AD: How to Change Your Life

Posted on by inkbiotic

ADVERTISEMENT

We know your pain!

Your thoughts are mighty, but your voice is weak.

Your footsteps are puny as your soul strides.

When the object of your desperate affection finally rejects you, all anyone sees is a sad little nobody, they don’t see the powerful torment of a shattered heart.

How can you make those around you see you for the dignified genius that you are?

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Flash Fiction: How Much More?

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But really, how many designer shoes do we need?

How many more different sizes of technology to connect us to the world?

We’ve already filled up the sky with bricks and lines, splitting the horizon into tiny segments, isn’t it enough yet?

How many new ways to wash your hair? Or clean your teeth?

New ways to excercise, new management restructuring,

Can’t we just leave it all for a little while?

Curl up in the crook of a tree,

And sleep?

Living in the Shadow of my Genius

Posted on by inkbiotic

People think that I’m boring and harmless, I love that. They call me mousy. They see my pimples and my chubby midriff, they see that I pull my t-shirt down to cover it like I’m embarrassed, like I could ever be embarrassed. They see my inexpertly applied make up, and they think, Aw, poor thing, she’s insecure.

It staggers me to think they can’t see it’s all an act. Even though I put the effort in, it shouldn’t be possible to fool all of the people all of time, yet I do. Hours spent in front of the mirror trying to get my make up just wrong, practicing the nervous tics and twitches. Every time one of these witless cretins tips their head in a magnanimous gesture of pity, I want to wink. Just a brief duck of the eyelid, enough to leave them wondering. But I won’t, I am the consummate professional. My vanity is not a weakness, my ego enables me; I have achieved perfection. Not only in my harried and feeble appearance, but in my art.

Of course, my art is not for the masses, only handful of brilliant minds see my work and marvel. It is exclusive. But for them I shall create my masterworks, my genius displayed in spattered blood and shattered bone.

I can slice meat from bone with a single cut, slice a jugular with one deft swipe, insert a needle into the spinal column in the lower back and suck out the juice. I have mastered the art of the false clue – wearing the wrong shoes, dropping the wrong ticket. There are no supersleuths to outwit, it isn’t difficult when there are only thugs in uniforms. No lightning fast computer mainframes, only slow databases, created so ineptly that nobody can be bothered with them.

And just like everyone else, they think I’m too dull to do anything as exciting as murder. So even if evidence sends them my way, their eyes just skim straight past me as I stammer through the interview. They believe me the ultimate innocent. And I love that.

Echopraxia

Posted on by inkbiotic

I am sitting at the front of the bus, going anywhere. I didn’t check the number on the front of the bus, I know I’ll end up somewhere. I sit on the top deck, front seat, enjoying the trundle and jolt, listening to phone chatter and the honk of the bus. I could almost hear the bus driver’s stress rattling his heart.

Sometimes people come and sat next to me, huffing and fussing so wrapped up in their own worlds and their need to get somewhere. For a while I live through them, listen to their phone dramas, the chink-chink of music through their earphones. I remain unobtrusive, the only movement is me biting my nails. That’s a habit I’ve had since I can remember, I go through a few weeks without, then I have a blissful afternoon going nowhere and gnaw away to fill my attention.

Then a woman sits down in the seat across the aisle. She starts chewing at her fingernails too. Lots of people do, and it takes a while to notice the oddness: each nail she bites is the exact same as the one I’m biting at that moment. Right forefinger, left little finger. I stop. She stops. I start, she starts. So I play a little. I scratch my left ear, she scratches her left ear. I shuffle in the seat and cross my legs. She shuffles in her seat and crosses her legs. It’s a beautiful thing and I want to catch her eye, but I’m scared to spoil it, so I stare straight ahead. Knowing that through these little moments we are connected, sisters.

When she gets off, I feel slightly heartbroken. No one ever notices me, but she did. She paid attention. In a small way, it was beautiful. I carry on to nowhere.

The Face of Nincompoop

Posted on by inkbiotic

I’ve probably watched you. Remember when you were in your bedroom and you tripped up trying to pull on your socks? I saw that. When you got in the shower too soon and stood huddled in the corner to avoid the cold water? You looked ridiculous, I laughed. When you tried to take the pie out the oven without gloves and dropped it? Remember that? I do.

I probably know all your saddest secrets. The faces you pull in the mirror, trying to figure out how to be sexy. Where you keep your diary or your stash of money. The TV crap you consume in secret and tell no one about. I hate to break it to you, but you aren’t unique. The reason I know you is because I’ve watched enough people to know that you’re all the same. I’ve seen the hidden face of the human race and it truly is the face of a nincompoop. This isn’t cynicism, I’m not having a bad day; I know. I’ve watched.

I became invisible the day I died. the afterlife isn’t quite the predetermined thing it’s made out to be. There are options. I didn’t pay too much attention to the form, once I spotted the Be Invisible option I was sold. For the first few hundred years all I did was watch. The human condition is a sorry one. Technology grows ever more complicated, but common sense? That never changes. And it started to get irritating. About the same time as my ability to interfere manifested, the never-changing stupidity of my ex-species began to really irk me.

