I wrote a story a little while ago about a dentist for the NYC Midnight flash fiction contest. Some of you may even have even read it, though I doubt would remember it (in case you are really struggling for something to read though, Here it is) – I barely remember it myself. Anyway, it somehow scored a few points in its heat and should I manage to score a few points in part II I might even progress to the next round, as unlikely as history would suggest that to be,

Anyway, the requirement this time was for a piece of historical fiction featuring a pasture and a ‘no-trespassing’ sign. 1000 words only.

***

The Gate

 

In late March 1997, a travelling shoe salesman stumbles upon a religious cult.

I had taken a wrong turn somewhere south of Encinadas and the road had become narrow and vague when the engine began to splutter, taking its final breath and coming to a halt at the crest of a hill. I was out of gas.

I sat there for a while cranking the engine pointlessly and cursing my own stupidity, before stepping out and kicking the side of the vehicle in frustration. The last of the sun was descending over fading grey pastures to the west and the only sign of life was smoke rising from the chimney of a large homestead nestled beyond a line of trees in the middle distance. In search of help I began walking in that direction, climbing through a fence, and proceeding across a field of long withered grass that crackled underfoot. Eventually I located a thin dirt track and followed it until I reached a rusted iron gate. The sun had set by then and there was no moon, but the sky was strangely luminous such that I could read an attached sign which said, ‘NO TRESSPASSING.’ Below that message, and in apparent contradiction, the sign also said, ‘Please Shut The Gate.’ Before the word ‘Gate’ somebody had roughly handwritten, ‘Heaven’s.’

I elected, under the circumstances, to trespass anyway, but I had dutifully closed the gate and was looking up at the source of the sky’s unusual brightness when I heard a voice beside me.

“Hale Bop,” said the voice.

I turned in some alarm and confronted an exceptionally slender man of indeterminate age only a matter of a few feet away. I held out my hand and responded, “Ian Sinclair.”

He didn’t take my hand but instead looked skyward himself. “Hale Bop,” he repeated, “Comet.”

“Ian Sinclair, Mr Bop” I repeated in turn, “Sinclair’s Shoes. I seem to be lost.”

He surveyed me with a look of vague amusement. “We are all lost until we are found.” he murmured, then, pointing to the sign on the gate, “but are you also blind?”

“It’s dark.” I lied.

“If one refuses to see the light.”

“At the end of a long day,” I added, for clarification.

“At the end of time.”

With this he turned away towards the house and began walking. I followed. There was something mesmerising in the silent grace of his movement but also something disquieting in the silence itself.

“I’m delivering shoes,” I said, attempting to break that silence, “but ran out of gas.”

“Of course,” he whispered to himself.

When we finally reached the house and I could make out his features under the lights, I saw that he had a comical looking face which was now smiling. “I’m Do, and this is The Monastary, my terrestrial dwelling,” said the man previously known as Mr Bop, before adding cryptically, “my wife, Ti, is with us here in spirit only, alas.”

He led me into a huge room where the fire blazed. Within were a group of more than thirty others, male and female, all evidently younger than Do, and presumably of similar single syllable names, staring into the flames, chanting something unintelligible. All were impossibly thin.

 “We have ceased to eat in this realm,” offered Do, by way of explanation, “but we might find you something to drink later. But until then, come warm yourself by the fire and share in our joy.” There was little joy in the room, as far as I could tell.

Do, at least, seemed to be finding amusement in my discomfort. “We are expecting a visitor, Mr Sinclair, but I doubt that you are He. By what variety of transport were you, in fact, delivered to us?”

“A Toyota Camry,” I said.

He feigned disappointment, “we are anticipating, I’m afraid, something of rather more intergalactic competencies.”

“Oh,” I said, discomfort and confusion escalating into something approaching paranoia.

“Still,” he continued cheerfully, “we are planning a big trip, and new shoes might be just the thing. What brand of shoes do you sell?”

“Nike.”

“Perfect.”

“A trip to where?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.

“We shall transition to the next level,” said Do.

The chanting instantly stopped and the assembly all turned and faced me robotically, as if by some coded command. I beheld young eyes like saucers staring out from expressionless hollow faces atop malnourished bodies. It was as though a group of coked-up hippies had escaped from a German concentration camp.

