy that washed through every cell, muscle and hair on the bodies of all these beautiful beings. Tears started to flow down their cheeks that almost blinded them, as the blood and shit was washed away from their skin and cleansed from the earth. As the sun went down they remained in silence waiting for it to appear again. The residents of this once dull planet were forever changed.

The flower had become their God, and the sun; its mighty benefactor.

The Irelefunt

The two brothers argued a lot. Alan was convinced that the sole reason for the mono-myth’s existence was to add meaning to an otherwise meaningless world, or put it in another way, people were bored. His argument was that the sole raison d’etre for the mono-myth was that people through time, irrespective of their cultures, and customs, needed to justify their existence by going on elaborate myth making journeys, so as to add purpose to a rather pointless and mundane existence. But Lawrence wasn’t having any of it.

As far as he was concerned life was teeming with meaning and purpose. His argument was that a sperm doesn’t causally swim towards the egg, stopping of for hash browns and coffee along the way. It doesn’t stop before the egg and think about returning. The sperm moves with purpose towards the egg. It knows its mission and ensures that its purpose is fulfilled. Lawrence would apply this to all human beings, in as much that we do have a purpose and a potential to fulfil it, even if it were just for us to become better people. Which means life has meaning.

Lawrence had decided to go on his Hero’s Journey. He felt the deep dark calling that wanted to lure him out of his everyday ordinariness and onto a journey of self-discovery that would challenge his deepest and darkest fears, so that he could return to the world a better man. And pass on that knowledge to other eager Hero’s.

Alan chose to stay at home munching Pringles and watching the Nature Channel.

‘Why carry coal to Newcastle’ was his motto. Alan would rather study esoteric literature from the safety of his own living room. He was convinced Lawrence’s literal journey was a waste of time and that the mono-myth was a psychological transformation that one could obtain without moving an inch.

While Lawrence sought solace in the mystical realms of India, chanting mantras with the Saddhus or whirling dervishes with the Sufi’s of Arabia. Alan went to the library and dug out dirty old leaflets on metaphysics and alchemy then returned to his couch to pop a few more Pringles in his mouth, while attempting to wrap his skull around Madame Ishrubb Utter, A German philosopher who believed that reality was a three-dimensional continuum, that when transcended could reveal the profound truths of dual-emptiness.

Alan hadn’t a clue what he was reading but the language appeared so exotic and profound, he was completely hooked. And so it went on until one day Lawrence was due to return, and bestow his ‘boon’ upon society. Alan was having none of it.

The door swung open and Lawrence sauntered in. His smile overlapped his face. His shoulders pulled back with more purpose than Alan could have ever mustered. Alan remained smugly stuck to the couch, hands and arms folded behind his head, a defiant pretzel. He had quickly hidden the Pringles and Malteser’s under the couch, and placed a few of his profound expositions across the living room floor for Lawrence to see. Master Eggarse’s ‘Meaningless Book on the Dual-Existence of Relative Emptiness’ looked towards the doorway, along with Tit Not Thans ‘All Mysteries Resolved In A Single Afternoon.’

‘I have returned Brother. And I hope you agree with me when I say, a little wiser.’

Lawrence winked and smiled at Alan, who just lay back on the sofa. His hands still folded behind his head.

‘Come in Lawrence. Don’t forget to wipe your feet on my GOD mat.’ Said Alan.

Lawrence looked down to find that Alan had actually gone to the effort to pay a firm, good money, to create a straw mat with the word GOD stitched into it. This made Lawrence very uneasy. While hardly a devout Christian, a lot of his purpose and drive were derived from his belief that the sole purpose for fulfilling our human potential was that it would bring us closer to god, and ultimately heaven. Not that he would call it heaven. He would use the word nirvana, or when feeling vague, would call it ‘some-thing’, as if it was a mysterious form of gas that ooeed and aahhed around the atmosphere just before you went to bed at night.

