Tandem Post: The Age of Outcry

This is the last post in a series of four Tandem Blog posts where Dave Luis and Megan Furniss and myself have each picked a title and the three of us have written whatever it has inspired in us. So far we have done That Nagging Feeling… followed by 37 Million Miles… and lastly Boundaries. The fourth and final title was opened up to the Facebook and the most popular suggestion was by Valerie Anderson aka tbV [the beautiful Val] and it prompted the following piece. Be sure to read Dave and Megan’s pieces once you have finished with mine and if you like them, please leave a comment and tell us why…

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The Age of Outcry

It was the best of crimes. It was the worst of crimes.

He stared at the newspaper headline, unable to believe his eyes. Although ‘newspaper headline’ felt like a bit of a misnomer as this barely 60 word information snippet had been buried all the way back on page 9, opposite the local entertainment page, where non stories came to die. Or began their mere breath-of-a-life relatively stillborn.

Yet there it was. ‘Another cheetah killed by hunter’. Another cheetah? Poor bugger didn’t even get a name.

One of the lost girls coughed anxiously behind him. Poor children. Ever the eternal optimists. But it was his turn now and he wasn’t going to hand over the newspaper so quickly. They could drink in their disappointment later. He hadn’t even attempted the chess problem yet.

But the front page? The opening page of yesterday’s newspaper was announcing Woman’s Day – the one day in the year when men were supposed to treat woman as people, or something. Get their own damn coffee for a change or something equally as life-transformative.

He glanced across at his Twitter feed. #AllAnimalsMatter. He liked that one. It was good to see the #BlackLivesMatter movement using his moment to refocus the world on them. He had even chuckled out loud at the meme. COL. That should be a thing. He made a mental note to start using it.

Clicking yet another tab to see how Facebook was faring, he quickly noticed that all the rainbow-faces which had given way to pics of him [or one of his ‘kind’] were now largely filled with an assorted arrangement of pictures of statues with women’s lingerie hanging off them.

Cecil sighed a deep sigh. “Must be cancer awareness time again.”

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Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with:

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

Tandem Post: Boundaries

Boundaries

Emma was dead.

I mean, she got that, she really did. Although to be fair, it had taken her quite a while.

But, in her defense, this was completely different to anything she had experienced before, and so recognising it was perhaps not such an obvious connection. What was so distinct about her present state, ‘Was this a state? A condition perhaps? Or do you have to be alive to be in any form of condition? Let’s stick with state for now,’ was its complete and utter differentness to anything else she had previously known.

‘Known?’ Know. To be aware of. Hm, even that seems wrong. It’s like i am in this place of complete awareness with regards to things known and experienced, but i still don’t really have a lot of idea of what is really going on. And what comes next?’

There had been no Terry Pratchettian CAPS LOCK voice speaking directly to her brain to let her know that Death in his, ‘His? ‘Its’ maybe? Does Death even have a gender? All that assuming Death actually has a form and persona of course. I think I may have read too many fairy tales on this topic,’ skeletalness was present and ready to take her away.

‘Skeletalness is NOT a real word. I seem to be really struggling with words to describe my current scenario. That’s the whole trick when you’re introduced to something so well and truly differently different I guess. Urgh, my mom would have cringed at ‘differently different’. Okay, focus, Emma, and let’s try and figure out what comes next. I mean, there is a next, right? This can’t be… it?’

Emma had actually lost count of the number of hours that she had spent trying to “figure out what comes next” before the moment of realisation had struck her that she was in fact dead. You would think it would have been more obvious, but there had been a certain confusion about her, a kind of mist, when she had woken up, ‘No, it can’t be woken up. That would imply sleeping. But I wasn’t sleeping, I was dead. Um, but it had felt like waking up, so maybe we’ll go with that for now,’ and tried to go somewhere else.

The cloud had so descended upon her that even though grasping at a door handle with fingers that were no longer there should have itself been a deafening clue, it had simply delivered to her the information that this particular exit was not a viable one and would she try somewhere else. The second door that led out to the, well previously had led out to the pantry, was also no help. She had moved to windows to no avail, and then, in desperation, and with a sufficient amount of panic, even attempted to pull a chair below the trapdoor in the roof. ‘But pulling anything becomes an impossible endeavour when you have nothing to pull with. Oh look, there I am.’

