Thursday 26 August 2010

Why am I still doing this?

Life reconstruction of pterodactyls by English...Image via Wikipedia
"Didn't you used to write a blog? One with short, unconnected stories?"
 Pinball Ed, his eyes aglow with curiosity, and possibly a little dysentery, was literally on the edge of his seat. Well, rock. In his aglowed eyes, his curiosity burned like a forest-fire, his question the last monkey to escape, filled with wonder and horror.
 "Yes." I replied. It was cold, the nights seemed longer the higher up the mountain we got, and my nipples had hardened and chaffed on my top. I didn't feel like talking, and I was still old and my hearing failed like the brakes on a car that had had the breaks cut so the breaks failed like the hearing of an old man up a mountain.
 "What happened?" He asked, his eyes still curiously lit up.
 "I started to write stories that spanned several days. It was fun at first, I enjoyed the change. It let me talk about selling oranges in the desert, and bears. I liked to talk about bears, back then."
 I turned from him melodramatically, the cruel wind whipping the tear from my eye and hurling it from my face into the maelstrom around us.
 "The stories though. They got out of hand. Too long, spiralling. Strange and stupid."
 "How?" He asked.
We were on a mountain, I was old and we were searching for the fountain of youth. All that had happened was that Max, one fateful day, answered the door. Poor, stupid Max. On these cold mountains, even his wrinkled face was one I missed. I wondered what he was doing, while I scaled mountains to bring back waters to restore our youth.
 Around me, pterodactyls flew in the winds. They didn't come near anymore, we'd shown them off at least. There never used to be pterodactyls...
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And the moral of the story is....?

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