Creative Writing

14

creative writing Why You Should Always Listen To Your Partner In The Morning

By Seb Lloyd

I dreamt that I saw the end of the world. There wasn’t a particular moment, I knew the world was ending. Dumb and asking myself how scared I am. Not out of lucidity, in a fastest-way-out-for-fear-of-painfuldeath kind of way. Then I’m in a bunker, and I have a really nice car with white leather seats and a green bonnet. But I know I won’t see it for 5 years. I think I own the bunker but I’m not sure.

‘You guys want a cup of tea or something?’ but we can’t, obviously. I feel stupid now.

“It’s going to torrentially rain.” I say. As people pour into my FLOOD bunker. Social embarrassment is still a thing during Armageddon and is possibly worse for fear of bathos.

Being

A

Twat

Hoping

Opportunity to

Save dignity will come.

But obviously it may not, as the end is nigh, judgement will come, lake of fire, pain etc. And some people look at me but most just carry on carrying their mothers’ pearls or their rations or their children or something because obviously. I know I’m hosting but it’s a bunker not a cocktail party. I prepare myself for ranting about prophecies, but most people just get comfy and chat.

Someone I’m sitting with starts ranting, but it’s about people defining themselves by their race. I feel uncomfortable because he’s talking about condescension and ‘uncontacted tribes’, but also because I didn’t expect that to be the first big debate, but I guess he has a lot on his mind. Then I think about Elephants in rooms and how some government initiative is probably cryogenically freezing an Elephant right now, For the Ark. I doubt what’s was worth talking about, so I find some oatcakes and expect people to be really needy about food, but everyone seems to have loads in their bags. Some people across the room from me get out some big pickles and I feel envious. The rooms are concrete and rectangular with a central area covered by a wide lattice rug. I pinch the plastic of a second oatcake packet and feel a twinge of embarrassment for having such a big bunker and no chess boards or crayons. I draw a floor plan and take a seat while some time passes.

Then we speak about the end of the world while it rains, finally. We think it’s ‘the final rain’ because we knew there was going to be a flood. When you know there’s going to be a flood, rain feels immeasurably important, but it just rains for a long while, and it’s relieving to be inside, out of the cold.

We had to join the Noah’s-Ark-but-for-cars and I’ve never had anything biblical in my dreams before, or a car. I’d forgotten I wouldn’t see it for 5 years. I’m imagining this was announced over a tannoy that we could hear from all the different districts. Over rain the size of puppies and kittens like we’d never seen. I’m thinking this up now, that wasn’t in there.

By the time we leave my eyes are square because everything’s square in bunkers, especially the light. I’m all dazed and can’t put faces to names. So many people are deep in conversation, talking about how loud the birds are. I think about doves and olives and if migrants exist when everyone’s a refugee. If the only land we’ll find will be former mountains. If we’ll make visible lines to remember where our borders were. How long until we make an Interstellar-style mega wave and the last people left alive are Point Break anachronisms on the final and ultimate ride. Whooping into the water thinking they’re right over LA, when really the lines were guesswork and they’re out in the unnamed ocean, dying happily. That wasn’t in there either. I didn’t mean to wake you up.

Good morning.

creative writing 15

Something Worth Sticking To

By Synnne Solbrekken

Between a parent and a child, the common denominator is love. But is love a skill we have naturally? Do our parents instinctively know how to love us? Or were they taught? I think the answer is both. Love is a natural phenomenon. Every person is capable of loving something or someone. But just because we have the aptitude doesn’t mean we naturally possess the skill. I would say that love is a biological ability we have but a behavioural skill we acquire.

I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong way to love someone. Because we all have baggage, we do the best we can with the tools we’re given. What I’m saying is that there are certain tools that are less damaging in the maintenance of our emotional machinery. You might say my dad was given a hammer while my mother was given a screwdriver. 2 very different tools and, as it turns out, not all that compatible.

As children, we fail to see how we’re affected by our parents’ tinkering of our machinery. It’s only when we grow up and attain a certain amount of self-awareness that we start to see. And when we do, we may see that the unconditional love, the: ‘I do something nice for you to show you I care, expecting nothing in return’ kind of love, is really: ‘I put you in this world so you owe it to me to be how I want you to be’ or ‘I provide this for you expecting you to obey me in return’ or rather I nurture you as the extension of myself rather than the separate individual you actually are’.

The point is a child is a person of their own and deserves to be treated as such. A child doesn’t automatically owe their parents anything. What they give someone, their parents included, is what they choose to give. So, if you’d ask me what I would do differently as a parent, I’d say: it’s not that I’d love my children differently than my parents loved me. I’d show them how to love differently. When you ask people my age that question, I’d expect vastly different answers. I, myself, have trouble being specific. I know what I don’t want to do, but I also don’t know what I would want to do.

All I know is that the truest kind of love is unconditional. In any relationship, but especially between parents and their children. It’s not necessarily unconditional by nature because love is partly taught. Our parents set an example for us to follow. Even if that meant showing their children that love is something you have to earn. It doesn’t have to be a good example, it’s still going to be the one we instinctively follow. Although awareness and knowledge can break generational patterns, human beings are creatures of habit and what we know is what feels safe and comfortable. So, what we’ve been taught is what we’ll most likely stick to. That’s why I want to give my children something worth sticking to.

Photo: Unsplash

16 Don’t Fall

By Izzy Murphy

creative writing

Look at them. All just walking around. Getting on with their lives. I bet they don’t know what it’s like. I mean, some of them, maybe, but it can’t be this bad. If it was this bad, they wouldn’t be down there, walking around, getting on with their lives. If it was this bad, they would be up here, with me. But no one is with me. I am alone.

I chose the right building this time. It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve got it now. The last building, I was too high up, and no one noticed. Someone pointed me out as though I was a statue, but they didn’t see me. They didn’t really see me. They never really see me. The first time, the roof was too low, I fractured my ankle, broke a few ribs, nothing major. I had to tell them I was ‘admiring the view and slipped’. You can’t tell the doctors you jumped, they send you to the psych ward, and that’s always such a faff, such a set back. So you have to find the right height of your chosen building. Too high, and you chicken out. The people are too small and you don’t want to make such a splatter. Such a mess. But too low, and the best you get is a broken something. A fractured something. No long standing result. Just sympathy. And sympathy isn’t enough. Apparently nothing is. So this is how it normally goes: The wind picks up, your heart does a little backflip, close your eyes and breathe. Deeply. Someone spots you, they point, maybe it’s a kid. You call it traumatising, I call it character building. Strangers, people who don’t know you, they start shouting. Stupid things like,

“What are you doing?”

“Are you okay?!”

“Don’t do it!” blah blah blah. By now someone has probably called the police. They won’t get here in time, but it’s their job to try. Someone shouts,

“You don’t want to do this!” Oh, what do you know?

More and more people gather at the base of the building, the sirens blare in the distance. That’s such a cliche isn’t it? Sirens blaring.

When it comes to it, like actually doing it, it’s not as dramatic. There’s no big jump. It’s not like bungee jumping. No one is cheering you on. You’re not coming back up. No. With this, it’s a lot less theatrical. The actual act, that is. Kind of like skydiving. You just sort of lean out. That’s it. With this, all you have to do is lean forward far enough, and gravity takes care of the rest for you. Some places have railings so you don’t want to pick that building. They’re so much of a bother to get around, it’s not worth the hassle. You don’t want to awkwardly clamber over. Or worse, try and jump it. No. It’s not a jump. It’s fall. You lean forward, and you just: fall.

Photo: Unsplash