My hair stood on end.

 

Nobody attempted to stop me as I ran for the door. I sprinted through the cold darkness back up the track pausing only briefly at the gate to look back and see if anyone was following me.

Nobody was, but I elected to leave the path as a further safety precaution and thus found myself pushing again through the long grass. With no sense of direction, even after several hours I could not relocate the road. Exhausted and cold and with an increasing sense of hopelessness, I took shelter beneath a solitary tree where I must have somehow fallen asleep, because when I opened my eyes again the sun was shining and two policemen were standing above me.

The policemen had located my car not far from where they found me, the keys still in the ignition and no gas in the tank. The trunk had been left open and was devoid of contents. During the drive into Rancho Santa Fe (not far, as it turned out) they asked me questions about comets and cults and somebody called Applewhite. I answered, essentially honestly, that I had no idea of what they were talking about. They dismissed me shortly afterward, as apparently an idiot with little idea about anything at all. It was a reasonable assessment.

It was only upon glancing at a newspaper the following day that I learned that the policemen had also discovered thirty-nine bodies huddled together beside a smouldering fireplace just out of town.

 All of the dead were wearing Nikes.

 

 

 

 

Wisdom and old age. The two things don’t just go together – despite how much we fossils would like to believe otherwise. Most of us just get more stupid as we get older and cling to memories of a past we have invented. This is not a segway into discussing a couple of sad geriatrics contesting a televised beauty contest – no mention of MAGA.

It’s just a rant with no real beginning or end. Or meaning. Or wisdom.

The wisdom prompt came from here but I’ve no idea if I followed any rules.

****

Wisdom. Highly overrated. Ancient knowledge. Old. Outdated. Memories of bygone glory. Just a tale, an old man’s story of the past – a foolish claim that different times might be the same. You should have been there, way back when the world was new and men were men. When black was black and white was white and women knew their place at night. When God was better understood ‘cause bad was bad and good was good and wars were fought on foreign land with those who wouldn’t understand and those who couldn’t see the light, all slaughtered in our noble fight for queen and country – thus we fought, the roar of guns outranking thought for niggers, communists and queers, with no spare room for new ideas – we knew all that there was to know, because the bible told us so.

How dare we even speak of love, and hide beneath a god above, excuse ourselves for fears and hates, delude ourselves that heaven waits. We’ve done our time, we’ve had our chance, as we stumble through this final dance. Our heart’s not beating, blood’s gone cold. There’s no wisdom in just growing old.

*****

Here’s something that I wrote for a competition that popped upon my feed during a cup coffee. It was not a serious attempt to create anything noteworthy, and it took only the space of one coffee to complete (long black with milk on the side, no sugar) with no edit. The only requirements were that it be 500 words revolving around two people in some sort of relationship. It had to contain the words ‘needle’ and ‘uniform’ and something else I can’t remember.

At the time I was thinking about the childishness of war and sexism and tribalism and racism – but it’s hard to make much of a point about these things in 500 words.

Anyway, somehow I made the ‘longlist’ – I don’t often make lists of any length, so that’s why I repeat it here ….

*

 We crawled to the very edge of the balcony, allowing just enough of ourselves to protrude, so that our eyes could stare down into the urban abyss and secretly observe the passage of pedestrians below. We were alone on the balcony – nobody there to later needle us for the crime.

“No-one can see us,” whispered Tom confidently.

“Or hear us,” I replied at similar volume.

“Correct.”

“So, why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know. It just feels right.”

Checking my timepiece: 0811hrs. Scheduled train arrival: 0817hrs.

“How long have we got, Ronnie?”

“Allowing three minutes for them to get out of the station,” I answered,  “and another minute to walk below us, we’ve precisely  ten minutes to drop time.”

“We’d better get ready.”

“Yes, we’d better. Have you got yours?”

“Yes, you?”

“Right here.” We each reached into our bags and carefully extracted the missiles and laid them gently on the concrete: 0814hrs.

“How many floors up are we?”

“Seven.”

“So how long will it take these things to fall seven floors?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed, “how much do they weigh?”

“That shouldn’t make any difference.”

“What? Don’t be stupid. Of course it makes a difference. And accuracy is vital!” I paused for dramatic effect, “T minus five minutes to surgical strike!”

