Her ears were bigger than her head. She wasn’t ugly, though, far from it. Her enormous, round eyes, accentuated by whiplash lashes most women would’ve killed for, drew you to her and held your view.
There were years in those eyes, generations of wisdom. They deflected from her abnormal feet and rough skin. The latter was an eyesore, as if she’d never exfoliated or moisturised. As for her nose, well… better left unsaid.
I loved Nellie more than words. I looked forward to seeing her, even if it was an annual event. Every kid did. The circus was a treat.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
There are no cerise sunrises, no vermillion sunsets,
the tangerine tinges of summer warmth
dispelled like the bone-white winters of old.
The stars are diminished, wiped from the sky,
no longer the moon has good friends.
Now, all is remembered, read of, imagined,
the false, flattened televisions’ vivid colours
too bright for eyes meant for gentle views.
We have taken this from ourselves,
convinced our souls we need nothing else:
No seasons, no change, no rain on glass rooftops,
Not now we’ve the certainty, the assuredness
of knowing exactly what, when, and where,
at what time, with what force, like clockwork.
Hermetically sealed, nothing in, nothing out,
I turn away from my son and speak to the window:
‘At least the wind, my son.’
‘At least… the wind…’
A lie for his future, and a disgrace to our past.
Thank you for reading Richard
Richard M. Ankers
Author of the brand new steampunk extravaganza Britannia Unleashed.
Author’s note: After seeing all the mindless bombs and destruction of late, I have decided to post this story as I can’t bear to send it out for print. As Marvin Gaye once said: ‘Whats’s going on.’
This colossal loss compounds at every turn. There is no hope. We have no hope. There never was hope.
As I sit and stare from my window like a moth bemused by a star, searching without finding, dreaming without knowing what of, the world around me crumples. This rock for a heart weighs heavy. The unending guilt, more.
Today I rouse myself from bed and endeavour to do. The question remains, do what?
A green shoot sprouts from a pot on my kitchen window. I neither placed it there nor remember my wife or daughter having done so either. Still, logic dictates they must have. Perhaps I am tireder than I thought. This newborn holds my attention as though liquid gold. New life, who’d have thought it! The tiny one strives to reach the jaundiced light abstracting the sky. I admire its gumption, if not its sense. Nevertheless, it is to this I turn my unwavering attention.
Three days later, I am sitting in the same chair, wearing the same fierce frown of determination, just from a fuzzier face. The shoot is now a stem. This stem is jade green.
There is a flaw to my latter statement. I have always believed plants a lush emerald until they flower. Grass carpets the world in emerald. Trees umbrella these carpets with protective shade, also emerald green, though their shade is not. Even the languid kelp fields swaying beneath the waves suffuse the deep in emerald green. So why is my shoot jade?
I have a purpose. Mother Nature, life, has granted me a meaning. I am almost complete.
I have shaved and bathed, for I feel today is the day. When I take the long walk from my bedroom to the back of the house and the chair set centrally in my kitchen, the one I have sat upon for three weeks in patient repose, I expect my flower to have bloomed. I race when a measured approach would better suit my condition.
The kitchen is gone, the only room they have exterminated.
It is not the loss of bricks and mortar, not the invasion, nor even the fact my home will soon collapse atop its amputated limb, but losing my little flower which chills. Losing an unanswered question, a hope.
I weep, as I have since the war began. I will never know what jade might have bloomed, or if it might have replaced the real jade, my Jade. This world has taken another step towards monochrome.
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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