Weekly Prompt Story: Stars

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=32085

The Lovers

By Christopher Munroe

They were star-crossed; but no matter what tragedy the world threw at them their love persevered.

When he asked for her hand she wept, when he saw her in her gown he did, for he knew in that moment that no force in heaven or earth could tear them asunder.

Then the sun went nova.

Both were slain, as was every other thing on the planet. The sterile, charred world hurtled through space, tomb and testament to a simple lesion that’s just as true today as it was back then.

Don’t cross the stars.

Stars, once crossed, will ruin you...

Weekly Prompt Story: Love

http://oneadayuntilthedayidie.com/?p=28410

Romance

By Christopher Munroe

I hate them.

I hate them all.

These fucking people with their fucking love, celebrating as though it made them special.

It does not make them special, they are not special. Nobody is special, and nothing means anything.

But you can’t tell them that, because they must celebrate love.

“Ooooooh!” they say, “Surely my perfect love will protect me from the icy hand of death!”

Nothing will protect you from the icy hand of death.

And as I sit here, in my turtleneck and beret, smoking long, black cigarettes, I hold them in nothing but the most abject of contempt…

The DJ

Last night a DJ saved my life.

And baby, tonight, the DJ’s got us falling in love…

He watches over me, my DJ, though I can never see him, keeping me safe as I go about my business, nudging me in the right direction when I start to veer off course. And, even at my lowest, weakest point, I know that my guardian DJ will be there for me.

Dropping beats, and bass, but never letting me fall however bad things might get. Protecting me, providing comfort, and doing a thousand little things over the course of my day, some that I never even realize he’s done, to make things just a little bit better for me.

We all have a DJ, though everyone’s DJ is different, because every one of us is different from one another, and while mine spins mostly retro indie tunes mixed with a little melodic industrial and EBM, yours might spin old-school hip hop, dubstep or even contemporary club-pop jams by today’s hottest artists. This is to be celebrated, because it takes all different sorts of people to make this world interesting, and all different sorts of DJs to watch over us, each in their own unique way.

Still, though I love and celebrate you, and through you I celebrate the influence of your DJ, I do still think my DJ is best. How could I not? He’s the one who’s always been there for me, after all, and who always will be there…

In the back of my mind, I can hear him now.

Providing the soundtrack of my life…

Conversation over drinks...

Before we go any further into this evening, I want to say for the record: I do occasionally turn into a wolf.

It’s not often, every month or so, but it does happen and, in the interests of full disclosure I thought it might be best to bring it up now, at the start of the evening, so that I don’t have to bring it up later and cause you to think I might have in any way misled you.

Once every month or so I turn into a wolf and run, naked and free, through the woods out back of my house. By morning I’m myself again, though a version of myself that is frequently covered in blood and stuffed with raw meat, and the rest of the time I go about a completely ordinary life.

This has been happening since last summer, during which I was bitten by a wolf whilst on a camping trip with a few friends from work, and while initially it was a terrifying experience to be sure, once I realized what was happening provisions could be made to get the situation under control, and I think I approached my new circumstance with a clear-headedness that I rightly deserve to be proud of.

Every problem, after all, can be dealt with if you approach it clear-headedly. I’ve always believed this, and to this point in my life it’s always proved true.

Overall, the situation has been challenging, but ultimately very manageable, and after nearly a year of changing into a wolf with the cycles of the moon I’m confident enough that I have it under control that I decided the time had come to date again.

Hence the OKCupid account. Hence the two of us, here, now.

I know this is a little heavy to spring on you during a first date, but I honestly do believe that no relationship can be expected to work if there isn’t honesty between the people involved, and this IS an important part of my life, so I’m getting it all out in the open in the hopes that you’ll understand and find it in yourself to look past it. I do turn into a wolf once a month. It’s not ideal, but hopefully it’s not a deal-breaker for you. And even if it is something you don’t think you can handle, it’s better for me to tell you now rather than wasting both of our time on something that obviously won’t work out. I’m in my thirties now; I’m done apologizing for who I am. I like me and I want the person I’m with to like me too.

So yeah, I turn into a wolf during the full moon, and I probably always will. That’s just me. Deal with it.