Tom normally reacts positively to technical jargon, but this time he looked offended. “Theoretically,’ he pronounced, “weight has got nothing to do with it.”

“That’s ridiculous. So, a brick and a feather would hit the ground at the same time?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“I don’t, sort of, believe you. But anyway, how long?”

“Not very long.”

Clearly the plan lacked precision. “And what about the targets?” I continued, “What speed will they be travelling? We need to allow for that.”

“Not very fast.”

“OK. Got it. So …. not very long and not very fast. Sort of. That’s it? That’s the sum of our research?”

Tom nodded.

Silence.

We saw them emerge from the station at 0820hrs, all wearing their uniform and chattering amongst themselves.

“Ronnie,” whispered Tom.

“Yes?”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Because they are girls.”

“Is that all?”

“And because we are boys.”

“OK.”

“And they go to a different school. Catholic.”

Then they were beneath us. “Now!” I called.

Six water filled balloons began their descent towards six first-form students from St Brigit’s Girls’ High. The plan was proceeding splendidly until about halfway down, when the wind, another factor we had not anticipated, intervened, and pushed the falling barrages out towards the roadway,  where they would have burst harmlessly, if not for a heavily pregnant woman crossing the road.

Collateral damage.

The gesture, we decided in retrospect, had been largely symbolic. Two daring young men had hatched a clever plan and, by virtue of that plan alone, had made a statement.

The statement itself remained tauntingly ambiguous. We spent the following six years of high school avoiding girls from St Brigit’s High, continuing, for reasons we could not explain, to fear them.

* 

P.S. I did not transition to the short list. No surprised there.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. Nothing much, probably. But if you have a spare moment (and believe me, you do have a spare moment) then find a little stream somewhere and sit beside it for a while. It might be nice.

****

You find yourself walking alone in a forest and you stop by the side of a stream to rest. You sit and lean your back up against a tree that’s branches stretch out over the water and intermingle with other trees and vines and bushes and rocks and moss as it reaches for the sky. The tree is old and her weathered bark scratches through your shirt and onto your skin in a not unpleasant way.

You are completely alone. You are deep in the forest and there is a mist rising from the stream but you feel like you could see for a thousand miles. You sense no past or future, no remorse, no ambition. No forward. No backward. Everything is motionless. There is an instant when you recognise that even your own thoughts have ceased.

But only for an instant.

For then you are aware that nothing, in fact, remains still. You cannot feel the breeze but there is enough of it to gently disturb the leaves in the trees such that they perform a dance above you and you realise that this is a once only performance and that no two such dances can ever be the same. Every tiny movement has its own reason for being and so the dance of a thousand leaves becomes so intricate before your eyes that it cannot be adequately described, much less repeated.

A single leaf becomes dislodged from its birthplace and you watch as it descends to earth. You recognise no fear or sorrow in its graceful fall, just a continuation of the dance to which there is neither beginning nor end.

Birds fly above you, stopping  occasionally to balance like gymnasts on twisted branches, looking erratically about and exchanging coded melodies. Clouds are drifting by, high above the canopy, and you watch them long enough to see their mysterious reshaping, the whisps of frozen moisture reacting to the air and the sun and the rotation of the cosmos.

The stream is only part of this eternal movement. Within it little eddies form and dissolve before your eyes and sometimes the water even stops for a moment on the edges, as if briefly contemplating a return upstream, before being sucked back out into the maelstrom and ever onward towards the ocean.

You pick up a pebble and throw it into the centre of the stream, watching as the tiny expanding waves are reshaped by the movement of the water and by the protruding rocks and sticks and reeds or just by a breath of wind, winding its way through the forest. Perhaps you see a tiny fish, startled by the movement, dart across your vision. Perhaps the falling leaf lands softly on your little wave to commence the next part of its journey. The beauty of it all brings you to tears.

You pick up another pebble and throw it, attempting to produce a replica of the event, but it is impossible, for nothing is the same. Despite the accuracy of your throw the stone arrives at a different angle. The missile itself is of a slightly different shape and weight, disturbing the water in a different manner. The clouds have conspired to subtly adjust the shade, the colours have been altered and the air has become colder, one of the sticks has been captured by the current and is gone. You realise that you are throwing a different pebble into a different stream. And that the universe has moved on.

****