‘So what great knowledge is it that you have brought back with you? Please, bestow your boon upon me.’

Lawrence came into the living room and surveyed the room disdainfully.

Alan’s walls were covered with page three girls from the 1970s, or famous pop groups from the 1980’s. Clearly Alan was living in the past. Lawrence felt sorry for his brother and was worried for his future. Here was a man begging to be saved. Lawrence went down on his knees and started to say the ‘Bright White Light of Love’ mantra that had been given to him by a small tribe in Botswana. He mumbled his incoherent mantras while Alan watched with amusement.

‘Your words sound great Lawrence but with science advancing at an incredible speed and physicists on the precipice of understanding the dark matter that holds everything together. Do you really think that your quaint words that fall onto the living room floor contain any meaning, other than what you, and the people of Botswana, place on them?’

Lawrence hid his aggression behind his highly arched left eyebrow and looked up at Alan.

‘The very fact that I place meaning in the words, and that the people of Botswana have placed meaning in them, for a thousand years, gives them their power, and creates a world of power around them.’

‘Of course we did manage to get by before language was created.’ Said Alan reaching secretly under the sofa for a lost Malteser.

Lawrence spun round on this.

‘Yes, and it was a world of God, and beauty.’

‘Or a world of pain and suffering, as cavemen, and cavewomen roamed the streets all day looking for food. Killing things and trying not to kill each other.’

‘Ah, but as we learned to talk with our divinely created consciousness. We created a better world for ourselves. Built homes, made clothes, created stories around the fire; bettered ourselves and the world we lived in because it is an innate purpose hidden within us.’

‘Or we just created the wheel so we could run away from the tribes people that wanted to eat us, or created fire so we could make weapons to hunt and kill, and ultimately build castles to protect ourselves from extinction. What you see as advancement. Is just man protecting himself.’

Lawrence gave Alan one of those smiles Oprah would have given to a small child that had overcome an apparently insurmountable challenge, which these days involved managing to keep the fingers away from the twinkie jar. Everyone was a hero these days. Lawrence continued unabated with his tales of his times in India and Tibet and the great teachings he had perceived over there. Just as Alan was getting bored of the whole Lawrence journey thing a great roar was heard from outside.

Roar!

Alan and Lawrence looked towards the window unsure what the noise was. Maybe it was a military fly past. But again a violent roar was heard and then people started to scream.

Lawrence and Alan rushed to the window to see what was going on. They poked their heads outside the window and thousands of people were running away from something. A loud thudding sound was heard as if some ginormous beast had escaped from the zoo. And then came a loud booming voice that terrified the life out of Lawrence and Alan.

‘Tribble, fibble, fumble, trunt. I am the voice of the Irelefunt.’

Lawrence looked at Alan with a quizzical look. He had travelled widely and had seen many an exotic creature but had never heard of an Irelefunt. Alan, although not as knowledgeable in exotic creatures, had watched National Geographic three years straight, and he too had never heard of the Irelefunt. They went back to being terrified and bravely stuck there heads further out of the window.

‘Siffle, jiggle, bibble, phunt. Here I come, the Irelefunt!’

Lawrence and Alan’s eyes were wide with terror as the first foot came clumping around the corner. The foot itself was shaped like a duck’s foot but covered in hair and its legs were lizard like and chubby as its whole body came round. Apart from the legs it looked like an elephant but had a red trunk and yellow body. Its eyes were very large and cross-eyed and the ears ludicrously disproportionate to the rest of its body.

Lawrence and Alan ran back into the living room in a state of panic. Lawrence fell to his knees and pulled out his prayers beads repeating as many mantras as possible. Alan briefly thought about God but considered it a bit of a cheek asking for assistance at the last minute, which he was not about to do anyway. As a rationalist it was far better to call in the army, and blow the hell out of this absurd object.

Alan snatched Lawrence’s worry beads almost as a knee jerk reaction from not knowing what to do. They both trembled pathetically on the living floor.

