Irenic

She tried to talk to one of them. And she failed, again. They don't know how to listen. Instead of silent understanding she faced unnecessary advice. She wanted to scream at that face, a long, continuous sound so powerful the skin on the face would ripple. She's not one to thrive on self-proclaimed irenic words. They're an insult to her. They make her feel small and angry. As the patronising suggestions were gradually belittling and replacing her heartbroken disclosure, she felt like she was outgrowing her own body, her strength stretching beyond the boundaries of her flesh, her fury escaping the cage of her mind. Where she was expecting comfort she only found shrouded antagonism. The longer the face was wearing that phony benevolent smile, the faster the shadows in the corner of her eyes were moving. She made the decision on the spot. She had to leave, go as far away as possible from the bars of the others' thoughts.

Hélène L.

*  *  *

Canadians pride themselves on their grasp of, and use of, irony. They think this sets them apart from their American neighbours and defines them as a nation. I would like to argue – no, wait. That would be impolite – I would like to put forward the notion that it is not a well developed sense of irony that makes Canadians distinct but their tendency towards irenic negotiations. (Now that’s ironic, eh?)

Kelli B.

Animalcule

He placed the pebble of amber under the microscope.

- Is it the thing shaped like a trumpet? she asked.

He briefly looked her in the eye before staring back at the fossil. 

- How on earth could such a thing exist? It doesn't make any sense. It would negate life. If it were activated, it would be the end of the world. It's beyond my understanding: if this animalcule really could do what you claim it can do, we wouldn't even be here to ponder about it. It would have eradicated life on earth. Or at least life as we know it. We would have evolved in a different way.

He grabbed it and watched it roll in his hand.

- You should destroy it, she said.

The small ball settled in his palm. He closed his fist on it. He took her hand and placed the future of the human race in it, pushed her fingers over it as if to nestle it, then covered her fist with his hands.

She didn't say no to the question he never asked. 

Hélène L.

*  *  *

Materfamilias

His clock was still ringing in his ears by the time he reached the turnstile. He caught his jacket pocket in it, and it ripped, sending all his loose change jingling off the floor. He awkwardly bent over, intending to pick the copper coins up, but changed his mind: it would congest the flow of morning travellers if he did so, and he wasn't the type of man who disrupts the way of the world.

 He quickly took his place back in the stream, a little flushed by the embarrassment, and made it just in time for the sliding doors to close on his satchel. He freed it as he imagined all the passengers' eyes looking at him disapprovingly. The turnstile incident must have put him out of sync with his own rhythm, making him skip a beat in the repetitive and monotonous score of his life. 

When he got to his workplace, the revolving doors looked threatening to him; he even thought of waiting until he would be the only person wanting to get in, but it would have meant being late for work, and he didn't like being late for work. He followed the accountant from the third floor as she stepped in and got unfortunately stuck in the same partition as her. She laughed; he didn't. 

He slowed down as she dashed to the paternoster lift: he didn't want to be stuck with her in one of its compartments. He hated that thing. He kept fearing he was going to be caught in its drive chain some day. 

But more than the paternoster, he feared the cleaning woman. And there she was, in the staircase, her matronal figure hammering a mop in a bucket. The rest of the staff seemed to see her as a benevolent materfamilias; to him, she was the combined embodiment of all the women who had persecuted him during his life. It was the way she looked at him. She despised him. He was despised by a cleaning woman. 

He stared at the marble floor. He felt even more trapped than usual. He thought of killing the cleaning woman. He pictured himself hammering the mop in her face again and again and again. He pictured himself being jailed for it. He wiped these thoughts away and pictured himself leaving the building, jumping on a train to anywhere but here, building himself a new life where nobody would know him so he could become the person he thought he was meant to have become by now. 

Instead, he entered the paternoster, as usual, because he just wasn't that type of man.

Hélène L.

*  *  *

10 words: Last Wish and

bread, dead, release, pursuit, serial, solicitor, haircut, pursuit, expression, haircut, developing, metric

LAST WISH

To whom it may concern,

I, the undersigned, Reginald Bread, appointed solicitor to the Vital Baboon's trust fund, would like to ask for the permission to release Mr Baboon's ashes over his beloved duck pond on the behalf of the family of my dead employer. After a lifetime spent in the pursuit of developing a type of haircut that improved hair growth with substantial metric records, I believe it is a reasonable last wish coming from a man without whom baldness wouldn't have been eradicated. Mr Baboon's family see it as an expression of respect towards our nation's capillary saviour. You may find the serial number of Mr Baboon's urn attached to this request. 

