post really, really, really short stories.

... and beside them, the Sweet and the Treat, the authors of an eponymous grooming algorithm. The principle was simple: should a woman dress like a sweet or a treat? A sweet enticed the beholder to delve for the goodies within; a treat laid those goodies bare. Wedding dress? Not for nothing were they slated as meringues. Sweet. Little black dress? Little left to the imagination. Treat. Bikinis, ballgowns, A-lines and V-necks: all could be neatly pigeonholed – or at least shoehorned – into Sweets or Treats.

That insight would not by itself have amounted to much; but the Sweet and the Treat had successfully parlayed it into a minor media empire by adding the dimension of time to that of choice. Millions of women had been persuaded: the key to heteronormative happiness lay in selecting the correct mode for the correct occasion. First date? Sweet. Third date? Treat. Now they were pushing at a bold new frontier: The Sweet had been working for two years on an equally pithy summation of mens’ clothing choices.

Thus far, however, the breakthrough insight had proven elusive, and the strain pulled at her normally placidly doughy features. By contrast, The Treat, whose waspish dominatrix stylings gave the double act its straight man, seemed blithely carefree; or perhaps pinpricks of poison had frozen her sentiments as effectively as her forehead. She stared, with cool self-assurance, across the table at the figures of The Salt and The Tart …

— New York.

You push the door shut. The door of your all-white, perfectly rectangular hotel room. Feel the surgical-grade steel handle turn smoothly in your hand.

Behind the door, the wall. Smooth. Immaculate. White.
You draw your arm back. Ball your hand into a fist. Punch the wall. The plaster cracks, craters. A splintered bull’s eye.

— London.

Push the door. Your perfect room. The steel handle.
The wall is smooth, white.
You make a fist.
The plaster cracks.

— Tokyo.

Door.
Wall.
Fist.
Crack.

— New York. Reykjavik. London. Paris. Berlin. Moscow. Mumbai. Shanghai. Tokyo. Los Angeles.

Close the door, make the fist, punch the wall. And again. And again. And again.

— New York.

And the wall cracks, craters.

— London
A palimpsest written in paint and plaster.

— Tokyo
A hundred holes in a hundred walls in a hundred hotels in a hundred cities.

— New York
You draw back your arm, but realise it’s not enough. It’s never enough.
The white wall stares at you, blind as all the rest. Smooth. Immaculate.
You take the white-headed matches from the white matchbox.
You set the fire.
And wait.

Soon, the white walls will turn black.

I found this when I was sorting through a bunch of old stuff. My old writing group used to play a game in which you were given an opening line and seven minutes to write a short-short based on it. Which tended to bring out silliness :)

The elephant was waiting quietly for the bus to Clapham.

Behind his massive form, a line of ecstatic primary school children slipped their neckties up around their foreheads and stamped about in what they took to be an elephantine fashion, their impromptu cotton trunks swaying as they went.

The elephant sighed. He was by nature an amiable beast, but occasionally humans really tried his patience. He pacified himself with a peanut from his blazer pocket.

There was a tug at his sleeve, almost too tiny to notice. He tried not to pay attention, but the tug came again, more insistently this time. He peered down between his tusks at the tiny form before him.

“Mister,” said the child. “Why are you an elephant?”

The elephant rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “Call it a quirk of nature.”

The child seemed satisfied with this, stuffing its thumb in its mouth and silently regarding the elephant with wide-eyed and quite unashamed fascination.

“Do you live at the zoo?” asked the child.

“If I did, would I be catching the bus to Clapham?” asked the elephant sarcastically.

“Elephants don’t catch buses,” said the child with quiet authority.

“Just watch me,” said the elephant.

A man made of night, he stalks the rooftops. Feline, invisible, as he moves across the skyline, his figure broken static, his uniform a shadow amidst the moonbeamed darkness.

He casts his eye across the city. So many sleeping innocents, oblivious to the evil-doers that walk its dark alleyways. His sworn duty, to protect them in their slumber.

His ears catch the far-off sound of breaking glass, a muffled shout. Gathering his cape around him, he leaps from the building’s edge, already poised for action.

And tumbles, wrapped in silence, towards the unforgiving concrete below. Because his only superpower, he belatedly realises as the ground rushes towards him, is

to entirely ignore

reality.

- and the walk back from the station, the same walk every day, the same dull dry combination of dogshit, tarmac and fumes. grey, all of it, grey, grey like the sky above and the ground below and the soul inside. step upon step, each and every one rehearsed each and every day.

bus shelter. fractured glass, veiled youth. scrawl of pen. the wind blows right through. waiting. waiting for the bus that never comes. waiting. a scrap of paper struggles fitfully along the gutter. passers-by passing by. don’t catch their eyes. but now a woman, too striking to ignore.

and she smiles. her mask cracks. her eyes light up.

and a young, fair-haired man is running down the street, white shirt untucking from his pressed black trousers, tie slipping from his neck. not just running: sprinting, legs pinwheeling. and another, this one dark haired. and another woman, and another and another and now it is a crowd; a mass of commuters, a train of suited and skirted, a flock of running, shouting humanity.

but there is no fear, no anger; no mob, no riot. instead, joy, delight, a woman pulls off her pale chemise to reveal a shocking pink brassiere, throws the pins of her long black hair to the floor. two bare-chested men kiss passionately. another sings. birds burst from the trees. grass blooms. and you with it. with them.

and the crowd keeps moving: remembering how it is to run, to laugh, to shout for no reason but for the running, laughing, shouting. And before you know quite why or how, you too are running, and laughing and shouting.

great times are ahead, great times. and you will do great things -

You pull out, across the lanes, levering down on the pedal. You’re keen to move on, to make tracks, to leave it all behind. But the rear-end is heavy; you can feel its drag, its dead weight behind you. Impatient, you press harder; swing to overtake.

But the thrust falters, then fades. Weighed down, your acceleration is stifled, your steering slurred. And suddenly, there is obstruction, too big and too close to register. Your wild evasion is too slow, too late. Time blurs as the blow begins.

And as the seconds split, as you feel the feathered powder, the sudden pressure of the cushion, the raking of a million glass meteoroids across your skin, you realise that you will survive all this. The real danger lies elsewhere.

It’s not the obstacles placed in your way.
It’s not the shock of the impact.
It’s your baggage that kills you.