Darren, God’s second son, was worried about the family’s legacy. Dad had an image problem, so he went to see him.
“Dad,” he said. “We need to give you a makeover.”
“What for?”
“All this divine retribution stuff,” Darren said. “It doesn’t play well. We need PR.”
“Where are we going to get that?”
“Ring the Pope.”
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Sunset at Coonawarra was sublime. The harsh daylight and perpetual dust momentarily forgotten. The falling sun hit the rocky range and the skies danced from crimson to vermillion. A thrum of cicadas replaced the chorus of laughing kookaburras. “How good?” thought Craig, as he sank into his grandfather’s rocker on the property’s veranda, savouring his chilled Tooheys.
Then one sunset at Coonawarrah turned the red skies black.
“Boss, boss, come quickly!” said Big Foot, Craig’s right-hand man.
“What’s the John Dory mate?”
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HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday midnight, 20.06.24.
TASK: ‘Retribution’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘retribution’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by midnight, Thursday 20th June 2024. Use the contact form or email Pat O’Connor directly.
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 23.06.24, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library. Finish at 3.30pm.
I heard stories about the Eternal Windstream. It will test you; it might break you, but if you’re strong enough, it will take you wherever you wish.
My search for it is finally over. I feel the flow of air and its pulsating energy before me. Excited, I step off the cliff.
The fall doesn’t last long. I spread my wings and enjoy the sensation of the wind in my feathers. And up the sky I go, gaining speed. Effortless.
I look back. The land gets further away. How far can I go now? How far should I go?
The wind gets stronger – now I have to fight with it to stay in the flow.
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Skreg looked at little Rhodri with tears in his eyes… well not really eyes; eyes is what you earthfolks call our assemblage of sensory organs. They generally work well …..until they don’t. Mine were working fine but Rhodri’s seem to have lost all functionality. Out of a sense of nostalgic allegiance, the partner progenitor had insisted on a name she had come across in the Incubatorium, whilst reading up on Ancestry.
“Rhodri Mawr, father of seven children or eight, depending on the source, and distantly related on my pater’s pater’s pater’s side,” she elaborated.
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The chair’s voice droned on.
‘Agenda item number 12.2’
This had been the longest day of my life, and we were barely halfway through.
‘All in favour?’
There was a unanimous show of hands.
We had all learnt from previous meetings. Any dissent to his proposals would mean even more procrastination, and would mean an all-nighter.
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Billy Thomas was excited. His parents were going to a posh dinner in Swansea, this meant he was going to sleep in his grandparents’ house. A rare treat, they went there every Sunday for tea but rarely did he stay.
Carrying his bag of clothes he set off, his mam’s warning ringing in his ears to behave. Nan was waiting at the door and ushered him in, hugging him. She smelt of lavender and she was tiny – Billy was almost as tall as her – and she reminded him of a small bird.
Grandad was ensconced in his armchair; he had a ruddy complexion thickset with hands like shovels. ”Alright our Billy.”
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It was a tiny mistake. A lapse of judgement while I drove to work fuelled by caffeine, death metal, and anticipatory rage. I was only seven miles per hour over the limit, but it cost me my driving license.
“Sorry, Jacqueline,” spat Nigel, my boss, in a tone denoting no sorrow whatsoever, “but I must let you go. Platinum Estate Agency can’t condone recklessness, nor can agents attend viewings by bus, or God forbid, on foot. Vacate your desk.”
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‘Are you in some sort of trouble love?’ asked the taxi driver.
Nishi squirmed in the hot vinyl hugging her toddler closer, her free hand tightening on the chubby leg of her five-month old.
‘Please… if anyone asks… you never made this journey’ she pleaded, hiding her black eye.
Nishi glanced back at what had been her home, nestled in the verdant hills, diminishing out of view.
The picturesque village with the 16th century church, weekly fete and mother’s group epitomised a rural idyll. Yet the dream was never Nishi’s, and the othering was relentless. The playgroup mothers asking her where she learnt English. Same place you did, from my parents, when I was a baby she thought but never retorted. The barely hidden speculation on what colour her unborn Indian-English child would be. The titters about their house ‘smelling funny’. She had tried so hard to fit in. Eventually exhausted by Murray’s hostility, she had given up.
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The two big lads squeezed into groaning chairs in the snug. Regulars compared the pair to two large teddy bears in a broom cupboard.
‘A couple of babes on the go; how did I get myself into this mess? ’ McDonagh said, palming sweat from his pale forehead.
O’ Shaughnessy took his first slurp of Murphys which formed a cream ring around his mouth and said, ‘There are worse problems.’
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1985
‘Pass us a Carlsberg’, Brian grunted from his recliner.
Stella hauled her heavily pregnant body back to the kitchen and grabbed her husband’s beer and her own TV dinner.
