russian roulette

09.08.2025

At the most, I had twitched my lips as a prelude to a word. Essentially just the moment before the action. Alfonso raised his finger aloft and intoned, ‘Enough of your vileness about love. Perhaps one day…’

‘There is no now, there was no before and there will be no before me.’

‘That’s the positive kind of attitude!’ Alfonso smirked at me. ‘Stop wallowing in pity.’

‘It makes for a good bed.’

‘The bed is precisely what you have to free yourself from. Your late mornings have started again in earnest.’

‘Do you know what the dream is now, Alfonso? While I am awake, I see myself with a black pistol. It is very elegant and very beautiful. Irresistible. And I am sitting at the table with this little fiend. She is inviting me. I stroke her. I love her. It is a seduction that is hard to resist. And there is one pretty little bullet in this sexy little fiend. I open the gun and roll the barrel. Now, no one knows where the pretty little bullet is. Does it have my name on it like I have its name upon my heart? Who knows. I aim the sexy little fiend at my temple. There is an audience. They watch. They have thirsted for my blood from before I was born. I am what they have to kill to survive. Then…’

‘And then?’ asked Alfonso coolly.

‘That is the thing. At first, this waking dream was that it is all over. But then, do you know what my luck is? I have never been lucky in anything. This society is against my luck. Then, perhaps I get the bad luck. Perhaps I survive. Perhaps there is no big BANG.’

‘It is only a dream. You detest guns. You have told me that they are for cowards. It is against your culture to use a gun against yourself. The dream signifies nothing.’

‘Still, it is a pretty dream.’

‘Get a prettier dream. Put some flowers in it.’

‘The flowers are a tired metaphor and a false one. There is no romance. There is no beauty. There is no life principle against the death principle. There is nothing and no one in this world and there are no flowers.’

‘Pull yourself together,’ Alfonso admonished me. ‘You would let them win over you? You would accept defeat on their terms? In the world, there are flowers. You just have to find them.’

‘I have looked my whole life. Even the flowers are impure.’

‘Purity is a fiction. Hence so is impurity. It is the impure that are capable of holding power.’

‘An impure power or a pure powerlessness? What would you prefer?’

‘You want to bandy words around when you should be living life? Tomorrow you could be the happiest man in the world. Tomorrow, it might be impossible to prise the smile off your face.’

‘Who lives in tomorrow? We live in today. Today has always been foul.’

‘What is foul is your mood.’ suggested Alfonso. ‘Did not even the chocolate ice cream I gave you add a moment of joy to your day? Why did you eat it then? Remember,’ said Alfonso, ‘even the cat that gets the cream is not satisfied with its lot. Remember the Hindu philosophy: life is suffering, life is pain, life is a punishment.’

‘Some are punished more than others,’ I responded.

‘Even when you are sad, that troublesome tongue of yours looks to argue and to defy the world. One man cannot defy everyone else. One man cannot argue against the huddled voices of the world.’

‘Let me die in the attempt.’

‘There.’ Alfonso clapped his hands and a brilliant smile lit up his face. ‘Spoken at last like a man. Keep that wild mind in your head and that wild tongue in your mouth. Keep fighting. Die a noble death. Die fighting. You are the warrrior.’

I watched the smile on Alfonso’s face. What a curious thing a smile is. How do these people smile? And almost all the time? What do they have to be so happy about when there is no happiness in the world? Together, they had all decided to apportion happiness across the world. And when it had come to my share, they had decided to scrimp and save, so that I had almost nothing. I was teasing happiness and joy out of consuming scraps of chocolate, inhaling scented bars of soap and an insane clinging to the cultural evenings around London so that I almost was not sleeping any more.

And yet, there it sat. The smile. Alfonso’s belief in me that I would keep on fighting without any victory. Against all. The Indian man’s belief in The Tiger.

Falsity (microfiction)

07.08.2025

‘Most people lie,’ was all the comment that Alfonso made.

I had just finished venting about a particularly preposterous lie that I heard. I had been looking into the eyes of this liar and they had not even flinched. Was it possible that they even believed their own lies? Or were they completely shameless?

‘I don’t lie.’

‘That is why you do not have much,’ said Alfonso. ‘People don’t welcome the truth with open arms. In fact, they loathe it and will do anything in their power to destroy it.’

‘It is not the truth,’ I said tiredly. ‘It is a truth. One of many.’

‘You believe that hogwash?’ asked Alfonso incredulously. ‘You have told me yourself that you are the truth.’

