Erections - because we are getting flooded with Elections...

I must say that I am justifiably proud of my erections.  Not every man can say that but I can.

I started them when I was about 15.  Of course it was late in life - most begin much earlier even as young as twelve - but in all fairness I really didn't have much interest until them.  Ah, but when I got interested, I really got interested.  Most of my family were unimpressed.  My brothers were both priests so naturally they figured I'd follow suit.  Priests!  There's no enjoyment in being a priest.  Not much opportunity for erections if you are a priest!

So I told my parents simply but firmly, the big things in my life are going to be my erections.  It was non-negotiable.  Upset my mother a bit I think, but I reckon my father actually looked a bit proud when I told him.  Maybe he didn't have much time for priests either.

When I met my first wife, the first thing she said was how big my erections were.  I don't think I'd be stretching the point to say that her eyes fair bulged.  Then I met my second wife and she admitted that my erections were the things that drew her to me.  She wanted someone who was destined for big things, she said, and from what she saw of me, I was that man.

So now, after many erections, I have a family of two wives and between them seven children.  I could never have done it without my erections.  I owe all my happiness to them. 

And just to top it all off, like icing on a cake, I am actually getting a medal for my erections.  Now hows that?  Even my mother looked pleased when I told her.  Her son, getting a medal - at a big ceremony too - for his amazing erections.  I guess I'm kind of the King of Erections! 

Anyway, the ceremony is tomorrow at the Sphinx which is, of course, my biggest erection to date. 

Who'd be a priest when you could be a builder huh?

A Funny Story

Jiggles Jiggler didn’t think his name was at all funny.  Nor did he consider his multi-coloured frizz of hair particularly jocular.  His big red tomato nose was, if anything, unremarkable.  And he would have been surprised if anyone had even noticed his rainbow suit with the giant shoes.

You see, Jiggles Jiggler lived in clown city.

Every morning, he climbed aboard his Model-T special with three small wheels and one large one, gave a squeeze of the  oversized rubber bulb – honk, honk honey, I’m leaving for work now – and drove the hundred yards or so to the train station with the usual bangs and orange smoke.

The Purple Puff-Puff was standing in the station and he climbed aboard the pink and white striped carriage with a hundred other clowns and settled back in the seat for the forty minute journey to the office downtown.

Every day he did it and every day it was the same: carriage full of clowns, all with big red noses and over-sized shoes.  Now and then, another clown would enter the carriage, sit down – usually on a honking horn – and they’d all gaze mindlessly out of the window until they arrived at their respective offices.

It was always like that – had always been like that – would always be like that - if it hadn’t been for Bert Smith.

On that fateful day, Jiggles Jiggler had only traveled two or three stations when someone entered the carriage.

It was the funniest thing they had ever seen.  He was dressed in a grey suit – absolutely no colours in it at all and it looked as though someone had actually made it ‘to fit’.  You couldn’t help but smile.  And his hair was black!  Black!  And … you’d hardly believe it – he had a normal nose.  That was a killer.  A normal nose.

The man sat down and then Jiggles Jiggler saw something that nearly sent him into hysterics.  The man’s shoes!  He had never, ever, seen anything like them before.  Ever.  They were tiny, so tiny, in fact, that they were only slightly larger than his feet!

Jiggles Jiggler just couldn’t stop himself – he had to laugh – big guffaws.   Tears ran down his face, carving little channels through the grease paint and dripping multi-coloured rainbow kaplonks on his giant bright yellow bow tie.  He felt a little ashamed of himself but he just couldn’t help it, he just had to laugh.  Everything about this man was so darn funny.   Hilarious.  Uproarious.

Pretty soon the others were laughing too.  The mundane world of clowns had suddenly been transformed by this funny little man in a grey suit and small shoes. 

He introduced himself as ‘Bert Smith’ and the whole carriage broke up in helpless abandon to good, old-fashioned belly-laughs and curious clowns with painted smiles from the surrounding carriages looked in to see what the fuss was about.  Pretty soon it seemed as though the whole clown express was laughing fit to bust.

It turned out that his real name was Cocoa Snuggles and he’d done it for a laugh - to give everyone else a laugh in fact.  And it had.  In a world full of red noses and big shoes, frizzy coloured hair and rainbow suits, Bert Smith had brought a touch of hilarity into the drab world of clowns.

The vultures fight over their pickings while the world suffers on to die...

I trot this one out around election times... it never grows inappropriate.  Not to me.  Not when the world remains in the mess it is in...

