Mind Your Manners

Shut Up was sitting on the gates of Be Quiet's house, throwing words at his door. G-E-T Y-O-U hit with a thud and slid down the door. L-O-S-E-R splatted on the windowpane. C-U-N fell short on the path.

Be Quiet watched this all from the comfort of his living room, perplexed. He did not know Shut Up, could not imagine what he had done to make someone throw C-U-N at him. Although he was a little frightened, he decided to find out.

He opened the door to have W-A-N hit him in the face and K-E-R splash into the house. Shut Up laughed and laughed.

"Why did you do that?" Be Quiet called out.

This appeared to make Shut Up even angrier. F-U-C-K-I-N-G, C-U-N-T (no missing this time) and B-A-S-T-A-R-D all came hurtling towards Be Quiet with ferocious, furious speed. But he could predict Shut Up's plan of attack now and dodged them all easily.

Shut Up was so angry he couldn't find the words. He stood shaking his silent fist on the lawn, his red face glowing, his black eyes bulging. His thin lips flapped, trying to speak. He kicked a passing cat, hollered a wordless holler at the staring children and stomped home.

The Boy of Joy

Here stood a boy of joy. Of playful temperament and positive thoughts. His laughter was a release, his smile a balm. Children and women alike were drawn to him. The children only wanted to bask, to borrow from his light, but the women wanted to take. They wanted to stand as women of joy, longed for their own playful temperaments and positive thoughts.

They squeezed the boy of joy, kissed and hugged him, anything to own that part of him that was warm and content. Probed and prodded, searched and sought - gentle at first, in reverence, and then in desperation as the imagined transfusions of joy faltered and failed. Why did it not take? What was he doing wrong?

They darkened him, lengthened his shadows. And with a final angry breath, the boy of joy was gone.

Choose Your Own Adventure

(i)
Dunh. Dunh. Dunh. Dunh.
The nightclub music is pounding in your inebriated ears, the strobe lights causing your pupils to dance even though you are not. Your hands involuntarily tug your micro skirt down for the forthy-sixth time this evening. Someone may or may not have spiked your drink. You may or may not have promised sex to a spotty youth at the end of the night. Your friends (colleagues) are definitely lost somewhere in the near dark, their tarted bodies now indistinguishable from the seemingly countless other tarted bodies. You are thirty-nine and equally lost.

(ii)
You are stupid. Not slow, a bit thick or short of sandwiches. Stupid. No one says so but they have all thought it since you were five. Even your mum. Especially your mum. The few girls who have not minded your stupidity, that have even been willing to embark on serious relationships with you, have been cheated on, abused and dumped. You're that dumb. Your buddies keep you around as their fall guy, the butt. And you don't mind. Hell, you probably don't even see what's happening. That's your saving grace - you're too stupid to be unhappy.

(iii)
You've come into a world that's tired, divided and lost. It doesn't seem fair, for you're seventeen (and a half) and none of these things. You see all of the solutions so clearly but no one will listen to you. They'll talk aplenty but listen not a jot. They only have energy to talk and you are bursting with do, do, do. Some will say you remind them of their young selves, but that's a grasping, stretching, rather patethic lie. They never had what you've got.

The Anti-Grinch Girl

A lot of things made her cry, but what else would you expect from someone whose heart was three times too big? Not so much worn on her sleeve as on her upper torso. You didn't need a stethoscope to hear it beat, didn't need to be a doctor to know it would cause her pain.

No matter how much she took to her heart there was always room for more. Another fire, another frozen wino, another ignored sunset - they lodged in her heart and set about aching. Watching the news was particularly painful; story after story stabbing her with sorrow and shame.

She was paler than pale. All her blood was needed to keep her too-big heart beating. She once met a man on holiday whose touch set her heart racing. She nearly died. "You need to be careful about that," the doctors warned. "No racing hearts - and for God's sake don't fall in love."

Easier said than done. Youthful Eric - of the small, cold heart variety - decided he couldn't handle her too-big heart. So he broke it. Everyone in the cafe heard it - a grinding, tightening sound followed by one terrible twang after another. But Eric just looked searchingly out the window, pretending the noise came from somewhere else.