#SMALLTALES

Me and the boys found her on the valley floor, dappled in the leaf-light, droplets of dew beginning to dribble down her cheek. It was a cool June morning, not too cold to be out and about, but still too early for the flies, so me and the boys had the place to ourselves. Less than a mile away her parents hadn’t slept, and they were beginning their second leaden hearted day questioning themselves – had her seventeen years of life really come to nothing ? To a beetle though, nothing is nothing. We got to work.

“You ought to watch your news outlets. We need to talk.”

That Friday that goes on forever and the weekend never comes? Those are all your wasted hours, coming back to waste you.

“So, I’ve got an illegal immigrant to deal with… I know! I’m not an a language teacher and I have 24 students already… It absolutely will end in disaster. She’ll fall behind, act out, drop out… Integrating these kids, it’s just a waste.”

We kneel before an altar lit by two candles.    "I don't understand why you've brought me here. It's all... just a fairytale to me," I mutter. Hanna has been trying to "save me," or whatever, ever since we'd met in college 5 years ago. I love her, but I gave up on God years ago.    "Just, wait. I have to tell you something and I wanted to do it here," Hanna answers.    "Your church? Why? Look, you're not going to change my mind. You're wasting your-"    Hanna faces me, taking my hands. "I have cancer, Kara. I'm going to die."

It comes from downstairs: Yoohoo! Wake up! My eyes respond by squeezing shut. My ears heard the call, but the rest of my body pretends it hasn’t heard anything. Undeniably the sun has been up for a while, even in this definite state of sleep I know this to be true. I try to guess the time. I bet the hour hasn’t even reached double-digits yet. What monster expects me to wake in the single-digit hours? Muffled footsteps on the bedroom carpet. It’s almost noon dear, if you don’t get up now you’ll have wasted the whole day. How foolish.

“Hear a tale, my boy, not often told, of how the Creators in Their wisdom made the world. Pluck’d from the heavens, the brightest shining stars; They put their light into our eyes so that we might see. They made the land from Their own bodies, and the seas from Their tears of joy at their creation. Before long, all that was left was their waste, stinking, foul and depraved, and from that filth, the First Men shaped their gods, to whom we give praise and obeisance to this day. The Creators, beneath and all around us, lie forgotten.”

The bin liners stick to my hands and shins. I've no idea whether or not the clothes in them are clean; all I know is that they're mine. The sweltering July sun begins to rise in a room that used to be ours. Nothing has that label now. You are on the bed, crying. I pack hastily, clumsily. I need to leave before the cocktail of guilt and exhilaration makes me sick. In a few days the life we spent eight years building will have been erased; consigned to a series of memories. I'm yet to decide whether they are ones I wish to keep. I'm sorry for wasting your time.

June is actually the cruelest month. She teases me into a lilac summer dress then tricks the cardie from my back. I’ll show you fear in a thin cotton dress caught in town in a thunder storm. I head to the brown fog of Costa. To sit it out, write my smalltales words. And there a wise woman divines from her window seat throne; without cards & over a cake spilling cream, it’ll soon pass. Except it doesn’t. I’ll have to go to the pound shop for some inner peace and a brolly that probably won’t even last the journey home.

You call it a waste of a life; I prefer ‘noble self-sacrifice’. You hurry your kids past the door of my squat, but you should bring them in, give them the tour; show them what chronic addiction looks like, and smells like. My reality is your best defence against them following this path, but you cloak me in mystery and euphemism, and it leaves them wondering. You hate me, but you need me. I am a cautionary tale come to life, if only you knew how to tell it.

https://archaism.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-hunt-for-higgs-bosn-xiv-for-smalltales/

https://archaism.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/the-hunt-for-higgs-bosn-xiii-for-smalltales/

https://xanderwatts.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/point-of-view-a-hood-story-for-smalltales/

http://hello--carly.weebly.com/hood.html