experimenting with an idea for a short story

as usual unfinished, unpolished, first thing that came out of my brain one night!

…that familiar rushing in the ears, and the distancing between myself and time. Responses slow down, reactions wait a moment more than they otherwise might. There is no imagining it, I slip out of this reality and in to a close neighbour. Objects pick up on it, and become a little further away from me than they were. Phones stop working, televisions turn themselves on, the consequences of dimension hopping. Technology hates the waves you make as you break through the surface.  Everything moves a bit slower from this angle, but for everyone else it all keeps rolling. So they all speak at hundred miles an hour and move in a loud blur. That’s why it’s good to stick around other people doing the same thing. You all move at the same pace. It gives a new perspective of time from here, you appreciate how fast it travels, how little of it you have and how quickly it is running out. It gets you thinking, what to do with the bit you were lucky enough to end up with. People rush by, trying to beat the next deadline, trying to arrive somewhere before they have to try and arrive somewhere else. They leave a snail trail in their wake, a snapshot of themselves drawn in to the scenery as they go. Watch it for long enough and it merges in to the background, like trees or grass. Always moving, always growing, but no one notices because they never stop to watch it. The people lose meaning. Just living out their time, peaking through their window to see what their lot is. There are always choices. You chose to be there. I am choosing to be here. Merging with the blur is easy, practically mandatory. It’s opting out that’s the challenge. Differing from as opposed to differing to. Those in the blur want to be in there. They don’t understand why I don’t. They want me in there, and have the power to force me to get in there. If I didn’t want to then I would obviously be crazy, wouldn’t I?

Suddenly it’s an hour later, and everything catches up with itself. I’m left a little giddy and sleepy, but lying horizontal is not an option so I opt for stimulants and pain killers. The pills cure a head ache I didn’t know I had and the spinning wears off with the sweet black liquid I made from bitter little grains of brown. The coffee isn’t great but at least it’s free. The clock on the wall permanently says 11 o clock. Suddenly a bell rings and a line forms, so I get in it. When I reach the front they hand me a cup full of small solids. I swallow them drink the rest of the coffee, and before I know it I feel that familiar rushing in the ears…

random snippet

something random out of the archives....

Part 1. The aftermath.

1

Waiting amongst the decaying forest, between the brambles and supporting trunks of giants, lay the remains of the city. The rows of houses crept out from the hub of over sized sky scrapers. Buildings once proud and shining now stood gutted and decayed. From these giants spread thousands of houses, spreading out like the empty bones of a giant brick carcass.  Entwined between them, through them, over them, the forest grew angrily. The branches stretched twisted and misshapen. The bruised bark, split and wounded, took hold of all. The branches split the concrete, the roots divided the roads. The shed leaves covered everything in a thick layer of decay. Through the disappearing foliage, the city began to reappear. Finally, the onslaught of nature was abating, and the cities bones were revealed. There was no evidence now of how the  previous winter had been so hard and white. The snows had melted, where it had covered everything in a never ceasing, blanket of deadly white ice. It had laid at least twenty feet deep. The temperature had plummeted to below 20 degrees centigrade. The surface, and its overgrown mutated growth, waited for the sun. Buried below the ice. The new year bought cold winds and heavy, never ceasing rain, intermittent with hail. This hail fell the size of fists on the cold days of December. The growth waited, the snows hung on, now protected by thick ice formed from the rains. Nothing even began to thaw until well in to spring. Even she had been reluctant show her face until the beginning of may. It was as if she knew what her warmth would reveal. With patches of ground exposed, the vegetation refused to show any signs of new life. As the days grew gradually longer, and sun grew warmer, the trees and weeds showed earlt signs of vigour, as if it may come back stronger. But by June it became clear something was different. Though the trees grew back, they became too heavy for their own trunks. The new growth began dying in the early summer heat, weighing down heavily on dying plants and trees. As the heat rose, and things began drying out, gravity and decay took their effect, and the death of the forest began. The rows of houses became visible, and more importantly, the roads became usable. There was still a large amount of growth in the streets and on the roves, but it was clean, normal growth.

'There, amongst the sycamores.' She moved away from the telescope and he angled his body awkwardly to the eye piece. He waited for a few minutes without seeing what she was referring to.

'Can we move it so i can see a bit better?' he asked. 'Its not easy for me in this chair.' She went to move the telescope but he held up his hand and she paused, mid movement.

'no wait.. i see him.' she grabbbed a pair of binocualrs from the window sill and they sat together and watched him silently for ten full minutes in silence, as if their uttering of a single word may scare him away.

'whats he doing?' she whispered eventually.

'he's putting together some kind of machine.' he whispered back.

The man was dressed in full camouflage so was extremely difficult to spot, in even the hot June sun. The fact he crept slowly and purposefully through the foliage filling the city streets helped him remain hidden, though it was not these two that he wished to remain hidden from.

'Do you think he's from Cassandra's lot?' She asked, hopefully. There was only a deep awkawrd silence in reply.

'I've lost sight of him.’ she said eventually.

Hes still there, he‘s creeping out of the trees now, you’ll see him aagain in a second..

Sure enough in a few moments he appeared from under the canopy, creeping cautiously now out in the open. Checking around him constantly.