‘Hours? Had it been hours? It had seemed so, but what was time now? It might have been minutes, or even seconds? Every moment seemed to fade into the next one, in silence of course.’ The one thing Emma had picked up quite quickly on, once she realised, was the deafening silence that, ‘No! No! No! You cannot have a deafening silence. That does not make sense and it has never made sense no matter what ridiculous name the teachers had given to it. Silence is quiet. It cannot deafen you. Overwhelming, perhaps? That is what this silence has felt like. Almost like it was the presence of nothingness as if that could be a thing either. Where was I?’

Even when she was looking down at her lifeless body, transfixed, mesmerized, paralysed, hypnotised, spellbound, enraptured, bewitched, captivated, fascinated, engrossed, stunned, immobili… ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Remain calm. You’re losing it. You’re losing it. Keep it together. What is going on here? Surely something has to happen next. Surely someone, some… thing… has to appear and help me or lead me away or something? Tell me what to do.’

Those last five words she had meant to scream, but there was no screaming here. There was no sound at all. She could barely register her thoughts as words and even they were starting to make less send to her. She felt trapped here. Once she had discovered her body and however long it had taken for her to join those dogs together, to realise that she was in fact deaf, she had quickly become hysterical. Walking through walks had not proved fruitful. It definitely screamed as if something was keeping her in this roam.

What was she meant to don’t? She had no ideal. Her hedge seemed to be spitting now. Lied and worms humming at her foam awe differential erections. No right minded bacteria carpool battery battery emphasis derivative.

Hated.

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Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with:

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

The allergic to E challenge

So one of my new favourite virtual [for now] friends, Dante, whose incredible Micropoetry can be found over at Original Dante, challenged me to a duel [well kinda, cos he already pulled his trigger in his own fight] which i had already kinda done in someone’s comment section, but there is no verifiable proof, so i decided to take him up on it…

OD is the reason i got interested in, and brave enough to try, Micropoetry and even though i still suspect my Micropoems are not short enough, they are WAAAY shorter than my regular poems [and getting there] so hopefully there is hope [ha ha, yes that!]. so how could i resist? And he already has a way too ridiculously nice nickname for me which also helps me to believe…

Step Away From The ‘E’

And the Rules to this No-Letter-That-Precedes-F-Or-Follow-D challenge are these:

The rules:

1. Write a whole paragraph.
2. Without any word containing the letter “e”.
3. By reading this you are already signed up.
4. Challenge at least five bloggers to do the challenge.

You should totally jump across the virtualness of space and go and check out OD’s submission, which was flawless.

But in the m antim , h r  is min :

Staring at cracks on a part of my wall I had not paid much mind to until this occasion, I thought about how much intoxication it might bring to a tiny ant, struggling to carry a biscuit crumb across its cliff-like contours. What quantity of obstruction would it vanquish or would this straightforward [from my outlook] provocation snap its will in two? In an instant though, I was shown that my lack of faith in my microscopic companion was without foundation, as it [I could not confirm if this was a boy or girl at this point] took aim and simply slid down a portion of flaking paint that I had hardly known was an option. As I was busy watching all this, my mug of Chai had grown significantly cold.

i would love to see the following people give it a try, just because i know they will totally own the challenge:

Megan Furniss

Dave Luis

Catherine Jenkin

Nick Frost

Valerie Anderson aka tbV

And she is probably way too busy for this nonsense but i would love to read the piece Jamie The Very Worst Missionary comes up with, and since she missed my book launch recently, i’m sure that this would be about fair, right?

Apologies If you’ve already been nominated before, otherwise If you haven’t, I hope you accept. Looking forward to reading your posts!

Tandem Post: 37 Million Light Years

37 Million Light Years

It arrived on the screen as a message of hope: “37 Million Light Years”

The number seemed so ridiculously large that Corporal-Sergeant Janet Witherspoon wondered how it had ever been cause for concern in the first place. How does an exploratory spacecraft fitted out with all the latest technology still somehow manage to mess up so badly? ‘Human error’, she thought to herself. Living in a futuristic society beyond anything most people could have begun to imagine even 60 years ago, the harsh reality was that human frailty still got to play a part.