After all, if I’m going to be a wolf, I can at least be a self-aware-wolf…

The Abyss

When you stare into The Abyss, The Abyss stares back into you…

When you look away from The Abyss, it lowers its eyes, blushing.

While you’re in the washroom, The Abyss’ friend, Loneliness, comes over to our table to ask on its behalf whether or not you’re single. I tell her that yes, you are, though I point out that you may not be ready to get involved with something as serious as The Abyss considering what you’ve been through in your recent personal life.

Loneliness tells me that The Abyss is an adult anthropomorphic personification of nothingness, and as such that it can make its own decisions with regard to its personal life, that I shouldn’t worry about it one way or the other and let the two of you make your own decisions.

And I concede that Loneliness is right.

The Abyss has existed since before the dawn of time itself, and It will exist long after the universe has winked out of existence one star at a time, if there were anything capable of dealing with the enormity of your emotionally stunted bullshit, your drinking and inability to commit and your unwillingness to admit that you’re ever wrong, it’s The Abyss. And you, much though I question the choices you’ve made up to this point, are also an adult, and though I sometimes fear for you I know I can’t actually step in and live life on your behalf.

I can barely handle my own problems, after all. I have my shit together by a thread, and I’m clinging to that thread for dear life, I can’t be expected to fix you.

Much though I might want, I can’t fix you and it would be death to try.

You would be a pyre upon which I burned myself to death, if I let you…

So, when you come out of the bathroom, Loneliness, The Abyss and I are sharing a table, laughing over drinks.

The laughter is forced, you can tell it’s forced as you join us, it has that “whistling past the graveyard” quality that all forced laughter does its best to avoid. But you join us anyway.

You and The Abyss hit it off immediately, as though you were meant for one another, made for one another, and when the two of you leave together I can’t even pretend I’m surprised.

It just seems so natural, the two of you. As though it were meant to be, as though your whole life was pushing you toward The Abyss, and as the door swings shut behind you, I force myself to hope for the best.

Yes, this might just be a one-night stand brought on by the stresses of your recent personal life, a night of profound existential despair that, come morning, you can walk away from and start the work of putting your life back together, but I can’t help hoping it’s more than that.

Because I saw the way the two of you were together, you slumped over your drink, The Abyss looming over you, enclosing you, protecting you, and I think that if you play your cards right you could stretch this chance meeting with The Abyss out into a lifetime of ennui.

If you play your cards right.

I know it isn’t the life you’d wanted, but I suspect that by this point in your emotional development, or lack thereof, it’s the best you can reasonably hope for, and certainly all that you deserve. So as you go off, together, I cross my fingers for you and hope for the best.

Myself, I spend my night in the embrace of Loneliness, and hope as I do that future nights bring better things. But that’s okay.

Loneliness is the sort of company I’m used to, I can weather it gladly that you might have The Abyss that you want.

I’m a good wingman that way.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

…and then came Valentine’s Day, and across the land a certain type of couple rejoiced.

Specifically: Loveless couples.

The type of couple who can’t be bothered to take the few seconds thought and few minutes effort required to tell the person they most care about that yes, they do still care the other three hundred sixty four days of the year. The type who put it off until the one appointed day and try to make up for a year of neglect and disinterest with one grand, misguided gesture.

The type of couple who, in the last dying years of what once was a beautiful and vibrant relationship, can only bring themselves to make the sort of token effort at romance that seems to come naturally to those who’ve forgotten that love is a beautiful, living thing, one that needs to be tended and nurtured every day.

You touch your partner’s body every day.

You tell her she’s beautiful.

You tell her you’re happy to be with her, and that you’re lucky and grateful to have her.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Or, if you can’t be bothered to do that, and many couples can’t, you buy some shitty chocolate and make a reservation at a middlebrow family restaurant.

Some couples convince themselves that this is what love is, that what they have is not a pale imitation of the real thing, an unfunny joke at the expense of their lifetime of loneliness even in the midst of what they call “Love”.

And those fuckers love Valentine’s Day.

For the record, yes, this has always been my position on the holiday, regardless of whether I’m in a relationship or not.

My own romantic life does not affect my opinion of the holiday one iota, nor should it.

When I am in love, I am in love and love is the center of my world. When I am not, I am not and it is not.

