#1
The fixed, persistent stare was his and his alone. The solitary world of his gaze could not be interrupted by anything or anyone. The curved, spacious and ancient bay window was well camouflaged in the forehead of a porcelain pig.
The rain might well continue until such a time that the animal would need to swim. The tall, thin, heavily wrapped parcel remained on the table made of woven dandelions. The painter-poet lived alone in another room of his choosing.
The locks do not function on any of the doors but their shapes are interesting and varied; mushroom shaped, crescent moon shaped and even one in the shape of a celebrity’s breasts.
The rules of the house are printed in Russian and Japanese. The caretaker does not know the land of his origin.
#2
Outside a small wooden hut amid flat fields of crops, some vegetable, some flower and others distinctly synthetic, a young girl waits motionless, her hands clutching a large ship’d compass.
To the right of the hut (and out of the girl’s vision) lies the empty shell of a tortoise and a page from a German dictionary.
The roof of the hut is covered with a collage of newspaper headlines dating back to the turn of the century.
#3
A forgotten grandmother occupies a solitary position close to the open fire. The disused parachute she attempts to gain additional warmth from traces of a distorted but nevertheless clear path to an empty pantry.
The one remaining black key from a cremated grand piano is nursed by a stranger who plays a solo version of musical scrabble in which the key is renamed several times in order to provide simple, singable tune.
No-one calls but an occasional farmer, lost after a day searching the hills for coloured tags which once adorned the ears of his flocks. The tags are the sole testament to a previous mode of existence. He does not realise (nor do the others) just how futile is his part in the overall scheme of things.
#4
A bell boy in a rundown hotel is still crying after two days, having heard that rain was not forecast for Saturdays until further notice. Enemies of the neighbourhood priest have taken out insurance against miracles and the advent of a second Christmas.
Out at sea small boats fight furiously in the battle for the new territory. Each finds a unique solution for labelling a plot. Where one uses laser guides, another floats corks strung together with lengths of white cotton.
A young, idealistically minded architect draws up plans for counter revolution based upon the notion of dwellings underground in which people are rotated like crops.
All stories in today’s newspapers about the same fictional overtones as the previous day’s.
The man referred to by certain members of the community as the mendicant remains passive at the intersection between two roads.
A sailor on returning to the nearby hotel proclaims that he has visited a country where the people believe that a car’s movement is illusionary and that the actual movement is brought about by variations in the speed of the earth’s rotation. The national effort is directed at a drastic reduction in inertia. The overall aim is to mobilise complete homes.
Coincidently, a clock which runs 14 minutes fast, chimes at the precise moment of the cedar’s 80th birthday.
The police unit continues its policy of beginning the shift by using random number tables to generate fictitious totals for the day.
Only the politicians are guaranteed work.
#5
During the course of an extremely long formal lecture, those attending focus their attention on the large pyramid of eggs stacked in one corner of the room. The ageing lecturer continues speaking as the eggs continue to hatch. Nobody is able to describe the emerging forms which, although fully mobile, remain silently clustered together.
The Perspex briefcase belonging to the lecturer houses a rack of eight test tubes.
Originally written during the 1980s (The turn of the century would have been 1900).