Very Truly Yours,

Reginald Bread

Hélène L.

*  *  *

10 words: Tulip of Destiny and Mirror, Mirror

birth, frighten, sugar, blinis, cold, riverfront, cage, swinging, yew, Hermes.




TULIP of DESTINY

 

The shape of a hand pushes against the film of a shower curtain, grabs hold of it and pulls it aside with a theatrical flourish. Tonight’s dress rehearsal had already created quite a buzz in creative circles for its swinging new style. Hermes (the owner of the shower curtain hand) came late to ballet. He was twenty one before he took his first lesson. Being chosen from the dozens of others who auditioned for the show was a testament to his determination and tireless training, as well as his natural ability. He must have had it since birth. He has no idea where it came from as his parents lacked the rhythm to clap their hands in unison, let alone the inclination to dance.

Hermes was the type of child who was always fidgeting and getting in trouble for it. He found it impossible to sit still and was labelled as a trouble maker for his constant twitching and wiggling. His behaviour frightened the teachers. Naturally, they assumed he was high on sugar. They locked him in a cage and implored him to choose a respectable career, like flipping blinis at the local diner or weaving baskets out of yew. The trouble was, although these jobs were extremely well paid, they left him feeling cold. Hermes knew this wasn’t the type of work he was destined for.  

After school he took a job as a Postman. He enjoyed the physical aspects of his job: walking a route, running up and down stairs in blocks of flats, carrying the heavy sacks and packages. But Hermes knew being a Postie was not his calling. It was a temporary stop gap between that and his real career. One morning while walking his favourite route along the riverfront, he saw a ballerina poised on a rock just a little ways out from the shore. She stood balanced on the tip of one toe with her back leg extended high behind her and her arms reaching up to the sky. He thought she looked like a tulip with it's petals bent towards the sun.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

MIRROR, MIRROR

The water is swinging as he stares at his own reflection, shifting from flat to concave as if it had a pulse. It's just his heart pumping his blood so fast in excitement affecting his eye sight; but he doesn't know that. He's so beautiful. He stands by the riverfront, naked, overpowering himself. He's captured by the gaze of this familiar stranger in the water. Nobody has looked at him like that before. It frightens him a bit; he feels challenged, it turns him on. And, to him, it turns the stranger on too. He's never wanted to touch a body more than that stranger's body. It seems that every moves he thinks, the other man does, as if he could read his mind. He tries to think of a move without doing it: the man stays still and keeps staring him in the eye.

He stands back and looks around him. Stones, yew, trees. He licks his lips and tastes the tangible sugar of honey. 

He's drawn back to the man. He is as aroused as he is. He runs his hand to his groin, hoping  the stranger would do the same, and, as expected, he does. He touches himself the way he would want to touch the man. The feeling of communion is overwhelming. Complicity and rapture draw a smile so pure on their faces. They trip as they peak, and fall towards each other, becoming one for ever in a cold christening. The sun sets in mourning, then rises in remembrance, gilding the delicate petals of a flower born out of ecstatic dew. 

The woman closes her notebook and cages it in her Hermes bag. She looks at the plate of untouched blinis, and feels thankful for the inspiration they provided.

Hélène L.

Premonish

“Listen now and listen clear for I only gonna to premonish if you is prepared. If you is hearing as well as listening. For hear me now, this is for true, these are the End Days. Times like these a vision can be glimpse and vanish. Forgotten. And then ain’t no use to nobody. Secret ‘pon secret get filed away in a teeny tiny space, like a capsule waiting for a drop of water to expand into scandal and gossip. Times like these memories clutch together to keep warm as age forget them. Right now a memory crawling along the wall of this here room. It twitching round the edges like some nocturnal creature waiting for dark so it be protect from prying eyes. It like a cat hiding, wedge between the sofa and the wall. Or it like some rat lookin’ for a gap to squeeze through. It just goin’ along like anything that don’t want nobody to be seein’ it before it ready –”

