Tales From The Town #103: A Dream Of The Watch

Antoine opens his eyes and wonders what the time is. He looks at his watch. Or where his watch would have been if he still had a watch, if he hadn’t lost it in the woods years ago, if it was still on his wrist and the numbers still glowed like tiny green phosphor stars in the gloom of the cave.

He lies back down, closes his eyes, begins to dream. In his dream, he opens his eyes and wonders what the time is.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on March 20th, 2023

The New Sound

A few years after the catastrophe, they reinvented sound for the silence, so if you were rich enough you could hear again. It worked by some sort of pressure manipulation within the walls of your skull, and although I’m sure they could have come up with some elegant design for the devices the demand was so high they didn’t really bother. Subsequently it looked like you were wearing suction cups on your ears, the sort of toilet plungers they have in old cartoons that I have no idea whether really existed or not.

If I’d been in charge, I’d have made them look like seashells, iridescent surfaces flickering through visual equivalents to the simulated audio pulsations being forced through the wearer’s skull. But anything can look cool when it signifies wealth and privilege, I suppose, and everyone wanted a pair. They were this year’s hottest fad, even more popular than those hairy sweets everyone seems to like.

For Christmas I bought our kids an hour at one of the sound booths, each of them taking turns while the others stroked their desserts and stared in awe and wonder at the expressions on their siblings’ faces as the pressure undulations stimulated sections of their brain dormant since birth.

Our hour was up before I got a chance to use them. On the way home, through eyes stinging with barely suppressed tears, I tapped out “What was it like?” They replied with several thumbs up, two love hearts, and fifty seven consecutive Ed Sheeran emojis.

Now the tears flowed. They would not stop.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on December 12, 2022
2. Song title taken from this song that I used to love
3. And still like quite a bit

Tales From The Town #102: The Football

“Claire! What did you kick it up there for?! We’ll never get it down now.”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Well who was it then?”

“Mum!”

“It was not Mum. You know she refuses to kick things. She’s a pacifist.”

“What? Really? Well that’s just stupid.”

“So it was you?”

“Of course it was me! Who else would it be?”

“Mum?”

“But you said…”

“I was tricking you into confessing, Claire! Of course Mum’s allowed to kick footballs!”

“See, I told you it was stupid! And it was stupid because you made it up, and you’re stupid.”

“So? It worked, didn’t it?.”

“It did not. I was going to confess anyway. How else would you know it was me otherwise?”

“Why would you want anyone to know it was you?”

“Because I was the one that did it!”

___________

Notes:

1. Written on March 17th, 2023

A List Of The First 101 Tales From The Town And Who Primarily They Are About

For no real reason other than it’s kind of useful, here’s a complete list of Tales From The Town episodes so far (and who they’re primarily about):

Tales From The Town #0: A Cast Of Characters (introductions to every one and every where)

Volume 1: Part 1 – Summer

Volume 1: Part 2 – Winter

Volume 2: Part 1 – Other Stories

Tales From The Town #53: The Penguin (The Penguin)
Tales From The Town #54: Pollen Days (Tina)
Tales From The Town #55: The Worst Idea Ever (Claire, Daniel, Ethel, Tina)

Volume 2: Part 2 – The Lodger Suite

Volume 2: Part 3 – The Lodger Suite

Volume 2: Part 4 – Other Stories

Tales From The Town #87: The Very Best Idea Ever (Claire, Daniel, Ethel, Tina)
Tales From The Town #88: The Ever Growing Urge To Do Something Else Other Than This (Claire)
Tales From The Town #89: The Penguin Again (The Penguin)
Tales From The Town #90: The End Of The Year (Agnes)

Volume 3 (Not Yet Named)

Bonus Tales

Pocket Editions #1 (2021)
Pocket Editions #2 (2021)
Pocket Editions #3 (2022)
Pocket Editions #4 (2022)
Tales From The Town: A Summer Book (2022)

Tales From The Town: Volumes 1 & 2

Tales From The Town reached its 101st episode last week, so to celebrate here’s two free anthologies collecting the first two years of this never ending series of stories from some sort of small-sized city.

Volume 1 (Summer, then Winter) collects the first 52 (standalone) episodes, while Volume 2 (The Lodger Suite), which was an attempt at an ongoing episodic story (with a bonus, pointless, palindromic structure, which was the style at the time), collects the next 40 or so.

Download: Tales From The Town Volume 1 & 2 (zip file containing epub files)

And as an even more exciting bonus, here’s a sneak preview of Tale #107, featuring a skeleton and also a spacesuit.

Tales From The Town #107: A Skeleton In A Spacesuit

The skeleton in the spacesuit stands at the entrance to the pier. The stitches are unravelling, the helmet fogged, the insignia faded to the point of illegibility, but still it works. Put in a pound and it laughs and laughs. It even gives an awkward little wave.

No one has ever put in a pound nor ever will.