{"id":3933,"date":"2021-04-29T19:17:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T19:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/?p=3933"},"modified":"2025-11-28T12:39:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T12:39:56","slug":"tales-from-the-town-2-three-short-tales-about-antoine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/2021\/04\/29\/tales-from-the-town-2-three-short-tales-about-antoine\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales From The Town #2: Three Short Tales About Antoine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Outside The Cave<\/h2>\n

Agnes sat on the rock and looked out to sea. Behind her, in the shadows of the cave, a slightly darker shadow lurked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you\u2019re there, Antoine,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s okay. I just came to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

She took a sandwich from her bag and had a bite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s there to talk about?\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m happy and you\u2019re happy and we\u2019re all happy and everything\u2019s okay, everything\u2019s just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI brought you some lunch.\u201d She held out the bag of sandwiches behind her, and almost instantly it was snatched from hr hand. \u201cAnd we\u2019re worried about you, Antoine. This cave can\u2019t be good for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with my cave? I love this cave. It\u2019s exactly what I need right now. It\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d Agnes said carefully. \u201cMaybe so. But it\u2019s damp. And the smoke from your fire just lingers everywhere. It\u2019s a health hazard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s atmospheric.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there\u2019s the crabs, Antoine.\u201d Agnes looked down at the little crowd of them on the sand, as they raised their little claws up at her defiantly. \u201cI don\u2019t know how you put up with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not as aggressive as they look,\u201d Antoine said. \u201cWell, they are, but, you know, you just need to give them space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still don\u2019t think you should live in the cave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo can I come back to the house?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Antoine, of course not,\u201d Agnes said. \u201cDon\u2019t be silly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, where else am I going to live?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. But there must be somewhere nicer than this<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not moving into the well,\u201d he said. \u201cNot ever. No way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho said anything about the well<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Agnes waited, but there was no reply. When she finished her sandwich, she jumped down from the rock and started back across the beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo they miss me?\u201d a distant voice said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course they miss you,\u201d Agnes said, unconvincingly. \u201cThey miss you terribly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside The Cave<\/h2>\n

Antoine spent his evening how he spent every evening and would spend every evening for quite some time. He sat beside the fire in his cave and thought about all the conversations he had ever had.<\/p>\n

He was going through them in order, and was currently trapped somewhere in his teenage years. Once again it seemed like they would never end.<\/p>\n

It would have been simple enough if he was content with simply reliving them, but instead he tried to correct them as he went, so that this time through they didn\u2019t spiral out of control and make him look a fool in front of everybody all over again.<\/p>\n

The trouble was that even now, as he carefully reworked them so that he had a ready made answer for everything, he still ended up losing the argument. He didn\u2019t know how, but he did.<\/p>\n

And not just once, but thousand times, in a million different ways, until each individual conversation from the past became a fractal filled with an infinite variety of easily rebutted idiocy and absurdly pompous ignorance.<\/p>\n

Even his own mind was against him.<\/p>\n

A Dream Of Mermaids<\/h2>\n

I was the middle of the night. In the dark, Antoine thought of the mermaid. She swam and swam in the silence of his dreams.<\/p>\n

At least his mind never made him argue with her<\/em>. No matter what he said, she just nodded in agreement, and occasionally splashed the water with her tail. That meant she was particularly amused by whatever it was he had told her. He told her a lot.<\/p>\n

She was perfect, he thought. She didn\u2019t even have a voice to answer him back with.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do,\u201d the mermaid said, as she popped her head above the waves of his imaginary sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t,\u201d Antoine told her.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I do,\u201d she said. \u201cHow else would I lure anyone into the sea?\u201d<\/p>\n

He blushed. Why would she need words for that<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that I\u2019d want to lure you<\/em> down here, Antoine,” the mermaid said, before disappearing beneath the waves with a defiant splash of her tail.<\/p>\n

Antoine lay back in the sand and sighed. The wind moaned through the cave like the lament of some lost and distant whale. The crabs tugged at his sheet, but he would not relax his grip.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/p>\n

1. Written on April 29th, 2021<\/em>
\n2. Please see the cast of characters<\/a> for more information about the protagonists<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br>

Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outside The Cave Agnes sat on the rock and looked out to sea. Behind her, in the shadows of the cave, a slightly darker shadow lurked. \u201cI know you\u2019re there, Antoine,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s okay. I just came to talk.\u201d She took a sandwich from her bag and had a bite. \u201cWhat\u2019s there to talk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1208],"tags":[1192,472,147,290,517,1209],"class_list":["post-3933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales-from-the-town","tag-a-cast-of-characters","tag-beaches","tag-caves","tag-crabs","tag-mermaids","tag-tales-from-the-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3933"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6048,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions\/6048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}