They charge by the word now down at the pub. As the evening drags on a silence like no other descends. Not even the dogs dare bark.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on October 14th, 2022
Tales From The Town #95: The Shop (A Trilogy)
1. The Shop
The shop sells whatever it can sell. You never know what you might find. Once it’s gone it’s gone, replaced by something new from the basement down below.
2. The Basement
The basement is full of all the things it can hold. They enter through the doors at the back, push forward towards the stairs at the front, all clamouring to be next on the shelves in the shop far above. It’s dark down there and they don’t like it at all. They dream of arc lights, window displays, glimpses of the sky, and so much more.
3. Beyond The Basement
No one knows what lies beyond those doors at the back of the basement beneath the store. Things come in through them, but when, but how, but from where.
Of course we do not care to know the answers to these questions we often ask. Whatever we found out would not please us, that much we know. Better to live in ignorance, better to invent some tale all our own.
___________
Notes:
1. Written on 20th October, 2022
Beneath The Bed
Beneath the bed was a door. Beneath the door was a stairway. At the end of the stairway was a cavern wider than the world. In the cavern was a silver pool as deep and as old as time. And in the silver pool there was nothing but despair.
Beneath the bed was a door, and we did not dare to open it at all.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 28th August, 2022
Tales From The Town #94: Infinity Explained (part 1)
“It is not a number, Claire!”
“Of course it’s a number. It’s the biggest number! Like a really big 8!”
“It’s a concept, Claire!”
“You’re a concept!”
“Claire doesn’t know what a concept is, Tina.”
“I do. And you’re both concepts!”
“What about me?”
“You’re worse than a concept, Daniel! You’re a notion!”
_________
Notes:
1. Written on December 31st, 2022
Whisky
There’s an empty bottle of whisky on my desk. It’s been there 10 years now, maybe a little bit more. Longer than the desk, in any case. Longer than any of the furniture in the room.
Johnnie Walker. Red label. Old enough to be measured in fluid ozs and percentage proofs.
I don’t drink whisky and never really have. I don’t drink at all these days. I assume my dad drank all this one and then I kept the bottle for some reason, because it’s nice and old, because it was there, because it gives me something to look at more interesting than the wall.
We got it fifteen, twenty years ago from the cupboards of a neighbour’s house after she’d died and we were helping clean up, this and various other archaic bottles of unopened spirits. I have no idea where they went, or what they were.
Shamefully, I don’t even remember her name. Maybe I never knew it. I used to talk to her in the mornings while waiting for the bus. She was kind of funny. I think she thought I was odd, weird.
I was odd, weird. I still am. It’s too late to change. Some lack I’ll always have.
I don’t know why I keep it, the bottle. But I couldn’t imagine throwing it away. If I’d left the top off it’d be full of dust by now.
Next to it there’s a milk bottle with a feather in it. No memories attach themselves to those.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 17th July, 2022