MAN MADE FLASH FICTION BLOG

I follow him into his kitchen, then through to his bathroom. Wherever he makes a noise.      " R EAP ! "        What did he just shout ?      Once, he told me there should be thirteen equal months in a year, as dictated by the Moon. That would mean five spare days that are totally out of time.  He said, Hidden men are manipulating our calendar to alter reality and change our experience of this world.  Imagine !      I kind of get that . H e does seem clever .      N ow then, did I rinse this bowl? I t’s my sacred duty to make sure . L et's clean it all again , my old friend the blue basin , just to be on the  safe side . G erms breed so fast , don't they?      He turns on the radio in his front room. I'll go through and catch what he's listening to.      But that would mean I must leave the tap running in the kitchen - which will be OK, ...

One of the 'Glasgow Wee Folk ' , I thought, deliberately keeping my attention on shelves stacked with assorted spirit offerings.      Clearly enjoying the moment, the diminutive old lady raked her purse painstakingly slowly for coins while chatting to the checkout assistant. I'd seen her do this before, auld bissum.      A man standing in front of me harrumphed loudly then turned, hoping I'd echo his impatient displeasure. He was well-dressed and in his early fifties.      I didn't oblige.      Her bill at last settled, shopping packed away into her tartan trolley, the old dear continued talking with the assistant. Now she really was laying it on thick, especially as the queue behind us was growing.      Seemingly having reached the end of his tether the man barged in front of her. Visibly angry, he as good as knocked her out of his way.      Some folk have no patience, ...

Full English in mind, I walk through the door and past so many empty tables.  Greek owners, I think.      “How many?” he asks.  Greek, right enough.      “Just the one.”      “A seat here, please,” he says, showing me to a table behind a pillar and far from any plate glass.      I respond by turning and leaving, pointedly eyeing undeniably available window seats before passing back through the door and out into late morning sunshine.      In the park across the street a little girl wearing pigtails and a gap-tooth smile swings her pencil legs above precious few worldly cares. She is with her mother, her father hopefully at work.      I know the girl will forget this day, perhaps until a vague childhood recollection much later when a thousand such times and many thousand such suns have passed.      Stay loved , little girl, I think to myself, and never lose your trus...

When I first moved into my flat several years ago junkies and other neds would gather outside my window after dark. Occasionally they'd knock on the glass, apparently expecting some kind of reaction. Sometimes they just hung around chatting in subdued tones on the street.      The previous tenant was a man called Kyle. I never met Kyle but found out from a neighbour that he was taking psychiatric medication. He had severe mental health problems caused by a chronic drug addiction which had resulted in paranoia, manic schizophrenia and other related conditions.      The gang had completely taken over Kyle's life. They would bully him into giving up his welfare benefits and his medication (which they then cut with other substances to make what's known as Street Valium ). Apparently Kyle went through such hell on an almost daily basis.      Eventually rescued and rehoused elsewhere by the local authority's social services department, Kyl...

Tony couldn’t play pedal steel, but he was a policeman who checked permits other visitors required back then.      A wandering Spanish cock, despite beautiful wife and home, he revelled in the glamour of our music-making.      He’d disappear after gigs for a private performance with some lucky tourist sweating under his spell.      A pleasant yet despicable man, I still think about his wife. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   Matthew 5:28 (KJV) 28  But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.  

Ross heard a commotion at the square. He went over, finding young adults of both sexes - plus a few more variations, if you believe such things - taunting a street preacher.      "Abortion is murder," proclaimed the preacher, his voice amplified through microphone and speaker.      "My body, my choice!" young adults with wombs screamed back at him.      "But it's not your body," insisted the preacher.      "My body, my choice!" screamed the empty wombs.      "From the first cell formed after conception, the foetus DNA is different from that of the mother - so abortion is murder," repeated the preacher.      "My body, my choice!" screamed the empty wombs. Now standing in front of the man, Ross turned to face the baying crowd. He held up both hands in a plea for silence.      The screaming subdued.      "Right at this moment," he announced, "I ...

Ross remembered his mother making supper each night as the family sat in front of their rented 24" black & white Phillips telly.      It was usually something lightweight on, such as Morecambe and Wise , though Ross does recall one Play for Today episode where a distressed wife smashed a dresser of crockery, making his mother shake her head and mutter, "Och! What a waste!"      Supper would be around half-seven or eight with side plates containing toast or a sandwich and a couple of ginger snaps appearing on everyone's chair arms. Mother would then disappear back through to the kitchen to fetch mugs of sweet, milky tea. Ross' father might be at home, depending on his shift pattern.      One day his father was thoughtful enough to knock a hole between kitchen and living room so that supper might be passed straight through the resulting "workmanlike" service hatch, thus reducing wasteful journeys via their short hall. The ...

