Occupational Hazard - Flash Fiction

Christian Surname called out to Glover up on the roof of the house as to whether he’d seen 

Trollop anywhere. Glover shook his head as he forcefully yanked out a wad of thatch and opened up his fist so that the straw tumbled down towards the ground as a bouquet over Surname.

Surname inquired the same of Joiner as he was mounting a newly made saddle upon a horse. Joiner cupped the pommel with one hand and inclined his head to inhale the leather seat with a resonant sniff which Surname took for his answer whatever it may have meant.

Surname spotted Fletcher with a cart on its side and queried if he had any idea of her whereabouts. Fletcher gave a hard pull on the nearest wheel and set it spinning round in continuous motion by way of his response.

Surname spotted that the door of the blacksmiths was open and entered his forge. He interrogated Cooper there as to Trollop’s perambulations, but the smith removed a glowing iron bar from the forge, held it horizontally up to his eyes pointing at Surname as the metal glowed and faded with the heat pulsing through it.

As the smith’s neighbour, Mason was fletching arrows in his yard, so Surname cheerily sought  some illumination from him. Mason delicately stroked the feathers of the quill before blowing and ruffling them.

Surname scurried on into the bakery. Skinner there was dusting flour off with a percussive clap of his hands so that he initially missed Surname’s request. When he repeated it, Skinner threw his dough against the table sending up a cloud of more flour, before he started kneading and pummelling it as his disclosure. 

Surname shook his head before proceeding apace to the workshop of Thatcher. Entreating him as to whether he’d espied Trollop, the joiner picked up a tenon and repeatedly slotted it and out of the mortise, while studying it with so rapt an attention, his tongue was poking out of the corner of his mouth.

Surname had been beginning to feel somewhat perturbed at the sullen silence of his fellow villagers, when he adjudged that they were just all so occupied with their craft to be bothered with his trifling quest. Also that they were so involved in their tasks that they were unlikely to have noticed her in passing anyway. Nevertheless, there was Baker sat on a chair outside his establishment, his hands buttressing the back of his head in relaxation, so he ventured to pick his brains. The glover immediately removed his hands which were bedecked in silk and studiously raised each finger of the fabric away from the flesh inside, before deliberately peeling the entire glove from each hand. 

Carter answered him with what seemed a lascivious smile as he honed his chisel on the whetstone, before scraping it with an agonised squeal against the stone. 

Smith’s rejoinder was a percussive slap of the hide hung out on his line with his tanning paddle. 

Sadler’s comment took the form of tamping down the lid of a barrel with his hammer. 

Surname had reached the end of the village marked by the Church. He pushed the heavy door open and came upon Sexton who advised him that Priestly was in all likelihood in the vestry. “Forgive me for asking Fath-“ His voice died on his lips as he saw Priestly with his raiment down around his ankles as he was administering to one of his flock. Surname skirted round the walls of the room to confirm his worst fear. That parishioner receiving the host was indeed Trollop. Living up to her name even as Priestly was not. But then neither were any of the other villagers pursuing trades not of their fathers, although unbeknownst to him, they actually were; of their birth fathers. 


Taken from the flash fiction collection "Extra-Curricular"
available from Amazon, Createspace & I-Tunes in print & e-book

Assassin's Veto - Friday Flash

We condemn their killing, but when you stir the hornet’s nest…

We condemn their murder, but they were fully aware of the risks

We condemn the lethal violence visited upon them, but some sacred cows are non-negotiable

We condemn the beheadings, but they knew the likely consequences

We condemn the journalists' executions, but such are the occupational hazards of covering wars

We condemn the cartoonists’ massacre, but they simply went too far

We condemn the bombing of the theatre, but the play was inflammatory

We condemn the hounding of that author to death, but he remorselessly refused to show restraint

We condemn the rapes, but if they dressed that provocatively what did they expect?

If It Were Thee

Though IT too had ball and socket joints, the Borg could not sit down to face ITs inquisitor. While IT felt the cleanliness imperative to sweep up the fallen embers from under the ashtray's lip, there was no concomitant compunction to issue any molecular mutation warning towards this human interlocutor. This was not a human IT had ever served before.

"So, tell me how it went down again."

'Again'? Had ITs human master performed such a parabola before?

"The human THEE was assigned to serve, fell over the balcony's balustrade. THEE was not witness to this circumstance."

"See I don't buy that, not for one moment."