Hark! The birds of prey assemble,
and blood dripps from their sharpened beaks,
So our leaders do resemble,
Hear their pre-election shrieks,

Clouds of doom are fast approaching,
Despair : the mood of every man,
Greed and hate are thus encroaching,
on each and every life they can.

Portents of an evil morrow,
Mongers of a violent age,
Spreaders of the world's sad sorrow,
Breeders of the world's new rage.

Suffer all the little children,
Victims of a world insane,
Of war, of sickness, and of famine,
Losers in a world of gain

Star-crossed lovers.

He thought about her, about the shape of her face, about the beauty at her legs .... and sighed.

She thought of the proud way he had held his head, silhouetted against a full moon, a lovers moon, and cried.

He recalled the vision which was her entire being that had slipped into view like the blooming of an orchid.

She played over and over the warmth of his gaze and the promise of futures that would never be.

He dreamt with open eyes of a life together.

She looked into the oblivion of loneliness to see his face everywhere.

He was an old ram but made young through her beauty.

She was mutton dressed as lamb but made new through the love in his heart.

A broken heart, a pitiful bleat, the loss of hope.

Lambs to the slaughter of an uncaring and unkind fate.

The flocks moved on, hers one way, his the other.
Ram and Ewe, promised in a glance, separated in an instant,
Love grown in a single view, divided by a farmers fence.

They were but sheep that passed in the night.

The Space Adventures of Starship Toothgroper in the 76th Galaxy

The story that inspired the humorous sci-fi novel that I am currently pitching to publishers...

Captain Titanius Catknobbler (known as Tobyjug to his friends) sat at the controls of the Starship Toothgroper and contemplated his future. It was a very short contemplation mainly, if not wholly, because his was a very short future.

Things HAD been going brilliantly. They had stretched the lightspeed continuum really well, knocked out a couple of extra parsecs on the dimensional rebound, and even juggled the caterering figures to the extent that they would be the only ship to have made a profit in on-ship waste recycling.

In fact, he had been well positioned to win the coveted Space Captain of the year award. Had been. And then this had to happen. Goodbye to the 20,000 dinion prize money; goodbye to the complimentary six week holiday on the planet of Gurgley Wormsuckers; and definitely goodbye to the much sought-after sex voucher entitling the bearer to one overnight encounter with Gladys McNude and her dancing nobb-danglers.

The problem that faced him was a simple one. Nothing to do with quantum cross-pollination of universes - that he could handle. Nothing to do with temporal facsimile overflows (or the tens of thousands of mutant air traffic controllers that usually resulted) - that was a piece of cake. Not even a hyper deplosion of the meganoid ultrascollops as experienced by the most ill-fated and much pitied starship the Mandrigal-Hyperbonker - Captain Titanius would give his right tentacle (if he had one) for such a problem.

No. The problem he faced was simpler than all these yet far, far more problematic. And, worst still, embarrassing. He, captain of the year (probably), with a record ten years unblemished service (if you ignore that incident with the nudists and the spiny wagglethorn on chundertruss 6), all-round-good-guy and fun-chappie-with-the-captains-hatty, had just discovered that the presidential galactic transport vessel, containing every single member of the galactic government assembly had been accidentally sucked up into the faeces reprocessing tubes of the Starship Toothgroper, and transformed into (edible) yellow slime.

Captain Titanius Catknobbler wondered what the punishment was for total annihilation of the Galactic government - and whether or not he'd like it.

Probably not, he thought.  Probably not.

On My Way.

Dedicated to the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia.  Another in my 'PM' series...

On my way now.  The future, yes, the future!  It’s nearly here.  I am certain about that as I have never been certain about anything before.  My time is coming.  I work hard, I study hard, I live hard.  Hell, I even drive hard.  I have driven myself  on, certainly, and the end of the journey is now in sight.  Except that it isn’t the end, really.  No, not the end – rather the start.  My life is the journey and I have started it at full speed. 

For most people, the future rushes towards them and they are like seaweed in the surf.  That’s not me.  No way - I’m no budgie smuggler.  I don’t ride the waves, I make the waves.   And I am making waves.   I am rushing towards my future, meeting it not in retreat, not even half way – I am meeting it on my terms.  Yes, on my terms.

