The Unbeast Who Was Not

On Monday morning, he awoke, not realising that the shambling unbeast was not under the bed. He thought there was plain old nothing under the bed. As he got ready for work, the unbeast didn't emerge. It wasn't seven feet tall. It didn't smell of deer carcasses. It didn't carefully tread downstairs. It didn't terrify itself with its ghastly appearance in the landing mirror. 

As he ate breakfast, it didn't climb into the passenger seat of the car. Obviously. It didn't exist! It didn't fiddle with the radio channels. It didn't accidentally play prog rock so loud the people in the next block could hear it. 

At work, it didn't hide under his desk, pointing out the desperate futility of trying to make order in a vast and chaotic universe. When he went to a meeting, it didn't sit next to him and whisper hilarious insults about everyone else there present. It didn't eat the apples from the staff room fruit bowl and spit the pips out all over the floor. 

It didn't pick up his smarmy boss and hang him out the window by his feet. It didn't hum TV show theme tunes annoyingly when he stayed late. It didn't ride home on the roof of his car making nee-naw sounds. 

When he got home, it didn't sit next to him on the sofa, talking over the events of the day, trying to help him make sense of a life which technically belonged to him even though it increasingly didn't seem to. It didn't insist on double helpings of ice cream at dinner time. When he went to bed, it didn't stay up watching TV until 3 in the morning and drink all the beer. 

At 3, it didn't creep upstairs. It didn't stand at the end of his bed, looking down at his fragile sleeping body. It didn't lean in closer, revealing its huge fangs. It didn't breathe the smell of rotten meat all over his face. Its stomach didn't rumble. And there, in the slumbering darkness, it didn't give him the tiniest little kiss, and then it didn't climb back under his bed. And as the light brightened behind the curtains, the unbeast didn't blink and simply disappear.

It didn't do that because it had never been there to start with.

Trees in Mist

There is nothing as strikingly alive and conscious and intent and majestic and wise as a tree in mist. I think it's because the mist places the tree on the boundary between the visible and the invisible, and so as you look at it, head tilted right back, mouth hanging open, eyes dry, it is permanently in a state of arrival, and you are experiencing the moment when trees came to our planet for the very first time, and you are wondering if they have come in peace or for mutual benefit or to crush everything they consider a threat into tiny pieces.

I also think it's because the mist makes the air the place where things are really happening. No longer does the world start with the greenness under your feet and stop a couple of metres in the air, while a bunch of other lifeforms take it all too far and keep going up way beyond the level where things are still people. Instead it shows you that there was always much more above the ground than on the ground, and that you should look up, and when you do look up at the world above your head and find it full of dark, mandelbrot-skinned personalities in smoky gowns, you will always feel like a mouse or an insect that has just run into the place where the giants meet.

But no, these are not the giants who will raise a casual foot and with it make your life tiny, dark and short. Nor are they here to validate your self-consideration. They are tactile. You can tell from the way they let you feel their furry flesh from hundreds of metres beneath their vast bodies with your eyes. They are made to be looked at, made to be touched by awe-struck minds. They are proud and particular and unique, and they are not particularly interested in you. I love to see trees in mist because they are beautiful, so beautiful and because they yield to me, unthinkingly, the consolation of my insignificance.

Three Additional Writing Prompts for Uneasy Fiction

At last, three more writing prompts for those weird, unsettling stories you've been dying to tell.

1. With but one score to settle in all your long years, you pass away. Stars swirl. You are reincarnated as a creature with two heads. The other head is occupied by the person you detested in your last life. Your thoughts and identity are mingled with theirs. What happens? How does it feel to be one with and inseparable from this awful person? How does the situation resolve itself?

2. Awakening from a revolting dream, you leap out of your bed unable to believe what you felt. You look at the bed. It seems normal. You touch it. It feels like writhing maggots. With disgust, you tear off your pyjamas. They feel the same. All touch has infected with this horrible effect. What do you do? How do you live?

3. Entering a covered market complete with fruit stalls, children's cheap clothing and a whole slaughtered pig bearing an expression of hideous anguish, you hear a voice, "Hey, you've been before. Don't you remember? It was horrible! You shouldn't be here! Get away! Run!" You stare at the pig's twisted face in silent horror and then turn and bolt, but the voice doesn't stop whispering. Finally, you summon the courage to speak back. What do you say?

I hope those disturbing thoughts help you on your way! By all means comment or e-mail me with the result! You can see my other writing prompts for uneasy fiction by clicking here.

The Naming of Forgotten Colours

Turleen is the colour of a cooking pot illuminated by the light of another room.

Versotage is the colour you remember rock moss to be.

Hubrian is the colour of something that could equally be a shadow or a patch of moisture.

Bisper is the colour of the sky after shutting your eyes for a long time and then opening them.

Nuve is the colour of the page ends of an old paperback.

Tidderish is the colour of grass in morning sunlight when butterflies are near.

Gish is the rich, living green at the heart of an old onion.

Potlion is the not-quite-black colour of clock hands on a stopped clock.

Spube is the colour of the food stain that won't come out of an old shirt.

Fegette is the colour of the darkness between bright illuminations or many fireflies.

Batcherfan is the colour of concrete steps near the sea at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Glubon is the colour of a football field after torrential rain.

Spaffle is the colour of the feathers of the bird on the window ledge, neither grey nor brown.