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Reprise

November 23, 2010 in R

By Jason Geary


I’m interested, I promise. The story is genuinely intriguing and she’s beguiling. It’s just that I worked late last night and I slept poorly due to a pulled muscle in my lower back. She doesn’t know that, she can’t it’s a first date. I don’t want to moan about mundane things, that’s no way into her good graces.

She keeps talking, oblivious to the fight occurring in my mind. She’s telling me about her trip to New Zealand.  It’s a place I’ve never been, she makes it sounds like a playground for angels. Every mountain range and pristine river she describes in such wondrous detail that I feel like I’m seeing it with my own eyes. I really like this girl, she makes me comfortable.

No! Don’t think about comfort. Damn. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach spreading like ink in water. My tongue is swelling in the back of my mouth and my eyes begin to water. I fight it as hard as I can. She notices that I’m not listening as fully as I have been and it breaks the confident cadence of her story telling. I panic. I try to show her I’m listening. She lowers her eyebrows a fraction. I’m sure that my trying to show her I’m listening comes across as some sort of constipated expression. I’m making it worse.

No. Give me a break, I like this girl.

She continues but I can tell she’s not inside the story anymore, now it’s just reportage.

My jaw locks and my eyes go wide. I feel the back of my mouth moisten and then I yawn.

It is a tremendous yawn, the type of yawn that can’t be yawn without a deep booming rounded howl. As it wrings out of my mouth I see her posture shift. She looks left and right and stops telling the story. I cover my mouth, but what I really want to do is run.

“I’m sorry,” I offer ” I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“We can talk about something else if you want. Something more interesting.”

There was an awkward pause, I broke it, “No, I like your story, please tell me more.”

She began again, all of her enthusiasm drained from the tale. I felt a ripple in the pit of my stomach again. Here comes the reprise and with it the end of any chance I have with this girl.

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Lost

November 23, 2010 in L

By David Stewart


Damn!

What?

We have to go back.

What do you mean?

I’ve lost my watch. It was my lucky watch and I can’t find it. We have to go back.

We’re not going back. Are you sure you took it with you?

Of course I’m sure, You asked me the time every ten minutes on the way there. Do you think I was just taking lucky guesses?

When did you see it last?

I took it off and put it down on those grey things because my wrist was itchy and -

Those grey things?

Yeah the ones we had stacked up in the back there.

The grey things that have gone now?

That’s them. They’ve gone and my watch was on them. Where did they go?

We dumped them out of the plane.

What? When?

Back there. When I said: bombs away. They all fell out. Which is what they’re supposed to do since they were bombs and we’re flying a bomber.

Well we’ll just have to go back and find where we dropped them. My gran gave me that watch.

We’re not going back.

Where did we drop the bombs then?

Dresden.

Dresden?

Yeah, It used to be quite a nice German town with a population in the tens of thousands but now it’s a large pile of rubble with a population of a lot less.

One of whom is probably wearing my watch.

Your watch is spread out in little bits over a radius of several miles.

My Gran will be furious. You’re not even prepared to go back and have a quick look?

No.

Well I think you’re being totally unreasonable.

You’re an idiot.

Fine. I’m not talking to you for the rest of the trip.

Suits me. We’re due back soon anyway. What’s the time?

Hang on I’ll check… it’s twenty past three.

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Refugee

November 22, 2010 in R

By Jason Geary


After walking north for 15 minutes along the main street I find myself at the edge of this country town. I look back and see it in scale provided by the fields that stretch off its fringes to the horizon. It is a tiny place with a lazy pace.

I allow myself to think for a moment just how much I’d like to stay. Open a shop that sells nothing of importance, find myself a carefree girl with freckles on her face and slowly sink into a life far from this one. I sigh. It’s stupid of me to allow myself to think it really.

I keep walking.

I know if I do that my past will not catch up to me.

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Monopoly

November 16, 2010 in M

By Brent Caldwell


Playing Monopoly with Veronica and Jaya while the others played soccer, I had the upper hand with only Mayfair and Park Lane. Veronica was grumbling that I’d fleeced them when we’d exchanged properties. I assured her that she would get her chance for revenge.
That evening playing with them and Michael, Veronica started coming out on top with the same properties, so I smugly wagged my finger “I promised you’d get satisfaction”. There was a pause then Zen and Jane erupted with laughter. Even Jaya chuckled that it was a Mohammad moment, alluding to the Prophet’s proclivities in taking an under-aged wife.

