A short story or two

A Tale of King Arthur’s Court

The King called for a feast, for it was Christmas, and so every single bird and every single beast of the country was caught and killed and brought to the kitchens of Camelot to be roasted in the marrow of its own bones. Every fruit from every tree and every root from every bush that wasn’t deadly poisonous in its own right was brewed up and fermented and distilled until it was as intoxicating as a single glance from Queen Guinevere herself. And twelve days of merriment was enjoyed by all who had earned their place around the table.

At the end of the feast, and the beginning of the new year, the Knights set forth for distant lands in search of supplies for next year’s gathering. By Merlin’s estimates there were ten feasts until they brought about the end of the world and the death of all things. Lancelot claimed he could get that down to eight if he tried, and everyone laughed and clapped him on the back, as he drank one last pitcher of sweetly rotting mead before climbing up onto his horse and setting out into the mist of the early morn.

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Notes:

1. Written on the 20th October, 2022

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Oxygen Dreams

Pumped in extra thick, 40/60 mix, euphorics for a sullen crew. Out past Jupiter the hallucinations kick in, open sky visions, phantom smell of rain, insectoid hums, gravitational tugs on calcium-filled bones, nostalgic visions scraped thin off childhood media memories.

You’d think we’d be used to the dark now, used to the float. But in my dreams I still scream as I fall.

Wake up.

Fall some more.

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Notes:

1. Written on October 19th, 2022

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The Boat

We took the boat out on the river.

It wasn’t our boat. It wasn’t even our river. We had no idea idea what we were doing. It was amazing we’d ever got it started, let alone kept it going.

“Imagine owning your own boat,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

“Where would you even put it?” Sam said. “You know, when you’d got where you were going.”

“Maybe they have boat parks,” I suggested. “Pay and display multi-boaties.”

“Maybe no one owns boats,” Sam suggested. “Maybe they’re all stolen!”

She spilled half a bottle of red wine down her life jacket and giggled. She didn’t care. It was stolen too. The wine and the jacket and everything else. Especially the jaunty little captain’s hat.

“Maybe they aren’t even boats!” I said deliriously. “Maybe they all just for show. ‘Oooooh look, I’ve got a boat! Aren’t I rich! Aren’t I clever!'”

“Pretend boats,” Sam said slowly, as if she was quoting something. “Are ships.”

It didn’t make any sense, but we laughed anyway. I spun the wheel or whatever it was called and made us drive around in circles, great arcs of spray splattering around us like rainbows. I fired a flare up into the sky. Part of me didn’t really believe flares existed, but here we were. They were just like in a film, but without the whooshing sound, and not as bright, because it was the middle of the day. No one fires flares off in the day in films. What’d be the point?

“We should steal a plane tomorrow,” Sam suggested, as she vomited into a bright yellow rubber boot that happened, purely by luck, to be between her feet. “Or a tank!”

But by then we were lost, a long way out to sea, sinking, unable to swim. No one ever saw us again. No one ever even knew it was us who stole the boat.

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Notes:

1. Written in the summer of 2020 sometime.

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Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

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Simulation

We left the simulator running unsupervised over the weekend. When we got back on Monday it had predicted everything that had happened, from when we left the simulator running unsupervised to when we returned on Monday and discovered it had predicted everything that had happened.

Our supervisor, who had left us unsupervised over the weekend only to come back on Monday afternoon to discover that we’d left the simulator running unsupervised over the weekend only to come back on Monday morning and discover that the simulator had simulated it all, heavily reprimanded us for our failures and declared the results of our experiment void, and so we had to start it all over again.

This time the simulator made sure not to make the same mistake again, and this time all its predictions were as wrong as its starting parameters would allow it to be.

We were all somewhat relieved. No one wanted this to be a success.

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Notes:

1. Written on October 20th, 2022

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Dreams Of Houses

At night I dream of houses. Ones I haven’t seen in years, places I used to live, or stay at, or simply just visited once, some long time ago. Retracing the layout of the rooms in my mind, floor plans and blueprints etched out in perpetuity in the architecture of my mind.

Yet always still there’s grey areas in these maps, smoke-filled absences at the edges of my mind. Houses where people’s bedrooms remained unseen behind permanently shut doors. Basements or lofts never entered. Garages always locked.

These places are always nothing but shadows to me. Even now, there could be anything back there.

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Notes:

1. Written on November 10th, 2022

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!