Further to my blog “Inkwell” on Friday. They organise a fun creative writing competition each month. Participants have to create a piece in just half-an-hour, from a standing start, with no editing allowed, on a given theme. There’s no prize but it’s interesting to compare the different interpretations. This month’s theme is “A Piece Of Sky”. Below are my offerings. Come and have a go, if you think you’re bard enough! Check out the competition here: http://creativewriting.freeforums.org/index.php
What furore! The whole country was in turmoil for around twenty hours. Our president shot dead! Immediately, the military declared martial law; there was strict curfew; tanks on the streets of the capital; soldiers outside the presidential palace and the parliament building. The political pundits went into overdrive: some saying it was inevitable because the president’s policies had been too left-wing and just as many saying it was because he was a right-wing stooge. The president’s own party were accusing the opposition parties of engineering a coup; whilst the opposition parties accused the president’s party of executing him to justify a crack-down on them. The police were running around like headless chickens, trying to ascertain who was responsible for the shooting. The president had been taking his customary, post-breakfast stroll around the presidential palace grounds, prior to starting the day’s engagements, when the attack took place. No-one had seen any intruder; no-one had heard a shot; no weapon was found. News organisations invented wild speculation about foreign powers using an unmanned drone armed with snipers’ rifle. All of the president’s security staff were arrested but none of them had a discharged weapon. Then, just after midnight, the truth was broadcast on the state television news. The president had been killed by a meteor.
“You can’t catch anything off yourself. If it’s in your blood, you’ve already got it, whatever it is.”
“But if I’ve bled all over the place, that’s got to be unhygienic, hasn’t it? I mean, blood’s not good, is it?”
“Its no better of worse than any other organic matter really and, when it’s in your body, it’s protected by your own natural defence mechanisms. So it comes out clean, to the extent that you are healthy. If you’re HIV positive, then you’re not healthy, but you can’t infect yourself.”
“OK, I can see that but if it’s lying around, it can attract disease, just like a piece of meat left out of the fridge, what then?”
“Yes, then it’s the same as any other muck. It can be infected by bacteria, fungal spores, passing insects. But it’s no more risk to you than say household dust. To do you any harm, it has to be out long enough to become infected and then find its way back inside your system. So you have to inhale it, or eat it, or get it under your skin through a wound or something similar.”
“Well, that’s what I mean then. I was right. It is a risk.”
“There’s always risk in everything. Nothing is entirely safe. It’s a question of degree and what it’s realistic to defend against. It’s not realistic to defend against spillage from a blood test, Sky. Now roll your sleeve up, please.”
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What you can see or can’t see depends upon where your eyes are and which way they’re pointing; the light; and what’s in the way. I can see a hand. I think it’s mine, though I can’t seem to prompt any movement. The hand is lying on a patch of vertical lawn. No, maybe horizontal lawn, viewed from equally horizontal head. Beyond the lawn is a huge yew tree; behind that, a graveyard and a church. A bell is ringing, slow and sonorous, like a death march. “Dong” he says: walk this way. Again “dong”: slow and sober, but not distracted or deviated, please. “Dong”: inevitability is overwhelming. “Dong”: the birds twitter on regardless.