At 1st, I was shocked; their laughing at such a taboo. “You know what I mean”, I bleated. I covered my eyes with mock-embarrassment and blushed. Oh the horror! I had after all befriended my missus while she was under-aged and she’d moved in after she’d come of age. I tried to hold it in, still with blinders on but they only sobbed more, until I was crying heartily too. Zen said “we shouldn’t be laughing” so we coughed sternly and started playing again. Veronica was on a roll with lucky cards and me, the bank, handing out the dosh. I whined that I was feeling like her private banker and everyone was side-splitting again.

Andrzej had just come back in with his pipe and was puzzling how we could have so much fun playing a game which, for him was a dark outlet. Good that no one enlightened him as he was immensely proud of her and fiercely confided later that he would read the riot act to any boy blah blah blah.

The next day, Veronica was grappling with more important things, begging Andrzej and Jane not to have to wear Andrzej’s clunky Saloman’s to school. Her own stripy sneakers had been deemed by a teacher to be an OH&S hazard but Veronica was mortified at the certain death she faced from her friends. He promised to buy her more girly shoes that day.

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Fraud

November 16, 2010 in F

By David Stewart


Gentlemen after months of careful study and analysis I am prepared to stake my reputation on the fact that this recently discovered manuscript can definitely be attributed to William Shakespeare. I can declare without a shadow of a doubt we are now in possession of another work borne from the great mind that gave us Hamlet and Macbeth. Now I’m aware that many of you feel this is in fact an attempted fraud perpetrated on the literary community but I am confident that this is not the case. I believe the main character of the play to be one of Shakespeare’s most carefully crafted comic characters. Despite being identified only as “A writer of epic poetry” he is clearly a fool on par with Falstaff but much more subtle in characterization. His interactions with his wife Margaret, their baby daughter, also named Margaret and son Bartholomew manages to be both touching and amusing. I was especially affected by the interactions with his eldest daughter, who despite being still a child is clearly the wisest character in the piece. The play’s narrative takes us into familiar Shakespearean territory – following some bad advice from the protagonist his son removes the head of the statue in the main square, causing uproar in the local community of the village, an unidentified location somewhere in Fife Scotland – …No I’m sorry can we save questions until the end of the – …No I didn’t know there was a town in Fife called Springfield and I’m not sure that I can see how it’s- …yes I know Homer was an epic poet and of course I’m aware that Marge and Maggie are both shortened forms of Margaret I fail to see your point… No of course I don’t watch it, I’m a scholar I don’t have time for cartoon television programs. …is there? Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie – I’m sure these are just coincidences. Next you’ll be telling me the owner of the local tavern is named Maurice and the main constable is called Wiggum. They are? Oh. And is there a vicar in the show by any chance? Is he called Lovejoy? Well then I can see there might be… I’m prepared to concede that… bugger.

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Father

November 3, 2010 in F

By Jason Geary


With a final flick of my wrist I short-circuited the door; it disappeared almost immediately with a loud hydraulic whoosh. I’d never been this deep into the engine core before. It was beautiful. Blue and red plasma whirled in a circle forming a deadly tunnel around the walkway.

“Lance! Give up. You got nowhere to go.” He dropped a foot and struck the walkway beneath him, it was enough to turn his body toward me in the zero gravity of the plasma well. He smiled and held out a thermal detonator. Two lights. It was armed.

“If you come in here John, I’ll blow the whole ship. You. Your precious crew. Your beloved ship will all be…”

“Gone?” I interrupted. His eyes narrowed, frustrated. ‘You got two outta three Lance. The crew have abandoned ship, on my orders.”

“Abandoned ship? Don’t be ridiculous. There must be a skeleton crew, a ship this big needs a small crew just to keep it functioning.”

“We are the only life forms left onboard Lance. All others were ordered off when I knew you had a detonator. You left me no choice.”

“I’ll use it, John. I’ll take us both down. Then the humans will have nothing. All those wars to protect us, wasted. All those deaths you mourned with them, wasted.”

“Wrong again, Lance. I’ve beaten you at your own game. I’ve plotted a course for the Hybourne singularity and locked the helm.”

His face turned white. “What? You’re a mad man.”

“Like Father, like Son. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance. Ended it on Justice Prime. The Hubris Program was criminal. We all knew it, but you took it too far. You made us so we’d break down. For what? To have control? You built me so I’d break. Well guess what. I’m broken.”

His face turned pink; “I CREATED PERFECT SOLDIERS! You could never do what was really necessary John. Not like the others. That’s what made you different, defective. That’s why I’m surprised by this move. You finally found your backbone. Now I can use you; like your brothers before you. Now you can really lead men.”

“No. Hubris ends here. Now. We are the final two. The program is confined to this ship. Today I end it. Without Hubris, the Humans will have nothing left to fight for, and therefore no reason to fight.”

“Humans will always have reason to fight.”

“Maybe so, though no more will die defending your ideals.”

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