‘There isn’t anyone for miles around, he’s quite safe.’ She said, partly to inform her father, partly to put her own mind at ease.

‘Yes, but he doesn’t know that… he’s quite right to be cautious.’ They watching him carefully pick a route through the deserted streets, now covered in a thick mass of twisted and mutated vegetation. He soon vanished up a street and was hidden from view,even to them in their 15^th storey safe house.

‘ what do you think it was he put down there?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ they sat thoughtfully for a moment, still looking through their eye pieces, trying to catch another glimpse of him. Suddenly, as if in answer to the question, a strange sound began floating up to them from below.

‘whats that?’ Tbey both began scanning the surrounding area for the source, but it was difficult to tell the direction it was coming from.

‘You know, I think it coming from where he was hiding in the trees.’ they both turned their attention to the contraption thee man had been working on.

‘I think youre right you know,’ he agreed. ’there is some movement coming from in the trees.’ They both watched in silence again, just listening to the sound, a strange rhythmic whirring noise interspersed with a regular drumming beat. It pulsed and filled the city, it was easily the loudest noise to have filled the air for more than a decade.

‘you know if he was from cassandras lot…’ he sighed in annoyance at her persistence of this subject.

info

Stone is a twenty-something hippy living in a trendy area of London in the closing years of the 70's. He has a plan; to escape the city, escape the country, and go looking for adventure in the wide wide world. There's only one problem... he doesn't have a passport. 

Stone's life takes a turn for the bizarre when he accidentally discovers a machine that can transport him across universes. With no control over it and no idea where he will appear next, Stone begins a life on the road he never imagined possible.

Life of Stone is the first manuscript the author has managed to finish, he currently has several compositions on the go, all in various stages of completion. The next planned release is 'Firestone Copse' in the summer of 2013, as this is the closest to being finished

..

cover

Cover for the book! Original artwork by my 2 year old son Elliott Rick, I just inverted the colours!! The kid is a prodigy

release

i have set a date to have Life of Stone on Amazon... 29/2/2012....

page 50

‘How did you do that?’

‘Easy baby, I just stuck my arm out and he stopped.’

‘Not the taxi, the watch, how did you do that?’ She spoke to him in English and he found her accent in his native language incredibly attractive. He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

‘Do you know why your heart beats, or why you blink?’ He switched to back French again. He found it sounded so much more poetic, and hoped it would make his words sound more convincing. ‘Or why your hair grows? Or why you think about things the way you do, why you like one thing, and not another?’ He paused for effect, and neither member of his audience attempted to reply.

‘We can come up with ideas, answers, but in the end there are no reasons, no explanations. These things happen simply because they can, because there is no reason for them not to. I do not know why I can do them, I only know that I can. I am seeking answers, but I do not question these occurrences, as if I do, it may stop them from happening. I am having too much fun to wonder how it is hapening.’

The pair looked at him, hypnotised, hanging on his every word as if it were honey and they were bees.

‘Now, let’s see if this thing still works shall we?’ Stone turned his attention to his old watch. He twisted a dial, pressed a couple of buttons, and from the watch face a projection appeared, it showed a strange collection of points of light, shaped like a rugby ball, with a small flashing point blinking in the centre. Dimitri and Andrea both let out an impressed ‘Oooo’ sound. Stone studied the shape for a moment, the position of the blinking light, the shape of the ball and the elegant dance the lights played around each other.

‘Yes, that’s still useless.’ he muttered to himself, and turned another dial. The rugby ball was replaced with a 3D picture of streets, houses, cars and people.

‘Oh, nice, ok, you’ll like this, look, here’s us,’ Stone indicated a small taxi weaving its way through the streets. Their eyes opened wide in awe. A tweek here and a button pressed there and the map sprang out to give a wider view of the city. The tiny cars were all perfect tiny replicas of those around them, the tiny people stalking the thin streets hustled and bustled about. Stone waved his hand on the map, dragging the view across and around with his fingers.

‘Here's the museum.’ Stone pointed out the massive building they had just left. As they looked, a collection of police cars arrived, lights flashing. A collection of tiny policemen jumped out and ran up the steps.

‘It would appear your handy work has been noticed.’ Dimitri observed. Andrea remained silent.

‘Yes. Well, nothing we can do about that at the moment, now let’s see.’ Stone pressed another collection of buttons, and the map was replaced by a collection of numbers. The first set was obviously referring to the current time, the second the date.

‘You’ll like this Dimitri, you see this number here?’ Stone pointed at a string of nine numbers;

148,273,142

That’s how long the watch has been running for, in other words, how long it was under ground for.’ Dimitri’s face brightened in to recognition.

‘So this is how old the nest is that I found?’

‘Exactly.’ He replied. ‘Give or take 800 years or so.’ He smiled wryly at Andrea. She smiled back. ‘I was hoping it might have stopped when I took it off, to give a more accurate age for you, sorry.’

‘That’s ok.’ She replied meekly, embarrassed at having ever doubted him. ‘Does this mean you’ve lost count forever?’ Stone pressed a button and the numbers vanished from the air. The object around his wrist stopped being a mystical alien device and returned to being a strange looking watch.