The videotapes are delivered to my door each day. I am not obliged to watch them, but I watch them. The things they show me have yet to happen, but are too close to stop. Moments of the future given some nostalgic VHS glow.
To be forewarned of the inevitable is a kind of torment.
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Notes:
1. Written on November 16th, 2021
The doors had been locked for as long as anyone could remember. The curtains were always drawn. There was a new mayor in there now, apparently. No one knew what this would mean, but it was all anyone talked about for a week.
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Notes:
1. Written between May 11th and May 17th
2. Although quite why it took so long to write three lines I do not know
“There it is!” Claire called out. “I saw it!”
“Where?” said Ethel.
“There!”
“That’s just a rock, Claire,” Tina said.
“It’s not a rock. It’s the whale!”
“If it’s the whale, why isn’t it moving?”
“Because it’s dead!”
“If it was dead it’d sink,” Daniel said. “And it’s bones would become a castle.”
“For mermaids!” Ethel said.
“Mermaids don’t exist, Ethel,” Claire said. “And dead things float, Daniel!”
“The whale is not dead, Claire,” Tina said. “So stop saying it is. I’ll get upset.”
“You’re always getting upset,” Claire said. She sat down on the grass with the others and started brushing her hair. “Anyway, maybe it is a stupid rock AND the whale is dead. That way we can both be unhappy.”
“Can I be unhappy?” Ethel asked.
“No!”
“Well, that’s not fair at all,” Ethel said.
They all sat there in silence, and dreamt of whales, bones, castles, mermaids.
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Notes:
1. Written on May 14th, 2021
Saturday Afternoon Ikea Trip Simulator is a one joke text adventure designed to simulate the experience of going to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon (other times of day and/or days of the week are available upon request).
Begin your Saturday afternoon Ikea trip simulation here
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Notes:
1. Made between October 30th and November 2nd, 2021
2. It’s made in TWINE, so should hopefully work in all and any browsers, but I cannot guarantee it.
3. I haven’t actually been to an Ikea in two years so it’s possible this is by now all horribly out of date.
4. I will hopefully never find out enough to know.
5. For more information about Ikea, please read this important piece of reportage, live from my 40th birthday
#1: Provocative Opening Paragraph With Nothing To Support It
As a child, they cut away my face.
This wasn’t done maliciously, but out of necessity: a necrotising infection was threatening to eat me away from within.
Yet still, as a child, they cut away my face, left only gristle and bone.
#2: An Attempt At Psychological Justification Of The Premise
I did not understand the reasons for it, did not appreciate the nuances of their decision. There was, from my view, simply a fever, delirium, darkness. Then confinement, confusion. Bandages, anaesthetics, salves, saline. Itchiness, discomfort, pain, boredom.
And finally, that inevitable revelation, that shock before the mirror, the face gone, my face, gone, replaced by this horror, this void, this grotesque mask that was not, I knew, a mask at all. Rather, it was the foundation on which the mask of myself had been built.
I turned away. I would not look.
#3: Finale Of Extended Outrages, For Which No Prior Justifications Will Suffice
[Forty five pages of faces being slowly and painfully removed by the protagonist in some sort of ironic vengeance or poetic revenge or karmic retribution, I don’t know, I can’t remember now. It doesn’t really matter.]
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Notes:
1. Written in September 2020