‘Move – I want to see the beginning of this!’ Brian said in an irritated tone, as his wife of three years passed by his seat. There was no way he would be missing a moment of Crimewatch.
As the now-familiar theme tune began to play, Stella crossed the great divide to the floral, velour sofa that was fast-becoming out of fashion. She sat down, finally resting her swollen feet. Nick and Sue appeared on-screen and started discussing a woman who shot dead her husband.
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I love a conspiracy theory, don’t you? Say what you like about them, mine is the best. It’s about…well let me take you to our inaugural meeting to hear believers and the yet-to -be convinced shouting the odds…
Newbie 1: You’re saying Earth is a penal colony used by several peaceful and well run planets to deport their undesirables? Well that makes complete sense to me. I’m in. Who do we have to kill?
Newbie 2: Where did you get the information? Q Anon are very clear about their origins.
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FADE IN:
EXT. New York Street – DAY
Two young fellers, COMANCHE and OBI make a beeline down a New York Street. Both are wiseass street hustlers, COMANCHE is half Native American, half Mexican, OBI is half black, half Italian.
OBI
Remember Syd Muir, tiny guy, bald, no neck?
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Tobermory held his daughter’s hand as they walked along the corridor, their footsteps echoing from the stone walls. He sensed her looking up and gave her a little squeeze.
“Don’t worry, daddy,” Eleanor said, “I’ll be okay.”
“I know, Pumpkin,” he said, displaying a sad smile. “We’ll all be okay.”
“Did you bring Flibut?”
Tobermory pulled the stuffed, one-eared camel from his bag. “Yes, he’s here.”
“Because I couldn’t go without Flibut.”
He looked down at her earnest features, a pixie face in a halo of red curls. Just five years old, he thought, how could there be a god?
He could have scooped her up right there and bounded back down the corridor. But he knew the guards would pick him off before they got out. And a stranger would make the long walk with her.
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HOMEWORK for deadline Thursday midnight, 23.05.24.
TASK: ‘Escape’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘escape’. Your story title isn’t included in the 500 words.
Homework to be in by midnight, Thursday 23rd May 2024.
Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.05.24, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library. Finish at 3.30pm.
Members: send all homework to Pat
Joiners: contact us through the Facebook Group
I’ve developed a grudging respect for my disease, it’s merely fighting to survive same as me; both of us were unwitting guinea pigs of doctors who misdiagnosed us, then prescribed inappropriate treatment, courtesy of the deplorable Sackler family. It was an osteopath in the end who felt the adhesions under my skin, with more skill in her fingertips and common sense than the scores of medics who had assessed me before. What precisely are they trained for if they can’t spot a disease as common as diabetes that only occurs in women?
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Alyria stood, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
All the sacrifices she’d made to get to this point, all the favours traded, the coin expended, the hard graft… it was all for nothing. Before her, the ruins of the gateway taunted, its rubble strewn over twenty square metres. With a wordless, throat-ripping howl, she sank to her knees.
Even the breeze through the dusty ravine seemed to mock her, whispering “too late, too late, too late” over and over until it became almost torturous.
Three long Earth years she’d travelled to get here, following rumours and sotto voce conversations in bars she thought she’d never get out of. The laser pistol at her hip had seen more use than she’d hoped – slavers, kidnappers, and perverts had all stared down the barrel, and more than once she’d barely escaped with her life.
And all for this. For nothing.
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“Three ruins at an older ruin.”
At Jane’s gesticulation, Shelley lifted her gaze to the hilltop. The forlorn skeleton of the banqueting hall had once pulsated with bacchanalian pleasures. Then rescanning the high-tide line, “At least we’re more than these empty shells”
“Some of us not much more” Jane batted back acidly.
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‘Don’t you remember?’ her daughter asked in an exasperated fashion. ‘That trip in June when we went to the beach and made friends with those people building a fire?’
Grace’s recall was not the same since the bleed but as this memory was so important to Dahlia she decided it was worth delving into that scary, cavernous place they called the hippocampus. She rarely visited it these days due to the destruction that lived there.
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Hunched at the desk of the paediatric consultant, her face eaten with anxiety, Jeanette briefly thought about her scream when the young doctor had told her. For fifteen months that scream had whirlpooled about her brain, making her feel like she was drowning. Next to her Simon gripped his fists, as if trying to crush the awful memories.
Dr Bennett, the report in his hands, said in his slow, self-certain voice: ‘These are the hospitals own findings, let us not forget, and they are damning. Short-staffed, equipment missing or not working properly and, most crucially, a doctor who didn’t understand the significance of baby having different oxygen saturations, SATS, in her hand (99%) and her foot (88%). Such a difference is an indicator of coarctation of the aorta, a congenital heart condition.’
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