‘We’re all doomed. The God’s have abandoned us, God has abandoned us.’

‘The only thing that can save us now is the good old US of A.’

The thudding came closer and closer until a giant blue eye measured itself across the window frame. Lawrence and Alan held onto each other tightly like two badly formed arguments at a University debate.

‘Irelefunt want to play.’ Said the comic monstrosity, and it put its hand through the window and grabbed Alan and Lawrence in one single swoop. It pulled them through the window and out into the world.

They both screamed with more terror than before, as it placed them both into its pouch. Then the Irelefunt made a massive cosmic leap off planet earth and into an unknown destination.

For what seemed like aeons, but was actually only twenty five minutes, they tumbled and fell through the darkest reaches of outer space, leaving their worlds behind them. Leaving their arguments back there, until they noticed a planet appearing in the distance looking not too dissimilar to planet earth.

Lawrence and Alan had fallen into a semi-trance like state but were now WAKING UP! Lawrence looked up at the Irelefunt’s big trunk and pulled on it hard.

‘Trinkle, tinkle, sipple,’

‘Oh never mind the bloody nursery rhyme.’ Said Alan, who was suffering from de-pringle-isation.

‘Where the hell are we going to?’

The Irelefunt suddenly spoke with great clarity and certainty.

‘I am taking you to a world where there is no religion, no spirituality, no esoteric teachings, no past and no future. It is not that these things have been banned. It is just that as you pass into this brave new world’s atmosphere your essence will naturally harmonize with the laws of this planet, and all defilements will cease to exist. At last you will be at one with yourselves. ‘

Alan and Lawrence jumped down onto the ground of this tranquil and blissful planet. Their minds were stunned by its radiant beauty. It was as if they had landed in the middle canopy of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. No religion, no war, no arguments; and no more uncertainty.

Alan and Lawrence looked at each other and for once they were thinking the same thing.

Utter Rubbish.

If the vacuous sincerity didn’t kill you, the lack of a decent shopping mall, good television and no music would. They both hopped back into the pouch of the Irelefunt and demanded to be taken back to Planet Earth.

Epilogue

It had been rumoured that Alan was now on the run in Brazil. He had offended a small tribe of warriors that had hidden in the amazon for hundreds of years. Alan knew that the God they prayed too was in fact one of the first Aga cookers ever built.

Just to prove it to them. He tried to whip up a quick Spanish omelette but the tribes-people were furious.

Lawrence was last seen wandering the high streets of Croydon, South London, mumbling his incoherent mantras. Everybody that looked at him thought he was mad. The Deities didn’t. He was one of their own. An urban light house shining the Bright White Light of Love mantra into the souls of those less fortunate than others. Offering hope in a hopeless world.

Reverse

Michael stared into the river watching the water flow and bubble as it traversed its course. He focused on his mirror image in the river. The gun pointed at his head wavered in and out of view as if a mirage. He then pulled the trigger. The only thing he felt next was a freezing cold feeling that engulfed his mind and body and then blackout. This was then followed by a different blackness.

He could feel himself fumbling around with his hands for his body but he could find nothing. It was as if he was swimming in air. His hands passed through his body each time he attempted to grab onto something. He then went into a panic and started to scream and scrambled around as if he was locked in some blacked out room.

Then came a blinding flash of light. And then a huge surge of energy that pushed him back, violently. Next he found himself on the river’s bank drenched from head to toe. Coughing for air. Sunlight invaded his sight and the sounds of dogs barking in the distance pierced his ears. He quickly stood up and stared at the gun. ‘Did he pull the trigger?’ He felt the wetness on his body and clothes as if to confirm that he had indeed fallen in. He noticed spats of blood on his shirt and remembered the bright light and the sudden push but he was confused.