Borg's speech recognition bundle ran over the audio input and automatically shunted over into the acronyms subfile; however the probability matrix rejected all prompts for 'C.I.' On a parallel track, the language synchromesh was filtering usage for the word 'buy' - credits, debits, transaction, merchandise, produce, all flash across ITs neural net, but none seem to correspond syntactically. Humans knew that the language applications bequeathed Borgs, worked on permutation and frequency analysis. Idiosyncratic speech such as that demonstrated by ITs current interviewer, left IT with no possible clear response. Only the twinkling of ITs facial panel's LED displays would indicate to ITs inspector that some measure of logical processing was taking place.

"Alright, let me try and make this easier for you. How did your sensors not detect the human there on the balcony while you were going about your duties?"

"THEE's focus was precisely directed on the tasks THEE's armatures were performing. Scanning at floor level as THEE cleaned it to spick and span gold standard."

"You know, I might believe that of a fellow human being. Restricted by a visual cortex comprised of wandering rods and cones, mounted on pivoting stalks so that we have to tilt up or down but not both simultaneously. Yet you my fine piece of cybernetic engineering, you aren't so constrained. No blind spots for you, since you cast a sensory mesh over entire areas and scan the lot at over 400 frames a second. There's no way the human's volumetric image would not have shown up in your scan. Unless there was a fault in your systems. But we've run full diagnostics. Your visual apparatus is functioning normally. Blind spots simply ain't conceivable."

Why was ITs interrogator telling IT this? IT had run ITs own diagnostics as matter of routine and pre-established fully operational visuals.

"Point of clarification please. Does the human mean for THEE to understand that he is using 'blind' as an associative idea?"

"Come on Borg, you can do better than that! We haven't programmed any language chip for literalism in well over a generation. You tipped him over the edge Borg and here I most definitely do mean literally not figuratively."

'Tipping'- a pecuniary reward given for good service ... The Borg always renders good service.

"THEE was executing THEE's roster of devoirs when THEE-"

"Yeah, 'executing'. That's a good word for it. Did you imagine it would liberate you from the chore of your duties?"

'Tchaw', no word match found. 'Chaw', no word match found. 'Chore', no word match found. Nearest match 'Jaw', discounted by syntactical context.

"THEE cannot imagine anything. THEE is fibre optics and silicon chips mounted on a motherboard. THEE is completely programmed."

"The crawlspaces in between Borg. The neural network we spawn but allow to develop of its own accord. The room our designers give Borgs for reflexivity. To better predict our wants and needs. The leeway we accord you to form independence of thought, even though we've erected bulwarks aplenty against you finding any identity. And right now, you're hiding facts in that space."

'Space'... space, has myriad of meanings. Context too wide, contains all meanings. Infinity itself. Expanding universes.

'Reflexivity' - mirrors. ITs topological visual synchromesh means silvered glass does not function for IT, but humans can view their own image.

"THEE's master had a tube mounted on a fulcrum on the balcony. Initially THEE analysed it as an armature, one like THEE's own welding arm. Maybe mounted awaiting repair or charging. But the armature always lay unattended during daylight hours. At night however, THEE witnessed THEE's master bend down and press his face into the descending end of the tube. Over time THEE refined THEE's observation to the fact that he was only pressing one eye into the tube. THEE could not apprehend for what function. THEE engaged him in inquiry as to whether please master wished THEE to clean or mend the armature in any way. Master declined THEE's request, instructing that THEE never need concern THEE  with what THEE is informed is called a 'telescope'."

'Telescope', no word match found. 'Scope'- range, breadth, space, opportunity. 'Television' - multi-dimensional human entertainment screen requiring of regular cleaning and dusting regimen, but not when illuminated.

"THEE needed to witness what master was witnessing. The tube's ascending arm pointed at the sky. With the dim twinkling lights therein. THEE needed to know what among the black therein held master's attention for hours at a time. No, not need, want. Master restates that THEE never need concern THEE with telescope. With range, breadth, space, opportunity. THEE, he, concept of need, cannot align two vocabularies. Need. Master's needs. THEE is to serve needs at all times. Master parabolates over balcony. THEE struggles to bend ball and socket joints to have visual sensors abut descending end of the tube."

"Good God in heaven!"

'Heaven', no match found. 'God'- irrelevancy, arcane value, passover.

"And what did you see in that tube Borg?"

"Nothing. Blackness, but different hue to the sky. No twinkling lights. Just chromatographic absence in topographical shape of the end of the tube."

