#100wordsaday

“One hundred words a day,” he said, “one hundred days to write. But you must finish before the dawn after year’s last night. Skip a day that’s fine, but two is soon to follow. And if you let three get away, sad’s the dawn tomorrow.” “I’m sorry,” I said, “How did you get in here? I lock the door at half past six, this last day of the year.” “Lordy Lou Terrance,” we both looked up, Pamela was standing there, cutlass in hand,  “just because this yahoo’s speaking in rhyme like some ridiculous Ogden Nash wannabe, doesn’t mean you’ve gotta!”

I thought it would feel good, to open my fingers one by one and let the string slide away through them, letting it go free. For a second it did feel good, I was swept up in a sense of elation as the little bunch of string at the end danced away just higher than I could reach. Of a sudden, I was taken with the realisation that I did not want this after all, this could not be, how could I have been so stupid? I dashed off across the field after it, but the kite was already gone.

You see all kinds of things when you're driving through the night. The ordinary is rendered surreal. A truck full of sullen chickens bound for slaughter, a single one among their number seeming to realize what is in store, or perhaps the corpse of a deer, body swollen to cartoonish proportions. Odder still, that passing moment of eye contact with the passenger of another vehicle. Somehow, the space between two is at once non-existent, a hands breadth, and infinite defined more by danger and speed, than distance.  I like to hold a hand to the glass and mouth, “find me.”

“Right over here, we’ve got the best quality knives in all the southern region!”   “Tales told! New or Old!”   “Pay no heed to charlatans! The kingdom of heaven will soon be at hand!”  “Bread! We got fresh bread!”  “Fortunes told! Souls bought and sold!”  “Spare some copper for the poor?”  “...that’s what I’m saying, if you account for the temporal drift in the phasing then you might lose your li…”  “We’ve got the best! Half the price of the rest! Find you a something pretty…?”  “Latest news from the Ice Wars! Read it all here first!”  “Peaches! Plums! Pommes-de-Mort! Radishes!”

Ponderous he made his precarious way up the small ladder, arms laden with books. Never one to make the logical choice to go up and down the ladder more than once, he always took everything up with him. As he stood upon the step which is not a step, he shifted his arms, supporting the stack of books with a trembling arm and his chin, ignoring the ominous squeaks coming from the rickety contraption below. He was a literary acrobat.   “You know,” she said, “you’re one big accident waiting to happen.”  With a grunt he ignored her and continued shelving.

In the city below the city there is a church below the church. The underchurch is full of people who worship the god below the god worshiped by those above, a step down the ladder of deity. These parishioners are the lesser children of lesser houses, drawn to this covenant of seconds and thirds, not dregs, just less than a choice. One would be mistaken to consider these to be people lacking in ambition, on the contrary the underchurch is a place of startling intrigues. Many a coup was hatched in the subbasement rec room over instant coffee and cookies.

...and that’s all there is to it really, just concentrate on your destination and bam! You’re there! Of course there is the tiny problem that you need to make sure the device is calibrated to your specific DNA and if not, that you’re holding a very precise pattern in your mind. It may seem like a good idea to leap out into a void and catch ahold of the hand of a falling damsel, but trust me kiddos, it’s suicide. Next thing you know you’ll both be nothing but a twitching mass of bloody pulp spread across someone’s front walk...