He started to walk away as if nothing had happened. An old woman was beating a carpet outside one of the houses. A dog was yapping at the feet of a passing cyclist. Michael briefly glanced around the broken down Russian town wondering how on earth he had got here. Next he remembered the girl. He stopped. Thought of her body. Tried to block out his guilt and shame. The revulsion. He could see the wooden bridge ahead that he had crossed earlier and decided to head back to where he had buried her.

Michael could see the over-hanging tree where he had buried the girl. The long tail of leaves from the willow tree almost touched the ground, covering the place where she lay, as if complicit in the death. As he approached the mound over which he had placed the extra dirt he placed his hand outright as if he was some super-human character. His hand and arm started to shake. Michael himself was full of fear. It was as if his he was being struck by a bolt of lightning. The earth around the mound started to throw itself up and outwards.

Michael shielded his eyes with his other hand. He could see a hole starting to appear and then the dirt around the hole pile up high until it stopped. Michael walked over to the hole and could see the girl’s body as if she was asleep. It had only been this morning. So much had transpired since then. Michael raised his hand and after a few minutes the girl’s body started to jerk a little and then she gasped. The girl turned over and then reached for the top of the hole. She ran to a nearby tree like a frightened forest creature and then sat down pulling her knees up to her chest for protection. Her whole body was shivering as she started to take in the world around her once again.

Michael was sat on the floor looking at his hands wondering what was happening. He had been given another chance to live, but no soft-being, or bright white light explained things to him. Just a heavy push and a sense of duty to undo certain events. He felt like he was some twisted super-hero but his magic only worked in relation to this event. Deep inside he just wanted to return home. He scratched his head trying to recollect how on earth he got into this mess. He remembered the girl’s father. Her father’s misunderstanding when he saw them both lying there. And the knife he came charging forward with. A further struggle in which Michael used his gun thinking he was back in Afghanistan. Their screams of anguish and her pleas for help as she lay there bleeding and her father unconscious.

He walked over to the girl who by now had lapsed into some kind of catatonic state. He placed his hand on her shoulder for reassurance and she put her arms around him and held him tightly. Their relationship may have been a tentative one. Forged quickly through an online database that connected lost souls and disturbed minds in far flung places. Bringing together strangers desperate to escape poverty and misfortune.

Elga was only eighteen. Michael was forty five. Elga was alone and poor in a small town just outside Russia. There was no work for her father. Her mother had died during child birth and her father had taken to drinking. He would occasionally beat her and then cry with deep remorse afterwards. Her only escape was through the slow broadband link in the café down the road that connected Elga with a world of possibilities and the dating website allowing her to build a new identity and a chance to escape.

Michael was escaping for a different reason. He was trying to escape from the noise and images in his head. Gunshots and wounded terrorists. Nightmares that you couldn’t wake from. A future life of medication and mental uncertainty. He had been struggling since returning from Afghanistan. Diagnosed with PTSD. He had to leave town after being convinced that his friends were against him. He thought love would be able to heal him or offer him some brief respite to his mental misery. Take him back to the land of the innocence before he joined up. Before he fired his first shot.

They had both returned each other’s likes and winks. Then exchanged words. Hers in broken English. His words fired rapidly in desperation. A man in regression. Similar hobbies, and interests in music and food was enough. It was Michael who was willing to travel the distance hoping that the further he went away, the further away from his illness he could get. The part of his mind that would normally moralise the age difference was replaced with the burning excitement of love. A love so strong that it could medicate away his current predicament. Make him believe in a fantasy world that would last forever. Michael snapped back to the girl and the tree.

‘I don’t know what has happened but I should take you home. Your father will be worried.’

Elga was still in a state of shock. Her memories were still being slowly recalled. The recent ones of her embrace with Michael were still fresh in her mind as a positive experience. They both just held each other, eyes closed, not talking. Both believing that each of them were escape routes to better worlds. Michael’s escape from his troubled mind. Hers, a chance to cleanse herself of where she came from. The memories of her father’s struggle with Michael and the accidental gunshot were still buried deep in the psyche. They both stood up and started to walk back to Elga’s home. Michael was no longer bothered by her father. He had just escaped death and was intent on returning home. They approached the village where she had come from and walked towards her house. Elga opened the front door and went inside to find her father slumped down on the dining table. Not dead just drunk. They both stood in the sparse living room with the dust from outside floating in the bright stripes of sunlight that reached through the broken windows. Moscow was rich but most of Russia remained poor.

