Ye olde café tucked away,
Nowhere near the main highway,
Been there forever, so they say.
Would open daily, come what may,
With food and drink served every day,
Local memorabilia on display,
The lawn out back saw children play.
Good service, the order of the day.
With dry mud walls and roof of hay,
All that, a long-gone yesterday.
Old and crumbling now they say,
It fell to ruin along the way.
That café was the best, they say.
It would all become history in just a few seconds.
All of her memories, including the bad ones, would be expunged. A brand-new life lay ahead. No more arguments with professionals who think they know better. No more justifying her choice of destiny. All that time away from those she loves. All those dietary restrictions. All that training. All that running. All those physical aches and strains. There was no going back. She was about to become a different person. She was about to make it all worthwhile.
She steadied her breathing and cleared her head, leaving only one single thought.
The crowd went quiet.
The starter’s gun is raised…
It was probably a good time to consider his past.
When looking back at the big picture, there were things that he probably should regret. He felt that things in the past should stay there. After all, what is done, is done. When all was said and done, he did have a police record, there’s no denying that. Nothing really serious. Over the years he’d been charged with common assault and aggravated assault, damaging property, being drunk and disorderly, drink driving and dangerous driving, driving without a license, driving while disqualified, using a vehicle without the owner’s consent, breaking and entering, handling stolen goods, resisting arrest, illegal possession of a firearm, drug possession and the supplying of drugs, disorderly conduct and tax evasion. Of course, there was always the family violence intervention order.
He was not a person used to much in the way of soul-searching.
However, now, laying in this hospital bed with the incurable disease of multiple sclerosis, he had time to reflect a little. He was feeling sorry for himself.
What had he done to deserve this?
He had never been sure about him.
Put it this way, he was not sure when he was fully aware of what sort of person his brother actually was. It could have been when they were young and he’d laughed like crazy when he watched their neighbour’s cat frantically running around after tying a bit of broken roof tile to its tail. Maybe it was the time, as a teenager, he shoved a potato up dad’s exhaust pipe. Or was it the time soon after that he set light to our uncle’s shed. Or later, when he was working at the factory, that time he stabbed a worker with a chisel. It may have been the time, in his twenties, when he got drunk and crashed his car, killing his passenger. Perhaps it was when that drug deal went wrong and he shot his supplier and did jail time.
Or, is it now?
Sitting here, watching him through a window, strapped there in that chair.
Now that he’s been found guilty of shooting a police officer and a security guard during a bank raid… in Kentucky of all places; one of only a few states that still do this sort of thing.
He knows now.
Perhaps he’s always known… what a despicable rotter his brother really is!
It was a strange place, only the locals seemed to understand how things worked there.
Everything was certainly comfy. There wasn’t a home in the village that wasn’t comfy. They all had comfy beds, comfy chairs, comfy toilets; even the garden seats were comfy. The church, the schools, the library and the hospital were all comfy. The shops, the restaurants, the pubs, the cinema and the theatre were also comfy. The Local buses were comfy with comfy seats. All the people had comfy jobs in comfy offices. Even those with outside jobs had things made comfy for them.
When visitors returned from spending their holiday there and were asked if it was a happy place, most said no; comfy, yes.
It’s hard to pin down exactly when the whole, horrible thing started.
It may have been last August, but even if it was, it has become completely irrelevant. It began with the elderly pensioner watching the late news bulletin on television. The newsreader was saying something about changes to the tax system, when his evening newspaper slipped off his lap and he began to doze… A bell was ringing somewhere. He opened his eyes, realising that it was his own front door bell. Feeling that it was late to be getting visitors of any kind, he got up and went through to answer it.
He didn’t recognise the man that stood on his front step. With an apologetic smile, the stranger explained that he needed to show him something. At this point, he produced a small object and held it up. Without warning, he pressed something and a cloud of spray hit the old man in the face.
Within seconds, he became groggy. If it weren’t for the stranger holding him up, he would have collapsed to the floor. He was supported while they both made their way back to the lounge. The stranger settled him back into his chair and crouched down in front of him.
He began by apologising for what was obviously a huge intrusion, but said that it was necessary. Barely able to understand what he was being told because of the stupor he was in, the other explained that all this was necessary because on the following day the pensioner was going to do something that would have dire results for the future of mankind. He said that this could not be allowed to happen. He went on to say that it had been agreed that perpetual stasis was the only solution available.
With that, the old man was alone.
