Archives: April 2014

Twelfth Night – Misunderstanding

These were written for the #SmallTales writing challenge on Twitter.
In celebration of the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and because the lovely @LiterallyGeeked who runs the show is a professional Wagstaffian, the triggers for this month are Shakespeare plays and a theme word.
I couldn’t decide whether to end on a positive note or not, so I’ll let you choose according to your mood !

If music be the food of love play on
But careful how you choose your lover’s fare
The melodies you love alone may on
Occasion drive your loved one to despair

“Play on” I say but just don’t make me dance
It’s likelier to piss off than inspire
Most likely it would just reduce my chance
Whose heart is captured watching me perspire ?

On second thoughts don’t play for goodness sake
The permutations are too hard to see
The whole thing may just be a big mistake
Love’s labour lost by errors aurally 		Perhaps I’m over-thinking, it has oft
Been said of me I doubt humanity
Her ardent heart by music be wrought soft
Miss Right might be Miss Understanding see ?

The Forecast’s Reign

100 words for #SmallTales (temporarily #ShakespeareTales) on the Scottish play and the word ‘Prophecy’

A witches’ tale of ill starr’d prophecy
of Mac the soldier and his rise in life
to Thane of Cawdor then becoming King:
A man who listened closely to his wife.
He murdered Duncan, then had Banquo killed,
Whose ghost would shake his mind and make him rant.
Then witches once again the future tell
Macduff, a fatal arrow set in flight.
The Lady Mac, her bloodstained hands lie still
Macbeth in Dunsinane believes he’s safe
Yet Birnam Wood approaches with Macduff
of woman cut not born. Macbeth is slain
And where the forecasts end is Malcolm’s reign

The Ferrous Fairy

500ish words in the style of The Clangers for #FanFicFriday

This is the planet Earth.
Round and blue and brown and green and wrapped in wispy whorls of white clouds.
From very high up, you would not know that anyone lives here at all.
But take a closer look and all manner of strange and wonderful beasts can be found.
Baboonicorns, Velociraptors, Goreybeasts and Storybeasts, sharp scribbly monsters and of course, the mighty Blampied.
The occasional goat. And look over there … Literally ! A Ge-eked.
Clearly this is a planet teeming with life, made by the power of a mighty imagination in only a hundred and forty four hours.
We would have to travel a very long way indeed to find a planet with quite such a strange array of fauna as this.
Far across the galaxy, past thousands of fiery pinprick stars we would venture, until we found one small, crater pocked ball of stone floating in the sky.
From far away, we would not know that anyone lived there at all.
But on closer inspection … who is this ?
Ah yes. Major Clanger. He’s rummaging around in his toolkit, and if I’m not very much mistaken, he’s about to make something really rather wonderful out of all those bits of metal he seems to have gathered in his wheelbarrow.
If there’s one thing we know about Clangers, it’s that they’re really very good indeed at putting things together.
Hammer and clatter. Spanner and potter. Slowly the thing is taking shape.
Whoo ! This is hard work.
Good job Little Clanger and Tiny Clanger are here to fetch soup. Just in time.
Off they trundle, taking their soup trolley and their copper soup jug with them – off to the soup wells to ask the Soup Dragon for some soup for the Major.
She’s there, bathed in the green glow of bubbling soup, a luminous leguminous pea soup I believe. She gives the Clangers just the right amount for their tea.
They thank her and trundle back home to the Major, thoughts of hot soup and Mother’s bread and butter hurrying them homeward.
But what is this ? The Major’s machine is ready ! No time now for crusty bread and butter knives.
We must see what he has made.
There it stands in all its glory. A magnificent, masterful, Major-made machine.
I have gathered together all the little bits of iron I could find on the planet and fashioned them into this …
A ferrous fairy.
Sure enough, standing in front of the Major, her iron wings outstretched, was a fairy made of nuts and bolts and sheets of metal.
In the very centre of her back was a key.
I will now, cried the Major, wind her up and set her free
He wound the key. Crank. Crank. Crank.
The fairy tilted her head, opened her metal eyelids and flapped her wings.
Up she shot into the air. Up, up and away.
Off to join the metal chicken who lived way up high in the sky.
Time for soup now little ones, said the Major and in they went for tea.

Dimple

100 words for #SmallTales on the keyword ‘dimple’

A blemish. A deviation from the norm.
The otherwise smooth surface marred by a pinch point.
And yet this place, this space, this void in her cheek, this is where my focus falls.
This hollow fills her face with beauty.
Without this lack, she is merely pretty: forgettable, anonymous.
Just one more red rose on the crowded flower stall – the only thing wrong with it ?
Nothing wrong with it.
With a dimple, a kink, she becomes fascinating.
My eye can’t help but return to the point, again and again.
She should probably have got a less obsessive plastic surgeon.