And either way, I have nothing but contempt for the whole concept of Valentine’s Day.

I wait tables, you see.

And I see them there, those couples. Sitting, impatient, each in turn thinking that their unique, perfect love is more unique, more perfect, than the love of the people sitting around them, and that it entitles them to special treatment.

Their unique, perfect love, which they could not be bothered to celebrate yesterday. And will not tomorrow. Or any other day of the year.

So unique that they have to celebrate out among the millions of other couples celebrating in the exact same, equally unique way.

So perfect that their food being delayed ten minutes due to the volume of food the kitchen has to cook might spoil it forever.

Those couples, you know the ones. You’ve seen them, though if you’re lucky not closely.

I will spend the day smiling, and nodding, and helping them celebrate love. Because that is what I do, and because I am a professional person.

So yes, happy Valentine’s Day if you must.

Halloween Horror

I’ve never been an easy man to scare.

As a lover of the horror, both literary and celluloid, I’ve seen every premise play out a thousand times, in every possible setting, with every possible spin applied to them. And yes, this has desensitized me to some degree. Zombies, Werewolves, Vampires, all old hat to me. Torture porn: A laughable bit of exploitive nonsense, good for a cheap thrill perhaps but by no means an actually visceral experience. I loves me some ‘80s slasher films, but more out of a lingering sense of nostalgia than any effect they might genuinely have.

And don’t get me started on ghost stories. Especially the ones where the cameraman can’t keep his damn camera steady.

I have nerves of steel, I suppose. Whether I might want them or not.

With that in mind, people are often disappointed at how tough it is to make me jump or squirm with fear. Halloween-based pranks inevitably fail, I simply lack the nervous disposition required to fall for them.

Still, when she claimed she could terrify me beyond belief, I tried my best to keep a straight face.

I loved her, after all. She was the woman I wanted to spend my life with, and laughing out loud at her heartfelt wish to give me a genuine moment of terror during the run-up to Halloween would be pointlessly hurtful, something I could never be. Not toward her, at any rate.

So I smiled, and I nodded, and told her  “I look forward to seeing what you come up with. I’m sure it will be great.”

And then I went on with my life, confident that whatever she might have planned would roll right off me.

She’d do her best, I knew, and when she did I’d genuinely appreciate the effort she put into whatever plan she had. It would be an expression of love, after all, that she wanted to share Halloween with me in a way I could appreciate, and I’d love her all the more for having gone through all the effort.

Even if I wasn’t particularly frightened by the results.

Three days later, I came home to find her crying, holding a pregnancy test…

Dream Lover

“He’s the man of my dreams.” She told us, but none of us knew what the fuss was about.

Gaunt and pale, with a shock of wild, ink-black hair, his presence struck us as off-putting. Otherworldly, as though he was somehow apart from what was going on around him.

Still, he made her happy and that’s what’s important, so we tried to welcome him into our social circle as best we could.

And he was better than her ex. That guy was creepy. Funny, in a sarcastic way, but always with an undercurrent of menace.

The fedora/sweater/glove ensemble didn’t help…

...another short story about love.

It would never work between them, could never work. As their parents tried to tell them, they were from two different worlds…

He was a centaur, she a mermaid. But they didn’t let this stand in the way of their love, preferring to focus instead on the things, and there were many, that they did have in common rather than those things that made them different.

Oh, their parents didn’t approve, but it was the twenty-first century and they weren’t about to allow stodgy family traditions to keep them from a lifetime of happiness together. Ultimatums were made, elopements threatened, and in the end their engagement was, if not embraced, accepted.

It was a beautiful ceremony, the two of them making their way down the aisle, him along the beach and her through the surf. Even the most traditional among their family had to admit that much, at least.

And yes, their life together would bring it’s own challenges. However much they loved one another, they could never be together for long without one or the other suffocating, and children, for obvious reasons, would remain forever beyond the realm of possibility. Yet still, knowing all this as they did, they pledged themselves to one another for a lifetime.

Because that’s what love is.

It’s the willingness to see the problems the life you wish to spend together may yet cause, but still prefer them to being without that one person who completes you.

And so, hand in hand in shoulder-depth water, they were wed. Centaur and Mermaid, husband and wife.