He was looking at an artist’s impression of what the new stadium would look like. He realised that he’d just been listening to an item about a proposal to build a new football stadium. The newsreader then droned on; he was saying something about changes to the tax system…
She was on the bus when she found it.
It was lodged down the side of her seat. She pulled it out. At first, it seemed to be some sort of business card. It was much more than that. It was only recently that Jonny Wonderful had been in town on yet another world tour. He was the heartthrob of the decade. She was actually holding his personal card, with his own personal mobile number on it. There were girls out there that would give their eyeteeth for the chance to ring him and speak to him personally! What would it be worth on eBay?
Then, reality kicked in.
She ripped it up and dropped it, when she looked out of the window. Her stop was coming up and she took out her free travel pensioner’s card.
Now, that was valuable!
There can be a seeking of silence,
While ponderings occur.
But… there are other things.
There are images born of the mind.
Such things are capable of breaking the silence,
Such things may start with a falling leaf or rise to a thunderclap.
To hear an abyss in unexplored depths.
To move the building blocks of imagery,
Glorious in their diversity.
No reasoning or calculating is required,
As one tries to determine what fills the silence.
Things beyond any known sound, but may be heard nevertheless.
–
There’s no shame in solitude,
While staying the course,
While taking the only open path,
While silence is on pause,
While conjuring up thin air, dressed in sound,
While loosening the threads of a silence unheard.
–
There is no folly in it.
Life’s entanglements, turning into sound.
Confronted by chaos and its poetic collision,
Both out loud and silently.
A mystic paradox, delicately balanced.
There is a great silent library of unspoken words
…pages that rustle,
…shelves that creek.
Sounds remembered.
Concepts… all there for the pondering.
The 66-year-old man who lived alone at number 44, was feeling lucky when he woke up.
After breakfast, finishing his cuppa, he decided to go into town. He walked the short distance to the bus stop, where he caught the number 22 bus into town. It was such a nice day, so he was happy to get off early and do the 11-minute walk across town, looking in shop windows as he went. He arrived at the newsagency, where he would buy a lottery ticket. There, he found that the yearly ‘Mega Lottery’ number 777, was being displayed on colourful posters as he walked in. He saw that it closes the next day! This might be a sign that he’d made the right choice, he thought.
Although the tickets seemed a bit pricey, he decided to buy three to improve his chances. He paid 33 dollars for them, then he sat in the nearby bus shelter, looking at what he had bought. It was then that he noticed that one of them had the interesting ticket number of 88888.
At this point, although he was surprised at this number, and whether he’d be a winner or not, he was totally unaware of the fact that he’d been dealing with repdigits all day!
He sat at his desk, looking at an accumulation of letters.
They were all from her. He didn’t want them; not any of them. He wanted them all gone, completely gone, and no longer part of his life. He had thought of simply burning them, but he felt this wouldn’t be enough. He needed to come up with something more significant, more dramatic. It needed to be an irrefutable statement. The one thing he knew, was that neither time nor money would play any part in how his act of severance played out. He slowly gathered them all up into a neat pile. This gave him an idea of the volume he had to deal with. Putting an elastic band around the stack, he sat back, thinking about it, formulating a plan.
The following day he went out and purchased a small combination wall safe. It was the type that could be cemented into a wall, after removing a couple of bricks. The following purchase was a little more time-consuming to accomplish. Eventually, he tracked down a hardware store that could sell him a thirty-millimetre diameter, Titanium Tungsten Carbide tipped drill bit.
Next, as the holder of a private pilot licence, he arranged a date when he could rent a small plane for the day. The rest, he could do at home. First, tipping the safe on its side, he drilled a hole through the middle of its side wall. He then removes any swarf left inside. Then, he placed the bundle of letters inside and closed the door. Paying close attention to what the instructions explained., he had it set up that when he span the dial back and forth a few times, it couldn’t be opened, by anyone, including himself. Finally, he was content to simply shred all of the paperwork that indicated that he had ever owned it.
At the relatively small airport, after completing the necessary paperwork and receiving any last-minute information regarding weather conditions he, with his plain, plastic carrier back, climbed into the aircraft. Once in, he removed the safe from the bag and placed it on his lap. He took off, with his destination being a point in the western Pacific Ocean, immediately above the Mariana Trench, it being the deepest oceanic trench to be found on the planet.
As the plane flew low, following the shape of the channel, he opened the cockpits side window and hefted it out. Banking the plane, he watched the tiny splash. Then, smiling and nodding, he turned for home.