microfiction 1

11.10.2025

An unaccountable loss this, the ability to write purely imaginative work. Reality was pushing its sharp corners into my mind and my body. This life of suffering… How long was it that you could endure suffering for? It had been a sustained assault, a laboured siege, a ravenous feasting upon me that had taken place over years without end…

So what story could I write? That was different from my life? That was not an interminable quest? That was not a tragedy of heartbreak? A lament of loneliness and unbelonging? A fight against all that there was? A doomed resistance of difference in the face of the great evil of the One?

The public wanted a glimmer of light. That glimmer of light gave them hope. That was what sold. An orphan magician that defeats evil. A misfit that finds love. An underdog that achieves some kind of victory, whether real or imaginary. A problem that is resolved. Justice achieved.

Magic. Love. Victory. Justice. Where was any of this in my life? Where were they in my world?

And so, the need for a new story. Fiction is not the unreal. Fiction is not the false. It is an old chestnut that fiction is another reality. Perhaps more real. Perhaps braver than this reality. An alternative imagining of reality.

Perhaps I should imagine myself as a villain. I write myself into my characters. I could pretend to be the villain. But this would serve the false narrative in place. I am not the villain. I am the hero.

I live in the dystopia. What is this world if it is not dystopian? Perhaps I should invent a Utopia. Where talent is rewarded. Where genius is recognised. Where there is true equality, fairness and inclusion. But would the mind of this society and this reality be able to take it? Would they even be able to begin to comprehend it?

Perhaps this is the great barrier. Perhaps this is the cause of my pen’s impotence.

But tomorrow we pick up the pen again. And tomorrow, we imagine a new tomorrow. That is what the artist creates. From the swamp, the lotus is born. And from the breast of the slave and the faithful, there comes the rebel and the freedom fighter. Just like the devil comes out from the mind of god.