The Word

I’ve just completed a small collection of short stories called Festival of Martyrs to be published soon by Another Small Press. I’m presently completing an extended short story, Adventures in The Gutter of a Golden Age. Although I’ve had a bit of a technological setback on that one two thirds – and 10,00 words – of the way in.

The Limit

Establishing shot: remote farm.
Crumbling buildings, dilapidated machines.
Rusty caravan in the yard.

Cut to interior. Old farmer sits.
Staring at a photograph tacked to the wall.
His daughter and the doctor, discussing him.

DOCTOR: So, how long?

DAUGHTER: Mute? One year.

He believes he has a set number of words
to speak in his lifetime.
He believes he has reached his limit.

I don’t think the written word counts against your limit, although I suspect that hearing other people’s words may well do.

Littoral

Coastal resorts are like dark places in houses, the places where the natural byproduct of life, the detritus of utility, finds sanctuary from the broom, the brush, the vacuum. People on the fringes of society, the forgotten people, end up dead, institutionalised, or trapped in coastal resorts. They drift in the gentle breezes and buffeting storms of their own unfixed, indeterminate destinies. Eventually they reach the coast, like so much flotsam, and drawn to the coloured lights of resorts they stop, caught, because the sea won't let them drift any further, and they can't turn back.