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Not only that, you’ll get new stories as I write them. That’s about one a week, at the moment.
And they’re more fun to find in your in-box than more ‘BUY MORE STUFF!’ messages too.
I sold my face to an investment consortium from Denmark.
Now if I feature in a viral meme or wander into the background of a film, they get a cut of the royalties.
My body went to a group of doctors, so they get dividends on medical breakthroughs which use my cells for research.
Nike got Mon-Fri advertising. I’m still looking for a buyer for weekend shirtfront.
I thought I had everything worked out, until my sister said “You selling your soul too?”
She’s got a point. I can probably start a bidding war between the vicar and the Scientologists.
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
The world was dead, just rocks and dust. Katherine Jacobs, Planetary Vanguard Team Lead, removed her helmet and took a tentative breath.
Clean. Her team opened visors, letting the air in.
“You don’t get an oxygen atmosphere without life… so where is it?”
Bzzzt.
“What was that?”
Something mosquito-like landed on Katherine’s cheek.
“Aah! It bit me!”
She slapped it away as her skin began to dry out.
The blanket of dust shivered as thousands of the bugs emerged.
“Guys,” Katherine said. “I think we should – ”
She was cut off as the swarm descended.
Bilious billionaire Howard Barge’s last words to his maid were: “Hands off the mahogany you worthless piece of shit!” which is possibly why the fates saw fit to reincarnate him as his own colostomy bag.
Somehow still able to see and hear, he experienced every last second of the final weeks of his life, all over again. Every time his old self spoke, he felt weighed down with more filth.
Not that this taught him humility. Expecting another death as the maid flushed him away, he resolved to spend his next body spreading more misery.
Alas, Howard. Plastic doesn’t degrade.
She couldn’t work out how it started.
He’d grown colder with the weather, his springtime smiles drying up like autumn leaves. Now, as winter lashed against the walls, she was almost surprised the coffee he held hadn’t iced over.
She said: “You don’t need to go.”
He said “Yes I do.”
He looked at her as if about to brush her cheek, a touch calling memories of all they’d shared. A movie montage. A reset switch.
But he just put down his coffee and picked up his coat.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know,” he shrugged. “But I don’t.”
I saw a raven on a telegraph pole, and thought bird, you’re as lost as I am.
It spread its wings and called: corax, corax.
And in my head I heard, lost? Yes, but by choice. I come from the forest and the mountains and snow, and maybe one day I’ll go home. Until then, I stay lost, and every day my world gets bigger.
With that it flew east, away from the mountains, toward the sea.
I looked back down the road I’d come, and decided well maybe I can stay lost for a while, and discover something new.
This was the quiet time.
The morning after the morning after Christmas Day. A world twilit and icecrackled, dawnstars slowly fading.
She found him leaning against a gate down the road, facing east.
“I’ve always wondered what you do out here,” she said, shoving her hands deep into coat pockets.
He passed her a hip flask with the last few dregs of sherry.
“Just making sure,” he said.
“Making sure?”
“That it worked.”
The first rays crept across the field and up the gate, warming flesh and bone.
“So?”
“Yep.” Around them, the frost shone like sunrise. “Spring’s coming back.”
The nights felt so long when he wasn’t there.
And he’d be fine. And he’d be here soon. But… a wife worried.
She should’ve been in bed hours ago, but she couldn’t sleep when he wasn’t around. So she stayed at the kitchen table, his dinner in the oven, a glass of wine in her hand, hoping he’d make it home in time for Christmas.
Her heart stopped as bells jingled outside the window.
And then he was through the door: huge, red and snow-flecked, that beard she wanted to bury herself in.
“Happy Christmas, honey,” Santa said. “I’m back.”
“She seemed nice.”
“She seemed stoned, Razzers. Dammit!” Constantine pulled himself back upright. He still hadn’t mastered camels.
“She’s tired. Got a toddler. Poor, too, but still gave us a meal. Hope the presents cover it.”
Elvis hummed ‘a poor little baby child is born’, and said nothing.
“Yeah, true. I liked her more than that Harold jerk. For a king, he was a right stingy bastard.”
Razzers looked back toward Bethlehem. “Y’know, that kid looked kinda like the one he was after. He’d probably want to know.”
“Yeah, well, he should’ve given us the good wine. Screw that guy.”
There was snow on the ground when I went to the forest to chop a Christmas tree.
“What’cha doin’?” Magpie said, perching beside me.
So I told him about Christmas, to which he said “So… every year, you lot take a forest indoors and make it shiny?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
Magpie stared. “That. Sounds. Amazing.”
He flew off. I finished chopping my tree, took it indoors and made it shine.
On the radio, there were reports of Christmas lights going missing. Police, apparently, are baffled, though I’ve no idea why. The forest can now be seen from space.
There’s one village where it’s always white at Christmas.
It’ll come on Christmas Eve and lay on the ground until the 28th, every time.
And for those few days, everyone comes out to play. The commuters, the locals, the kids and their parents. They build snowmen, make forts, throw snowballs at the vicar.
They’re having so much fun, they completely ignore the silver-coated figure sitting on the park bench.
But Mr Snow doesn’t mind. Because in this one place, at this one time, people are happy to see him.
He doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but it’s a present he’d ask for.
—–
It’s Christmas week \o/