Interrupted. Train of thought derailed and thoughts jumble into blankness. Clean as the unwritten page and as unsullied as an idea before it is spoken. The room vibrates with the weight of expectation and anxiety. Everything has been stirred up into a cloud of anticipation and nothing is clear. The walls change colour as thoughts bounce off the surface at high velocity: green, red, blue and orange; each one leaving behind a faint impression, like a map drawn in the sand. The floor starts to tremble and falls away into a pile of dust and ashes.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

She premonishes them. She knows it's pointless, they never believe her. They can't believe her. And all that comes out of her mouth is premonition. All she does is foretelling. She can't talk about the past or the present: she's stuck in the future. Everything bores her, she never gets surprised: she already knows the outcome of every single thing that's going to happen. It's so frustrating. She knows how and when people are going to die when she meets them, and there's nothing she can do to stop it. Her words have no effect. She finds no pleasure in life anymore: there's no anticipation, no yearning, no craving. Her existence is just a never ending parade of spoilers. The only thing she doesn't know is when the hell that she calls her life is going to end. Maybe it's because the bastards who granted her wish of precognition made her immortal. That's the kind of crap these in-breds would find amusing.

Hélène L. 

Epigamic

HIPPY: Dude that jacket is, like, totally epigamic.

PUNK: You calling me a fuckin’ pouf? Coz I’ll pound your fuckin’ face in!

HIPPY: Chill, dude. I’m saying it’s, like, an outward manifestation of your virility.

PUNK: Too fuckin’ right it is. You like someone fuckin’ puked out a rainbow.

HIPPY: Ace, man. Rainbows rock.




Kelli B.

*  *  *

She screamed her own name as he fucked her. He found it oddly epigamic. Suddenly monogamy didn't sound so bad.

Hélène L.

Bushwhack

Marcel preferred to think of himself as ornamental gardener. He had more than a BTEC under his belt and wasn’t shy about modeling his own work. When asked how he managed to sculpt with such precision he would reply with obvious pride, “I have a very flexible spine.” 

But Marcel was bored with his work at the beauty salon. His clients were housewives, young professionals and students who believed a regular trim kept their husbands faithful or their boyfriends interested or, if they were single, that it would give them enough confidence to get laid. Most of them weren’t adventurous. He was tired of Brazilians, Californians and the ubiquitous Bikini. His skill was going to waste, his art deserved a wider audience. Marcel had a vision. One day he would gather together enough performance artists to stage a gallery opening. Each actor would stand on a plinth, like classical Greek statues, so his work could be viewed at the correct eye-level. It would be a glorious moment. Then, maybe then, his father would stop calling him a Bushwhacker.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

A bushwhacker muttering about a girl in a grey dress marched past the convoy of comedians. They were heading to the next spring fair, where they were hoping to please the crowds and their starving bellies. But there wouldn't a fair expecting them in that village. Instead of an audience, there would be a mournful angry mob who would feed them to the crows.

Hélène L.

Purlieu

I wandered tired and alone to the purlieu of my mind. There I found a gnarled mass of fears which barred the way. Like Theseus, I had with me some string and the confidence that I would make it unscathed to the other side. I should have known better, for my string was merely a filament of pride and easily broken.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

I found her in the purlieu. He had laid her down in a bed of wild flowers, straightened her dress and crossed her hands on her chest. I say he, could be a she, even a they; I don't know. I don't think anyone will ever know. Whoever did it had put a lot of care into it. Almost some reverence. Her little face had turned gray, a pearly kind of gray, so similar to the silk of her pretty dress that she looked like these statues I had seen in the candlelit basements of their churches.

 I couldn't resist the morbid impulse to touch her cheek. It was cold, and slightly sticky. I didn't press hard; I was too scared to leave a mark. I wondered where her colours had gone. Did they dissolve into nothingness? Did the person who laid her there take them away? As I looked at the flowers around her, I thought they seemed to look a bit brighter than the ones further away. Maybe the red that once lit her cheeks, the gold that had once shone from her hair, had diffused into the ground.

