writing – The Dice Pool

Still Inspiring

Second Anniversary

My family and I are once again celebrating the life of my brother, Lorcan this weekend. Tomorrow it will be two years since his untimely passing. It’s still very near and raw. I think about him every single day and he inspires me still, every time I do. Though, it’s always tinged with sadness and thoughts of what might have been.

I wrote a post about the effect he’s had on me this time last year. I’m sharing it here again now in tribute to him and also in the hope that someone else might find some inspiration in the work he did so often to bring people together.

Inspiration

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 5: Subscribe to Life!

Enshittification

I think we all know the feeling, right? Like, whenever the word-processing software you bought for a flat fee decides to switch to a subscription service so you can’t save any files on it without shelling out 7.99 a month? Or when you need to sign up for a free delivery service from the worst company in the world just so you can watch the latest season of Star Trek? Yeah.

Anyway, that’s what this week’s flash is about. There is no hidden meaning or anything. It’s just straight-forward anti-enshittification propaganda. Enjoy!

This is a flash fiction challenge where I challenge myself and anyone else who cares to take part to write a 500 word flash fiction piece every week. I generate five random nouns and five random verbs for each piece. Part of the challenge is to include all the words in the piece. Here are the words for this piece.

Nouns

Session
Nature
Wood
Guest
Membership

Verbs

Dominate
Slow
Forbid
Get
Dictate

Subscribe to Life!

By Ronan McNamee

You roll up to your spot in the Elysian Woods Outdoor Living Simulation Centre and unroll your tent. You hit the Temporary Habitable Structure Instantaneous Construction button on the remote you received in your first Kampzite subscription box and your tent lies there, a useless, Permanent, Uninhabitable Chaos Slowly just existing. You check your phone. In your latest fit of anti-capitalistic pique the night before, you canceled your Danube subscription. It seems, when you did that, Kampzite, Bafftime, Fudz and even Lurollx went with it. You attempt to construct it with your hands. You receive a text message from Kampzite. It is a friendly reminder that interfering with Kampzite property is an offense and that any further tampering will result in the police being summoned and a hefty fine. A moment later you get another text, this time from Danube, this one much less friendly.

A week spent in the wondrous glory of nature. Too much to ask.

You attempt to restart your Danube subscription right then but you had bravely deleted all account credentials from your phone when you cancelled your subscription. You lock yourself out completely, trying to log in with incorrect passwords. You use up the last of your data subscription credits in the process. There are no Elysian Woods colleagues anywhere.

You fold up your “tent” and pop it in your boot. Frustrated, you ask your
EV to take you to the nearest hostelry so you don’t have to sleep in the car. Sleeping in your car is outside the fair use policy you signed up for in your EZ-EV subscription.

You slow, passing the sign. Gaia’s Gardens: Subscription Retreat. Maybe you’ll be eligible for a guest membership. Your EV chimes. You have exited the area covered by your EZ-EV contract. The car lights dim and it rolls to a halt. Wondering how you found yourself in a life utterly dominated by which services you subscribe to, you slide out and onto the road.

You begin to dictate this story to an app on your phone. The app refuses to save it on your free plan.

Gaia’s gates forbid you entry. There is no guard house, there is no intercom. There is only a camera. You peer through the fence into paradise. Forest gives way, beyond, to cold brew coffee houses and hot yoga sessions, to silent discos and loud wind sounds, to glamping. Desperate, you climb that fence, rattling and trembling as you summit before plummeting to the piney floor below.

You awake to pain. Your back. It’s bad. But there’s your phone on the floor nearby. You call emergency services. “Danube Heightened Experience Response Services. Your account number please.” You laugh into the receiver. “Your account number please,” repeats the AI voice. Another voice from the trees, “Hi there, our facial recognition cameras can’t seem to identify you. Would you mind telling us your Gaia Gardens Subscription Credential Code?” The Emergency Services voice says, “Danube Police have been dispatched, please remain where you are.”

Next week

I have been running this challenge for five weeks now and I feel as though I have gotten enough out of it. It has spurred me to write more fiction and has gotten those creative juices flowing (isn’t that a dreadful idiom?) Anyway, I’m going to focus on writing more RPG related posts for a few weeks and I might come back to the flash later in the year.

Flash Fiction Challenge Week 4: He Told Us

The news

Art is political. I might struggle to call what I make “art” most of the time but I guess, whether it’s good or bad, it’s still art. Some of it is more overtly political than others. You can certainly see the politics in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth novels. It bristles and boils up and breaks the world, but it is still veiled by its fantasy setting. When you read her Great Cities books, based, as they are in her very real home of New York City, the place and the politics are the real deal. It’s right there on the page; the shit that people deal with every day even it is couched in fantastical occurrences and the antagonists are disguised behind cosmically horrific metaphor.

