Arriving at the station that evening, I could see my train pulling away. I looked up at the Live Departure Board. Apparently it was running bang on time. That’s perplexing, as I was ten minutes early.
I asked at the ticket office. There had been “temporary technical anomalies”. I lost my temper. I had missed my train. It was an hour till the next one.
Cursing, I checked my watch. It was ten minutes slow.
Her sudden death was seismic, contrasting with her gentle ways. She handpicked lavender, plucked rose hips, played music with an engraver’s patience, etching permanence onto everything she touched.
Grandma’s belongings gathered dust in a battered old suitcase, like my handcrafted violin on top of the bookshelf.
I planted lavender, foraged foods, with ritual nonchalance.
Until today, when, after wiping sticky syrup from my fingers, I reached for the violin, and finally stirred the silence.
I don’t understand how you can create something out of nothing. Doesn’t seem likely to me, but then I’ve always been useless at physics and chemistry. If it was possible surely everyone would be making money all the time, why wouldn’t they? Money for nothing, count me in.
Now I’m told the big bang was not an explosion but a rapid expansion of space itself, which cooled as it grew.
Yuma had not left his room in months. All he did was play games and eat. His mother wept as she cooked his food. His father preferred to work very late at the office. Grandmother would have it no longer. Invoking the Namahage ritual of her prefecture she called upon the ancient house-shaking spirits to perform their work. Yuma thought they were people dressed up to call him out on his laziness. He was wrong.
BANG
The champagne cork goes flying, ricocheting off the ceiling, leaving a pale dent above the door.
Applause follows, like an audience at curtain call.
I pour straight into iridescent coupes, purple-pinkish shimmer, the kind gifted for anniversaries.
The divorce papers lay unsigned on the counter, patient as guests who know the ending.
Later, I studied that crater in the plaster.
Tiny impact.
Astonishing what passes for celebration.
As if I haven’t just uncorked the silence.
BANG ON TIME
Arriving at the station that evening, I could see my train pulling away. I looked up at the Live Departure Board. Apparently it was running bang on time. That’s perplexing, as I was ten minutes early.
I asked at the ticket office. There had been “temporary technical anomalies”. I lost my temper. I had missed my train. It was an hour till the next one.
Cursing, I checked my watch. It was ten minutes slow.
Oh no! That ending is painfully perfect!
Bang, bang
With the first bang, my life changed. Not in a negative way. The opposite. The particle accelerator incident compressed time.
Days dissolved. I was drifting.
Weeks blurred. I felt disoriented from the swirling.
Years warped in on themselves.
Images flickered back into focus.
The pile-up.
I ran to our Ford Fiesta and managed to pull dad from the wreckage before the car blew up.
He had died.
The second bang brought us both back.
Alive.
The Hole She Left, Bloomed and Fruited
Her sudden death was seismic, contrasting with her gentle ways. She handpicked lavender, plucked rose hips, played music with an engraver’s patience, etching permanence onto everything she touched.
Grandma’s belongings gathered dust in a battered old suitcase, like my handcrafted violin on top of the bookshelf.
I planted lavender, foraged foods, with ritual nonchalance.
Until today, when, after wiping sticky syrup from my fingers, I reached for the violin, and finally stirred the silence.
EXPLANATION PLEASE
I don’t understand how you can create something out of nothing. Doesn’t seem likely to me, but then I’ve always been useless at physics and chemistry. If it was possible surely everyone would be making money all the time, why wouldn’t they? Money for nothing, count me in.
Now I’m told the big bang was not an explosion but a rapid expansion of space itself, which cooled as it grew.
Help!
'You Haven't Met His Obachan Have you?'
Yuma had not left his room in months. All he did was play games and eat. His mother wept as she cooked his food. His father preferred to work very late at the office. Grandmother would have it no longer. Invoking the Namahage ritual of her prefecture she called upon the ancient house-shaking spirits to perform their work. Yuma thought they were people dressed up to call him out on his laziness. He was wrong.
DIVIDED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE
Jackson stroked her hair gently. “I love everything about you”, he whispered in his soft southern drawl.
“I love your golden curls, and the way they cascade to your waist”.
Honey felt warm, as she had done when he had first wrapped his strong arms around her.
“…and how they frame your beautiful British face…”
“…but I do wish you’d cut your bangs”.
“It’s a bloody fringe”, she screamed as she pulled the trigger.