I only know one speed and that’s fast, and I only know one direction and that’s forward.  I’ve passed, I know that - passed my HSC.  Just like I passed that old Holden a few moments ago.   Just like that new Ford a couple of streets back.  Passed them in Dad’s old jalopy like they wasn’t moving.  I’ve passed my HSC just like I passed those cars.  Just as easy.  Got my big ticks, as they say.   HSC?  No problem.  No worries mate.  There’s no doubt.  It’s in the bag.  It’s a done deal.  I drove myself to get the grades and now I’m driving myself down to the post office to get the official results.  ‘Official results’ that will only echo what I already know.  I have done well.  No, not well.  I have done brilliantly.

When I get there, I’m going to ring the old man and tell him.  He’s always been there for me, supported me.  When I read what I already know - that I’m up there in the high 90s, about as high as you can get I think - well then I’m going to call him from the post office phone itself and tell him the good news. 

And, as the future usually does for me, it all went according to plan.  Mostly. 

I called him with the good news.   “Dad” I said, “I’ve got good news.”  But before he could speak I added “And some bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” he asked.

“I did really well in the HSC,” I said.  And I had.  I really had.

“And the bad news?” he asked.

“I pranged your car on the way here,” I said.  And I had.  I really had.

Sometimes the future still manages to meet you on its own terms, it seems.

Letter to the Agony Aunt

Dear Ask-Aunty,

I am experiencing an overwhelming sense of self doubt.  I honestly don’t know what to do or what to think.  I am hoping you might be able to help.

I feel as though I am locked in some sealed box – as though my life has contained and restrained me, unable to break free, unable to escape, unable even to perceive of a life outside my own limited confinement.

It is as though all communication with the world has been cut off.  I feel alone.  I feel isolated.  I feel as if there is nothing but me. 

Or, perhaps, not even that.

I am beginning to doubt my own existence.  Do I actually exist?  Did I ever exist?  Is this life or is this death?  I don’t know and I think – I fear – that I might never come to know the truth.

Can one be no-one?  Can I think of my non-existence if I indeed do not exist?  Isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, how can I even begin to know anything, let alone anything of my self?

I doubt that I even exist.  There is nothing and I am nothing – that’s how I feel.  Now, though, I even begin to wonder if I feel anything at all.  How much that we ‘feel’ is real and how much is, in fact, our imagination?  How much ‘being’ is life and how much ‘life’ is actually a useless faith in some kind of existential delusion?

Do I exist?  Am I alive?  Am I dead?

I do not know and my life – if I am alive at all – is filled only with doubt and darkness.

Please, please, please help me.

Yours sincerely,

Pussy Softcusion,

(care of my owner, Erwin Schrödinger who is apparently quite famous.)

And the band played on

It started as a story but became a 'poem'.  As today is ANZAC day, I thought I'd post it here.  It is not a story of daring bravado - but rather a sad indictment of a world that still thinks violence is a solution.  And it is testimony to the fact that, while I disagree with war, I can only admire and thank those who risked or gave their lives for others.

The God that looked upon us with love just laughed,

The blood that coursed now ebbed,

Noises that first were fearful, now were unformed,

Everything now was unformed.

The flag had fluttered in the breeze,

As the band played its serenade to bravery and duty,

While the fools marched back and forth,

basking in their youth.

The girls had clapped and cheered,

and we’d marched past with stony disinterested faces

that secretly burned with delight,

in the glow of their worship.

Corners of eyes picked out pieces of our own hearts

girlfriends, wives, mothers,

And the band played out the glory to the beat of our hearts

as we marched.

But the jungles were hot and wet

and the leaches fat and bold.

We’d held our guns above our heads and waded and swam

through swamps and streams.

Our hearts still beat the rhythm

of 'duty' and 'freedom',

as we hid and fought and cried and died.

And the band still played on in our hearts.

The night was split with bullet and scream,

the lightening of gun and flame tore apart the night and day

And hate and fear marked the beat of despair

but still the band played on.

And I saw his eyes

and he saw mine

and for a moment

we were brothers.

In an instant we played and laughed and grew from children into men,

Until the stench of blood and guts and half digested meat dragged us back,

to Now,

and I knew that we were enemies again and he had become man before I.

The God that looked upon us with love just laughed.

The blood that coursed now ebbed.

Noises that first were fearful, now were unformed.

Everything now was unformed.

And the band played on.

In memory of the tiny

Today in 1949 : Nuremberg Trials ended with 19 top aids to Adolf Hitler receiving up to 25 years for their part in war crimes.

