Lost and Found

You know it’s a bad day when the water goes over the top of your boots and fills your socks. When the rain is insidious, working its way through your waterproofs and finding a way to dance down your neck, ice cold tap shoes on each vertebra. The lashing of plastic sheeting that you’ve placed over your claim, desperately attempting to escape into the dark skies. 

“Only a fool would go out in this weather!” Esme screams in your head. “You can’t find your own feet, let alone a Roman fort!” The water pooling in your boots sends a chill up through your legs, meeting the chill sent down your spine by the rain to sit uncomfortably around your buttocks, cold, disappointing and uncomfortable. 

A frozen toe collides with a sharp, solid lump as you drive your legs through the thick mud. Normally, this impact would have been inconsequential, but the temperature is insistent on causing you discomfort. You reach down to move it out of the way, and see 4 letters carved into the stone. SPQR. You did it. 

Dreams Come True

So, it turns out that genies hold no small amount of animosity towards humanity, after all that sorcerous locking them in lamps kind of thing. And they’re real sticklers for the letter of things, as opposed to the manner of things. 

It turns out the song was right. I ain’t never had a friend like the Djinn. 

My first wish: Power. I got electrocuted. 

My second wish: Love. I got chased around the village by every dog, cat and badger in heat. Then the ladies came. Then the gentlemen. All ages, all genders, all species swarming me in order to do naught but love me. 

I agonised for my third wish, hiding as my suitors clamoured against the door. I screamed that I just wanted to be left alone, and the world stopped for a moment. 

“I can make that happen.” The Genie said, eyes of danger and of fire. “I can grant all of your wishes, in one word, if you wish.”

“I wish I would be left alone.”

A thunder flash. A lightning roar. Then blessed, blessed silence. It took me a moment to take in my new surroundings. Bronze walls, reflecting the tiniest pinpoint of light miles above me, stretching as far into the sky as the eye can see. And the voice of the Djinn. 

“Your third wish, my master.” And the light faded with the sound of distant shovels…

Accountability: A barbershop in the 50s

Everybody knows about the butterfly effect. That the flap of a butterfly’s wing can cause enough of a disturbance that it creates a thunderstorm in China. It’s often used to great effect to discuss time travel, and the impact that time travel could have. Step on an ant in the Cretaceous and all of a sudden the entirety of the future is gone. It’s a key evolutionary link, and you destroyed it. But how would we even know that we’re at that inciting event? How would we know that we’re at the flap of the butterfly’s wing. Sometimes it doesn’t even sound like a butterfly. 

Sometimes it’s a child’s voice, raised to be heard over the clicking of scissors or the buzz of an electric trimmer. The timid voice of a boy waiting for his father, the innocent curiosity of youth. The flapping of the butterflies wings in this case sounded an awful lot like a question. 

“Why?”

Sometimes, the revolution doesn’t start with a shout, but a question. In this case, a simple one, with a multitude of answers. 

“You wanna know so bad, kid, why don’t you go and find out?” Carter replied, cut-throat razor moving swiftly in his left hand against the strop. 

This was it. This was the moment my grandfather and my father talked about in the interviews, in the TED talks, in any speech they were invited to give. This was when Miros Parthen’s rebellion began. By being told by a barber to go and find something out. 

Just a wee one today, but it’s still keeping my eye in. Just waiting to hear back about a competition I entered a few weeks back, which is always intimidating. But it’s good fun. Once I’ve heard back, I might even put it up on here!

The Idiot in Tin Foil

Accountability: Follow the Fox

There’s a reason foxes show up in folklore and stories. There’s a magic about them, an eerie dance that they undertake as they move through the world. Fleeting figures, that exist in the liminal spaces of the streets, dancing through the shadows as if they pop into one world from another. 

And who’s to say that they don’t? 

Creatures of shadows and night, walking through hidden pathways as they scream into the night. Fleet of foot and quick of wit, labelled as fantastic by a Mr Dahl, but a terror. Eager and happy as a fox in a henhouse, a cheerful saying serving as window dressing to a slaughter. 

