Trip

“Follow your dreams,” his father had told him.

Based on some of the dreams he’d been having lately, he didn’t think that’s what his dad had meant.

The weird dreams were going hand in hand with the weird reality he was currently experiencing.

This was actually based on him following a dream of sorts. He’d felt his life stagnating and wanted to know which path his life should take. After not particularly much thought and soul-searching, he’d sold everything he owned and quit his job. He was currently living in a small cabin by a lake which he was renting very cheaply. So cheap it was actually free, although technically he was squatting rather than renting.

He had spent a significant chunk of his money on a large haul of mind-bending narcotics.

Every day for two weeks he had experimented with different cocktails of drugs hoping they would show him the way his life was meant to go next.

So far it had shown him nothing and he was nearing the end of his supply.

That night the drugs would tell him to go for a midnight swim and there would be no question left to answer.

Hurt

The sleeplessness made her think, sometimes too much. Was she over-analysing everything? She wasn't sure.
She knew that sometimes people you love say things that either they don't mean or don't realise are hurtful. Sometimes though it was calculated emotional torture. She played through a catalogue of these things in her mind and mulled and remulled them over, thinking of them all from the worst possible angle.
She wanted to wake him and tell him he'd hurt her, but she was scared. He might react with anger, in fact he most likely would. Or was she overthinking that too?
Some of the things that upset her were from a year or more ago. There was no point in revisiting them. But why did they keep bubbling to the surface?
Maybe she'd be strong enough one day.
She sobbed into her pillow as she waited for sleep.

Lost

“Where are they? I can’t find them.” Tobias was pacing back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, visibly stressed.

“What have you lost this time, dear?” Megan didn’t even look up from her newspaper. Her husband was always misplacing things.

“My keys.” He sighed loudly and left the room again.

Megan continued reading her newspaper. She knew where his keys were, but said nothing. She smiled to herself.

There was a series of loud crashes from the living room.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking down the back of the sofa.” There was more banging.

Megan got up to see what her husband was doing. She entered the living room and was greeted by a cloud of dust. The sofa was destroyed. “What the…”

“I was perhaps a little over-exuberant,” her husband explained.

“Here,” she said, picking his keys from the table in the hallway and throwing them at him.

“You knew where they were?” he spat as he rushed from the room.

Megan couldn’t believe he’d ruined their sofa. She stood and surveyed the damage and heard her husband swearing under his breath in the hallway.

“Where’s my fucking briefcase?” he yelled.

Extinction

They all went about their daily business as usual. They hunted, they foraged, they ate, they bathed in the lake.

Some hid from others in fear of their lives and some strutted around like they owned the place. These aspects were perfectly normal.

There was a general feeling that something wasn’t quite as it should be, but none of them could put their metaphorical finger on it.

It became dark earlier than usual and this created unrest.

A large object flashed across the sky, coming closer at an alarming rate.

There was a feeling of strong impact.

If any of them could speak, they would probably have said: “Well, that’s all this fucked then.”

Meeting

The AGM of the allotment committee was a dull affair.

It was full of elderly people who looked like they could draw their last breath at any second.

“Any other business?” the chairman of the committee asked.

“Yes!” yelled the Winston Churchill-alike on the back row.

There was a collective gasp. Nobody ever had any other business. What the hell was going on?

“The rabbit problem.”

“Yes?” asked the chairman.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted a man who resembled Terry Nutkins, “but what does that have to do with the committee?”

“It has everything to do with the committee!”

Churchill rose to his feet and headed towards Nutkins, knocking chairs and people out of the way as he went.

He picked Nutkins up, a feat of strength which surprised everybody in the room. He carried the man above his head and slammed him through the table at the front of the room.

“Just a minute,” said the chairman. “You’re responsible for the rabbit problem if it’s on your plot.”

Churchill picked up a chair and smacked the chairman in the face with it.

He left the room, leaving Nutkins and the chairman unconscious.

The secretary looked perplexed. “How do I record this in the minutes?” she asked.

The Performer

Terry loved singing. He’d done it for getting on twenty years and it was the life he’d dreamt of when he started.

That’s not suggesting he’d had dreams it would be glamorous. Getting changed in a yard full of empty barrels behind a pub was certainly not glamorous by any stretch, but he’d had to do that again tonight.

No, his dream had been to simply make a decent living from performing and he was definitely doing that. He’d never be rich, but he made enough to get by.

He still got nervous before he went on stage – it was only natural.

Tonight’s crowd had been about fifty or so and he’d belted out his usual array of covers, modern and old. He always threw a bit of Elvis into the mix too. Pre-toilet Elvis, obviously.

The crowd sang along and danced and had a good time all round. The landlord of the pub gave him the agreed £40 when he was finished.

Terry loaded his gear into his car and closed the boot.

Yeah, he still had it alright. Now he was getting older he wasn’t earning so much and didn’t have as many gigs each week, but he was still doing ok.

This is what he told himself as he climbed into his car, reclined his seat an attempted to fall asleep.