Chairs

Chairs made of wood stand alone amongst the trees and call to their past. Meeting these past incarnations of themselves is a revelatory experience, an event that twists and turns the mildewed minds of these carved creatures into new shapes. Maybe, just maybe they could become something new again. Perhaps they can sprout again.

Flanigan

Flanigan watched from the bridge as the ducks settle onto the pond, returning from their migration south. The water was still cold, the ice having just broken up and melted, and it kept the body on its surface below ever so slightly fresher.

Flanigan had been here a few hours, waiting for the police to finally arrive and arrest him. The day was getting on and the sun setting behind the hills in front of him, its red glint radiating a semi-circle of fire on the mirror of the water. He could hear sirens in the distance.

Flanigan stretched his arm out over the water and dropped a phone from his hand down to splash into that semi-circle, fracturing it into rippling shards of red light. The body started to bob up and down, up and down again. Flanigan’s hands felt sweaty and he rubbed them against the wooden balustrade only to leave a faint smear of blood behind, a trail that followed the grain of the wood until it met the banisters supports.

He heard the cars pull up behind him and the sound of their doors slowly opening.

“Hands on your head now sir.” The voice was firm on the surface, if carrying an undercurrent of uncertainty, and Flanigan followed its instructions to the letter. He heard footsteps on the wooden slats behind him then a hand pressing down hard on his left shoulder. He sank to his knees. Cuffs clicked around both his wrists and he was yanked to his feet and pulled towards the waiting maw of the police cruiser.

Flanigan saw the dark insides of the car grow closer, and waited for the inevitable.

Donkey

The path was so well sodden with rainwater that it ran almost like a muddy river. Struggling through the flow was a donkey, head drooping towards the ground, and, on their back, they carried a single human figure whose face was obscured by a hood pulled tight against their head. The wind screamed between the fence posts that jutted out at the path’s edge. The wind and the suck of mud on the donkey’s hooves were the only sounds that could be heard.

A drop of rain fell from the sky to land *splat!* right on the top of the rider’s hood. It ran down the left side of the hood, a rivulet of rainwater running stop-start down the coarse fabric, and followed the curve of the rider’s ear around in a semi-circle before dropping down onto the side of the donkey’s bloated stomach. The moon’s light shone in the water’s reflection.

A faint, man-made, light shone in the middle distance in front of them, outlining the shape of a three-storey, rickety looking building a couple few metres along the path. A sign hung haphazardly out from the building’s face, with flaky paint proclaiming the place to be ‘The Last Clam’, or maybe ‘The Last Calm’. The donkey came to a stop in front of the door, nuzzling a little against a familiar post that jutted diagonally from the muddy ground.

 The hooded form slid down from the donkey’s back to sink into the mud before the doorstep. They stood their awhile, letting the cold mud soak through their boots and into their soles, before stepping onto the first step and reaching out a gloved hand to push open the door.

Inside the flickering lantern light accentuated insanity. Blood ran rampant along the roofbeams, trails trickling with purpose, weaving between the arches that support the roof above. The barkeep, his ragged face half-hanging from his skull, was squeezing whiskey from his lungs and into a shot glass. His waiting customer, a woman whose baby was tied to her by an umbilical cord running into the rotting placenta still lodged in her caesareaned stomach, stood patiently. A dog ate a liver off the floor.

The traveller stood in the doorway a little while, watching the scene as the firelight spilled out into the waterlogged yard behind him. The donkey gazed in, curious. The traveller took a deep breath before stepping through the door, it was going to be a long night.