More RATTLER’S TALE Stories
by Anthony North
for
Friday Fictioneers
dVerse
Poets & Storytellers United
The Sunday Muse
in association with
KEYUDOS

PHOTO PROMPT © Jeff Arnold

TIP TAP TAPPING – a typewriter possessed

Grandad was dead.
But sleeping in the old house, that tip tap tapping.
All night long.
How prolific a writer did he intend to be?
Gets into your head, that tip tap tapping.
It was an old typewriter – very old.
Grandad found it many years ago at…
…he’d never say. But it inspired him to be a novelist.
He had many bestsellers before his suicide at 61.
I sat.
Tip tap tapped.
Wrote.
I was hooked!
Then I found it – the last note Grandad wrote.
And I write …
…for 40 years 4 months.
It was signed Hemingway.

ACROSTIC
FOR POETS & STORYTELLERS UNITED

She loved him.
Was his mother. Yet …
Warned of danger.
She didn’t understand, of course; even though she hated the soldiers.
Was unable to grasp what he was; yet she grasped her staff tightly.
Given, he was, as if an undeniable miracle from heaven  … but …
An incomprehensible death.
Explanation? Pointless, yet she was …
Never the less for it. Except …
She picked up her staff to strike the soldier, but his thoughts …
Persisted. Not with A CROss STICk.

MULTI VIRAL
FOR THE SUNDAY MUSE

Viruses have a habit of multiplying.
At first biological, they soon have their eye on the economy.
And once the economy is quarantined, politicians fall.
Revolutions go viral.
But luckily we left the tanks in stores; pointy things in silos.
But who would have thought.
When granny was quarantined she had to find something to do.
Add a weather beaten wall and a can of paint …
Granny was on a mission.
Yet granny soon went exponential.
And now that the biological, economical and political were over …
They looked at graffitied cities all over the world …
… the look of despair of the disenfranchised youth …
And banned aerosol paints for the over seventies.

Book 28 of 68, A Family Loss: A Crime cum Horror Novel, out 27 April

More RATTLER’S TALE Stories
by Anthony North
for
Friday Fictioneers
dVerse
Poets & Storytellers United
The Sunday Muse
in association with
KEYUDOS

PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

SODOM ‘n’ STUFF

‘And the Lord God said: “Let there be cars … and there were cars” …’
‘Is that how it was Dad?’
‘It was son; but it all went wrong.’
‘What happened?’
‘Mass production, motorways, broken communities, air travel, globalization, climate change …
‘Well, in the end Planet did a HG Wells & shut things down.’
He became reflective then. Said:
‘If only we’d looked in the right direction, we wouldn’t have ended up like Lot’s wife.’

HYPO FLORA
FOR POETS & STORYTELLERS UNITED

Why does Rose have thorns?
‘Cos she’s got a prickly temperament.
Why is Daisy in chains?
‘Cos little girls like her.
Why don’t we have the freedom to roam?
‘Cos gardeners imprison us.
Why don’t the little ones grow?
‘Cos they’ve been classified as weeds.
Why do people keep cutting us?
‘Cos they can’t hear us scream.
What is Ivy doing now?
Strangling humans.

HUNDRED
FOR THE SUNDAY MUSE

Okay, excuse the way I’m saying this;
Shouldn’t really be saying anything – I’m not very bright …
I’m 100, you see.
For ages life seemed boring –
No opportunities, no nothing, as if I was stuck in the dark.
Then, when life took over, it happened so fast.
No time to think, plan, nothing.
I was just buffeted this way and that, pressures mounting all the time …
It sometimes felt I was going at 100 miles an hour.
Of course, careering at high speed had consequences.
I made no money – I’d only have burned it anyway.
No photos of relationships – never had any; never loved.
It was just a jig-saw with no doors opening.
And then, at 100, I found myself in the proverbial tunnel.
And then the light approached …
And now, I suck my mother’s breast, happy to forget the 100 minutes of my birth.

Book 27 of 68, Mysteries of the Bible, out 27 March

Two RATTLER’S TALE Stories
by Anthony North
for
Friday Fictioneers
dVerse
Poets & Storytellers United
The Sunday Muse
in association with
KEYUDOS
Stories: Eyes and Veg

EYES

It began as I walked up the starecase.
With each step my trepidation grew.
Sweat, like shards of ice, lacerated my skin.
I was waiting for it, but not like this.
The corner of my eye.
Why does horror always first appear there?
Because we instinctually turn away.
I’m an individual, you see.
Ha! See
I demand my privacy, to my thoughts
My emotions.
But
It was there now, floating to my front, its evil eye bottomless
Waiting
Staring
At the top of the stares I came to the door.
The sign said ‘Doors’, plural, but there was only one.
And above, ‘MacroHard.’
I opened Doors – entered the gallery.
The ultimate techno experience.
Whether you wanted it or not.
On every wall there were eyes.
The selfie was now streaming ..
… tears

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

VEG

Fresh veg on a half empty shelf.
I just can’t get that image out of my mind.
A metaphor?
Veg – short for vegetables.
Or vegetate?
Words entered my mind.
War.
Done that.
Chris.
Married her.
I suppose I felt like that veg when I walked into the store.
You know – old, redundant; on the shelf.
It was a dirty shelf; people went straight to the freezers.
They were sparkling new, full of plastic food.
I’m trying to contact Chris, tell her…
…what?
I still see the old veg shelf now as I go into the freezer.
In the morgue.

Book 27 of 68, Mysteries of the Bible, out 27 March