And if they can make love work, maybe we can still hope not to fuck it up in our own lives…

No Heroic Measures

The fire rages within the building, and alarms sound around me as I make my way, coughing into my sleeve, out into the street.

She’s still in there.

I couldn’t find her, the smoke had been too thick, and as I scan the street in front of the apartment that we share, that we shared, the dark premonition I’d had while staggering down the stairs is proven to be true. She hadn’t made her own way out, she is still somewhere within the building.

Maybe she’s passed out on the floor of our apartment, maybe in the hall, maybe she made it as far as the stairwell, but at some point the smoke in the air must’ve overcome her, because she never made it to the exit, and never will. Not under her own power, at least.

For a moment, I’m close to being overcome myself. The love I’ve felt for her in the years we’ve been together, the laughter and the tears of a lifetime, the infatuation I felt the moment I met her years before, infatuation I to this day haven’t gotten all the way over, nearly prove too strong, and I’m tempted to rush back inside. To find her. To bring her to safety.

But then I remember.

I remember the meetings we’d had with lawyers, after hearing the horror stories about the people in comas, hooked to machines that do their breathing for them, never to think again in a way anyone would understand the term, kept as vegetables for years, for decades, against their will long after “will” ceased to be a meaningful phrase with regard to them.

I remember the two of us, writing our living wills together, discussing what sort of care we’d want in the event that the worst should happen to either one of us.

And I remember how adamant she was, that no heroic measures be taken to revive her, or to prolong her life.

No heroic measures.

What measure, I wonder, could be more heroic than rushing back into a burning building to bring her, unconscious but alive, out into the safety of the street?

So I turn my back on the whole horrific scene, blink back tears and leave her behind to burn.

It’s difficult, to be sure. Doing it damn near kills me, but in my heart I know it’s the right thing to do.

It’s what she would have wanted, after all.

I won’t go back inside for her. And when the firefighters finally arrive, I’ll do my best to stop them from going in too.

It’s the least I can do to honor her wishes, and do justice to her memory…

Weekly Prompt Story: How to Respect a Woman

Odd story this week, by which I mean "one that really has to be read out loud to work in context." Even if you don't normally listen to the 100 Words Weekly Challenge, and are content to merely read my story on this blog, I strongly recommend that you make an exception. Here's the link...

http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com/2012/07/22/weekly-challenge-326-power/

...and for those of you who absolutely insist on merely reading the text, here it is.

How To Respect a Woman

By Chris Munroe

To love a woman, you must first learn how to properly respect a woman.

And to respect a woman, you must first connect with her.

Connect through eye contact, or physically. Touch her arm as you speak, brush hair out of her eyes. That’s a very real source of connection.

Connect intellectually. Ask her questions about herself, get to know everything about her.

But most importantly, connect on a deep, spiritual level. Like so…

I wanna know what love is, and I want you to show me!

I wanna feel what love is, and I know you can show me!

Growing Old Together

She’s the perfect woman. Beautiful, bright, with a smile that lights a room and a wit that guarantees I laugh out loud every single day of our life together.

And what’s better, I managed at some point along the line to trick her into thinking she can’t do any better than me.

Nobody tell her she can, okay?

I love her.

I want us to grow old together.

Fortunately, we both have a theater background, and know enough people who know enough about stage makeup that we don’t have to wait for that to happen naturally.

Instead, we’re walking down the street, me with a cane, her with a walker, enjoying the looks on our neighbor’s faces as they struggle to figure out where they’ve seen us before.

We look to be about eighty. White hair, deep lines across our faces, a stoop to our slow, shuffling walks.

I’ve got a bit of a hunch, under my shirt. Padding, to simulate the real hunch I’ll have after fifty years of leaning in to kiss her. She’s got a boil on the side of her neck. No reason, she just thought a boil would be hilarious.

We were in the makeup chairs for close to three hours. Totally worth it.

I was going to scream at the passing kids to get off my lawn, but she rightly pointed out that this is us after fifty years of happiness, and I might not have that sort of anger in me.

So instead, we’re taking a slow walk around the block. Her hands on her walker, one of mine on my cane, the other on the small of her back, enjoying a warm, summer day and the prospect of a lifetime together. Happy, and temporarily old, and still very much in love. Enjoying each other’s company and the pained expressions we get as our neighbours pass and try to fit what they see into their worldview.