Usually, what I write lies in the former category but, today’s flash is jumping right out of the headlines. It came unbidden, I will say, but here it is. Take it for what it’s worth.

Nouns

crusade
cluster
drawer
railcar
turkey

Verbs

permit
stop
spring
control
fuck 1

He Told Us

by Ronan McNamee

He told us to permit no Rykerites. Neither should we tolerate a Jellicho to live amongst us. For we were the people of the one true god! Kark!

We joined together in a great convocation. We occupied Scotte Station and created of the railcars an impassable barrier. That’s how the Rylerites came to our great city, like diseased cells through the arteries of a body. We watched the trains burn from the terminal.

He told us to take back control so our crusade abandoned the useless railway and spread to the spokes of our great metropolis, the bridges. Those who could, exploded them, the rest of us smashed them, rammed them, blocked and burned them. No more Jenwayers coming across those bridges.

Finally, together on our island of freedom, we beat down doors, beat on drums, beat those damned heathens, the Forgistas. They didn’t belong here either.

He told us to clean the city and that’s what we did. We sprung traps for all the unwanted. We clustered them all in Liberty Gardens and watched them bobbing around in there, like livestock, like turkeys. We fenced them in and went home for dinner.

He told us to eat what the city produced. So we opened our pantries and explored the recesses of our drawers. We ate ketchup and pickles until our tongues fizzed and stung. We drank old soda and energy drinks until our teeth throbbed and our brains balked.

We looked across the barricades and threw obscenities at the filthy outsiders beyond. We returned to Liberty Gardens. The Rykerites and Jellichos had run out of condiments and own-brand cola. They lay in the dirt and we licked our lips.

He told us not to stop until they were gone. So we started and did not cease until we picked our teeth. We were free of them then. Or were we? Some of our crusaders continued to subsist on mayo and sherbet. They refused the “turkey.” They went back to their lives. Sympathisers. Vegetarians. Fuck them.

He told us to find the traitors and destroy them, hang them from the bridges and the tallest skyscrapers. And we did, though we kept a few to make up for the last of the city food. Great Kark would not begrudge his favoured people a good meal.

The eyes of the traitors looked down on us, as we basked in the streets, satiated. And I heard him tell the others to take us for anti-city behaviour. We ran and cried but finally obeyed the leader. We gave ourselves to the great people of our city and they fenced us in, fed us stale donuts and old olives until we lay in the dirt, doing what we were told until they came for us with belief and hunger in their eyes. Had Kark abandoned me? Was I no better than a Forgista now? I always did what I was told. Was this a reward?

He told us what he was, but we never listened.

Next week’s words

Here are the five nouns and five verbs to fit into next week’s piece:

Next week’s nouns

session
nature
wood
guest
membership

Next week’s verbs

dominate
slow
forbid
get
dictate

Happy writing!

Flash Fiction Challenge: Habitant 1306

Week 1

Predictably, I spent absolutely no time thinking about this challenge until yesterday and then I knocked out the five hundred words in an evening. No matter how I did it, though, I have a sense of accomplishment. It’s been such a long time since I wrote for the pleasure of it, I forgot what it was like. That slow unfurling of the story in my mind, the careful (or not so careful) selection of the words, the freedom to make it what it wants to be. I enjoyed it.

Anyway, the random words certainly helped get me started in this case. I had some images from other media in the forefront of my mind as I wrote. Aveena, the holographic assistant from the Citadel in the Mass Effect games was the first thing. But instead of a mysterious space station, it was the assistant for something like the arcologies in Appleseed, a manga that I read more than 30 years ago. I remember almost nothing about it except for the arcologies, which I thought were a pretty cool concept. Habitant 1306 is the result. Here’s the list of the random words that I managed to fit into it first.

Nouns

Development
Surgery
Union
Shopping
System

Verbs

Execute
Finish
Approve
Undertake
Take

Habitant 1306

By Ronan McNamee

“The System is here to fulfil all of your needs, Habitant 1306.” The hologram flickered and flashed, blinding me momentarily. Why had it designated me Habitant 1306? I thumbed my eyes and walked on past it. It felt like a haunting, but not the one I would want. The vastness of the Development’s central atrium bloomed around me, twilit and dripping. I pulled Aunty’s scarf tight.

