At 3:15 A.M. it was black outside the diner window except for a few lights beyond the two-lane blacktop. A couple miles west the traffic whispered and rumbled on the Interstate. 

“Why’d you want to meet here, Bill?”

“I like the food, Jack.”

“Yeah, right, it's monochromatic. You wanna talk about Joan?”

“Why, it’s obvious now she can’t stand either of us.”

Irene shuffled up and poured their coffees. Bill took it black and ordered the lumberjack breakfast; Jack ordered toast, then doctored his coffee with an ounce of cream and a table spoon of sugar.

“Timothy, you MUST open up about your experiences – otherwise you will never recover.”

Timothy drew a deep breath. Talking would be helpful; otherwise he might bottle it up, allowing his feelings to fester inside him until they exploded.

“You see – a gun was pulled on me. Long story short: woman claimed she was a hitperson, I gave her a job, she refused it, she returned, I gave her benefits.”

The counsellor nodded slowly and drew her notepad closer.

“Timothy, this is absolutely appalling...


“How DARE you hand out benefits willy-nilly! Our strict benefits criteria must always, always be met.”


*Pic courtesy of wikimedia commons

So this woman comes into my office to claim benefits for the first time. Claims she’s a redundant “hitperson”! Honestly!

Turns out I’ve a job for her – involving a cat somehow – but she throws a tantrum. “I have standards,” she announces. So I say, no benefits for you, sweetheart. Off she strops.

In no time she’s back. “I claim religious discimination,” she announces. She’s a Quaker, a pacifist hitperson. Seriously. No can kill.

I mention Grace Kelly in “High Noon” but she replies Grace only killed baddies. Then she draws a gun out saying, “Like you.”

She gets her benefits.

It took Sally more than an hour to cool off after storming out of the welfare office.

That self-righteous prig didn’t deserve a civil response! But Sally still needed the money.

Looking at the purloined address of the client, she thought, “Who’s to say I can’t bypass the welfare office and talk to the client myself?”

Sally found the house and approached it from the back. Creeping silently around the building along the side path, Sally saw the cat napping on the front porch. Sidling up to the sleeping animal, Sally whispered, “OK. Who do you want me to kill?”

“And sometimes, it just seems like my wife doesn’t love me anymore.” Mel sighed.

His longtime therapist looked on. “I see. And how does that make you feel?”

“Like ... like I’m not good enough!”

“There, there. You have a LOT going for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?” Mel looked doubtful.

“Well, you’re intelligent. You’re handsome. And you’re obviously concerned about your relationship.”

Mel smiled. “You really think so?”

Whiskers licked her front leg. “Hey--I may be just a talking cat, but you’ve been my owner for years. Absolutely.”

Sally slunk into the Benefits Office. Unemployed for the first time ever, she’d to register for work in order to qualify for welfare benefits. She gave her details to her ‘Benefits Officer’.

“Reason for leaving last job?”

“Redundancy.”

“Well, Ms Anderson, to receive benefits, you must accept any suitable offer of employment we can make. What’s your line of work?”

“I’m a hitperson,” Sally replied; politically correct at least.

The official looked unconcerned. “Really?” He reached for a postcard. “Looks like we’ve a position for you, Ms Anderson. Someone called Alice is looking for a hitperson. Do you do cats?”

Gloria’s cry awakens me.

I open my eyes. Time to feed her again.

I notice my hand as I turn the doorknob. Must remember to wear those dishwashing gloves.

“Sorry, Grandma,” says a young woman standing in the hallway. “I’ve got her.”

I stop and stare. Another woman, a bit older, enters the hallway.

I look back and forth between the older woman and the younger woman. They look … familiar.

“Mom, it’s OK. It's me,” says the older woman. “Gloria.”

They look … like me.

Gloria touches my hand.

I start to cry.                 