Slapped senseless day one then swaddled in sleep, do you know who, what, why, when or where you dream?      Come many, come many, come many, come one to a realm that sits beyond hell unseen, where snakes shake hands dipped in pockets of poison.      And under the milk sky a brass band play tacit, and even a poet forgets to write.      To understand how truth sits above our received wisdom, see the prince of the power of the air spin his lie over this earth.      He knows your days here number no more than a breath. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   2 Corinthians 4:4 (KJV) 4  In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.  

I've acquired a small dark demon who wears two distinct faces. With one, he will flitter, flutter, not quite flatter, obsequious in his manner. The other conceals a malignant mischievous smile redolent of a lower order. Don't think I dislike this wicked little weevil; au contraire, he's my reminder to abstain from all appearance of evil. I'll even show him these words, prepared to see him wroth, describing how I wish he'd just get lost.   CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   1 Thessalonians 5:22 (KJV) 22  Abstain from all appearance of evil.  

Despite both of us carrying 2G technology in our pockets, and because we never bothered to exchange numbers, bumping into John remains down to luck.      It'll most likely happen once or twice over the months of what we laughingly call a Scottish summer; when we might be graced with a brief window of sun under which we can occupy the high dugouts and watch over the Clyde with its array of islands.      Perhaps because of their impromptu nature, our conversations will go in many directions, cover a broad range of topics, where no reference is ever made, certainly by John, to the world of online. This is because he has neither computer nor internet at home – and why would he? He is of a world I also come from, of a way of being I once belonged to. Only, he has managed not to abandon it, unlike many of the rest of us.      John instead relies on rehearsing television news seen a decade ago, remembering a radio report broadcast la...

My turn came to answer the question put to each of us on the panel - the others being far younger than me - about if we’d ever secretly pried into a lover's online messages.      "When I was last in a relationship social media didn't even exist," I said. "In fact," I continued, "the only options back then were either to steam open envelopes very carefully or to listen in quietly to phone conversations from a landline extension in another room."      The other guests laughed, as did our talk show host; none of them quite believing the truth of the world before them. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   Song of Solomon 8:6 (KJV) 6  Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.  

“Between ninety and four-fifty for a crown but I recommend an inlay at three-fifty.” His words breezed out as if we were of course equals participating in some healthy economy; sadly a notion no longer within my reach. So I aired my stand-by line oft used for levity and to hide embarrassment on such occasions: “I know I look rich but I’m not” - confirming with no trace of envy, “I’m not a dentist.” Though I have time to decide still, I suspect my now-over-sixty visage will transition closer to that witnessed in any Texas crack whore’s police mugshot as yet another late-life extraction proves inevitable. Anyway, I learned some time ago to accept how fate leads us all ultimately into a tomb-stoned sepulchre. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh     Ecclesiastes 3:20 (KJV) 20  All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.  

A couple of packets came through my door when I was still laid in bed. I couldn't be arsed to get up and check what they were, even though postal mail is such a rarity these days.      So I lay there luxuriating, thinking it might be my invite at last for that most infamous medical procedure of our age - one I would decline, just as at the same time I wanted this hiatus to conclude.      But what had arrived actually turned out to be an annual notice of increase in local taxes and a polling card for an election I will not take part in. ("We're from the government, and we're here to help," the "nine words no American wants to hear" as President Reagan once famously said.)      A bit later after breakfasting on black coffee, orange marmalade and burnt toast, I went out into the morning sunshine for a walk.      Some ways along the street I became aware of a youth attached to a dog on the pavement behind me. I ...

Before long three squad cars and two sizeable vans pulled up. Out jumped several goons, leaving vehicle doors wide open a-la-Sweeney. But these weren't normal woolly suits. For a start, they looked too fit.      One of them, a superintendent or suchlike, wore a cap sporting not only the familiar masonic checker-board but also a mess of silver across its peak - presumably how he plugged his head into the mains electricity for recharging or reprogramming.      After a moment assessing the potential crime scene Plod-Senior walked straight across to where three of us stood apart from the crowd. Unconsciously screwing in what seemed to be a concealed earpiece, he barked, "Who is in charge here?"      "Nobody," answered Mick, calmly pointing over at the placards. "We're an anarchist collective. We organize cooperatively. No leaders necessary, sir."      Plod-Senior pondered Mick's unexpectedly gentle response. Ru...