‘Although not everything that passes as truth is the truth,’ I elaborated, ‘still there has to be some room for manouevre. You don’t want a rigid and totalitarian framework. Which is what knowledge passes as in this society of twits. Their fascism is supposedly knowledge.’

I thought again of this liar and the lie. I had heard some good ones in my time. Some of them had even fooled me. It was obvious why these people lied. Because the truth was too dangerous, because they wanted to cover up their own guilt, because perhaps their intellects were so unsound that they could actually believe the paper thin story they were trying to wrap events in. They were so skilled at lying to your face. And then they would call it ‘civilisation’, their false narrative.

‘Don’t let it bother you,’ said Alfonso, sensing what I was thinking about. ‘You live in a society of liars. I am surprised that you still haven’t gotten used to it.’

‘Only a coward accepts injustice,’ I said firmly.

‘Yet what do you do about people lying to you? Nothing.’

‘What can you do? As you said, they will not accept the truth. It is not worth wasting time on them.’

‘And if the lie is an injustice?’

‘If I had my way,’ I told Alfonso, ‘There would be no lying and there would be justice. This world has never been ready for that in its entire history. Why would it be ready for that now or in the future?’

‘So why do you exist then?’ asked Alfonso. He sneered at me, one of his trademark sneers. ‘I thought you told me that you fought for truth and justice.’

‘Yes, by telling the truth myself. Just like you can’t make someone love difference when they are prejudiced, just like you can’t make someone choose fairness when they are biased, just like you can’t reason with a bigot, so you cannot stop a liar from lying. They have a psychological problem and they need therapy. They are just compulsive liars.’

‘I keep telling you, don’t be upset. Forget everything.’

‘I will, I told Alfonso. I will go to sleep now.’

Alfonso clasped my hand. ‘If you are the truth,’ he said, ‘show us the freedom and the wildness of The Tiger.’ He knew what was in my dreams.

where can i go? (microfiction)

07.08.2025

Finally, after several years of not taking a holiday abroad, he had decided to go to foreign shores. However, nothing in life is easy, least of all a journey of ease. He did not know where to go.

His parents had not taken him on holidays abroad when he was a child. He had never booked a holiday abroad by himself or had the decision about where to go.

He lacked any kind of experience and he was stumped.

The first choice had been Japan. Beautiful Japan, the land of inspiration. But what was it that he was actually going to do there? He had a vague impression of nature and local traditions. But how was he going to organise everything?

The second idea was to take a coach trip around Europe and to cram in as much as possible. But then, how much did Europe interest him? Surely it would be pretty much the same as England?

The third idea was Athens. He had always wanted to go there. But then there was that association…

Athens could be had for about seven hundred pounds. A nice hotel with a swimming pool and breakfast. Plenty of archaeological curiosities out there.

Choices. The whole world to be had. And yet, every time he had tried to go abroad, all the plans had come crashing down around him.

There was nowhere to go. There was no place for him.

And at the same time, he could not rest where he was.

In the universe, we are a space. Our body is a space. A tiny little space in what is almost an infinity of space. And that space of the body relates to the spaces of the bodies around it. His space, his body, it had no relationship to the bodies around it. So it did not matter what country he went to or what he did, he would never have a human space around him. So why try? Why imagine being in a different human space? It was all very well saying that no man is an island. But an island he was. He would be an island in Japan, Europe, Athens or Africa. It was not what he wanted, but what he was.

This holiday was already stressing him out.

Jiggling the Jelly (microfiction)

06.08.2025

After a promise to write in the night, I sat there at my desk in my boxer shorts scratching away idly at my inner thigh as I endured a severe writer’s blank. I tried the usual methods to break the blank. A feverish search in my vocabulary of words. Reflection on an experiences that would inspire something. Themes.

Nothing worked.

There were certain things it was now best to avoid. That was not helping. Because it was those things that were on my mind the most. The unfinished business…

Suddenly I felt tired so I grabbed the laptop and lay on my bed. And, immediately when I done so, all the words and ideas came flooding in.

Curious. Had it been the change of scene? But why? I am comfortable at my desk and habituated to writing there. Then I realised. I had laid down. Which had changed the orientation of my brain.

I had jiggled the jelly.

That was what had sparked off the creativity. All I needed to do was to change the orientation of the mass inside my head. Maybe if I leant to the left, that would mean that I would produce poetry or soemthing like it. Then, the right might produce prose and non-fiction. Maybe if I leant my head back while it was straight, I could produce some good erotica.