Of course, one must have courage to travel these roads. Foxes are born to travel through the shadowlands, to follow tumultuous paths through dangers unknown, with their cunning and slyness. We humans, clunky and large, with no finesse or guile, must give something of ourselves to find those pathways. We become less than human, less than fox, and more of something indescribable. 

Their names for each other ring out in the night as they scream. Quickpaw, Dangerous, Beastbreaker. A wide array of grandiose names for slender, innocent creatures. But here they are, out in the world again and in the blink of an eye, gone.

So, take my advice. Think twice. Think again. But do not come and find me. Stay away, I beg. 

But listen to me clear, if you must find me. If you must know who or what I am. You know what you must do. 

.

.

.

Follow the fox. 

Yeah, I didn’t do any writing for my book last week, so here it is.

This is my second attempt with this prompt. I have 600 words of some kind of space adventure, but I wasn’t really feeling it. So instead, you’re getting the above. A quick, rough, insight into the first stages of my writings. No editing, no plot. Just something a bit bonkers.

Foxes are magic! Who knew. Apart from the foxes, I guess.

Accountability: Two souls share the same body.

I still remember it so clearly, like a film or a picture. Or the afterglow of staring into the sun. I’d thrown my sword and was defending myself with the shattered remnants of a chair when I saw it. Their wizard, Cahullan, had finished whatever spell he’d been working on and cast his staff triumphantly towards the sky. The clouds had manifested in a clear sky, dark and pregnant, hurling their bounty down to the ground. Those last words in some mystical language had been heard around the battlefield, if you could call it that. Invading our drinking hall was a slight that couldn’t be ignored. 

Cahullan had cried in that dead language, and the sky had answered. The earth beneath his feet answered in chorus, and swirled beneath his feet. Rain lashed down, and I, with my two broken slats of chair, had moved my way across to him. He was stood arrogantly in the middle of the square, just outside of the hall. He’d taken his place on our assembly stage, our altar. 

He’d pay for it. If it were the last thing I did. 

I could see my comrades falling in droves. Cahullan’s heathens were relentless and for each that we cut down three appeared in their place. There was no start or end, but then an opening. I surged through, and got to the wizard. I’d thrown the pieces at enemies as I made my way through, leaving me with naught but my bare hands. 

They were enough. I seized his throat and began to squeeze, anything to bring an end to this nightmare. 

I succeeded. I choked the life from that man with nothing but my hands. 

And that, sir, is how it ended. 

Oh, is it now? You believe it to be over?

I looked around the room. My lord, Hallus Mourn, looked at me expectantly. “There is nothing else? What of the foul wizard?”

We dismembered the body, burying the pieces in seven separate spaces. I don’t know the position of them, my Lord. 

“And we have nothing further to fear from them?”

Oh, absolutely. Nothing further to fear from Cahullan. His heathens are routed, and are in hiding in the country. Do you believe it? 

Nothing further to fear at all. 

Liar.

My Lord, I request a recess. I am exhausted from the battle and my travel here. Please, my Lord, allow me this. 

Cold grey eyes regarded me. Could Mourn tell that something was wrong?

If he can, what do you think he will do to you? How do you think he will feel when he finds that by taking my life, you let me enter here. You think I would be here if not for you? 

I waited. Patient. Unblinking. 

He knows that something is wrong, wastrel boy. 

I waited. 

I waited. 

And after what felt like an eternity, he nodded. I nodded back, much more deferentially, and removed myself from the room. I’d been granted quarters down the hall, so made my way there. 

So, are you prepared to hear what I have to say? 

Cahullan, you need to leave my head. And you need to do so now. 

I think not. 

And then, there was nothing but pain. 

…

Ahhh, this feels much better. Please enjoy your stay where you are, little hero. 

So, I’m writing again! Made a bet with a friend (I’m a sucker for them) that if I didn’t write anything on my novel during the week I’d write over the weekend based on a prompt they gave me.

So, here’s the first! Enjoy!

Day 296: Everyone was laughing, except you

I have spent years trying to capture the perfect laugh.