“Hello, sonny,” she says to one of them as his eyes go wide and he suddenly realizes who we are, “would you like a Werther’s?”

She holds out the caramel to him and he has no idea what to do. He just stares as we walk by, laughing.

I hadn’t known she’d brought some along. She’s not eating sugar and I never much liked them. She must have bought them for this bit, and this bit alone.

Such careful attention to detail.

Christ, I love her.

Making Love

I’m here at my forge, making love.

Hot sparks fly up into my protective mask as I bring the hammer down, again and again, onto the anvil, shaping my love into what I hope will be perfection. I won’t rest until my love is perfect.

You’re worth nothing less.

You’re waiting for me at home, and I imagine you miss me terribly. I miss you too. I’d dearly love to return to you, I’ve barely seen you in weeks.

But I can’t go home yet.

Not until I’ve made love that I know is worthy of one such as you...

The Audition

I’d never placed an ad on Craigslist before, but the interface was user-friendly enough, so no trouble there…

Wanted: Young, uninhibited women to audition for BJ videos. Pays $50 to auditioners, $500 to the women cast in the actual video. Nude scenes necessary, contact email below.

The email address was a dummy I’d set up for the purposes of the ad. I knew I’d be receiving a lot of email from a lot of women I’d likely want nothing to do with, and I wanted to be able to abandon the address when I was done with it, never thinking of any of it ever again.

I mean, who responds to an ad like that?

A surprising number of people, as it turns out...

I don’t know if it’s the economy or what, but when I checked my email Monday I already had three hundred replies. Three hundred women who, for one reason or another, were willing to respond to an add like that on Craigslist. Disturbing, if you think about it.

I tried not to think about it as I deleted each and every one of the emails, unread.

This wasn’t about them, it’d never been about them. Their emails were just a byproduct of an unrelated agenda.

I wasn’t even really paying attention to their subject lines as I deleted them. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew it wasn’t there.

You’d already told me, after all, to expect your email Tuesday.

By which point another hundred fifty emails had arrived. Weeding through them was tougher, logistically speaking, as this time I was actually looking for something. But eventually all but one had been deleted. I responded as politely and professionally as I could, you responded back, an uncomfortable edge to your email, and we made our plans to meet.

So here I am, in a hastily constructed video studio in my living room, waiting for you to arrive. And when you do, we’ll see how your “audition” goes, and if you do well, we’ll see what other “projects” I might want to involve you in.

And I’ll do my best, through all of this, to be comfortable with the part I am to play in the process.

I honestly will do my best, nervous and somewhat icky though I am by the seediness of it all.

I’ll do it because you’re my wife.

And I love you.

And yes, I’m willing to play along with your kinks.

The Question

I very nearly didn’t ask, not least because it was an incredibly stupid question.

I mean, it was impossible. I understood that it was impossible, and yet I’d seen her.

She had Kat’s hairstyle, certainly, and drove an identical car, but she was clearly a different woman. Like, 50 years different. Her hair was grey-white, her hands hooked over the wheel, bony and withered, and her faced was cragged by what appeared to have been a very full lifetime of experiences. Yet, sunk into that face, surrounded by deep smile-lines, were the eyes I’d fallen in love with. More tired, certainly, but still clearly the same eyes.

She was stuck at a red light, and when she saw me she seemed to look away, as though avoiding my gaze. I started over to the waiting car, but the light changed before I arrived and she sped away.

Sped, by the way, was chosen very deliberately there. Tires squealing and everything, as though she was trying to escape something that terrified her. As though she was trying to escape… me? That made no sense, we’d never met, why would she want to escape me?

So I wondered. Then, realizing how stupid a thing to wonder it truly was, I stopped wondering, shook my head to clear it, and got on with my day. Because I’m a grownup, and grownups get on with what they have to do rather than standing around wondering incredibly stupid nonsense.

Later, once my errands were run, I started to wonder again. I guess I’m not THAT grown up after all.

I let the question nag at me all afternoon, knowing how embarrassing it would be to ask it out loud yet needing to know the truth. I agonized over it, vacillating back and forth on whether to ask or not, but by the time Kat got home from work, I’d resolved not to. It really was unbelievably stupid, after all, both as a question and as something to spend a day obsessing over. So I would put it out of my mind, we’d open a bottle of wine and enjoy a relaxing evening together. So I had decided, and so it would be.

