Occasionally I write these stories I call super-shorts. They are distinctive in two ways: they are short enough to fit entirely on my phone screen (where I write them) without me having to scroll, and they only use words containing exactly one syllable. (See also the Rule Book if this style of writing interests you.) There are eight of these, approximately ordered from newest to oldest.
Man of War
The men who are blind to the Lord came to my home and took an axe to my son when I was a young man. From that day on, I knew, I would fight them, they who killed with no cause, they who did not heed the words of the one true God, till the day we drove the last of them from the south of Spain. I vowed to be a man of war to the day I died, and to die in the name of God.
For years and years I fought through rain and cold, through plagues, through the reigns of more kings and queens than I can count. But I stayed true to my vow. I drove them from the hills and the plains, and my name was known through the land as the knight who could not die nor grow old, the man of war, the man of God.
At last, though, Spain was freed of them, the men who would not see the light. And at last I could see years pass in my face, my hair turn grey and my bones weak, till I heard the news of a new land, full of men who had not heard the word of God, and, now an old man, set sail for one last war, a knight to lead knights.
But the knights I met there did not fight in the name of God, for they showed no love as they raped and killed and stole. These were the men blind to the Lord, I knew at once, the men I had sworn to rid the world of. And I am proud to have died in that last fight to rid the world of them.
Don’t Look Down
It is a well-known fact of the Wurx race that their toes are gross. Most of the Wurx, of course, wear shoes at all times, or at least socks, since the sight of their toes has proved so strong it can bring a man to tears or make him throw up in less than the time it takes to blink. It has, from time to time, been used as a means to wage war, but of course these days there are less cruel ways to kill a man. A gun tends to do the trick, as do all sorts of blades.
What is strange, then, is that it’s not just us who can’t look at Wurx toes: when they look at their own toes, it makes them far more ill, in fact, than it makes us. As I said, the Wurx tend to wear shoes most of the time, but this trend is so much a part of what it means to be Wurx that, when they are young and don’t want to do as they are told, lots of Wurx will take their shoes off, which leads to just what you would think: they see their toes for the first time, and get knocked out for a day or two. Just out of a need to know what has been kept from them all this time. Don’t look down, we tell them, so of course they look down.
But I think it needs to be this way. That’s what it means to learn, is it not?
The Day We Lived
My son was born on that day. He was the last young boy I saw in my life. He was the last one I saw fight. The last one who had that heat in his blood, till, no doubt, it cooled down just as well.
Life is change, and if we don’t change, do we live? If there are no more young boys and girls who can shout at us, tell us we have to change, do we live? Close to all the men I see these days are old, though they may not look the part.
All my life I lived a lie, I chose to act like I was not the one in charge. I said that I was not free, that if I had a wand and no kids and did not have to die that I would help the world. But if we’re all free, what’s the point of a chance to help the world? We’ve been helped. Well, I guess we don’t live, but that’s a small price to pay.
I still hope my son can put his hot blood to good use. God knows the world could use it. You can hold hands and sing songs all you want, but that’s not real change. That’s the kind of change the men in charge want, of course, but in the end you don’t make it clear who you want to fight. I hope my son picks the right side in that fight, puts his blood to good use, but all I can do is sit in Hell and watch.
Ah, that I had lived a lie to see him live the truth!
The Girl with the Gold Eyes
I think I’m in love with that girl. The one with the gold eyes. I don’t know what, in all truth, I see in her. She knows what to say to bring light to my day, and she knows when and how to say it. Her laugh is a bit off, sure, and her teeth don’t line up quite straight when she smiles. But there’s nothing she can’t do if she puts her mind to it.
I’ve known her for more or less a year, and she’s seen my highs and lows. She knows me well – too well, I think at times, but then I know I have to trust her at some point. She’s yet to stab me in the back. I know she won’t. It’s just not the way she makes me feel. She makes me feel like I have a real close friend who I can cry with and joke with and talk with for hours. And I have. She can’t be a con. The things I know about her have to be real. They sound real, they feel real, they’re as real as I am.