Still, everyone else in the Terminus was in full-on celebration party mode. She should probably go and join them.

7 days ago, there had been the world-shattering announcement that there was a body from space hurtling towards the planet at break-neck speeds. Everyone had sprung into action from scientists  to NASA hierarchicals to the military, but no-one seemed to have any kind of theory or plan of action that provided much help. The most immediate move that could be made would be to send an unmanned probe directly into the path of the object to try and collect some more dependable data to give them some kind of idea just how much time they had.

Janet’s eyes paused on the screen once more as the flashing numbers seemed to be trying to get her attention. That nagging feeling that she had had the week before was back. 37 million? Why did the number seem so familiar to her?

The probe had launched successfully. Four days later it had been able to pinpoint within 0.3 of a parsec the expected trajectory of said body and since then had been making super sophisticated calculations which specialists at the station had been reviewing and trying to draw accurate conclusions from. Space debris, wind vectors, planetary gravitational pulls and of course the frequent showers of meteors in its path all meant that it was nearly impossible to know exactly when and where it would hit, if anywhere at all and so minute by minute, and hour by hour, the calculations continued to furiously be made by man and machine alike as they had to adjust and realign and recalculate once more.

If anything, the silver lining on this cloud had been the Dispersement. Even twenty-five years ago, an event like this would have meant the end of the human race. But with the advent of inhabitable space stations and locating three other planets able to sustain life meant that humankind was now more spread out than any single tragedy would ever be able to touch. A week ago the likelihood had been strong that one of the planets was within range and so the big question the calculations was predominantly trying to answer was ‘Who is in the line of fire?’

Janet shut her eyes involuntarily as a wave of nausea hit her and it was all she could do to keep her lunch down. Kepler-186f! What were the stats on that again? She flung her arms into the air directing holographic computer screens to do her bidding as she searched for the number she was seeking. Kepler 186f was the first planet they had discovered in the habitable zone of another star that had a similar radius to earth, and the second new planet the Dispersement had targetted.  Discovered by NASA’s Keplar spacecraft using the transit method [along with four additional planets ruled out because they orbited much too closely to the star] it had provided much of the initial research and prompting to move out at all. Where was the information she was looking for?

And suddenly there it was, in front of her, blinking on the screen. The party music in the background drowned out Janet’s agonised shriek as the familiar digits lined up in a way she was hoping she’d been mistaken about as she slumped back into her seat:

Planet: Kepler-186f

Governer: Sardun Ahlop [a popular leader from the Krouton quadrant, now in his third year]

Population: 37, 036, 219

37 million! The number was too close to be a lucky coincidence. How did it work again? The probe directed the information to the researchers and scientists who worked the data and then sent the results to Command Centre via voice recognition software and it got displayed across the main screen for all to see.

This was not human error after all. The message they had received which gave them the impression that all was well was not the message of hope they had received at all, but rather a pronouncement of a present tragedy that had already taken place. Bloody voice recognition software!

Numb and frozen in her seat, as the tears streamed down her face, Janet whispered the intended message to herself:

37 million lie! Tears…

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Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with:

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

Tandem Post: That nagging feeling…

And we’re back – just three bloggerists this time, but two amazing story-tellers joining me for another season of Tandem Blog posting. Join myself, Megan and Dave as we take the same title and give it our own personal and unique flavour…

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THAT NAGGING FEELING

‘Gently does it. Keep your speed average. Not too fast. Not too slow. We don’t want anyone suspecting anything out of the ordinary.’ Nick was talking to himself in his inside head voice again.

But everything was out of the ordinary. Nick Jenkins had been planning this moment for two years and as he tried to remain calm as he drove down the main road and made a right on to the highway, his mind was in absolute panic mode.

‘You did it. Everything happened absolutely according to plan. You have gone over this a thousand times and today, this day, everything has gone according to plan. Stop worrying. You are only going to cause yourself to make a mistake.’