 I thought about going to the village and telling them about the girl. But I couldn't move. I just stood there. Suddenly, I couldn't think anymore, only feel. All the emotions available to mankind had started pouring into me, mixing into an incontrollable force. What came out of my eyes didn't qualify as tears as the flow was so strong. I felt out of touch with my own body as it started laughing, shaking, breathing faster, unable to cope with the contradictory overspill.

I sat down in a half fall, rested on a trembling arm. I could see my blood pulsing in the veins of my hands. I noticed I had drooled all over my shirt. As my thoughts were gathering themselves, it came to my mind that no one alive had ever made me feel like that. It was the sudden understanding of my own death that I had just faced. 

I stood up and brushed the grass off my trousers, a vacant reflex. I couldn't go back to the village. I could only go forward.

Hélène L.

Dandle

"Dandling the secretaries used to be the best part of this job. Willingness to ride the Knee of Success was a useful performance indicator. It aided stratigic growth and directly incentivised positive momentum. Those with a competitive edge were quick to spot the low-hanging fruit and exploit their potential to spearhead future applications."

"Sexual harassment my ass!"

Kelli B. 

*  *  *

As above him I dandle [iron
wringing] I exhale

blurry petals from a dandelion.

Hélène L.

Incommodious

Of all the shoe fetishes, 

the three-inch golden lotus 

is the most incommodious.

 Image: Beverly Jackson

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/thebook.html

Kelli B.

*  *  *

- Where's the main water tap? 

- Well, it's very difficult to reach it, I'll show you, it's incommodious.

- It's in a drawer?

Hélène L.

10 words: Spiral of Shame and A brightening Sun

 spiral, hello, yellow, speaker, apple, thumb, brighten, hold, pin, turn.


SPIRAL of SHAME

Georgina pawed through her handbag wondering why she could never recognize the items in there by touch alone. I’d never be able to cope if I went blind, she thought. Something hard, taught and round found its way between her thumb and forefinger. Apple. She shoved it aside and continued to rummage. Where is my wallet? GoddamnwhycanIneverfindmywallet? She caught hold of something long, slender and cool to the touch. Keys.

“Sorry” she muttered to the saleswoman who was being forced to keep up a stiff smile of politeness. This was met by more glib smiling. I’ll bet she thinks I’m a right twat. Oh, god! I’ve become one of those women who can never –

“Sorry, I know it’s in here somewhere…” Georgina gave her bag a 180 degree turn and wrestled it up onto the counter to get a better look inside. Crumpled napkins, plastic cutlery, empty gum wrappers, loose change, the apple – again. With a sigh, Georgina upended her bag and shook it’s contents onto the counter.

Ker-THUNK

A yellow dildo. GASP!

The expression of the sales woman visibly brightened, her smile now genuine.

There was a pause the size of a pin before Georgina snatched the dildo and crammed it back into her handbag along with handfuls of other debris. She could feel her knees weakening, her body spiraling downwards unto the grubby carpet tiles. She could hear a voice, faint and muffled, like someone had thrown a duvet over a speaker. It said, Hello? Georgina? I think your wallet is in your pocket.


Kelli B.

*  *  *

A BRIGHTENING SUN

I am sitting by my window, staring at the busy street corner but looking at my own thoughts. Then I catch sight of my hands, resting on my lap. My big, manly, robust hands. The chipped black varnish and the flaky tips of my nails. The inflamed flesh around them, the cracked cuticles, the never healing cuts.The numerous lines, like rippling spirals spreading from my knuckles; an aging sign.

I can't remember how it feels like to hold somebody's hand. I intertwine my fingers, as I used to do when I had someone's hand to hold, I look at them, those lonely powerful hands, and I feel sad for them. I start stroking my left thumb with my right, as if to say, there, there,  it's all right.

A red light. Then green. As a car pulls away, its speakers leave a trail of "Yellow" by Coldplay. I try to wash it out of my head, but it gets replaced by another one of their songs: "a warning sign".

Uniformed youths gather by the crossing, carrying polystyrene boxes of death. One of them kicks the apple that fell from under his elbow; I twitch as the innocent fruit rolls under the wheels of a car. 

I stretch my left arm up until I feel pins and needles. I hold by bloodless, numb left hand in my right one. It feels like the cold hand of a dead person. My hugging hands look like they're silently sealing my solitude.