John grew up in a small town with his four sisters and two stepsisters. Perhaps unsurprisingly he was considered the black sheep of the family.      During his early years John showed a keen interest in art. By his teens he was skilled at drawing, painting and sculpture. The introverted boy flourished as his artistic talents developed and got noticed.      Once he was able John flew the nest and made for the big city. Soon he was exhibiting his work and making a name for himself as a highly talented artist.      After studying at a prestigious art college John received an offer to work there as a lecturer. This brought him into a higher sphere of society and to a circle of people that included his soon-to-be wife.      For years the sisters back home heard little from John, just snippets of his new life via short letters he sent sporadically, many of which he'd decorated with pencil sketches and doodles. ...

The boy watched starfish wiggle their tube feet, observed tiny seahorses tread water, saw crabs as big as dinner plates, found the world's ugliest monkfish, came across eels injured by perhaps propeller or fishing knife. Each animal could only wait it out until a tide would return and lift it back into the freezing Forth, perhaps eventually right out to the North Sea.     The boy  passed much of his childhood out on the same rocks where an uncle he never knew had drowned as a boy. Both males aged eleven, one's life had ended long before the other's began.      A woman could sometimes be seen. A distant speck farther out closer to the low tide. Stooping, the boy's mother raked for sea-coal, placing any bounty into old hessian sacks. Even the usable coal needed separating from the larger stone it formed part of. Much of her find was unusable. Her labours represented the geology of direst economic necessity at work.      At home, sitting near t...

This tale takes us back to the early 1970s. The Troubles One day, my mother took me the five or so miles walk up from our home on the coast inland to her friend's from work. That woman was either a divorcee or a widower, with two children of her own but no man about the house.      My mother and I were both quite fit in those days - us from walking everywhere, her from daily labour. Her rheumatoid arthritis came later as reward for picking potatoes, cauliflower, sprouts, lettuce, whatever was ready for harvest at pittance wages, bent over in east-coast Scottish weather.      I was still too young to realize we might have taken the local bus instead. Terry Wiles's blue and yellow single-deckers covered routes that Scottish Motor Transport's green coaches didn't run on, where Lothian Regional Transport's maroon livery was not yet evident anywhere east of the Scottish capital Edinburgh.      But we had fallen too poor for even the b...

The pagan spell worked its charm on the sea of ice cream faces now turned away from boat burning and other abominations to board late home-bound trains that will carry their home-bound bodies mostly fuelled by a day of battered fish, soggy chips and diluted beers. These pugilistic Scots will re-tread well-worn arguments, thereby tormenting tired eyes towards salty tears and ultimately into submission. And any of their children, those not yet asleep, those keeping schtum, might just turn face outwards to witness a much higher God displaying the merry dance of his northern lights on this coastal summer night. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh   Psalm 19:1 (KJV) 19  The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.  

My mechanical clock says five-thirty-seven as I raise the blind on this light summer morning, Across the street a gull asserts its weight over a magpie and three jackdaws, all of them foraging fruitlessly for their breakfast on a damp patch of pavement next to an overflowing bin. Chased by the gull, mister magpie complies and moves on, as magpies tend to do, while the playful jackdaws seem game for a spot of teasing - for they are used to dealing with bullies. But eventually the third jackdaw gives up and struts away in search of more fertile ground. From behind my open window I ponder which of these different personalities I most identify with (probably that last jackdaw, or maybe the magpie). While I drift through such thoughts a car hisses by and elsewhere gulls cry out in unison like a gaggle of distressed children. Eventually the kettle comes to boil, snapping me back into focus. Black coffee, oatcakes and thick-cut orange marmalade. It's going to be a fine day today here on ...

The animal had pointy ears and a sleek body covered in short hair. One might have seen something like it in ancient hieroglyphs or as a carved statuette raided from some pharaoh's tomb. A thoroughbred of some sort, it belonged to my brother's friends.      Keith was looking after it while they were on holiday. He was used to the cat, and it knew him.      Never having been spayed, instead being used for pedigree breeding, the cat had balls that any large dog would have been proud of. Whenever on all-fours it had the gait of a prowling lion.      However, Cat, the name it answered to when wanting fed, also liked to drape itself over people's shoulders, wrapped round their necks.      Keith indulged Cat in this. ~      "We're back home. Want to bring Cat and have dinner with us?"      "OK, what time suits?" said Keith.      "Come over this afternoon if you fancy...