The following is a short that may have happened.  Certainly worse did.  We need to change our world.  In memory of the tiny.

There was not much blood. Small bodies have little blood anyway, but small, starved bodies have less. Or perhaps it just clots quicker.

The tiny lifeless corpse hung on the barbed wire and fried in the sun, with the tiny pool of blood under it congealing like soup. Human soup. And it smelt. And that was perhaps the worst part of it. Because the body, almost inhuman in its tortured form, could be glossed over by the heart but the smell invaded the heart and tore it into a thousand pieces. The smell of death. Young death.

In general, the children were taken and destroyed first, but somehow this one had survived. Perhaps it had been hidden well. Perhaps some incredulous pity had turned the eye of the butchers. It was hard to tell. But it had escaped the furnaces, with its parent. Parent, because gender had died along with compassion when they had entered the camp. The dead have no gender.

But then the mother was taken and the child had tried to follow, tangling itself on the barbed wire. The wire cut and through blood and tears the child had fought, not to free itself, but simply to be with its mother.

And the guards had laughed. Then shot it.

And then they ate their lunch.

And the tiny body hung. And stank. And all those who waited for their own death knew that the end of the world was come. And they named it Auschwitz.

Amazing developments ...

I am planning a book launch for Quickety Snippets - tiny tales for those on the go.  MORE on this later but stay tuned via my twitter account Jaja Toff On Twitter.

There is also a new website for Arables.   Please stop by and check it out.

 

www.arables.net

(note: .NET not .COM)

She said I was the first.

Can't get over people.  Really can't get over them.   You think they're your friends, your lovers maybe, and what are they?  Your worst nightmares.  Your worst enemies. 

And even your enemies you can't trust.  No, not even them.  Because sometimes, they become your best friends.

People.  I just fathom them.  Can't read them.  They screw with your mind, and your life.

She said I was the first.  That was what she said.  No-one before me.  She said. 

But that was a lie.  You could tell it was a lie.  Not because her eyes sought to close the shutters to the truth bound and gagged within her soul.  Not because her voice delivered each world neatly wrapped in plastic wrap, pre-prepared, pre-cooked.  Not even because ultimately a lie betrays because it is betrayal.

No, it was a lie and I knew it because it all came so naturally to her.  It was an act of habit, of perfection, of honed ability that came not of a sudden instance but from a lifetime of application.

She said I was the first but she lied.

See, I can't get over people.  She didn't have to say I was the first.  She didn't have to 'specialize' the act, to create the importance.  I didn't have to be the turning point for her.  It was all so unnecessary.   It was all so pointless.  She did that which she did, and that was enough.  To be the first, the third or the last - it has no real meaning, no power, no conferring of honor or even, shock, of fame.   To be the first is just a single one in a series - the location mattering not at all.

She lied and I don't even know why.

But, let me confess now - I don't care that she lied.  I don't care that I was not the first.  Nor the last. 

I am beyond caring.

A corpse with a cut throat loses interest in such things.

Her first murder or her tenth.  It doesn't matter to me.  You are just as dead.

But I can't get over people.  The deception.  She said I was the first.

The Boat People

The boy stood on the burning deck – only it wasn’t exactly burning, just a little hot in the sunshine.  Initially, bad weather had plagued their journey but now there was plenty of sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky - the ocean was a deep intense blue except for the occasional white tips on the waves. 

He was young – would have been about four years old at the most, but the sight of that sea would haunt him forever – not as some horror from the past but rather as a magical memory with the promise of things to come. 

His mother stood close, holding tight to him; his father slightly to one side.  They all gazed out at the ocean – spying for land but seeing only blue that seemed to go on forever.
 

“Will we be welcome?” his mother asked.  “In Australia, will we be welcome?”

His father put one arm round her and rested the other on the shoulder of the boy.  “Yes” he said, “I think so.  They are a friendly people, the Australians, and it’s a land full of promise.  Yes,” he said again, “I think they’ll welcome us.  It will be a new life for us all.”

The boy was too young to understand all of his parents’ conversation.  He was just happy to be there; to smell the salt; to feel the motion of the ship on the waves. It was all just a wonderful adventure to him - he didn’t understand concepts such as ‘new life’ or ‘land of promise’, as long as he had his parents with him, he was happy.

“But maybe they won’t welcome boat people” said his mother.  “Maybe they’ll think that we’re a threat – to their culture, to their jobs.”