So simple. All I had to do was to introduce different movements into my routine.

I tested it out. I lay down and tilted my head to the left. Failure. I started thinking of they, all the moments. They were on my mind frequently.

I tried the other side. It was worse. I started thinking of the big C word. My career. And out of work time too. I shuddered.

Why was the writing impulse so elusive today?

But if it was the jiggling of the jelly…

‘Eureka!’ I cried. The solution was so simple. I slapped myself on both cheeks and on my forehead. That would move it.

I pummelled away at my face with my open palm. Unfortunately, however, you can not get much writing done when you don’t have any free hands. The jelly was jiggered and not jiggled. And in all the experimentation, I had forgotten the idea I had when I laid on the bed. There was not going to be any story tonight.

My discerning, demanding readers would be most displeased.

Robot Cyrano (microfiction)

05.08.2025

(Written lying in bed after waking up.)

It was the words. They were not speaking the recognised words.

‘You cannot say individually. You have to follow convention. Peculiarities raise precautions.’

They looked sorrowfully at me. ‘What if I cannot?’

I advised them that for the next attempt, they should put a prompt into an artificial writing machine.

‘Are you serious?’ they asked me incredulously?

‘You are in dire need of a Robot Cyrano.’

‘It is not just the words. What about my actions and feelings? Cyrano is a fiction. Most of communication and speaking is not the words.’

‘The speculations of one that has shown little success. What do you have against a robot Cyrano? If they like your actions and feelings in addition to the words of predictability and convention, the words of a society, what is wrong with it? Technology assists humankind in all of its aims. Why not love? And then, Robot Cyrano is a people pleaser. Robot Cyrano will do the job.’

‘There is something awful in you. All is not fair in love and war’, they said. ‘I cannot corrode my voice to belong.’

So, they stumble and bumble. Because they won’t imitate. Because they won’t parrot Robot Cyrano. Because they have their own words. Because they don’t and can’t follow the acknowledged rules.

I am happy to ask the machine. After all, it works. There is an algorithm to connection.

α division (microfiction)

04.08.2025

Written in my head at a bus station in the morning.

α – I don’t agree

a – I don’t agree

α – You are wrong

a – You are wrong

α – I refute what you are saying

a – I refute what you are saying

A – You are wrong

α – You are wrong

a – You are wrong

A – Repent

α – Repent

a – Repent

A – Good riddance to you

α – Good riddance to you

a – Good riddance to you

A – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

α – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

a – Silence (You have hurt me. I can’t tell you how much.)

(A/α/a dreams of saying – I am sorry. I am sad. I miss you)

and/or (A/α/a dreams of revenge)

and/or (A/α/a dreams forever for the other to restart the conversation)

and/or (A/α/a buries it away and moves on)

Eyebrows (microfiction)

04.08.2025

Central Line into work

She wanted one eyebrow to be blue and the other to be green.

‘Why?’ they asked.

She said to be different. To be able to waggle her eyebrows so as to be received in a polychromatic perception. To confuse in blue. To judge in green. To be playful in colour.

They told her it was discordant, disarranged, disparate.

She said it was outrageous, outstanding, an outlier of style and sophistication.

Those are not good things they said.

Who are you to be gods of society? she cried.

We will have our wish upon a dish they proclaimed. There is a law of the face which we cannot misplace. For to do so would be disgrace.

So she shaved off her eyebrows and she unveiled her eyes, one blue and one brown. It was the talk of the town.

folded flower of paper (microfiction)

27.07.2025

At the risk of death, he packed everything of his strange self into the folded flower of paper. Neatly sealing everything in, neatly pressing down, neatly wincing when the paper cut into his thumb and finger, staining itself with his blood.

This paper rose, this unreal flower, he festooned it upon the wall of his house. The innermost was now on the outside. They came. They looked. They said that the paper flower was foul. They said that he, who had made the paper flower, that he was foul. They would have clawed his eyes out if they could and chopped at his fingers if they could.

The paper flower, hurt by the eyes and hurt by the words, it sighed in perfume. And the scent stung at the eyes of the haters. Their eyes watered and the tears fell. The tears were full of poison. They tore apart the paper flower.

And he? He was in the paper flower. They were tearing at him, clawing at him, ripping into him. He was unbuilt and uncreated, whittled down and scarred all over. Big gaping scars that screamed with oblivion. But he, he could not cry.

And so, they were happy.