The lottery, Valentine’s Day, friendship cliques, one-up-man-ship, fashion. When you no longer get to play these games you realise how laughable they are, how much time and space is taken up with the futile.

So I began to play a game of my own.

It was just toying really, I happened on an inept young fool and my patience snapped. He couldn’t get anything right. He broke his new kettle because he couldn’t work out how to press the button to open the lid. He bumped into the TV, snapping a wheel off and then couldn’t work out how to fix it, so he watched TV on the wonk. He never figured out how the storage heaters work; they aren’t that complicated, but no matter how many times he read the instructions he got it wrong. He embodied all that was pathetic about the human race, so I began to play.

His books were all in alphabetical order, so I shifted them about a bit. When he was at work, I put his toothbrush on his pillow and bunched up his towels into the shape of sleeping figure in his bed. I smeared his window with butter and I wrote “Idiot!” in the condensation in his shower. It took him a surprisingly long time to notice my interference, but when he did he assumed quite naturally that he was going mad. His frantic calls to his mum were some of the funniest conversations that I’ve ever listened into. Made all the more delicious by knowing I caused that.

So I carried on. I turned all his books upside down. I squirted washing up liquid around the rim of his toilet, so it frothed every time he flushed. Every day when he left the house, I put a small line of crisps inside his door, so that they crunches when he got home and stepped inside. I painted his toenails while he slept.

It was a good few months before his hinges started to become properly loose. Nearly a year before they fell off altogether. It happened while he was running away from the small collection of insects I had put in his bed. It sounds like a trivial thing, but by then I had push his mind to breaking point and it only took a tiny nudge to finish the job. He ran out of the front door, into the traffic and got run over by a bus.

And I thought to myself Well now, this is fun, why didn’t I think of this before?

Humblebrag

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I tend to drop things. Yeh yeh, I know, everybody says that, everybody likes to think they can drop things, but for me it’s true!

Some people work hard for years trying to drop things, but for me it’s a gift, I don’t need to work at it. Sometimes I drop things without even trying. I’ll be carrying my shopping down the road, or on the phone, or even juggling, and then suddenly I’ve dropped something!

Today I’ve dropped: my coffee, three pens and a potted fern.

I feel for people when they say they just can’t drop things. I can’t imagine what that’s like. Just going through life holding onto everything, how dull!

Maybe it’s a spiritual thing, I’ve always felt connected to mystical beings and I believe that angels may have given me this gift. Or it could be my determination, I always say if you truly believe in yourself then you can do anything, but maybe that’s just me. 🙂

Snug

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He curled up snug, while the wind howled elsewhere. Smelling a little of feet and vinegar, chortling while he hunkered down to his duvet, marvelling at the all the joys a life could hold.

He found it safer not to own anything worth stealing, to keep his surroundings stable. He made sure to avoid reaching out with delicate tendrils of affection that could so easily break. His heart had been broken once, an unreturned smile that he had proffered to a stranger and snatched back too late. Never to forget. He kept his heart wrapped in wodge of fat, a parcel made of a thousand, thousand fish finger dinners and chips.

He kept his attention still, a tiny kingdom without much thought where he could rule supreme. The television kept him busy. He had all he could ever need.

Dilemma

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“It’s a gesture, I’m wary of gestures, it’s how somebody treats you when no one is looking that shows their true feelings,” she said airily, with a flick of her hand.

He lowered the flowers sadly and since her attention had already wandered, he walked away. As his feet scuffed the gravel and his shoulders slouched, his mind was ticking over the conundrum: how can I do something that isn’t a gesture?

“I know you”

Posted on by inkbiotic

The teapot had a Buddha painted on it and he poured the tea with great reverence. A ritual that had clearly repeated throughout the years unchanging. He carefully arranged the cups in their saucers, lovingly swirled the tea leaves around the pot, and didn’t speak until the tea was poured and he had added the milk and sugar. When he did speak, the words rolled across his tongue, heavy and husky, and she knew that these words were also a ritual, often repeated with every girl he enticed back to his flat.

“I know you, I know what you are,” he paused to let her soak up the significance. “I know everything about you, from your fears to your needs. I know with what I like to call my uncommon sense.”

She hadn’t the heart to tell him she didn’t take sugar in her tea, instead she sipped it dutifully, while he went on to explain her thoughts.

