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.
_________
Notes:
1. Written on March 23rd, 2023
__________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.
__________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.
__________
Notes:
1. This was written on the 26th June, 2018
2. It’s been hot this week and I cannot sleep