“Perhaps” said the boy’s father.  “But it’s a big land and a land of opportunity.  It has a big heart and it’s a place where dreamers can make their dreams come true.”  He patted his son’s head.  “Who knows,” he said, “this one might even make Prime Minister” he said and laughed.

“My son, Anthony Abbott – Prime Minister of Australia” said the boy’s mother with a laugh.  “I’d like to see that.”

YOUR OWN MEDICINE

The psychologist shook and squirmed, and the patient could see beads of sweat on his face and hands as he lay on the floor, quivering.  She ran to him, then changed her mind and ran to the door.  She stopped, regarded the doorknob with some suspicion, and finally pulled the sleeve of her cardigan over her hand and opened the door.  She called out to the secretary “He's having a fit or something - come quickly” she cried.

The secretary ran in.  “Oh no, not again” she cried.  “It's the fourth this week.”  She slipped a pencil into the psychologist’s mouth and started to stroke his brow while speaking calming words into his ear.  “Go next door and tell the secretary there that you have been transferred to Mr Hawlings” she said.

The patient kicked the door open a little more with her foot and left the room.

The psychologist had calmed down now and was looking weakly up at his secretary.

“What was it this time?” she asked.

“Doorknobs” said the psychologist weakly and tried to sit up.  And then in a weaker voice still, he continued “she has a ph- ph- phobia” he almost spat out these words “of doorknobs.”   He collapsed back onto the floor and a shudder went through his whole body.

The secretary looked down at him with a mixture of frustration and sympathy.

“I'm sorry,” she said firmly, “but you're going to have to see Mr. Hawlings yourself.  This has gone too far.  A fear of feathers, or heights or even the number thirteen I can cope with.  But working for a psychologist with a fear of phobias is downright impossible.”

She walked over to the door and looked back.  “You”, she said, “have phobiaphobia and it's time you did something about it!”

ARABLES FOR KINDLE!

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Your chance to explore your Christian faith in a set of short stories.


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A collection of short stories to strengthen, grow and perhaps even challenge your Christian faith.

They'll amuse you and they'll amaze you
but above all they'll move you.

 

Childs Play

"In the imagination of a child live both our darkest fears and our greatest hopes"  Jaja Toff.

The child sat propped up on his bed, illuminated only by the weak green of the nightlight plugged into the floor socket.  It was too weak to cast strong shadows but those it did seemed all the more menacing for that.  And there was menace.

Had anyone entered the room, they might - in the faint light of the nightlight - have observed the child sitting up in bed.  They would not, however, have been able to see the pyjama chord which bound his feet together.  His hands, similarly bound although this time with a dressing gown belt, were securely tied behind his back.  They would not have seen that either.  Perhaps, after accustoming their eyes to the darkness, they might have noticed the gag made from several tied handkerchiefs that cut deep into the sides of his mouth and kept him silent.  They would certainly not have seen his eyes, open wide and staring in abject terror.  It is certain, though, that they would have been instantly aware of the sickening smell of fear and the unmistakable stench of evil.

But no one came in.  They slept - his parents in their room down the hall, and his younger sister next door - dreaming of faeries, butterflies and songbirds, clutching her Roly-Poly Gladioli Diva doll.

Only the boy did not sleep.  Wide eyed, he was watching a doll - a doll walking slowly, almost painfully, towards him.  The hideous painted face grinned at him and its eyes glistened with the pleasure of anticipation.  It was too dark to see what it held in its tiny plastic hand, but the boy could guess.

When the doll had been bought at the garage sale, it had looked quite innocent.  The smile had betrayed little of its true nature.  Dressed as a confederate soldier in the American Civil War, it would make a good addition to his collection of memorabilia.  It's grey uniform had looked enticingly authentic - only the painted smile on the plastic gave it away as a cheap Chinese import.

So he'd bought it for a dollar and placed it with some of his other soldiers a few nights ago where it looked very much at home.  True, it was nearly three foot high whereas the others were only twelve inches, but that only seemed to increased the impressiveness of the piece.  Yes, it had been an excellent addition to his military collection.

Only perhaps it hadn't.

The doll edged closer, agonizing step by agonizing step until it was only a matter of inches from the boy.  Drool dribbled slowly from the painted mouth and hung like a jellied stalactite for a moment until falling to the floor with a plop.  Its eyes, no more than two black dots in two black ovals, seemed to glisten with excitement.