_The Lottery King

Posted on by inkbiotic
Another lottery, another king, and I’m sick of it all. On the screens I can see their faces, shiny with excitement, drooling with the possibility, whispering,
“It could be me!” And it could.
Anyone of those thick, unimaginative yokels could be making up laws by the end of the
week. Or promoting their cat to be foreign secretary. Like last time.
Nobody remembers how it used to be, the dignity, the order, the logic of it all. Instead a
random serf takes my rightful place, and I’m supposed to celebrate them, bolster their
ineptitude. Behind me there’s a cheer as the balls spin and the machine spits out another number. Soon, somewhere around the country some schmuck will shout with glee,
“It’s me! It’s me! I’m the ruler now.”
And we all hail our new leader, however much of a fool he may be.
Nobody else remembers aristocratic rule. I was taught about it in secret, I couldn’t show my
peers those gilt-edged picture books that explained my importance. I tried to instill their
adoration with subtle manipulation, but they had been brainwashed with delusions of equality and understood nothing. Instead I would hide with my books and dream of the life I should have had; how the eyes of the proles would shine, how they would doff their caps in an instinctual movement. Instinctual, because this is the truth they try to deny: hierarchy is not some arbitrary human notion, it is an evolutionary need, seen in every species. Gorillas,
elephants, wolves; animals have been practising genetic modification for millennia. Alphas
breeding with alphas to create strength. No king was ever an accident, they were destined.
And we took this fine, natural system and wrecked it, forced ourselves to walk this crooked
path. Turned power into a lottery that anyone can win.
I watch the screens and nod thoughtfully, as if I care. I have to pretend, I am a member of the supreme council, an overseer. They’ll tell you that nepotism is no longer a thing, but I am proof that is wrong. A member of my family has always sat on the supreme council, because they have to give us something, a cheap token of respect.
The final ball has fallen into place; the cheers have reached a new pitch. One of the
number-crunchers is checking and rechecking until he comes up with a name,
 “Frankie Arlett,” he says blankly. He doesn’t need to pretend enthusiasm, it’s not expected of him.
“Frankie Arlett!” says John, a fellow council member. “Isn’t that just a name you can trust?
Frankie Arlett, he’ll be the best ruler we’ve had.” Nobody points out that since all the other
lottery elected rulers have been so hopeless, Frankie can’t be any worse.
“He sounds wise, don’t you think he sounds wise?” says Penny, clasping her hands together.
“Wise, but not too lazy,” adds Brett, with a tinge of doubt. Sometimes I think Brett has a little more spark than the others, the ability to see a hint of truth through the demented fog of optimism.
“I can just sense his presence, can’t you?” that’s John again, dribbling his emotions all over the place.
Frankie Arlett’s name has already been sent to every piece of Internet-linked merchandise in the land. Coffee mugs now say ‘King Frankie!’, Balloons flash the words ‘All Hail King
Frankie!’ On screens in every street, on every motorway around the country, the words ‘King Frankie, long may he rule over us!’
We have half an hour of platitudes before a number-cruncher pipes up,
“I think Frankie is a woman. She’s a queen,” before he hurries away. Panicked reprogramming of merchandise ensues. My colleagues realise that perhaps relying on feelings alone is unwise, and start checking Frankie’s details.
Of course there are restrictions for who can be chosen. No one under the age of eighteen. No one who’s in punitive stasis. No one senile. Still there are always new issues appearing, we had a leader some years back who had a thing for little girls. While he was busy changing
laws to lower the age of consent and releasing all his paedophile friends from stasis, we were frantically trying to fill out the right forms to get him de-throned.
I flick through Frankie’s details, 26 years’ old; part French, part Armenian. A sales assistant, the masses will like that, they feel cheated when anyone close to aristocracy gets in. Of course they don’t see the irony that the only people they don’t want in power are those with the ability to rule running through their blood.
Queen Frankie has appeared on the screen, she’s hooked herself up to her webcam and is
giggling hysterically. I give her two weeks before the giggling becomes a breakdown. I’ve
seen her kind before; they accuse my ancestors of interbreeding, but look at what cross
breeding gets you. Her genes are all over the place. There’ll be another lottery in a few
weeks.
A few days later…
As I walk towards the throne room where the new queen awaits, the effort of restraint pounds my head. I keep my feet light and my face polite. Reduced to this: a pleasing minion, careful not to offend. This is not right. This is a travesty of civilization. We have become our own satire.
It may be my job to nurture and coddle the new rulers, but it is my moral duty to unseat these weak pseudokings. To trick and confuse until they tumble from the throne. I don’t know how many times I must do this before they finally see the pointlessness of their system. A hundred? A thousand? My patience will outweigh theirs, it’s in my genes.
And there sits Frankie. The giggle has gone. Her face seems as guarded as my own. As
Penny, John and Brett bow and scrape adoringly, I stand back a little. As an advisor to the
throne, I will be seeing plenty of Frankie. Until her reign crumbles to dust, I will facilitate,
but also I will push and trip, I will sneak.
I keep a bland smile on my face to show willing, no doubt she’ll be too involved with herself
to notice my lack of subservience.
John is fussing about her culinary tastes, what kind of pillows she likes to use, does she have any dietary requirements? It’s ridiculous, what could a serf know of the range of quality bed-wear available? Somebody introduces me, I can barely summon a nod. But maybe that’s as well, to wobble Frankie’s confidence a little. She listens to my name and then looks thoughtful,
“Ah yes,” she says, “the royal bloodline. I’ve been reading up about you.” And there’s a
glance, betraying something shrewd, as if she spots the glint beneath my polite façade.
“I see all the previous lottery winners have failed under your guidance,” she says. Her eyes
narrow, she smiles sweetly, then leans close to me and whispers,
“But not me, sunshine.”