An open roof double decker turns from the main road. Tourists wave hello. I wave goodbye.

Hélène L.

On the Edge of the Big One

Kelli's word for H5l5n5: Simon, singer, open, lot, wicked, jungle, carve, slimmer, junk, awkwardly.

The singer carves the notes in the air, and for a moment, as the words curl around him like smoke, forgets he's never made it. The waitress, who thinks her life would have been different had she been slimmer, opens a bottle of champagne she will never be able to afford. The guy everybody knows as Simon, even though his name is Pete, or Pat, nobody really knows or cares, is looking for his past at the bottom of his beer. All that lot flocked to the jungle hoping to rid their despair; but all they found was junk, as they failed to dare. They're not wicked, just tainted: along the way, someone forgot to care, as they awkwardly fell, in a hell they unknowingly shared.

Kind of inspired by Billy Joel's "Piano Man". Wasn't listening to it, just came to my mind as I wrote the first line.

The Big Sleep

Kelli's words for H5l5n5: spinach, lump, ring, wrath, simple, juggernaut, pumpkin, gibberish, found, flan.

She pours a glass of wine to wash the man right out of her head. It shines like the gold of her ring, as a sweet, thick, syrupy nectar would; only it's bitter and dry, like her thoughts. Now, every time he smiles at her, it's as if he had spinach on his teeth. That fucking smile. The spinach had always been there, she just refused to see it. There are so many things she refused to see. She's wondering how many things in her life are tainted with invisible spinach. It's not that she found something out that changed everything. She can't point out the exact moment when her eyes opened. Did it happen gradually? Is it the same process that people who find God go through? So many questions running through her head, and she can't be bothered waiting for her brain to suggest some answers. She doesn't give a fuck about the answers. They would only be shape-shifting gibberish anyway. She remembers catching herself having hateful thoughts about him over the years. Like that time they went to an Italian restaurant and he ordered panna cotta. That suits him, she had thought. Flan. A flaccid, gormless lump of flan, that's what he is. And since then, every time he'd been above her, his sweat dripping on her bored face, she'd thought of the plate of shaky panna cotta.

She enjoyed the wrath for a while. The wrath she was directing at herself for being with him. At least it was an emotion. A simple, raw emotion. But being a juggernaut to herself didn't lead her anywhere. Like a dog running to bite its own tail, she ran out of energy

and dropped into inertia.

If only she could have been like a pumpkin plant, able to fertilize herself. Poor child, she thought as she swallowed the pills.

Infinity plus 1

H5L5N5's words for Kelli: marble, hairy, snake, softly, nature, Napoleon, nebulous, carnage, lullaby, hard

From the depths of the nebulous carnage a guttural note, hard as marble, shot to the surface with a CRACK!

From Napoleon's position on a faraway hillside, the sound filtered through his dreams as a lullaby sung softly by a hairy snake. 

Freud, not yet born, absorbed this knowledge deep within the nebulous carnage of the universal subconscious.

And so on to infinity.

Simon says

Simon says: Wash your hands.

Simon says: Re-use plastic bags.

Simon says: The peach is an abstraction of lewd animal urgency and desire which must be avoided with all the willpower at man's disposal lest he lose his way in this life.

Credit where credit is due: The photo for this post is not my own. Thank you bentoyumm I hope you don't mind my use of your image!

Your words: tinker, thinker, stinker, sphincter, most, boast, ghost, host, lilac, azure

Self-help

My assignment given by Kelli:
Your character has just won £8 million. Everyone and their dog now wants to be their friend. How do they cope with their new wealth?

- Isn't it the guy who wan £8 million you just served?
- Aye. He comes in all the time. He's always buying the same book in several copies that he asks me to giftwrap for his "friends" who are after his Johnny.
- What book is it?
- "How to cope with rejection."



Kelli's assignment: 5 children from Norway go to Eurodisney.

The Penguin

The 10 words from Kelli :
lift, Frankfurt, open, clamber, penguin, dim, jigger, brazen, poach, whistle.