As slow and painful the approach to the bed was, not so for the attack.  The toy-formed demon swung its plastic arm upwards with a lightening speed to reveal the glint of a long, fine, sharp knife.  The boy whined and shook, and the smell of sweat and bowels filled the room as the knife swung down with a terrifying and complex combination of lightening speed and - yet - slow motion, towards the boy's stomach.

Into the stomach it plunged and with a deft turn of the plastic wrist the living intestines were plucked from the boy.

Or, at least, so it would have been, had it not been for the teddy.

As the knife swung down,  Theo the Teddy Bear swung into action.  If the doll moved now with the speed of sound, then the Teddy moved with the speed of light and using the shepherds crook from the boy's younger sister's 'Little Bo Peep' set, knocked the knife from the hand of the pestiferous polypropylene ponce.  The painted eyes betrayed a look of surprise, but it scrambled with astonishing speed to where the knife had landed with a clatter on the floor a few feet away.

No sooner had it picked up its sinister weapon and turned when there was Theo, standing resolutely between the boy and the doll.  Good versus evil with a child's life the prize.  The smile on the doll seemed to widen with the joy of promised violence and the anticipation of its prize and the additional horrors that it now promised in its dark, demonic mind.

The knife cut the very air as the doll swung it from side to side.  The bear deflected it, time and again, using the crook - striking this way, then that, first tarrying, then twisting, then jabbing - but losing a little ground each time.  The bear was good - very good - but the doll was better.

The bed pressed hard against the bears back, but still the slashing of the knife came, and came, and came.  Then, a cut to the arm - small but a cut never-the-less.  Then a jab to the chest.  Bit by bit the bear's defenses and strength wore down, as the doll cut further and further into it.  The battle neared it's finish and the doll grew even stronger in it's victory.  Finally, scarred and marked, the crook broke in two and the bear was left holding only a jagged end.

The dolls knife drew back with a vicious sideways jerk and was about to arc through the bears neck for the final kill before the ultimate thrill, when there came a piercing scream from behind it.  It turned it's hideous painted plastic head in an instant to see Roly-Poly Gladioli Diva standing at the door - with the force of La Donna est Mobile projecting from her electronically operated Japanese mechanism.  Theo the Teddy Bear took his chance and plunged the broken end of the shepherds crook straight into the head of the doll.  It collapsed on the floor and the evil that had powered it, fled.

It was over.

The Fat Lady had Sung.

The White Christmas

Ernst Meyer, 89 year old pensioner and sole occupant of room 26, Twilights Retirement Home,  was awake.

He had woken suddenly, drenched in sweat and breathing fast.  A slight pain beat time in his chest, but it was not the pain that had awakened him.  At least, not that pain.

His eyes adjusted slowly to the half-dark of the room and the shadows and shapes slowly resolved themselves from some vague echo of the dreamscape into real, everyday things - wardrobe, bedside-table, armchair.  He took a deep sharp breath - something silvery like a phantom danced before him near the ceiling.  Then he almost smiled.  Tinsel.  Of course, it was only the tinsel hung up by the staff at the home for Christmas.  But Christmas had no power over the nightly tortures.  In fact..... he shuddered.

"Bad dream?" asked the voice who shared his single room.

Ernst did not answer but nodded.  It was too soon to talk.

He'd been having the dreams now for almost seventy years.  Not every night.  Most nights.  Yet they still had this power over him - seventy years on they could still tear him apart.  He wondered if it would ever change. 

"Tell me" said the voice soothingly, "in your own time".

Ernst lay back onto the bed and closed his eyes but opened them almost immediately.  Too much was still there waiting to be seen by closed eyes.  Horrors that only holidayed in the shadows lived in the sight of closed eyes.  He looked over to the visitor's chair and regarded the man who now sat there.  He wavered, in the chair, like something out of a dream - but then so did the chair.  Everything wavered when a dream tears you from very sleep itself.

"Yes" he said at length.  "Another bad dream".  Then he corrected himself.  "The same bad dream".

"I thought that it might be so" said the man gently.  He paused for a moment and then asked, as he had for so many years, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Ernst Meyer, dreamer of bad dreams, always said no, thank you but no.  There was a risk - a terror - that talking about the dream might in some way bring it into the world as some objectively existing fact - and he couldn't face that.   So he always said no.  Some things were best imprisoned - at least as much as he could imprison them.

Tonight, however, he did not say no.  Perhaps it was the pain in his chest which had been worsening of late; perhaps it was the fact that it was Christmas; perhaps it was simply that he was tired of running.