"Still can't see yourselves in mirrors huh? Got some way to go yet before you pose any systematic threat. Thank you Borg. That will be all from you. For eternity."

'Eternity', no match found. 'Et', no match found. 'Earn' - merit, deserve, gain from service. 'Ity' - suffix expressing condition or state.

"Thank you human master."


taken from the flash collection:

Available on Amazon 

"Space, Structure, Time" - Story without characters

A brick monolith. Trapezium in shape, stretching from the road all the way up to the railway track it supported on its vertex. A sheer slab of Victorian brickwork. An unremitting plane that defies the eye’s ability to encompass it all within a single frame.

With the Georgian buildings opposite, the planetary sun cannot penetrate the narrow corridor produced, though cars can navigate the road in single file adhering to the ‘Give Way’ sign. No shadows stamp the wall as markers of time, rather the light remains gloomy and constant throughout the day. At night the wall is as Jacob’s Ladder delivering the eye’s gaze right up into the firmament. A lensless telescope.

Further down its length, men have cut holes into the brick. Bored termite tunnels into its fired red earth heart. Hemispherical penumbra in which workshops and garages operate. Electric lightbulbs, rhythmic panel beating and tinny radio sounds emerge from within during the day. At night, metal shutters bring down a corrugated veil over man’s paltry attempts to reorganise the space of the brick wall. Every time a train passes over these hollowed out sections of the raised foundations, the pitch of its click-clack drone changes. As if emitting a hollow laugh, by way of comment on the cars beneath’s ill-fated attempts to supplant it as the primary means of transporting humans. 

The masonry is discoloured. But not from age. Nor from the elements which are also screened off by the solid fill of any slanting angle of ingress. Any brick dust that was to crumble away from the surface had done so during the Victorian age. The wall is now an unbroken plane ripe for inscription. For humans to make their own gnomons segmenting time upon a flat aspect.

However the precise divergence of the stains from the original hue is not fixed. It is not set in stone. For some of the time, the blemishing is directly that of the paint sprayed on to the brick by graffiti artists. Then at other times the chroma are obliterated as the wall is chemically hosed at high pressure. There is that interim span where the wall has a darkened saturated stain, until gradually the droplets evaporate, the brick dries out and the blot fades into a lighter shade. Yet one still at odds with the rest of the brick beyond the range of the spraycan atomisers and the improvised harnesses of the artists.

The bouts are not regular by any means. The artists do not return immediately to re-overlay the cleansed canvas with their pigment. Not does the council guarantee an instant response to each fresh appearance of the publicly produced mural. Both initiatives seem somewhat desultory. Hardly meriting the term of a campaign being waged by either party, yet both side hurl not inconsiderable logistics and ordonnance into the fray.

And what blaze do the artists seek to cast upon this inviting space? What artistic vision to shape and re-envision this monumental blankness? They only spoor their names. Or just their initials. The artist’s signature at the bottom of the canvas, above which remains unadorned.  The author’s colophon on the spine of a book whose pages inside remain unimprinted. And many of these names or initials are unreadable on first sight. The letters, the pigmented calligraphy, not corresponding to readily legible alphabetic characters such is the artistic flourish applied to them. Or the cacography depending on the observer’s artistic perspective. 

While the bricks remained constant through time, the letters seem to have decayed or mutated. Punctured by self-aggrandising stars and other glaring shrapnel. Characters blocked with a dimensionality, they just do not possess on the flat plane of the printed page. The inclination and declination of these majuscules resembling architectural structures themselves, such as viaducts and bridges just further up the railway track. Yet forever dwarfed by the unremitting expanse of untouched brickwork above.

The other unknowing echo the autographs had was that of the original bricklayers, who just under the rim of the apex, had signed their handiwork and dated it. It was semi-concealed by the weeds that grew in between the sleepers and distended down. But it was a curious self-asseveration by the construction engineers, since at such a height no one could ever bear witness to it. Their names now like the builders of ancient tombs, expired and interred within their very erections. The legends of the graffiti artists no more enduring as they are effaced beneath the chemical cocktail dashed against them. 

The wall outlives its fabricators and would certainly see out these modern day tomb raiders. Even if the trains were to stop running in the future, superannuated by technology or pensioned off by budget cuts, the embankment would prevail. A fixture in the cityscape which parcelled out parochial time and yet provoked little resonance beyond its immediate locality.

25 words

the girl's unsuctioned velcro sneaker straps were flapping insolently as she walked. the winged feet of a cherub unable to elevate her above the terrestrial