An infinity of ephemera

Gateway

They opened a gate, a few thousand years ago, out in the desert, as far away as it could be from people and animals, so they didn’t fall through by accident and end up on the distant planet it connected to.

It was made in such a way that what went in came out at the same rate on the other side, and what came back did the same here, so that there wasn’t a catastrophic loss of atmosphere, either there or here. Although they didn’t take into account the effect of the acceleration as our planets moved apart, so actually slightly less came out then went in, on both sides of the hole.

It used to be so busy they built a railway to bring people here to the in side, and another to take them away from the out side. And they did the same on the other planet, although that wasn’t a railway but something more advanced for which we never had the words to describe.

No one comes here now, though, so the railway’s all rusted and partially submerged beneath the sand.

I stepped through the gateway to the other world, and it was as bleak and as dead as our own. I walked round to the other edge of the gate and stepped back home, and did this over and over, each step through advancing time by fifty years, or thereabouts, and by a hundred, by the time I got back.

And like this I watched the worlds change, a stroboscope of incremental decay.

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Notes:

1. Written on 20th July, 2018

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Odontomancy

I placed my teeth in the tin and gave them a rattle and then poured them out on to the table with a gummy smile as they revealed their prophecy to us all. I’d rolled five fives and got the maximum score.

Mother accused me of cheating and eventually the game had to be abandoned.

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Notes:

1. Written on July 14th, 2018

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cat poem

a cat sneaked into my house today
and came upstairs
and saw me in my underwear

then it ran away
all the way back downstairs
and out the back door

into the garden
one quick look back from the safety of the fence
then gone for good

no amount of plaintive cries could bring it back

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1. Written on 8th May, 2018
2. Live, as it occurred

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On the futility of postcards

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Notes:

1. Written on the 28th June, 2018
2. All events occurred as depicted
3. And where depicted
4. And when

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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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night time

I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this skeleton outside, tapping at my window, tapping and tapping incessantly with its long bony finger while the rest of its entirely improbable being just stood there motionless, its feet in mother’s fuschias, each bone held perfectly in place by whatever force it is that maintains their coherence, the whole spectre stained red as blood under the streetlights’ glare.

I tapped back and it tapped back and then it tapped some more and then some more and went on tapping for quite some time.

It was fairly annoying.

It was 3 am.

I tapped back again to see if it would stop but it didn’t stop and I wondered if it was all some Poe-esque torture designed to make me collapse to me knees and confess my sins, but in the end I decided it probably wasn’t, and that it was more likely that, considering the skeleton had no eyes or eardrums or even a brain, it simply hadn’t heard me or seen me or perceived my existence in any way at all. Or at least not in anyway I could understand.

Also I didn’t have any sins to confess, except I suppose for the sin of gluttony, but I’m not sure that’s even really considered a sin anymore, rather than the necessary duty of every citizen, for if we don’t do all we can to maintain the steady expansion of the capitalist balloon on and on for ever and ever without end until even the infinite has been consumed then where would be? In some arid post-apocalyptic tesco-less waste land, no doubt, like I’d always dreamt about, like I’d always wanted, staggering about all alone under a wan unblemished sky.

Maybe that is my sin.

Maybe this is my confession.

The skeleton tapped on and on. I went back to bed and dreamt of clocks and death.

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Notes:

1. This was written on the 26th June, 2018
2. It’s been hot this week and I cannot sleep

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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.

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

Thank you!