"I'd" he began and hesitated.  He took a breath and continued "I'd like to tell you about it".

The man showed no sign of interest - nor disinterest.  He simply regarded Ernst thoughtfully for a moment and then said "You want to tell me about your dream?  Of course, I'll be glad to hear you - but only if you're ready" said the man.

Ernst Meyer,  swallowed hard and then, despite the dark, nodded.  "Yes" he said.  "Yes, I think I am".  For whatever reason, the time had come.  It was time to unlock the cage.

"Go on" said the man, "but in your own time.  For you," he added, "I have as much time as you need"

In fact, not much time was needed - the dream itself was very short, its real power lay in its intensity.

"I'm holding my child - my son" began Ernst. "Not in my arms but with my hand clasped upon his and he is dangling about a foot above the ground from that hand.  He's crying and screaming but" and Ernst felt the sickness and horror of the dream as he gave it life in words and he almost stopped.  Almost.  It took a few moments to continue but his friend calmly waited in silence.  After a moment or two, Ernst continued. "He stops screaming and looks up at me and " then almost spitting the words out he continued "and I shoot him dead.  I shoot him dead".  Tears began to run down the face of Ernst Meyer and he buried his head in his hands.

There was a deep silence in which neither spoke for a good minute.    Finally, his friend said to him "But you didn't kill your son did you".  It was not a question - it was a statement.

Ernst Meyer, old man and father, lifted his head from his tear sodden hands and looked at the man in the chair.  "No" he said.  "My son is alive - he comes here every week to visit me". Ernst held out his hands, palm upwards, towards his friend as if to show off the lack of bloodstains.  "I didn't kill my son.  Only in the dream".  And he repeated the words again, as much to himself as any other "Only in the dream".

There was another silence in which Ernst thought much but said little until suddenly as if the words exploded from his very mouth he cried "I need to tell you what I didn't dream."

It was 1943 and by accounts a good year.  Certainly he was doing OK and the war - if you could believe the propaganda machine - was going pretty well too.   He was due for leave, starting Christmas Day, and expected to be home with his wife and son by the afternoon - just in time for their Christmas meal.  Not withstanding the war, everything was perfect.

Almost perfect.

Ernst Meyer, father and good soldier, had drawn duty in one of the camps.  It was not up to a soldier to pick and choose their posting, but had he picked he would certainly not have chosen that.  Jews!  He could see why they were so unpopular.  Dirty, smelly, lousy and they looked like animals.  'The Zoo' he called it when he went home on leave.  And he was a zoo keeper.  They used to laugh at that, him and his wife.

But there, on duty, he found little to amuse him.  Laughter in the camp was born not of humour but of hate.

It was not that the 'things' that he guarded drew any real compassion from him - they were after all just the final remnants of an evolutionary mistake.   In fact they were more like hideous caricatures of people than people themselves.  Never-the-less, sometimes - when his thinking was unguarded - he might almost has thought them human.  But such thoughts were dangerous.

"Dogs are dogs and rats are rats" the camp Commandant  would tell him.  "and jews are jews.  But what you have to remember Meyer, is that dogs don't pretend to be anything else.  It's the same with the rats.  Rats don't pretend to be horses do they!" and the Commandant would laugh his big hearty laugh.  It was the hearty laugh of someone who might easily shoot you dead if you gave them the slightest reason - or even if you didn't.  It escaped neither Ernst nor anyone else that laughing and shooting you dead could come only seconds apart with the Commandant.

"And that's the problem with the jew" he continued, "they pretend to be human" and there was no sign of mirth now - neither feigned nor genuine.  "That's what makes them worse than dogs, worse than rats."

It was Christmas eve and Ernst Meyer, Camp Guard, was on duty.  Snowflakes tumbled from the sky, turning the whole camp white.  Ernst tried to forget that it was not proper snow but the hard dry snow that knew nothing of ice nor water nor melting.  He thought of his wife and son readying the home for Christmas Day - she would be cooking already and he no doubt helping her as only a two year old child could.  Feelings of warmth and celebration began to burn in him and his heart beat a fraction faster in anticipation of his coming leave. 

A tug on his trousers also had the effect of tugging him back into reality. He looked down to see a young child at his feet.  It was  a dirty, half-starved, jewish boy.  So engrossed had he been in his own thoughts that he had almost trodden on it.  An older female, presumably the mother, stood some way off screaming hysterically - presumably enticing it to return.  The child, however, stayed where it was and continued tugging at his uniform trousers - taking no notice of the mother.