‘Will you stay?’

‘No. I have to return home.’

‘Will you be online?’

‘Of course I will. I’ll chat when I get back.’

They stood staring at each other wondering how on earth these two different worlds could collide so quickly in such a catastrophic way. But that’s how it went in this newly digitized world where every being was connected and the media turned minds into pharmacies that manufactured dreams as medication. Butterflies flapped their wings while the waves rolled quicker and faster across the internet. Michael grabbed a taxi to the nearest bus station and then took a bus to the nearest airport. After a few hours of waiting for flights he was back in that other world again. He felt as if he had just been transported to another planet for a thousand years and then beamed right back. The shops sold the same sweets. Chocolates near the till were at a reduced price. People queued impatiently checking their phones for unwanted downloaded messages. The boring minutiae of everyday existence.

Michael took the cab back to his house while trying to hold on to what had just occurred. A brief sojourn into madness. And then a gift from God. A chance to do good again. He walked upstairs to his bedroom and opened his bedside draw. Inside were his dog tags and prescriptions. The medication that reminded him that all was not good with him and may never be the same again. That sadness he still wore like a dressing gown. The emptiness. But he had been given another chance. And that was a good thing. He turned off his bed-side light and went to sleep. Hoping for a dream to wake up in.

Malcolm

Malcolm felt good. Malcolm at sometimes felt almost elated which was strange considering the terminal diagnosis. He had been battling with cancer for over twelve months now and had ticked of as much as he could from his bucket list. He had made his peace with family and friends and now knew that the next thing to happen was his death. But he didn’t want to die without answering one last question.

What happens after death? And how could he answer this question. Malcolm being a well-read scientific sort of guy wanted to find a way to answer this question and he had found one. A Professor in London was conducting research on speaking through thought for the severely disabled. This involved, in some cases, a paraplegic communicating by imagining ones and zeros in his mind which would be picked up by transmitters in the brain and passed through responders attached to a skull cap he would be wearing. The ones and zeros could be used like dots and dashes in morse code and then translated.

Michael’s family were not too happy about this as he was essentially turning his death experience into an experiment. It took a lot of persuading to get his family and loved ones to remain outside while he passed away and tried to communicate what he was experiencing.

Malcolm’s health had deteriorated considerably as he accepted his passing. His family were gathered around his bed and knew that when he passed his last breath, they would have to leave the room for a while.

Malcolm was apprehensive as he lay there. His body felt like stone and he would switch from hot to cold as his heartbeat seemed to get slower and slower. His vision seemed to move in and out of focus. Malcolm was still surprised at how peaceful he felt. Visions of white glows would appear in the outer edges of his sight. His family would zoom in and out of focus. The skull cap that he wore for the experiment started to feel heavy on his head as he started to fall asleep. He could hear the beeps and his family weep.

A rush of white seemed to cloud his vision as the slow beating of his heart became a loud drum. And then the outer edges of the bright whiteness started to turn black and he found himself almost being pushed into the universe and this enveloping blackness as Malcolm felt catapulted out of his body. His family started to leave the room while the scientific team waited for communication.

Malcolm said he would use morse code to try and think a message to the team, but Malcolm was consumed by the vastness of his experience. Along with the blackness came changing sounds. Volcanoes erupting. Rivers rushing. Whole mountains pushing up from the ground. And the view oh the view. It felt like tears were streaming through his soul as he tried to comprehend the greatness of his experience.