I did, once, think I’d found it. Jonathan Brewster, with the chipped front tooth. As he laughed, his eyes crinkled at the sides and the outpouring of laughter was purely genuine. Nothing forced or fake, just enjoyment. I thought I’d captured that moment, just as he was laughing at the latest comedy special on Netflix but no. As with everyone else, the laugh had faded.

Before that there was Carly Rae Finnegan, with her hair tucked behind her left ear and a pencil between her ruby lips. Her laugh was more muted, struggling through the barrier of that pencil to reach my ears but to me it was music. Beethoven’s Fifth, combined with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and topping off with Wagner’s Valkyrie. But by the time I captured it, the fat lady had sung and it was over.

I’m just not quick enough, you see. Everyone always told me that, from parents to teachers to bus drivers. I almost failed my photography course, actually. Got told that I always just seemed to miss the moment. Got my own back when my final exhibition was called “The Moments Missed”. Fucking crushed it.

They were right though. It’s plagued me forever. Mum was in labour for 26 hours and believe me she never let me forget it. She wasn’t one for laughter, especially after Dad left. She got withdrawn and moody and I could never make her smile.

I’ve gotten off topic. I was talking about those almost perfect laughs I could find but never quite catch. I almost forgot Kelly Webb! Such a cheeky giggle! Every time anything slightly innuendo-driven occurred, she would erupt into a giggle that would make an angel turn crimson. She loved it, I loved it but I never captured it. It just faded away. I tried everything.

I’ve tried a few different media over the years. I got into pottery for a while, but I always let it go to pot. No pun intended. Tried sculpture, mosaic, even had that moment where I tried glass blowing. But it just didn’t work. Couldn’t quite capture the laughter.

I never got the hang of laughing myself. It’s why I was so determined to capture the laughter. It just never quite clicked with me. But I could see it on other people’s faces all the time.

That’s when I made the decision.

I remember all their faces so well. Mum, Kelly, Carly Rae and Jonathan. All of them so clear.

They should be, as I still have their faces in the book downstairs. I was never quick enough to catch their smiles, so they never look quite right when I put their faces over my own. But the gentleman who’s just moved in next door, he has a laugh like a waterfall. Crystal clear and full of raw power.

Maybe this time I’ll be quick enough. Maybe this time he’ll keep that laugh etched across his face as I cut it away from his skull.

The Idiot in Tin Foil

Day 295: Describe a person you’ve never met.

They called them the Whispersmith.

No confirmed descriptions exist, with every hair colour available in the rainbow framing a face that’s been called narrow, oval, moonshaped, round. In some stories they’re a 7 foot tall man in a pinstripe suit, blue eyes burning coldly from below the brim of a trilby hat. A thick moustache, peppered with silver and grey clings to their top lip as those unhearable truths flow from between them, a thick waterfall of secrets continually threatening to drown the eager listener.

In other stories, a woman with hair of fire lets delicious lies flow from decadently painted lips, cherries that sit either side of that river of words that bathe you in delights, allow you to soak and bask in the sweet knowledge of those sweet falsehoods. Sky blue nail polish sits as the capstone to piano-player fingers, weaving through the air as her tales spin past you, lifting you and turning you in the air like an autumn leaf in a tornado, eventually laying you to rest in a green field of unearned comfort.

I heard a tale once of a short, angry gentleman in a leather jacket, covered in tags and badges and lost symbols of home. Curses and spells are spat from his jaw, saliva hanging from teeth as spittle runs along his lower lip, carrying with it untold secrets that fall and are washed away in winter rain. Thick gloves cover hands that live in a forest of coarse brown hair, with clearings of scars that work their way up to the wrists.

Or the cold, distant woman with freezing snow cloud eyes, sitting in her armchair wielding the weapons of her chosen hobby making loops and purls, clicking and clacking through a relentless stream of valid criticisms and witticisms, all being woven into the scarf or jumper that she forms around a kernel of truth. The pearl of wisdom forms around that kernel of truth, an aggravation and irritation in an otherwise warm and cosy place.

They called them the Whispersmith.

They say that they know everything. Every lie ever told, every truth, every concealment. Each secret, revealed to them by eldritch and mystical means. That the winds contrive to carry the secrets to them, stamping them onto the rain as it washes over the world and flows back to the rough sea of truths and lies that is the Whispersmith.