Edna sat on the edge of the bed, positioned the bedside table for lunch, patted down her black-dyed hair and admired the view of the town through the window of her private room.
She couldn't remember why she was there, couldn't think of anything and couldn't understand why. Everything gets confused with memories of when she was a child. Her reality like waiting for a movie to disclose some meaning in a jumble of disconected talk and random movements.
"Hi Edna." The smiling young nurse arrived carrying a tray. She placed it on the table in front of the elderly women. "Smells good, sweety. Here, I'll open the milk carton for you."
"Oh thank you, dear." Suddenly, through paranoia and fear, Edna asks: "Who are you? Where is my mother? Are you my mother?"
"Yes," said with a sad smile through tears, the young woman answers.                  

One more contentious but dull council meeting.

I’m bored to tears, but I need this job. At least these officials’ respect my integrity. They don’t always like what I report, but they admit it is accurate. And they never complain when I paraphrase their irrational, ill-worded, ungrammatical remarks; it gets their names in the paper.

Oh God, now that bigoted blowhard is at it again. How can he think, much less say, such things?

I am tired of being Ms Nice Gal. This time I as going to do the most evil thing possible, I’ll quote him directly and accurately.                  

I slept on my stomach till someone pushed on my shoulder. I looked back to see my mother as she was in the fifties—wearing a frumpy outfit with a little brown hat, both of which were dated even then. She looked otherworldly—but eerily incandescent as if lit from within. She said nothing, just smiled. I became dizzy; my consciousness began to fade. I’d die if I didn’t do something so I shook my head violently from side to side to bring myself out of it. I woke and yelled. I said nothing—It was just a scream.                  

Every morning at 5:30 sharp Liz fires up the urns; the water heats, then boils and roils and percolates till a strong aroma takes to the air.

Quick as a flash the morning crowd begins to gather, then descends upon Liz's Café like ravenous scavenger birds falling with ballistic missile accuracy from a blazing noontime desert sky.

Liz has a name for them, but of course never speaks it aloud:

Coffee buzzards!

Sally stared at the benefits officer in horror.

“You piece of ****. I may be a hit person, but I have standards. Cats indeed!”

“Well then,” the benefits officer shrugged, “no welfare for you. Principles do not pay the bills you know. You can't just pick and choose your jobs according to whether you like them or not.”

Sally stood up, shoving her chair back violently and marched out of the job centre. The benefits officer had inadvertently revealed the client's address. This time the job was personal. Across the city, Alice felt someone walk over her grave...


*Picture courtesy of DEVIANTART

It was time to make myself scarce. It was far from the first occasion, and experience is everything in these matters. Always have a back door is my motto. But what experience has never clarified is why all the anger? Haven’t they learned from experience? Yes, spilt rubbish is messy. So what? Outside is no different with all its dead leaves and such scattered everywhere you look. So why all the cursing?

When I went back later, they still cursed me. So I did the only thing a self-respecting cat can do. I turned my head and started washing myself.

Each year we gather together up on the mountain in the Sacred Lodge to smoke our pipes of peace. Afterwards we return to our families, our homes, our jobs, our regular lives.

More wars break out; people are blown to bits by roadside bombs; gunshots ring out on school campuses and on military installations; surely Mankind is obsessed with self-destruction.

Then we return to light our pipes of peace again, each and all with the same hope in mind:

"Maybe our pipes will work this year."

He often recalled a story his great-great grandfather told him years ago:

"My dad was a tenant farmer, and we lived in a shack beside the tobacco fields.

"One Sunday we got woke up by the most awful sounds you could imagine.

"Everybody ran to the windows and stared out at the cross stuck in our front yard--and at the burning man who hung there screaming in such torment that he drowned out the Easter Sunday church bells."

“Glad you could come today, since you’re not coming tomorrow for Easter dinner.”

“Yeah, we’ve got plans.”

“Your father and I normally see you at Easter.”

She makes him a sandwich with the Easter ham they’re having for dinner tomorrow, and places Easter candy on the table. 

“Are you going to ask her to marry you?”

“If something ain't broke, why change it?”

The Flash-Fiction-Vampire sat hunched over a computer screen, working on his latest client’s website. Behind, a group crept noiselessly towards him, armed with stakes and hammers. 

