A Sea As Pale As A Dead Child’s Eyes

The boy, Robert, my nephew, had been missing two hours now when I saw him in the harbour, his head bobbing up and down in the water between two fishing boats, as if caught in the ropes that tethered them in place and now calling for help in between the slow swell of the incoming waves.

The breathe caught in my throat, tears welled in my eyes, the shock of it, the surprise, the suddenness of the sight. I didn’t even think, no worries for my own wellbeing, no attempts to call for help. I didn’t even kick off my shoes, simply ran into the water, wading through the waves, clambering across the pontoons floating in the shallows, climbing into and out of boats before diving from a small wooden raft down into the depths of the sea.

A single vision then, clear as a painting, as staged as some devastating tableau. Robert floating in glass, the scene bisected by ropes fringed with weeds, his billowing hair lit by a single shaft of light from above, a bubble of air almost lazily forming between his lips, his eyes a piercing blue sharp enough to cut apart my soul.

I surfaced, coughing, choking, panic and horror and shame, of failure, loss. Clinging to the side of the boat I called his name, “Robert! Robert!”, then dived back down. Dived back under to try again, again, again.

There was nothing there, of course. Oh the water was in turmoil, sand swirling in the maelstrom, shapes redolent of ghosts in the tumult. But in those lifeless waters of the harbour there was nothing more.

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Notes:

1. Written on the 8th July, 2022
2. An attempt at a ghost story
3. And based upon a dream

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Train Dream

I dreamt I lived on a train that never stopped
Never slowed down nor sped up
Just went round and around
on the same tracks
each day

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Notes:

1. Written on August 16th, 2022

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The Castle

Last night I dreamt I was lost in a castle
lingering there in the mist
and the fog and the darkness and the snow

and when I woke up this morning
the sun was shining
and the castle was gone

but still I felt the same

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Notes:

1. Written on July 9th, 2022

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Tales From The Town #48: The Door In The Wall, or The Worth Of Dreams

The first time Yulia saw the door was on her walk to work one morning, in the middle of the old Roman wall that ran through the centre of the town. It had never been there before. But there it was, locked and closed and as solid and real as the wall itself. She couldn’t stop thinking about it all day, this out of place door in the middle of that wall. When she came home that evening, it was gone.

The second time she saw it, it was down near the abandoned pub, in the wall circling the beer garden. A different wall, but the same door. It was unmistakeable. She was on the bus this time, and caught only a glimpse of it, but she was sure it was open now, not fully, but slightly ajar at least, a shaft of light shining though the gap and illuminating the pavement with an ethereal glow.

Then the bus rattled on towards its destination, and all Yulia was left with was the memory of it on her retinas, a patch of shimmering blue superimposed over the dismal and the dull of the town in winter.

The third time the door was on the other side of the street, opposite the shop, in the ruins of the old gallery, directly in her line of sight for the whole of the day. It was wide open, and Yulia could see through to what lay beyond. And what she was a world of wonders, a shifting infinity of possibilities, each one more enticing than the last, more beautiful than any heaven.

Only the queue of her customers, which stretched twice round the shop and back down the street, kept her from getting up from her chair and crossing the street and stepping through that door and never coming back.

Yulia knew it was all a dream, but that hardly mattered. She’d seen it now. Seen through and beyond to something else, something other than this. All she had to do was was wait. Wait for the door to return, for her to take her chance. There were other worlds than these.

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Notes:

1. Written between June 7th and June 14th, 2021
2. The title is taken from an HG Wells short story
3. And the last line is taken from The Gunslinger by Stephen King
4. But the bits in between are my own

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Tales From The Town #35: Five Dreams Of Space

1. Selene puts on her blindfold and dives into the pool. Floating there in the dark is as close again to space as she will ever get. It’s so comforting she could cry.

2. Someone once told Patricia that Venus was so hot the fillings would melt in your mouth. She wonders often how this would taste.

3. Ted would blow up a planet if he could. He would blow up the stars. He’d blow up the sun. But he would never harm the moon.

4. Every summer Anna dreams of winter. Every winter she dreams of Pluto.

5. The whale has no knowledge of space. It remembers oceans in the night. Galactic blooms of luminescent algae. Constellations of jellyfish pulsing in the dark like the neurons of some vast distributed brain. Volcanic vents glimpsed through crushing depths beyond the understanding of human hearts. All as beautiful as any comet’s tails or rocket’s trails carved across the impossible skies of our dreams.

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Notes:

1. Written on May 21st, 2021

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