Two Women and Some Books
Words can be weapons
Words can seduce
They can cause conflict
Or they can reduce
Words taste like sugar
Or dark as finest wine
Words can last forever
Or just a blink of time
Words are the tools we use
The building blocks of tales
Depending on the words we choose
Our art succeeds, or fails…
Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!
You know who you are. The boys and girls who do their research via Google as they evacuate their bowels in the mornings.
Which odd behaviour would be no more than your own business if you didn’t immediately fire up whatever brand of antisocial medium that is your particular poison and broadcast your findings as being the words of one with superior knowledge.
They aren’t. And neither are you. Think on.
You can’t cure Covid with infusions of black treacle.
You can’t change people’s sexual orientation by sending them to boot camp.
The royal family are probably not lizards.
Donald Trump did not win the last American election.
Ukraine is not run by nazis.
And it’s highly unlikely that a Covid vaccination is going to render you infertile (even if the rest of the world might wish it did).
In the end it comes down to the old chestnut of internet anonymity. You can sit with your underwear around your ankles and postulate anything you like without fear of consequences.
However. If you had to stand on a soapbox at Hyde Park Corner and defend your opinions against the slings and arrows of ridicule (or thrown missiles), you might have another think.
It’s the same in microcosm if you voice patently under thought and unresearched twaddle in the presence of a group of people in a pub (or wherever you may now meet your peers). Somebody is going to take you up on what you have to say and punches may ensue.
This, therefore, should be your mantra. If you are not prepared to stand naked in front of the world and defend your ‘scientific findings’ with reasoned argument and provable data, it might be a better idea to just finish your crap and get some breakfast without enlightening the world with the half-baked ideas you borrowed from some other eejit!
A darkling drabble offers a shiver of horror in a hundred words…
The vigilantes had been hunting her for three generations, though they no longer had any idea why.
In a street of tamped earth next to a stockyard full of bawling beeves, they finally found her. Tiny, she was and as wizened as a season-dead black beetle, but the twin sixguns were rock steady in her hands.
The shooting commenced, and she pretty soon took four loads of buckshot which all but blew her in half.
Only she wouldn’t die. Just kept on shooting.
When they were all gone, she grinned toothlessly and turned back to her interrupted poker game.
Picking up our packs we took to the kitchen roof, running barefoot and silent along the ridge in the darkness. At the far end of the kitchens, we dropped into the roof of a bank of sheds housing goats and chickens, before sliding down a convenient drainpipe into the darkest corner of the kitchen yard. From there, it was a relatively simple matter to scale a wooden fence and follow a dry ditch to the edge of the woods. Once in the woodlands, we climbed a big oak tree and settled ourselves in a comfortable crook in its crown, from whence we could command a view of the front of the building whilst remaining unseen.
Pulling on woollen socks, plus the fur-lined boots and thick coats our unknown benefactor had gifted us, we settled down to wait. It seemed to me that this raid was something outside what we had heard of before. There seemed to be many men, and much weaponry, involved. The moonlight was bright, and as we watched, a stream of servants issued from the kitchen end of the building. They were hustled off by a group of armed men. They lit out running, and we thought that the raiders had let them go. It was not so. There came a sudden yappity yap, which we realised was gunfire, and the running figures all fell to the ground. The gunmen strolled over to the bodies, laughing as they went, and emptied more rounds into the rows, just to make sure. Beside me, eight gave a low moan, and I gripped her hand tightly.
‘Shush.’ I murmured. ‘If we’re found that could be us.’
She gripped back, and I could feel the effort with which she kept silence.
Then two things happened, which at least distracted us from the callous killing of innocent serving women.
Firstly, we became aware of something, or someone, moving cautiously in the woodland below us. We froze. Then eight grabbed my shoulder in a death grip and pointed to the roof of the breeders’ place. A slight figure was racing along the ridge at breakneck speed. At first it was hard to make out who it was, and what it was wearing. I stared harder, then realised it was one zero three, and she was half naked. She reached the end of the roof, and, without abating her speed, ran gracefully along the garden wall. We held our breath. The wall top is only about six inches wide, and, she seemed to be very exposed as she ran. If anyone looked out of the windows at the back of the house, she was a sitting duck. It was a relief to see her drop to the ground, and roll into that same dry ditch we had entered from the kitchen quarters. She had further to crawl than had we, and it took many minutes before we spotted her head peeping over the earthy dyke. She gave a low tuneless whistle, which was repeated from a thicket of low-growing shrubs about twenty feet from our hiding place. We scarcely dared breathe.
One zero three leapt out of the ditch and sprinted across the moonlit turf to the concealment of the shadowy forest. We peered down and were able to make out another figure, and two horses. The other woman handed over a bundle of clothing, and we could hear our erstwhile companion’s teeth chattering as she dressed herself.
‘Is it not a bit cold for nude running?’
‘Very funny Clo. I’d not have gotten here in clinging bright pink draperies. Which is all most of the breeders are allowed. Even the two who run daily do so in pink breeches, pink shirts, and no shoes.’
‘I see. Have you found aught?’
‘No. Just more suspicions to add to the ones we had already.’