Dot Dot/Dash/Dot Dot Dot

I         T        S

Dot Dash/Dot Dash Dot Dot/Dot Dash Dot Dot

A         L               L

Dot Dot Dot/Dash Dash Dash

S           O

Dash Dot Dot Dot/Dot/Dot Dash/Dot Dot Dash/Dash/Dot Dot/Dot Dot Dash Dot/Dot Dot Dash/

B                E    A       U            T     I       F                U

Dot Dash Dot Dot.

L

Who are we?

John woke up. It was half past nothing. He knew what the time was but what was the point of time. John was trapped in time. Caught between the meaninglessness of it all and the need to find meaning within the meaninglessness. The sun shone through the windows, again. The same bird that appeared on his windowsill, every day, appeared again, like an endless re-run of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

He opened his window and spoke to the bird. The bird had such a sense of confidence that it did not move. In fact, it continued to cheep right in his face.

‘Cheep. Cheep,’ went the bird.

‘Fuck you bird,’ said John.

John did not move and neither did the bird. John admired the bird. Not visually but literally as it cared for nothing in this world. At that point it flew up and circled around a few times more than birds usually did as if it was showing off.

‘I know. I know. Look at me I’m so free.’ He closed the window just as his girlfriend walked in.

‘Good morning honey. It’s a beautiful day don’t you think?’

She emphasized the ‘don’t you think’ bit knowing it would wind him up. She was one of these endlessly cheery types whose glass was always half-full. To which John would always respond by drinking the contents of whatever was in her glass out of spite. Now that drew him pleasure.

‘Now it’s empty.’ He would say. He took pleasure in seeing the miniscule look of disappointment on her face, but she would retaliate with a big kiss, and ‘I love you John.’

And John would find it hard to bury his happiness and joy at being with such a beautiful woman.

‘I’m surprised you’re not a Christian. How can an atheist be of such a cheery disposition knowing full well the finality and pointlessness of it all?

Jenny got up and grabbed her jacket. ‘And you the spiritual seeker caught up in an endless paradox of seeking. Unable to enjoy any of it.’

She pulled on her jacket and grabbed her satchel. John smiled within himself and a surge of, ‘dare he say’ love, rose within himself, and he sighed, but only to the side. She went to leave the bedroom ready to go to work, and he knew what she was going to say. And she said it.

‘Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses on your way to work.’

How the hell did she manage that every day. He tried not to think too much about who he would see today. He had been counselling for over fifteen years and he had heard about every tragedy possible and every whine possible. Keeping a smile on his face was what he had to do. It was understandable that when he got home his default mood would be abject misery while Jennifer went to work and did creative stuff. He too grabbed his coat and headed off to work.

It was a cloudy day. John stood and observed the clouds. He looked for funny animal shapes but couldn’t discern anything. He nearly found one that looked like a whale but looked again and saw a rabbit. He walked to the bus stop trying his best to notice his surroundings. The houses were a mixture of prefabricated dwellings that were unashamedly American Dream suburbia.

They admittedly bought theirs when they were both in the early throes of love. As if the purchasing of a property would somehow cement, seal, and make definite their love. John had avoided marriage so far knowing full well that would be the end of their love. Jennifer disagreed. Marriage was what nurtured the love and made it sacred even though she did not believe in God. John disagreed stating that love can only exist without boundaries and confines. It had to feel free. But maybe his love and her love were two different things.

John noticed a flower growing on the ground by the bus stop. He wondered about the flower and its purposeless existence. He dreamed himself as a flower growing towards the sun. The seed taking root. The root shooting up out of the earth. The petals unfurling, reaching towards the sunshine. Feeling the warmth of the sun. Feeling the rain. Being the sun. Being the rain. He imagined other people passing him by and marvelling at his flower beauty.

‘If only we were all flowers’, he thought to himself.

‘Maybe we are all flowers’, he thought again.

The End.

Thanks for reading my short stories. As a writer I have struggled for recognition while dealing with two mental health breakdowns. Not to draw sympathy but just to say please leave a donation and share if you like. Thanks David