Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 13

SHIMMER

 

So we were by the lake, a gentle saunter in the gathering dusk. I was, as usual, playing his verbal foil and he, well, he was his usual gruff, taciturn, dismissive self.

‘The moonlight’s glimmer,’ he said.

‘No, shimmer,’ I said.

‘Rubbish,’ he said.

So I snapped. I drowned him.

CASUAL

When we woke I felt there was a manhole cover on my head, my eyes were inside out and my throat swabbed with wire wool soaked in paraffin.  Stark naked and painted pillar box red, ‘Let’s go,’ I said, prodding James. The  church congregation were aghast. ‘Act casual‘, I advised.

Memory

She talked him into tattoos of each other’s names, night of the ‘long talk’. One look love. She died, time the tattoo faded, not the memory.

PARTNER

via Daily Prompt: Partner

My significant other was in the toilet. I waited, drinks in hand. I hated works dos even if they had a social function.  ‘Go by yourself,’ I encouraged. She wouldn’t. A co-worker approached, gel slick and leery. ‘Hello,’ he drooled, ‘all alone?.’ ‘No, waiting on my partner.’

SYMPHONY

 

Everything was prepared, the score commissioned, the ranks of strings, brass, woodwind and percussion, assembled, even a singer found for the brief cantata in the first movement. She had him wheeled in, his broken body propped by stays.

‘What’s this?’

‘Your symphony.’

‘Symphony? Are you deaf? I asked for sympathy.’

Photo: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (wikipedia)

Dying to Believe – 100 word prompt

We question everything we do. It’s in our nature. I imagine how this whole belief thing began. Sun rises. Winter ends. Spring and life begin. Autumn flourishes. Winter rests, restores. It didn’t take a genius to work it out. It took a genius, though, to turn it into a cauldron of power. Such evil genius, its been repeated again and again through the eons of time. Wars are won and lost, millions die, countries and fortunes, lost and regained. It’s a poisoned apple, the worm in the machine when the answer to why we live becomes we’re dying to believe.

Word count: 100.

Rewriting Life – First Human Embryos Edited in U.S.

Researchers have demonstrated they can efficiently improve the DNA of human embryos.

by Steve Connor

(Note: I’ve reblogged this article to occasionally keep people apprised of what’s going on and the decisions people make for what they apparently believe are  for the best intentions but never consult or consider the consequences.)

read more

 

FOGGY

 

In the damp, morning air, her breath puffed like floss in the dawn. She blessed her forethought luring him to the rendezvous in the boathouse. There was nothing to carry, she just rolled him in to the boat, bound and weighted and set off. Foggy morning, she thought, clear head.

TOOTHBRUSH

 

The sun was a ball of melting butter on the crimson horizon. It took her breath away. The air clear and crisp, the sky above her receding into encroaching darkness. About her feet was sticky with the congealing blood of her lover. A thought occurs, has she packed a toothbrush?

SUBSTANDARD

Epitaph on a TyrantW. H. Auden, 1907 – 1973

 

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.