“We can’t see him in his screen, so he can’t see us,” whispered one. “Remember, aim for his heart at the stroke of midnight on Thursday.” 

“I don’t like this,” whispered another. 

“It’s for his own good.” 

But they’d forgotten something: Flash-Fiction-Vampires’ reflections can’t be seen in mirrors, including computer screens. Suddenly, he swung round, leaped, and bit them, turning them all into Flash-Fiction-Vampires themselves. 

Now they too were doomed to write stories every Friday.         

With an impatient and irritable sigh, he flung the book down. It made no sense at all to him, especially with all the bombs exploding outside. Ridiculous, trying to tackle a foreign language. And if fate had been kinder to him, he wouldn’t have chosen Russian. He’d given it his best shot, you had to grant him that. Well, fate be damned. He would now make a totally different choice, one in which Russian played no part – a different shot altogether.

At that, Adolf Hitler rose shakily to his feet to seek out his newly-wed wife and his loaded pistol…

It was Friday, and there were problems. 

The words were agitated. They whirled in her mind, but couldn’t coalesce into a plausible story. If the nouns would get themselves organized, the verbs would come – but verbs, for all their strength, needed a leader (although they called it a subject). Without it, they simply whirled in meaningless activity. 

And as for adjectives, well, they saw no point in even showing up. 

Little prepositions and conjunctions gathered in shapeless piles, offering no direction. Most couldn’t even find a sentence to settle at the end of. 

So she sighed, then realized, “That’s 100.”

What do you think of him, Sue?

I don’t know. His eyes are too blue, his hair is too blond, and that five o’clock shadow is sooo overdone.

But what about that sexy bod?

It isn’t all about sexual attraction. He can’t even hold a decent conversation.

The talking part will come with time, Sue. It’s something that we all need to work on, and it’s going to take awhile to develop.

No, sorry. He’s just not the kind of man I’m looking for.

OK. Hey, Ralph! Load another model into the 3-D copier and shred this one.                  

“So, how much time do we have?”

“If my calculations are correct, no more than two hours until the comet hits Earth.” The scientist’s face was glum.

“And all life will be obliterated?”

“Sadly.”

“There must be SOMETHING we can do to save humanity.”

“Well, there IS one thing …”

Half an hour later, everyone in the town had lined up, side to side, doing disco moves and belting out “Stayin’ alive”. Sure enough, the alleged comet never appeared.

“Are we awesome singers or what?”

“But, maybe we just scared it off …”

This is what the light looks like...

It picks out is subjects selectively and dusts them with a golden glimmer. The selectiveness is important: the light does not choose to pick out with prominence any surface underneath it. The light is subject too, to the dominance of cloud and rain. The battle is more often lost than won, but the rainbow is its occasional and very beautiful battle scar


Such is life when you live in Scotland. Sunshine is a rare beast indeed.


*Picture courtesy of Wings Over Scotland

"No!” Chelsea yelled. “Put me down! Let me go! Stop!”

She felt herself being hoisted into the air, and with no great care either.

“It isn’t fair, it’s not my fault! Why me?” she moaned. “I’m not even two years old yet – ”

She was cut off in mid-sentence.

It made no difference, because no-one could understand what Chelsea the Range Rover was saying as she was lowered into the crusher, her owner having repeatedly been caught speeding on the school run. Some observers even applauded.

It’s not fair on the car. It’s the owner who belongs in the crusher.

Trevor’s eyes opened as Joe walked into the bedroom and opened a beer.
“What’s up, man? I was sleeping.”
“Let’s talk personnel.”
“What?”
“Trevor, you only play rhythm and I don’t see you growing.”
“So? Up yours.”
“Sean plays rhythm, too, and he sings lead, backup, and writes.”
“Your point?”
“We need to cut back to reach the next level.”
“Shit, Joe, we’ve been together fifteen years through five bands, since we were sixteen.”
“Yeah, things change.”
“This just your idea?”
“No, everybody’s.”
Joe left, closing the door. Alone in the dark, Trevor got pissed, hated them, cried silently.