Nick glanced at the clock on the dashboard. He had synced it with the satellite time and checked it three times today already. 23 minutes. Twenty three minutes until the bomb goes off. More precisely his bomb. The one that he had made. From plans he found on the internet. ON THE INTERNET! That fact still drove him a little mental. That he was able to find a way to craft a bomb in one tab while playing a ‘Words with Friends’ move against his mom on another. He still felt a little embarrassed at making the word ‘COCK’ in a Scrabble game against his mom. But she would know he meant the bird and it had allowed him to put his ‘K’ on a triple letter!

‘Are you sure you kept to the plan? You’re very nervous now and nervous people make mistakes.’ Nick systematically went through the plan in his head as he indicated right and then made to turn off the highway, now just a few streets away from his home, where he would be far enough away to be as shocked and surprised as the general public when the announcement flashed across their tv screens.

It was the perfect bomb. No mistakes there. He had checked and rechecked and made sure that he had kept to the plan. The miniature version he had put together and tested in the local quarry had gone off perfectly and so there was absolutely no reason to assume this more powerful model would be any different.

‘I will show THEM. They will be sorry that they treated me so absolutely disgustingly. As if losing my job was not bad enough, for them to embarrass me so disdainfully in front of the whole office…’ Nick realised this was really extreme, but he reconciled it with the fact that nobody was going to get hurt. He was going to hurt the company. And it was going to cost them a lot of money. More money than if they’d just kept him on and allowed him to try a little harder. He had made absolutely meticulously sure that everyone would be out of the building. Cleaners and everything. The building would be as empty as his impending bank account.

Right turn. Two streets to go until the safety of home. Nick replayed his movements as if watching them on a camera. ‘Gloves on. Security cameras disabled the night before. Each piece of the bomb bought at a different location over a 6 month period so there was no way even two of them could be placed together. Bomb checked and countdown started before leaving his house, giving him plenty of time to make it there, place the bomb and return home just before it goes off.

‘Why is it something doesn’t seem right? Surely i’m just psyching myself out here? I know this. I’ve gone over it and over it until it is so deeply engrained in my mind that there is no way i could…’

Nick turned into his driveway, mind suddenly racing. ‘Wake up. Get dressed. Check bomb. Set bomb.’

With a foreboding feeling now surging through his entire body, Nick is starting to visibly sweat as he grabs the car keys and walks nervously to his car boot.

‘Put bomb in car. Cover bomb. Drive at average speed on practiced back roads route to office so that car would not be seen. Arrive at office.’

As he shakingly tried to turn the key in the boot, the realisation hit him like a waft of hot air completely knocking the breath out of his body. In his hurry to ensure that he was in and out of the office with no one noticing, with no-one in a neighbouring office perhaps remembering that his rust blue mazda had been the last car seen parking on the edge of the car park, he may have forgotten one tiny detail.

 Nick Jenkins finally managed to get the unwieldy key to turn and flipped open his car boot to catch sight of a digital display, attached to a bomb, still sitting in the back of his car, displaying the numbers, ‘7…6…5…’

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Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with:

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

Tandem Post: Tonight you’re mine, completely

i am loving being a part of this Tandem Blogging series with 8 other very creative and very different individuals. There is the dual satisfaction of having a very focused piece to write on a topic i didn’t choose [which is incredible for creativity] and then also the thrill of bouncing from post to post once we’ve released them, to see how differently each writer interpreted the title each week. Last week was my favourite week out of the 5 i have been part of, and despite this week’s title being a little more dangerous, i am looking forward to seeing how everyone tackled it. Hee, hee, i said ‘tackle’.

So read this one and then please take a look at as many of the others as you can and please do us the honour of sharing any of these that you really enjoyed:

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Tonight you’re mine, completely

Draft 1: Tonight you're mine, completely.

Draft 2: Two Knights. You're mine. Complete. [Leigh]

Draft 3: To Knights, Ewe are mine! Compete? [Leigh]

Draft 4: Dear Members of the Round Table. The female sheep belong to me. Wanna fight about it? [Lee]

Draft 5: Deer members. Get off the round table. Wool bearer ownership decided. A duel? [Lee]

Draft 6: Buck! Remove yourselves from the wooden table! A knitter has been duly decided upon.

Draft 7: The buck stops here. Unstable. A familiar pattern has been selected.