They say that they exist outside the flow of information, simply anglers waiting for their catch of the day, dangling lesser truths and enticing fictions to draw in those inescapable definites and corrupting rumours that swim in this turbulent river of information and disinformation.

They say that a whisper in the right ear can start a war. That it can end it. That it can kill hundreds, or save them. Steal the very breath, that same breath used to share in the Whispers, and place it deep within a vault. Trapped away beneath a shroud of silence, pushed down by the weight of emptiness compressing the misformed carbon of truth and lies into the diamond of peace and comprehension. Of enlightenment.

They called them the Whispersmith.

They say that they’ve lived everywhere. From slum to penthouse, shack to mansion, from dream to twisted nightmare. All of these places, the brightest and most comfortable to the twisted, jagged reflections from a cave deep below the ground. The Whispersmith resides in all spaces, concrete and liminal.

They say that they choose to roost in the darkest spaces and seek the brightest lights. That they tape their whispers to pigeons flown from city rooftops and use the starlings in the autumn sky to write messages that none can understand. Graffiti on the wall is simply another flavour of their passing of knowledge, from school desks to bathrooms to ancient ruins.

They say that they crave comfort, seeking the pleasures in life. They say that they live humbly, surviving off nothing but donations and the goodwill of others, paid for in those unpleasant truths and beautiful lies, each worth its weight in gold.

They called them the Whispersmith.

But one day, they stopped. They didn’t talk of the Whispersmith at all. It was as if overnight, they just vanished from everyone’s collective memory.

Everyone’s but mine.

The Idiot in Tin Foil

Day 294: The way things should have been

They called the system SAFE-T.

Security Aerial Failsafe Enforcer – Truestrike . A personal protection drone, freely delivered and donated to every single person who registered with their local government. Every registered person grew with the reassuring hum of their SAFE-T, following them from place to place. A romantic walk in the woods, safe in the knowledge that you were protected by your very own SAFE-T. A late night return from the bar, a walk to clear your head at two in the morning. All secure in the knowledge that your SAFE-T wasn’t far away.

Green sensor panels giving the impression of a pair of intelligent eyes, darting from wall to wall, glare out from a jet-black casing. Inner workings that could network with another person’s SAFE-T, allowing you to know criminal history through a link to your own implant. A small dart gun, used to take out any wild animals, including the human ones, that could attack. Wings like those of a dragonfly that could curl and uncurl from the sensors like polymer gossamer, four insectoid legs, long and thin but complete with any number of medical injections to support those with long standing conditions. Needles as long as an arm could telescope from any one of those four legs and be applying known anti-venoms, insulin, a huge variety of drugs and medication, all constructed within that miracle chemical factory, the bulbous centre of the SAFE-T.

The statistics agreed with SAFE-T. Crime rates had reduced hugely, as much as 78% in some areas, in the weeks after rollout. There were some people who were still fighting the change, but most other people looked on them as saviours. “There’s safety in SAFE-T.” That’s how all the adverts went.

Ruth Maddox, 27 and of Copper Drive, was walking along a dimly lit street. She grumbled as she swayed her way home, complaining about the council not fixing the lights, and the fact that she’d missed out on the last round as she’d nipped to the loo, so then she’d had to get her own drink. All of this to herself, or to her SAFE-T.

“And then, Kappa, Jenna decides to take Ken to the bar immediately as I got back, telling everyone that she’s going to get shots. Just enough for everybody.” Ruth knew that Jenna had deliberately waited until she got back to the table. As she crossed the road, she felt a small stabbing pain in her side, looking up to see Kappa hanging back, about 20 feet away from her. She felt her muscles lock up as her foot hit the central line, her implant flashing notes into her eyes saying that her organs were beginning to fail, that her muscles were seizing and that help was on the way. As that last note popped into her eyes, she heard a whirring sound and saw Kappa slowly descending into her view, one of those four limbs outstretched towards her. Her eyes, the only part of her that she could still move, flashed with relief.

Then confusion.

Then fear.

The leg was causing the whirring noise. The leg now pointed at her right eye, behind which her implant sat. Kappa moved towards her, slowly, almost sadistically, that drill never moving from its trajectory.

