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Bench

  He walked up to the bench and sat down. It was the same bench he always sat down at, because in times of turmoil, why change what’s comfortable? Hearts break and love ends but a bench is a bench and it might just be the one thing that isn’t being taken from him. That’s an exaggeration and he knew it, but that doesn’t change anything. When you lose what clears the clouds away, you’re entitled to getting lost in the gloom. The clouds are black and the gloom came with it, so where else are you meant to go? Affirmations like those powered him through the misery and got him to his bench. The bench will make things better. It really is just a bench. A sturdy, old thing — dedicated to a man he never met in a park he would normally never visit. Westview park was in the west of the city (as the name suggests) and he lived in the east. Still though, it was a nice view in the west and the bench is the best. The bench was ordinary, as far as a bench goes. Like all the special things in his...

Bit of a Ramble + Hey Guys, Brian Here

I have a piece of flash to share. Shocking, I know. I haven't written much this year. I am choosing to blame being far busier than I have ever been before. The real reason probably lies somewhere in the middle of 'crippling fear of the future' and 'genuine chronic laziness underscored by mental illness that I am consistently failing to get on top of'. Any who, this piece is a rambling little excerpt of a day in the life of a man called Brian. Like all truly great men, Brian is a piece of fiction. Thank you for reading today and I do hope you enjoy my work. If you want more, I might just right it. Or not. Hey Guys, Brian Here Six seconds ago, I learned what it meant to love. Which is a shame, really, given that I had been in a relationship for the six months prior to those six seconds. It would have been incredibly helpful to know how to love somebody whilst I was meant to be loving them. Misfortune is no stranger to me, though, and the lesson never found itself lear...

A Return to Normalcy: Part One

  Part One Back where he was from, two people who loved each other dearly and sought no other life but the one they would live together often decided to get married. Marriage, of course, being the permanent binding of two souls both legally and spiritually. Well, the permanence is only contextually relevant and the spiritual aspect is entirely open to personal interpretation. Many people also did not see the need for government input in their relationship, so the legal aspect of marriage could also be up to interpretation. That’s hardly the point, though. The point is, as far as he knew, marriage was the normal next step in a relationship such as theirs.  The Man had not known normalcy since he fell through a crack in the pavement on his way to work and landed in a world completely unlike anything he knew to be real. Above him now rested skies of impossible lavender shades and below him grew grass that somehow bore the taste of pepperoni pizza. This world was home to literal...

Two Steps

  The Fontaine is not named for any man or woman who walked this green Earth , no. This once-great, now-middling night club and music venue was named for the French word— not any such person whose great grand-father happened to take it for a surname. It’s a fountain and a natural spring all at once. Water is life in the same way music is life. Music keeps us sane, it keeps us happy, it makes us sad and it’s there for us when we need it. It can bring us back from the darkest times and it's what we need when the sun shines bright. Music flows from this hallowed ballroom the way water does from a spring. Hence, The Fontaine. Live music will never be the same thing it was 30 years ago and there is no way in Hell it comes close to what was here 30 years before that— but the fools whose mouths try to sing the worlds and whose fingers try to play the notes that make us want to live again spend every single Saturday night in that building regardless. The Fontaine was once an institution an...

Can Whimsy Die?

  Foreword I haven’t written a word yet this year. Well, I’ve texted. I changed a line in a poem, too. I also made notes for a Youtube video- sorry, I started making notes for a Youtube video. I haven’t properly written, though. No prose or the like. Not until now, at least. The me of January 2024 would have been mildly embarrassed by this. What sort of ‘proper’ writer gets two (plus a day) whole weeks into the new year and hasn’t written a word? Is what I would have thought. Fortunately- and it is fortunate, because the agonising self-torment one engages in as an egotistical tortured artist is truly exhausting- I don’t really care anymore. Art is art because it's an authentic expression of one’s self. That’s how I’ve learned to see it. My writing will be written when it's time to write and not a moment sooner. With that preamble, I present to you- a middling piece of flash fiction that I had not even remotely planned out before I started typing.  Can Whimsy Die? Grief is a f...