Which is why I was surprised as anyone when the first words out of my mouth when she got home were “Honey? Could you come in here a minute? There’s something I need to ask you…”

My face went red even as I was saying it, I couldn’t believe what I was actually considering. But when she came in, blushing equally guiltily and staring at the floor, my eyes went wide with shock.

“Were you…” I stammered, suddenly certain she was, “did you, I mean… you were the woman? You were the woman?”

It made absolutely no sense, yet I could tell before she even opened her mouth what her answer would be. And when she finally worked up the courage to look up into my eyes, she knew instantly that I knew.

She put a finger to my lips to silence me, which was good because I was sounding dumber with each word I spoke, then silently walked to the kitchen fridge to grab herself a can of diet soda. When she returned I was on the couch, still visibly shaken.

She explained to me that yes, she was occasionally an eighty year-old woman. She had the ability to use years from the end of her life at any time she chose to, and so she used them whenever she had a convenient opportunity. While driving, or evenings when I wasn’t around and she didn’t want to do much more than watch TV, or other such trifling moments. She’d been doing it since she was in her teens, in order to get the years as an old person out of the way in as non-intrusive a way as was possible.

She explained that it was a skill she’d picked up from her grandfather, and that the first time she tried it she immediately dropped dead of a massive stroke at the age of eighty-seven. She’d been dead for nearly ninety seconds before she snapped back to her natural age, and had been plagued by headaches for weeks afterward.

But, she added, when it was pointed out to her that, having died of a massive stroke already, she never had to worry about doing it again, she immediately understood the value of the gift she’d been given.

Since then she’d been getting the years at the end of her life out of the way however she could, and by her count she’d managed to work her way back to somewhere around the age of eighty-one, in the process saving herself six extra years of youth to be used at her leisure.

Which seems insane. Because it is insane. Yet I saw what I saw, and to be honest she does look many years younger than me in spite of us being approximately the same age. I’d clocked it up to my smoking and her taking care of her skin, but if it was this…

Which, of course, it wasn’t. Because like I said, that’s insane. She’d spun a good yarn, but really? She was dealing with aging by getting it out of the way? That’s not even a thing, and hearing her say it out loud drove home this point such that it finally felt real. I was being silly, it was just a woman with a similar hairstyle and similar eyes driving a similar car, Kat happened to be somewhere nearby and had seen how I reacted to it, and she was fucking with me. It was funny, in a way, but I was on to her and the joke was over.

And I could have left it there, honestly I could have.

I could have just laughed it off, or said something along the lines of “Oh, I see what you’re doing, you’re right, it was a stupid thing to ask.” and then offered to order some takeout for dinner. I could have done any of a thousand things, and the matter would’ve been left.

Basically I could have done anything other than say what I wound up saying.

“Prove it.”

Which she then did.

And there, faced with an eighty one year old version of the woman I loved, slightly stooped, wrinkled and exhausted-looking, wheezing slightly as she breathed, apologetic that she’d never told me any of this before, it became impossible to deny.

Also; impossible to understand. I sputtered and stammered, trying to force my fractured thoughts into something resembling a sentence, failing utterly to express my response to the totality of all that I’d witnessed that day. Eventually, although it was woefully inadequate, I managed to get at least one word to squeak out of my paralyzed throat.

“How?”

…and then, smiling, she showed me.

So yeah, that’s what happened to me today. Weird, right?

Oh, and sorry it took so long for me to post this. Arthritis in my joints as I type takes some getting used to, and it took me all night to finish…

The Funeral

It was not my funeral, by which I mean both that I was not up front, in the box and that I had no right to be there. I had crashed the funeral of a stranger, and I admit that that fact caused me a little trouble.

Yet somehow I had managed my discomfort, since there I was.

It was a lovely ceremony, overall. The eulogies were appropriately touching and tearful, and everyone had glowing things to say about the deceased, a peaceful-looking white man who looked to be in his mid-sixties from the view I got on my way in. I’d never met him, as I’d said, but I was never called upon to speak, so my lack of specific knowledge didn’t hinder my experience much.

