The Pure Life of Dreams

June 13, 2024June 22, 2024

The Russian Puppet

She could be Russian, I think, as she holds the door of the motel open for us to continue on through. She’s beautiful with her long bony arms and legs like a raggedy puppet. They move as if disconnected from her body.

Her face, too, is too sharp, her black hair, her pointy nose. And her eyes are large, almost bug like and deep brown. Her skin is stretched taught on those bones, those arms and legs and face, and its coloring is a pale grayish tan, but she’s beautiful you know.

She sympathizes with Liam because we are in the middle of a game and I’m winning because I have the weapon and he doesn’t. She too, knows the game but she is graceful enough to say nothing more about my winning even though she, like Liam, is very good at it and would, like Liam, usually win hands down.

Artwork by CoolArts223 via DeviantArt.

June 7, 2024June 7, 2024

Business Trip Abuse

Ricky G, Pete Bossman, Johnny Two Shoes and I are sitting outside at a large circular table drinking beers, Ricky to my left, Johnny to my right, Pete opposite. And Johnny is complaining about how people abuse the business trips.

May 31, 2024July 8, 2024

Everybody Is Back In London But Somebody Is Naked

Everybody is back in London. I mean everybody, and we are crammed in Mum and Dad’s house in the cul-de-sac… Isabelle, Imogen, Elaine, myself of course, even some of Elaine’s friends that I don’t know.

And I am sitting on the orange overstuffed leather armchair in the TV room, my legs hung over one of the arms, when I get a call from Ted Bucco.

May 23, 2024May 24, 2024

A Unique Storage Unit

It’s Christmas Day and we are all together Mum, Elaine, Me and Dad in the Coring Road house, in the living room with its opulent fake gold embossed wallpaper.

It’s already the afternoon and Elaine and I are bored enough to look through some old stuff that had been put away in storage.

The sun is coming in from the French doors and Mum and Dad are talking while I am pulling things out of old cardboard boxes. I look at each item before handing it to Elaine to look at too.

The room is reversed. The couch, where mum and dad are sitting, is on the other side from the radiator where Elaine and I are looking at the boxes. From one box I’m pulling out her old soft toys, one after another.

The next soft toy I pull out is the purple teddy that replaced Big Ted after Big Ted got burnt in the fire.

“He doesn’t look like Big Ted,” I tell her as I push the teddy bear in Elaine’s face.

It’s purple and triangular, the wide base at its bottom is white. I guess it wasn’t supposed to be an exact replica.

And then I notice Uncle Vartan has shown up. I go over to him and give him a big hug. He feels warm and full in my embrace.

“You’ll have to take the baby for a walk,” Elaine says. Uncle Vartan has brought with him a baby that sits in a pram at the end of the couch.

“I don’t want to take the baby,” I tell her. Then again it wouldn’t be terrible if I took the baby for a walk, out in the fresh air.

We are bored and need to get out of the house.

I clamber up onto the truck behind me, to see what other boxes I can find. It’s a huge army pickup with a metal frame which I use to lever myself onto the back of the flatbed. Then I turn to Dad.

“Why don’t you put all your stuff in a storage unit rather than in this old pickup truck?”

He looks up at me.

“It’s slow,” he answers.

“What! Slower than a storage unit?”

I laughed at the absurdity of it, full belly laughs. And I couldn’t stop laughing, in fact my belly was rippling with laughter until I awoke…

“You alright?” says Siobhan as I stir to.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“I thought you were having a seizure,” she says.

“No,” I reply, “But I have to write this dream down,” still laughing.

Photo from PxHere.

May 17, 2024July 26, 2025

The Pain of Things Left Unsaid

It was my last day in Hong Kong and I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to Dee.

We’d only met up once during my visit and I was doing my final walk back up the shoreline path in Lamma. Lamma, with its narrow paths and hustling stalls on either side.

Hopefully I would see Dee on my way.

People, many people were pushing past me as I climbed the path. I knew not where else to go, though I knew that Dee’s house was somewhere off to the right at the end of the path, somewhere after the path split into two.

At the fork, the right turn followed the shore, the left went into the forest, but I reckoned I’d have to turn around before then, to head back to the pier. Any later and I would miss the ferry back to Central.

Further down the path I’d left one of the restaurants and was pushing past people up the hill when, as luck would have it, I saw Dee coming down towards me. She was with a girl.

Dee saw me as she approached. She was wearing a formal pale green frock with pleated skirt. Her hair was short bob blonde.

Once she was near I spoke, “I’m leaving Hong Kong today.”

Her friend carried on down the path to give us some space to talk.

“Oh,” Dee replied, and we hugged.

Her skin was pale, her shoulders rounded and plumper than I remembered, against the pale green straps of the dress.

We embraced and my face was close to her ear. I wanted to say, “I love you,” but her friend was still in earshot and I was afraid.

I thought I would say it just as we were parting, but before I could spit it out, suddenly Dee said goodbye and turned away.

Instead I continued up the hill, following the line of the shore, knowing that I’d missed the chance and that it was gone forever unless I double backed and caught up with her; unless I caught up to wherever she was going.

I was still kicking myself as I approached the fork.

The stalls either side of the path had thinned out.

A couple of lads were walking towards me and one of them made a joke about the other. I caught the joke and tittered as I passed them, and then the first one, the joker, said, “You think that’s funny?”

“No,” I replied, even though I thought it was. Yes, I’d got the joke even though I hoped he hadn’t realized it.

His friend squared up to me and began to push me, and so did the joker. So I pushed the friend backwards until he stumbled and fell hard onto the path.

The joker was harder to deal with, and only when I pushed him against the low cut wall that separated the shore from the path did he fall. He fell over the wall onto the pebbly beach below, and when I looked over the wall to make sure he was OK, all I could see was that he was riled up.

The joker stormed back up the stairs to the path and squared up to me again.

His friend was still lying groggy on the path.

This time I used the joker’s momentum. He ran at me and instead of pushing him away I deflected his force and projected him over the wall good and proper.

By this time the joker’s friend was coming to – just as the joker fell head first over the wall. The joker’s arms and legs were splayed apart as he landed.

I wasn’t afraid of his friend – instead his friend looked over the wall at the joker with me, but the joker looked like he was out cold this time. He looked unlikely to get up any time soon.

Photo by Judy Gallagher via Flickr.