Ten Minutes

A ten minute writing exercise we did on BlergPop.

5:10 p.m.

The light outside is pale and delicate but the sky is oddly dark. There is nobody in the street. I hate the sight of that yellow house with the stupid giant Monarch butterflies on the side. But the branches have light green frosting, the instrument of nature tuning itself for the spring crescendo.

There are sounds above my head, footsteps on hardwood floors, happy married sounds. I can’t resent it. I just can’t bring myself to.

My keyboard is so dirty. I can’t actually believe how, all of a sudden, I can objectively see the ingrained dirt of food and drink spills, splashes. It’s disgusting.

What will I eat tonight? What is everyone eating? What are they eating in Paris now? It’s past one a.m. there. Maybe someone is drinking from a great litre stein filled with lager on the Champs Elysees. What about Marseilles? That is the France I would prefer right now, the smoky, jazz-filled night. The seediness around the next corner. Danger.

We have divided this world into arbitrary parts. We guard these artificial lines like they matter. They don’t matter. We shoot at others across these lines, if not with rifles with words. Harsh words. We blame in place of accept. We have all done this. When we fall victim to it, we pause. If we are not cowards, we learn to do it to others less. Most people, however, are cowards. They pass on the hurt instead of saying “no,” gently “no,” we’ll stop that here. Erase that line. Step across it, friend.

I have less than three minutes to finish this piece.

What would I like to say?

The outside light flattened out, became an old faded photograph. I don’t even hear a single dog barking. It’s as if I am trapped inside something from the past that can’t get here, can’t find its way to the present and is fading away because it knows something it can’t impart, as if in possession of some terrible secret it is doomed to keep to itself.

And now, the last minute has sounded. It’s all over.

5:20 p.m.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Insomnia

This is my story in Indies Unlimited's recent Writing Exercise contest.

It's a little twisted and disquieting, but if you like it, you can vote for it here.

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Photo copyright KS BrooksI don’t recall seeing it, but I must have seen it. Something kept me awake half the night, after all. Then some dark urge made me return to it.

Bud Lilly’s Trout Shop.

A fishmonger’s, you’d think. And for the most part, you’d be right. But you would also be wrong.

Here on this quiet street, post-revelry and pre-dawn, I stood before that window once more. Odd that it should display its neon welcome at this godforsaken hour. And that such cold fluorescence still burned within.

Suddenly afraid, I turned away, wishing for sunrise, for even the spartan brevity of my home; anything but this suspended place masquerading as a city street.

Nonetheless, as if compelled, my gaze returned to the window. In time to see a flash of silver and an appalling face. A hideous sweating man was butchering someone with the efficient strokes of a squalid Samurai, amputating the limbs of his screaming victim. My blood froze. The night butcher propped up the dying man, whose rolling eyes and sagging lips resembled nothing less than a helpless trout… dressing his limbless torso and placing him, bleeding and faintly sobbing, on the shaved ice of the display beside the other staring fish.

The attacker looked up. Implacable, euphoric, he grinned a terrible grin, lifted his awful, dripping blade and pointed at it. Then pointed back at me and winked.

Then I remembered what I had seen earlier: my own name on an empty section of that same display, waiting.