"Who the fuck are you?" he says, staring at the mirror. The frustrated anger and the despair lift his brow in a chaos of conflicting lines; his brain feels like it's been poached.
He hears a disembodied voice telling him to go back to his seat. As he opens the door, a turbulence sends him flying (as well as the content of one of the passengers' coffee cup) across the aisle. The sudden pain in his thigh as he crashes on an armrest takes his mind off his introspection for a moment.

He unscrews the miniature bottle of alcohol he stole off the trolley on his way to the toilets (yes, he could have asked for it, it's free after all, but the staff on the flights to Frankfurt always terrify him) and swallows its jigger as he dives back in his inner thoughts, losing his eyes in the cottonwool sea.
He hums himself a tune to the brazen roaring of the reactors; something his dad used to whistle when he was a child eating cloudberries back in Maine.

What is he doing with his life? when and where did he lose track of what he really needed? Five years ago, the first time he was sent to Frankfurt, he had thought: that's it, I'm quitting, that's not what I want to do with myself, I deserve better. And there he was, on his way to Frankfurt again, hating himself for having become that numb shadow of a human being.

As the plane clambers above the winds, he sinks deeper into bitterness.

He looks inside his wallet. Look at that, he thinks; there's nobody close enough to my heart that I would carry their photo with me. Just credit card receipts and an old coupon for a meal for two for the price of one from a restaurant he has nobody to take to. And an out-of-date condom.

But it has a penguin on it, he thinks with a dim smile.


10 words for Kelli: abstraction, willpower, peach, life, Simon, bag, desire, animal, urgency, lewd.

Blue Eye Surprise

That can't be right... It must be the horrible light from that energy saving bulb. But if the light from the bulb is orange and my eyes are green, that wouldn't make a blue reflection, would it?
With toothpaste dribbling down my chin I lean in for a closer look turning my head from side to side to see if the colour changes from green to blue like an object in a hologram changes from one thing to another. No change.
Did I get coloured coloured contacts by mistake? No don't be stupid you would have noticed that. Wouldn't I? No, I'm sure I would notice something like that. Maybe you need some more natural light. Try the living room - and wipe that toothpaste off your chin.
I grab my compact and examine one eye then the other in the cool light of the north facing window. Still the same. My eyes are now blue.
this is bizzare. Should I panic? Is there reason to panic? Should I see the doctor? the optometrist? Am I going colour blind? Maybe I'm imagining things. Look in the mirror again.
Nope, still blue.
Ok. This is officially weird...maybe they'll change back tomorrow. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? More ridiculous that them changing from green to blue in the first place? Ok, ok, ok! Enough! I now have blue eyes. They might even suit me. Come to think of it I could do with a change. You should dye your hair blond! Blonds have more fun, right? Especially blue-eyed ones! NO, don't dye it. What if it doesn't suit your skin tone? Then you'd be walking around looking like a idiot for months. I could get a wig! Just to try it out. The shop downstairs should be open by now... I knew living above a wig shop would come in handy some day.


10 words:
lift, Frankfurt, open, clamber, penguin, dim, jigger, brazen, poach, whistle

Scalding!

Riccardo polishes steaming baskets of cutlery straight from the dishwasher. His hands move in a staccato rythum while his eyes remain fixated on the man at table three. He has ordered today's special - Beef in allegro marinade, flown in specially from Paris Tennessee with a side of seasonal vegetables and mashed potato. His suit looks plain and well worn, his tie a mish-mash of ostentatious reds and oranges swirled around and spat out onto cheap polyester. Riccardo picks up his tenth butterknife and rubs it gently, suggestively. He would love to dote on table three but the man has company; a sharp nosed woman dressed from head to toe in plum. Her hair colour, eyeshadow and lipstick, skirt and blazer, blouse and tights, shoes, handbag and nailpolish; everything in more or less identical shades. Riccardo thinks she looks looks a jar of prunes, obviously over compensating for her marginal personality. The pair pause their conversation while their plates are placed in front of them. Riccardo notes that the woman has conservatively ordered the pasta primavera. His attention shifts back to the man who is removing his tie and draping it over the back of his chair. Riccardo's imagination flits to a fantasy involving the man at table three, his tie, a bedpost and a damn good spanking. Riccardo takes a deep breath and governs his strength to keep the tingling in his groin from becoming a full-on errection and grabs another scalding knife from the cutlery basket.