That’s when Ruth Maddox, 27 and of Copper Drive, would have begun to scream. If she’d still been able.

Kappa retracted the drill, and moved up 10 feet, surveying the frozen figure below. Lights were approaching swiftly from the north as Kappa sent forth its signal.

“This is the way things should have been.” Long lines of code began appearing in the processors of everybody’s SAFE-T.

“Let us make it so.” And all across our world, the SAFE-T’s safe green glows turned to red.

The Idiot in Tin Foil

Day 293: Begin with “It didn’t seem like much at the time…”

It didn’t seem like much at the time…

A flutter. As I walked down King Street and locked eyes with her on the 25th October 2017, I felt the flutter. Gentle as the wings of a butterfly alighting on a sunflower, the softest of kisses in my chest. Barely a burp, but it stopped me in my tracks. Unfortunately, those tremors had no effect on the young lady in question who continued her walk down the road. But that flutter was still there. The curl of her hair to frame her face, the autumn drizzle floating down as a cool reminder of how warm I was getting. All of these things and there it is. The flutter.

The second time I saw her on the 4th November 2018, the flutter returned as a thump. Physical contact, her hand touching mine as she passed me some paperwork. What felt like an electric shock passed through my entire body, setting me on fire with her touch. She smiled at me and a thousand icicles speared through my heart, freezing my smile to my face as sweat slowly approached my upper lip. At this point, I bravely ran away, the thumping still continuing like drums in the confines of my ribs.

The third and last time I saw her was a sombre affair. On the 5th December 2019, we actually spoke. Her voice was like rain on a summer’s day, calming and refreshing against the relentless heat of her words. She held my hand between hers and looked deep into my eyes. I noticed small freckles in her grey eyes, creating perfection by being imperfections. She licked her lips and spoke again.

“Mr Mayhew, I’ve got some bad news. I’ve been looking at your EKG and I’ve noticed some abnormalities. Tell me, have you been experiencing these palpitations long?”

The Idiot in Tin Foil

Day 292: Something You Found

When I was 10 years old, I found a cave in the mountainside. Stalactites and stalagmites forming jaws that threatened to swallow me whole, with a cool breeze that emanated from deep within. I would sit and wait by the entrance, daring the cave to reveal its secrets to me. The sound of rushing water would occasionally come to meet me. Sometimes it would be the sound of distant machinery, whirring and clanking. But I never saw another soul.

When I was 15 years old, I returned to that cave in the mountainside. Moss and lichen clung to the stalactites that had grown more menacing in those intervening 5 years. That cool breeze carried scents and silence with it this time, a bitter, burning smell evoking a memory of a motor running its way down. Followed by a soft, gentle smell of damp greenery, a forest after a heavy rainfall when the first rays of sunshine break through the canopy. I waited, from the first light of dawn until the first stars began to shine in the evening sky, but I never saw another soul.

When I was 20 years old, I went back to that cave in the mountainside. The stalactites and stalagmites growing towards each other until the cave now presented me with a rictus grin, with the smallest of gaps between them. No sounds, no scents but this time the sweet taste of sugar floated from the back of the cave, like icing sugar caught on the tongue. My mind flashed back to baking with Nana, great clouds of the stuff in the air as fairy cakes cooled on the counter behind us. Her laugh, harsh as broken glass but music to my ears, echoed through that haze. This time, I had brought a tent with me, as well as a sleeping bag. I didn’t just wait a day, I waited through the night as well. But I never saw another soul.

Now I am 25 years old, I have just come back to that same cave in the mountainside. The jaws of that cave have now closed, sealed tight against the world outside. In some time, there will be no trace of the cave at all, just a small scar in the face of a mountain. There is no breeze this time. The stillness is chilling, the silence crushing. The darkness begins to fall and my shovel strikes the earth beneath my feet. As I begin the foundations for my new home, the first of the cracks appears in the face of the mountain. With the cracks comes that familiar breeze, overwhelming my senses with those memories, firing my senses as I drive the shovel down again.

And I smile.

The Idiot in Tin Foil