‘Well, whatever. We need to get away. Now. In case some enterprising type decides to search the woods, or strafe the trees, or set fire to them, or…’
The two women mounted up and set off cautiously, picking their way through the trees and undergrowth, careful to make no noise, and leave no trail. Neither looked back.
From The Barefoot Runners by Jane Jago.
Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!
The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…
Coffee apparently fuels
Authors and other like fools
But for my own sake
I have brandy and cake
As my preferred writing tools
… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago
belive (imprecation) – the opposite to be dead
cocnern (noun) – unreliable dildo
defrentiate (verb) – to unfriend in a history group
egnlish (noun) – language of ladies who lunch
extatic (adjective) – applies only to men watching porn – exceptionally happy
gate hred (noun) – man who sits in the road by the gatehouse exposing himself to passing women
hiar (verb) – of upper-class twits to rent a posh car
improtent (adjective) – of high value but sexually incapable
jealsoy (noun) – thick salty sauce
legmue (noun) – knee that appears to be pulling a face
lubmer (noun) – person who thinks he’d like to be a sailor but is sick when he puts too much water in the bath
nuremous (adjective) – of families, possessing many rodentine offspring
obnexyus (adjective) – having a very long neck
raibb (noun) – a weapon that shoots death rays and pieces of potato
seeance (noun) – three old ladies with a ouija board and a bottle of port
tuaght (adverb) – of speech, clipped and mildly threatening
tuseday (noun) – day on which it is legal to kill annoying people
vergin (noun) – pure young woman who doesn’t eat meat
vigenar (noun) – lady bits
yur (noun) – the way year is pronounced by any royal correspondent on television
zologoist (noun) – supernatural creature that manifests itself during seances by farting
Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.
A darkling drabble offers a shiver of horror in a hundred words…
Doug was a little, skinny man who sat in the window of his little, skinny shop mending clocks. He was a fixture in the city, and as reliable as the dawn. So the day he wasn’t there there, a hunt was called. But there was no sign. The city burghers sent for a finder who led them to a half-forgotten graveyard, where a moss-encrusted headstone marked Doughall Snaith’s last resting place.
The mayor had to be revived with smelling salts and burnt feathers.
“But who has been mending our clocks?”
“Who? Or What?”
The finder flew away laughing.
What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted…
“The final Future Data field trial started five years ago and was originally focused on one man, Avilon Revid,” the woman went on, this time giving a slight, supercilious nod to Cista Tyran to acknowledge her previous mention of the name. “It seems that was something of a mistake, in retrospect.” She paused and shot a meaningful look at Jecks, who frowned.
“Right. But at the time the evidence was highly convincing,” he said, a little too quickly.
“And faked.”
“Right.”
Five years ago? Playing catch up, Grim realised, that implied Avilon Revid had not died in the Specials and had — presumably — been released. Which was probably the most chilling piece of information he had encountered so far in this briefing. No wonder there was so much secrecy being padded around this. Politically sensitive was not in it. If word that Revid had been released ever became general knowledge, there would be a massive public outcry from Central all the way out to the Periphery and so many scalps demanded that even the top echelons of Central government would not be safe. He glanced at Cista Tyran and noticed she was looking thoughtful. He had a distinct feeling that it was not news to her.
“So we have an interesting situation in which a half-run field trial has caused a number of issues and left some highly irregular loose ends. Ends we thought had been tidied up, but which seem to have re-emerged onto the scene.”
The woman sat back clearly satisfied she had said everything that needed saying. Grim, translating the obscuring words, took them to mean that despite what the presentation had implied, there was evidence that Chola and Baldrik were still alive.
“Right,” Jecks said into the strained silence. “So we have the job of clearing up a potentially critical mess. Just because the Future Data project was aborted does not mean that the consequences it was predicting have also been terminated. In the original plan, there would have been a sweep of all those — ” He hesitated fractionally, but enough for Grim to notice that he had needed to find a different word to his first choice. ” — implicated in the project to ensure none of them was left at large, endangering the security of the Coalition.”
“People like Avilon Revid?” Grim found himself asking, feeling just a little appalled at what he was being told.
Jecks shook his head. “No. Not at all.”
“Avilon Revid is dead. He died in the ‘City in a turf war,” Cista Tyran said, as though it was a well-known fact. “But seriously, sir — it’s not like — “
“Right,” Jecks cut across her. “That is a very valuable point. Avilon Revid is not an issue for us to worry about anymore.”
“And Baldrik and Chola are?” Grim asked, faintly relieved to be assured that at least Revid had not survived to make this mess worse than it looked already.
Jecks gave a half-nod and looked at the unknown woman who cleared her throat.
“Kahina Sarava is a genius. A highly flawed genius. But that does not detract from the power of her mind or the quality of her achievements. We have to take very seriously the consequences that were foreseen by her work.” She gave a tiny nod as though she had just explained everything.
“So what you are saying is that even though this Future Data project failed to predict things correctly — you still think the things it predicted incorrectly might happen?” Cista Tyran asked, her tone sweet and convincingly ingenuous. Grim found himself warming towards her.
From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.
Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!
The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…
I wonder how I get inspired
Being both idle and tired
It’s surprising I’m able
To make funny fables
Perhaps it’s the booze I’ve acquired
Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…
***** ***** *****
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