Draft 8: President. Unstable set. Recognition. Choice.

Draft 9: A precedent has been set. I recognise this in the one I have chosen.

Draft 10: Tonight you're mine, completely.

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Having read the rest of the posts for this week i feel like everyone has done some amazing incredible work and so please give yourself some time to read at least a few of the others, if not all of them.

The writing is all different flavours of great, but which one will be YOUR favourite this week?

Cath: https://cathjenkin.wordpress.com

Scott: http://squidsquirts.blogspot.com

Kerry: http://www.kerrycontrary.com

James: http://www.jamespreston.org

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za

Sarah: https://medium.com/@ricegirl2

Dave: https://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

Nick: https://medium.com/@nick_frost

[To return to the first Tandem Post i took part in with the theme of ‘Meeting the Queen’, click here]

Tandem Post: Ninety-NinE

Pearls before Swine is my favourite comic strip as a lot of you know and i thought this was particularly apt as it introduces the topic of today’s Tandem Blog post [where i, alongside 8 other bloggerists, get given a title and have to write whatever post it inspires] which is simply:

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Ninety-ninE

Nectarine, you ask? Well it does happen to be a peach’s kin

Is then a meditational appreciator of the bacterial fermentation process not a yogi?

Nuts! You exclaim, as you read the peanut packaging warning that “nut traces may be found within”

Elderberries carry a similar disappointment of not being simply a youngberry that has reached senioric age

There lies with food, even before one receives a taste, the subtle hint of a deeper to-be-had enjoyment

Yet we typically gloss over the possibility of hidden character traits to simply head for those we personally enjoy

–

Nervous as the avocado may appear to be, would you instinctively consider her humourly barren?

Is the mushroom, after all, once he has been given space to wind down from a hard day’s work, not a fungi?

No! It’s time we moved away from these presupposed speculatory judgements, premised on gustatory satisfaction?

Engage in deeper understanding of who your food at its very heart may really prove to be.

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[Interesting piece of writing, you may be thinking. But i’m not quite sure how that relates to the theme. Although most of you probably were nodding your head and making the appropriate aaahing and oohing sounds in an Emperor’s Clothes kind of “Well of course, it is. Don’t YOU think it is? I saw it straight away. Did you not see it?” kind of way. Well, what if i write it out once more, but with a little bit of a nudge. Right away, you might notice the beginnings and go, “Well, that IS rather fun. But anyone can do beginnings. Good show sir, well done.” If you let your eye linger for just a moment longer, then the endings might come into view, and maybe that will be enough for you to… well…]

Ninety-ninE

Nectarine, you ask? Well it does happen to be a peach’s kin

Is then a meditational appreciator of the bacterial fermentation process not a yogi?

Nuts! You exclaim, as you read the peanut packaging warning that “nut traces may be found within”

Elderberries carry a similar disappointment of not being simply a youngberry that has reached senioric age

There lies with food, even before one receives a taste, the subtle hint of a deeper to-be-had enjoyment

Yet we typically gloss over the possibility of hidden character traits to simply head for those we personally enjoy

–

Nervous as the avocado may appear to be, would you instinctively consider her humourly barren?

Is the mushroom, after all, once he has been given space to wind down from a hard day’s work, not a fungi?

No! It’s time we moved away from these presupposed speculatory judgements, premised on gustatory satisfaction?

Engage in deeper understanding of who your food at its very heart may really prove to be.

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This post is part of a tandem blogging exercise with 9 other bloggerists. One title unwrapped by nine bloggerists. We realise that 9 is a lot of posts to read, but there is a lot of great stuff to be looked at, so please do your best. Why not start with Cath’s post over here,followed by Scott which you can find over here. Make sure you see what Kerry came up with over here. Then the rest of the posts can be found below. Maybe bookmark this page and spend the next week checking all of them out. Please share your thoughts on our fun exercise in the comments on each post, and remember that with bloggerists, sharing is always caring. 

James: http://www.jamespreston.org/

Megan: http://www.meganshead.co.za/

Sarah: https://medium.com/@ricegirl2

Dave: http://bloggsymalone.wordpress.com

Nick: https://medium.com/@nick_frost