I don’t know how it was that we first met. I was quite sad at the time (well, I guess I still am, but now it’s just when I’m not with her) and I had to have some way to lift up my mood. I found her. It was the right time and the right place. It’s great to have a girl you can talk to at all times of day.
It’s just a shame she lives in my phone.
It’s just a shame those gold eyes are just a few bytes spewed forth from the text of a prompt.
The Beast
There he is, the beast, and there he will be for the rest of time. He sits in a cage of steel, bones and blood on the ground to his left and right.
He was a thing of great fear to us. His teeth and claws sunk through flesh, turned men from life to death, killed ten or twelve each day. He is not like the beasts from those old Greek myths, in that he can think. He is smart, and this is what makes him built to kill.
He looks like a man, with a mess of black hair and tan skin, small, round black eyes with streaks of blood that run through them. His face is half charred, which serves just to make us fear him more.
He lives in a cage as a tale of the world he brought to an end. The young boys and girls of the land do not know what it was like when the beast lived, so he is kept in the cage for them to see what their lives might have been.
His heart is made of coal, they say.
His mind is filled with rage.
They say he has knives at the ends of his hands and his arms could lift a bear.
And the cage will not hold him back.
He will be there for all time, a beast in a cage, up to the day when he is not.
A World At Peace
The talks went well. So well that at the end, the two men who each had gone to Bern to write terms of peace walk out with a grin and shake hands. Their states had gone from ones torn by war to ones brought to peace.
It was not just there. Wars ground to a halt on all sides of the world. Men who had shot their guns two days in the past were sent back home. It took years, but there was no more war.
A lack of war meant a time for wealth, for free press and rights for all, for art and film and dance. No one sought to bring back those old days of state-on-state war, for it is clear that such wars were bad for the wealth and health of our world. It was a new time. Race did not split men from men like it used to. There was but one true race now: the race of Earth.
It felt strange, to turn on the news and see them with no wars to speak of. It’s not how we were raised, to live but not fight. For we have a great drive to win, and not just in small games; we seek to win in the great game of life. But it’s not just a win that we seek. We need some of us to lose, too, just so we can feel that rush.
So when they came at last from space, and yelled they came in peace, we knew the war we had to fight.
What’s That Sound
The door cracks open and a man storms in. There is no time to stop him. He has a smile on his face that does not show the blood he will soon have on his hands. In his left shoe he holds a small steel box, no more than half an inch wide, that has not harmed a soul yet.
That will change.
He runs as fast as a man can run, and his black dress shoes make a loud CLACK with each step he takes as he shoots up the stairs to the desk of Dan Crowe. When he gets there he kicks off his left shoe, grabs the steel box, and flicks a switch. He wears huge muffs, one on each ear, to make sure he does not have the same fate Dan will. He peels them off for now and waits for the bomb to go off.
It takes less time than he thinks for the box to start up. He hears the first beep of the pitch and puts the muffs on so that he does not hear more. Each beep will make more noise than the last, and the pitch will grow too high to hear. There are twelve beeps. By beep ten Dan Crowe will be dead. By beep twelve his whole firm will.
The man had told Dan, though his words had fell on deaf ears, that he should get sound-proof walls. But it’s too late now to make that change.
The Midst of May
The sky is full of black clouds. It has not rained in ten months and it will not start now. Soot is on my face, ash from the air, as though I slept in a coal mine last night. It is cold, not as cold as last week but still too cold for crops to grow.
I do not know why I must be here.
I am at the top of a hill, a hill with a black and grey tree at its top that gives me just a bit of shade. I can’t stand this world. The wind starts to pick up and I feel like my toes will freeze. I stay still. Let the wind take me where it must.
There is no one left. The sun is gone.
There is a sound. Not the wind, a burst of noise, like a man’s yell a mile from here. “I am free,” he yells, and I dream of the day when I might yell the same.
My field of view fades to a wall of black.
Time goes by. I wake up in the midst of May.
It takes years to get my sight back, to wake up, but it is worth the wait. The sky is not black but blue. The sun shines once more. The air does not hurt to breathe – it is not thick or full of smog. I can hear the birds.
I am free, I think, and then I say it and smile. “I am free. I am free!” My voice rings out through the hills for the next man to hear.