23 June 07 - 07:35North Monday / Missing Link
NORTH MONDAY
The Villages were full of cityfolk down for the weekend period. The hot office cities were upon a lucky escape from their prison of streets and sparse parks between the headaches and highrises towards this village oasis of plaintive birdsong and its sounds of empty horizons and of trees. Everything was south from this point onward till the dusty weekend took over with its signal return to the hard treadmill of fulfilling lives and livelihoods back elsewhere.
Sunday had been travel day. Saturdays were interludes that filled the roads with more than just the car-spaces they would otherwise occupy given the propensity of avoiding traffic jams. So Sundays opened their petrol garage forecourts end-to-end for a free run towards the extra-mural greeneries that showed that the cluster of Villages was not too far distant down the dirt tracks that the atlas failed to contain in an attempt to isolate the cities and their wealth. ...
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21 June 07 - 18:44The Exquisition
FIRST PUBLISHED 'OCULAR' 1996
My name is Phillips and I have a journey to share. I intended to tell stories of the strange zones that inhabit the Elder Zodiac. But, once told, I've decided they're not stories at all. They merely employ my words from convenience. This means, in hindsight, they must be subject to the laws of the Outer Gods ... and you must travel them all over again until you are convinced of this fact or at least until you shuffle off this mortal coil, shed this earthly raiment and become a God yourself.
As you enter the first Sign, you notice the guards, in ramshead helmets, their stares being harder to by-pass than the sparkle-topped spears which they wield. They do not move to stop you but, all the same, you know full well that you are committing a series of prohibited acts in one: since this is the only access to the other eleven Signs. ...
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03 June 07 - 12:50Works Outing
WORKS OUTING
Published before somewhere - currently being investigated
It was the one event to which the whole corset factory looked foward from one year to the next. Working for an industrial concern near Birmingham, England, a visit to the seaside would put salt in their veins and the echoes of saucy promenade songs in their ears - providing future memories for the long smokestack evenings when even sexual by-play became more wearing than getting up early on dark mornings.
Tom had worked for the firm, man and boy, since before those gathering storms which, some said, Hitler had magicked up from the blue sky of Europe's new hope but which, in reality, as others perhaps suspected, had belched from the new sprouting factory-chimneys - betokening the conjuration of Man into Machine...
"Tom, I guess you're not going on the trip this year." The foreman smiled, whilst his eyes spoke sorrier volumes. ...
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