Afterward there was coffee and commiseration. Vague pleasantries were exchanged, we recited the standard platitudes reserved for situations like this, said how sorry we were for one another’s losses, and how badly he’d be missed. We commented on how lively he was in life and how we still couldn’t quite believe he was gone. We talked about how much he’d affected our lives.

I was lying, of course. He hadn’t affected my life in any way, the stranger they’d put into a box and then into the ground. He couldn’t. I’d never even heard of him until that day, I’d chosen the funeral at random and was attending on a whim. And I couldn’t help wondering, as I moved among the bereaved, how many of the people gathered were lying too.

Because nobody had anything negative to say about this man, no unkind word was once spoken, and a human life can not be lived that way. If you’ve touched enough people to populate a funeral, you’re bound to have pissed a few of them off. That’s simply the way of things, it can‘t be avoided.

But, whatever sins this man had committed in life, whatever flaws and shortcomings the people who cared about him had suffered through, the act of death had washed away and, baptised in entropy, he had emerged pure, flawless. Beautiful.

Loved unconditionally by all.

And, moreover, the people gathered at his funeral had, for one day, put aside their petty grievances and gripes against one another in the spirit of the event. They clung to one another with an unexpressed desperation, aware that anyone can be lost forever in the blink of an eye, and that every moment in this life is precious. They loved each other there, over coffee and finger food, truly and deeply, and they knew that life was short, sometimes tragically short. A body in a box at the front of the room focuses the mind on such things. It brings remarkable clarity. Reminds you of what’s important.

And on my way home, I was overcome with grief that I had never known this no doubt flawed, troubled man who nonetheless brought out so much affection in so many people. I had only heard the best that people had to say about him, true, but that best was very good. He seemed the sort of man I’d like to know, and the knowledge that I’d never get that opportunity caused my faux outpouring of grief to become strangely genuine. In life, this stranger had touched the lives of a roomful of people, had changed them each in turn in some fundamental way. And in death, he had similarly touched me.

This was not my funeral, no. And no, I did not deserve to be there. But there I was, and it was beautiful.

And I will one day have a funeral.

And I can only hope my passing will have a similar impact.

A Poorly Conceived Love Story

You believe yourself a person with hopes, dreams and desires. But if you are, nobody will ever know what they are.

Because ’til now, you didn’t exist.

You’re immortal, ageless, forever beautiful. Always swept up in danger, never truly endangered.

You’re a beautiful empty suit, the cipher into which the world pours hopes and dreams, symbolizing everything to everyone and nothing of weight.

Yet they barely tolerate your presence.

For you are the romantic female lead in an action film. And while I do love you, deeply and truly, I have to go. There are people who need killing now.

Love Potion #8

She drank my love potion, and loved.

You could see it in her face, brighter, more vivid. As though worlds of possibility had opened up. Possibilities she’d never known or, perhaps, simply perspective on what she’d known forever.

She ran to the open window, screaming affirmations into the street below, at people who stared up as though she were a lunatic.

But she didn’t care, too filled was she with joy at being alive.

She’d developed perfect, undying love for the universe, in all it’s wonders and complexity, and for everything within it.

Yet still, she did not love ME….

Saying Goodbye

Halfway out the door I froze, as a sudden, sharp fear came over me, momentarily convincing me I’d never see you again.

I looked back at you, still on your laptop, finishing your homework, and wondered if I ought to say something. But what? I love you? You’re in my heart always? It’s ridiculous, it’s overwrought.

So I said bye, you grunted, and I left, still reassuring myself everything was fine, you’d be fine, and that you’d be waiting when I got home from work.

I wonder what happened with that. I hope you’re okay.

I never made it home…

The Power of Love

Building the army of giant robots was surprisingly easy. The trouble came when I tried to power them up.

My neighbourhood was blacked out for three weeks, the grid couldn’t handle my power requirements. It was time to go back to the drawing board.

I brainstormed energy sources, but anything that’d provide sufficient power’d surely be noticed by my neighbours.

Finally it came to me: Love. Love’s the most powerful force of all…

…anyway, enough about that. Are you coming to the pub tonight? I want you to meet Linda, she works with me. You’ll like her, she’s really cool.