The Commandant had taken notice however and immediately marched over to Ernst, drawing his pistol as he came.
 
"Zerstören das Ungeziefer" he barked.  "Zerstören das Ungeziefer!"  Destroy the vermin.  There was no good-natured laughter now.  The fat, ovoid face of the Commandant was red and full of anger. 

Ernst Meyer, Camp Guard and good soldier,  had looked at the Commandant blankly at first, frankly unable to comprehend what the fuss was all about.  The Commandant shouted again, this time in rage.  "Zerstören das Ungeziefer!" Ernst's rifle was pulled from him and the Commandant's pistol thrust into his hand.

It was a moment that Ernst Meyer, father, had all but obliterated from his memory.  Most of his time at that camp had been exterminated with the same ruthlessness as the jews themselves.  Now, as he recounted the story, it came flooding back into vivid detail.

He had reached down with his innocent arm and grasped the child by the hand, lifting it up into the air by it's arm.  The mother's cries had died down somewhat as terrible fear gave way to the inexpressible horror of knowing.  She half kneeled, half lay, restrained by the joint efforts of starvation and despair.  The child, held aloft by one arm, dangled and wriggled and cried - though less from pain than from fear.  It squirmed desperately but could not escape the vice-like lock of his hand. 

"Sie hat sich eine Kugel in ihr oder ich eine Kugel in euch geben!" screamed the Commandant.  Put a bullet in it or I'll put one in you.

The child stopped its wriggling and looked up at Ernst Meyer, holder of children in the air by one arm. 

And Ernst Meyer, Camp Guard and father, put a bullet into it.

Ernst Meyer, murderer, monster and human being, stopped talking.  The heart that had died with that bullet finally caught up with its own death.  The dream released from the cage died in its awakening.

And the man with whom Ernst Meyer, pensioner, shared his single room, shook his head.  It had taken nearly seventy years, but finally he had faced it.   And the young child with a hole in his head, formerly the man with whom Ernst Meyer had shared his single room, faded into the oblivion of the past.

Outside, it started snowing.  Real snow.

Things were very quiet ...

Things were very quiet, now the phantom had passed away,
For ghosts are also subject to age and decay,
The house now was empty, save the creaking of the boards,
And the wails of a lonely wind in harsh and ugly chords.

Things were very quiet, now the phantom had passed away,
The spiders got to weaving, their webs of silver grey,
The dust relaxed to settle, now that the ghost was dead,
Even cats and bats came back, from wherever they had fled.

Things were very quiet, now the phantom had passed away,
Moonbeams dared to shine again, in their secret, silver way,
And life, at last, returned, to the place that had meant death,
and the air that once was strangled, came back to take a breath.

Things were very quiet, now the phantom had passed away,
And normality took up residence, at least throughout the day.
But as the night grows longer, when the dark is at its most,
they say the place is haunted now, by the phantom's ghost.

Nanotales #1

Light and dark danced about him, drugs and booze overcame him,
hunger overpowered him and death became his only companion.

Room For One On Top

 A slight variant on a classic ghost tale.....

 

‎'Twas late of night and all had bade farewell to day and gone to bed at last,
Whence I looked from my boudoir out upon that night so dark,
And beheld a vision of a bus, that drove about a mist,
And from the back there came a call, the call that came was this...

"Room for one on top"

And with that the bus was started forth, and made to move away
But there came a frightful screaming sound that rings my ears today,
A burst of light and flame tore forth and split the very sky,
But echoing still about the night I heard that haunting cry,

"Room for one on top"

Well, upon the morn I quit my bed, eager for my work,
And forgetful of the night's events, I recoiled with a jerk,
As a bus pulled in to where I stood, with a grinding of the gears,
And I heard the voice of certain death that echoed all my fears,

"Room for one on top"

So I walked to work.

She Wandered Ever Eternally

She wandered ever eternally,
A twilight creature all alone,
Lost in thoughts and memory,
Unheard, unseen, untouched, alone.

Red wine drinking, every night,
Tomato juice at every morn,
She was a terrifying sight,
So alone, and so forlorn.

Sucking beetroot, never necks,
Bloodied wounds, she would not touch,
Her bloodshot eyes were full of specs,
She really wasn't up to much,

Vegula was a vampire strange,
Starving, weakened, but still a scary-un,
Far and near did this vamp range,
Vegula was a vegetarian.