I tell stories

I found a message in a bottle, discarded by the tide.

Now it sits in my little bedsit, still unopened. You always did complain I was too safe, never doing anything I couldn’t undo.

But it’s not that I don’t dream.

That message could be a map to buried treasure, a thousand rent-cheques of gold doubloons.

Or maybe it’s a poem by some lost master, with the exact words that will bring you back.

Closed, it could be anything. Open, I’ll know exactly what it’s not.

I think you’d laugh at that, but still, it keeps me afloat. Bobbing along.

Tristan was fishing on his boat. Merlyn was trying to set him on fire.

“Lucian said Archimedes used this tactic at Syracuse,” she said, adjusting the mirror she’d placed atop the castle walls.

“What do you think?” Arfa said.

“I think Lucian was drunk.” She sighed. “I get the principle, but there’s not enough power.”

“Maybe it needs magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic. There’s only philosophy.”

“Then what’s that guy doing?”

Arfa pointed to a man floating toward them from the west, quite unconcerned, on a millstone.

Merlyn opened her mouth, shut it, and opened it again. “What.”

She sang to me: you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. And then one day, she died, as people do.

My sister places daffodils around the room, ready for later, when everyone’s here saying how sorry they are.

She liked daffodils.

She liked it when the family got together.

Shame we waited.

Now we do it without her, when skies are grey.

My sister leaves, and I am alone.

The daffodils seem to glow, and just for a second, I think I can hear her singing.

But I can’t. They’re just flowers. Little bowls of sunshine in a faded room.

We called it Riding The Nova.

These days, you drive a Star, or you drive junk. Our cars carry spacefire under the hood, suspended at the point of collapse.

I was a good racer, but I was Johnny Throttle’s bridesmaid. Always second, always to him.

So I did some mods. Bit of plumbing, a hydrogen tank, and a load more gas.

Only regret was missing his face as he ate my exhaust.

Except…

The extra gas kicked my star over the threshold, so I’ve created a black hole in the middle of Alabama.

That said, Johnny’ll never beat me again.

She comes home in her blue nurse scrubs each night, too tired and emotionally worn. I put a little more sugar than usual in her tea.

She tells me her day: doctors and families shouting at one another if not at her, drug addicted patients demanding oxycontin before it’s needed, children too young to know what terminal means.

She looks at me with a heart that’s seen too much, made dull and numb by loss and bitterness. She pleads with her eyes for an answer, for reassurance on a better tomorrow.

I put a little more sugar in her tea.

—–

M. A. Barr is in the middle of writing a 100-word story every day for a year. He’s clearly mad. You wouldn’t catch me doing anything like that >_>

If you liked that one, you can read more of them on his blog: Twisted Dreams in Pen and Ink

“Are you drawing those stupid spider pictures again?”

Oh hell. Emily. It’s OK, you can do this. Just talk to her. Be witty. Charming. Go!

“They’re not spiders. They’ve got six legs.”

…what.

“Sad,” she muttered, and left.

Dave sighed. He’d never get a girl like her. He just wasn’t special. Rubbish at sport, not funny, couldn’t draw anything except the stupid spiders.

On the page, the picture twitched as they began to move, crawling over the struts and platforms.

Dave turned the paper over in disgust. He couldn’t even make his sketches keep still. No-one else had that problem.

—–

This was from the first picture prompt I’ve been given: XKCD’s Red Spiders 2.

“Actually, it’s fascinating. Watch this.”

Moira was the alpha-female baboon, and so was desirable to Jeff the gamma-male.

And she knew it.

In front of Jeff, she gave away some of her fruit, so Jeff gave away all of his. When he wasn’t looking, she took her fruit back again.

Jeff always gave his fruit to Moira.

“Don’t you see what this means? Evidence of near human-level reasoning capability! Forward planning, social interaction… it’s all here!”

“I’m not convinced. All I see is that she’s being a dick because she can get away with it.”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

Offered anything he wished, the wise man said “Take a chessboard. Place one grain of rice on the first square. Then two, four, and so on. I ask merely this.”

The Emperor stared. “Seriously?”

“You may not find it so easy, Sire.”

“No, I get that, I know how big numbers work. But… I’ve got gold. Jade. Virgins. You could have anything, but you want something impossible. In rice. Well, your call.”

At a wave, his servants fetched 50 large sacks.

“Ah, even here there will not be enough grains…”

“Prove it,” the Emperor said. “Count ‘em. I can wait.”

Jimmy was king of the Spelling Bee at Wordsworth Grammar.

They said he read a dictionary every night. He said “If it’s English, I can spell it.”

Only Kate was unimpressed. “Don’t be silly. No-one can do that.”

“You mean you can’t do that,” Jimmy replied. “But you’re an idiot.”

So for the next Bee, Kate studied. And struggled. Jimmy was a jerk, but he could spell.

Until…

“Schadenfreude,” said the announcer. “Schadenfreude.”

Jimmy paused at the mic, beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Ah… Schadenfreude,” he said. “S… er…”

Kate sat forward. Oh, this was going to be good.

—–

Rather obviously, I suspect, the prompt here was ‘schadenfreude’.