Maybe it knew me? The cracked and mossy statue of a habitant, gaily swinging their shopping bags winked at me, I’m certain. Did the statue know me too, somehow? Spiders crawled up my spine. I whipped about but caught only the brief flicker of the hologram, awaiting the next habitant. It might wait forever.

What if it mistook me for someone else? Perhaps Habitant 1306 looked like me. What if 1306 was the designation, not just of habitant, but also habitation? An “i” towered, gallingly tall, above a booth, hunkered between ATM and escalator. A gentle glow beneath an encrustation of grime drew me in. With a wipe I discovered a map on a screen. Below, the development delved deep. Caverns occupied by industry, commerce, leisure. Above me, the habitations stretched high into the night sky.

Developers had undertaken the doomed project; the union of all aspects of life in a System-governed space. Self-sustaining, self-regulating, self-populating… 1306 was far above. There were elevators but I didn’t trust them not to take me where they wanted. A stairwell, housed in a tall glass tube, spiralled into the heavens. I stretched, knowing Aunty would approve, and started the climb. Every few landings, a gap in the Development’s titanic cladding allowed the Free City streets to shine out below. My home, where Aunty found me as a nipper, clad in my birthday suit, exploring, unworried and unhurried, she told me.

13 sounds doable, but each floor encompasses cities. Peach streaked the horizon as I finished with the stairs. 06 was on a low inter-level. The halls’ walls and ceilings had partially collapsed. Utility cabling and piping barricaded the way. The Development’s arteries blocking my path to the heart. I had surgery to perform. I hefted my idle crowbar and scrubbed in.

Shocked, soaked and stinking, I left the patient bleeding behind me, crawling to the end of the hall. Forty winks, Aunty found me. She scowled with that smile hiding behind. Only ever in the electrified darkness inside my eyelids, these days. I thumbed my eyes to clear them again, rose and stretched.

1306 said the door. “Everyone left you,” I said to the Development or the door, maybe. Touched, it swung sullenly open. Illumination blossomed. It was a home. Unobtrusive conveniences skulked, observing my steps. But still, a sort of habitation to be sure.

A closet? Located dead-centre, it buzzed and gurgled. Inside was a tall mirror. No, I switched the light on and saw me, in my birthday suit, watching Aunty. The pink water bubbled. A single word question blinked on the tank’s surface, “Execute?”

Next week’s words

And here are the random words generated for next week’s challenge.

Next week’s nouns

measurement
consequence
desk
winner
employer

Next week’s verbs

echo
influence
enquire
mix
pin

I’d love to hear from you if you took part in the challenge this week, dear reader, or if you wrote anything you’re satisfied with in the last few days, even. Get in the comments!

Short Fiction Challenge

These are not resolutions, okay?

Yes, I wrote all the way back last year, that I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions. So much so that I then proceeded to list five of them, with the proviso that they were “gaming resolutions,” not real ones. So, I may as well continue along Self-Delusion Avenue into 2025, I thought.

So! There are a couple of non-RPG things I’d like to try to do more often:

Practice my Japanese and improve my fluency before our big trip to Japan in the autumn
Write more fiction that is not related to games

The cover of the book, Read Real Japanese Fiction, Edited by Michael Emmerich and featuring the writing of Hiromi Kawaguchi, Otsuichi, Sinji Ishii, Banana Yoshimoto, Kaoru Kitamura and Yoko Tawada. It also features the illustration of a small, angry, barefoot child with a light blue dress on.

日本語の練習は大変だけど楽しいです。最近　Read Real Japanese　Fiction　という本を読み始まりました。その本の中には日本の著者六人のすばらしい短編小説が読めます。一文ずつ、英語の説明もあるから分かりやすいです。それ以外、Netflixで日本のテレビ番組をよく見て日本語のリスニングの練習もできます。日本語を話すことの練習もできればいいな。

A double-page spread from the book “Read Real Japanese Fiction.” This shows a page of the short story, Kamisama by Hiromi Kawaguchi and the opposite page with explanations in English for each sentence.

For the second point, I thought I might use this very blog, dear reader… and perhaps, dear fellow writer…

Random Word Generator

In a now defunct writing group I was once a part of, we often used a random word generator to get our minds working on new short pieces of fiction. In fact, some of the short stories and flash fiction I posted here came from that group. I think we can all agree that I had mixed success. But, there is no doubt about one thing: it got me writing. I always found that, when my brain was working on the practical problem of fitting those randomly selected words into whatever it was I was writing, I was not focusing so much on the fact that I didn’t have any ideas. I let the words guide me into something resembling a story. After a while, I found the ideas for short fiction coming without the aid of the random words and so I would have to shoe-horn them in, which is an interesting exercise in itself. But the random words were the kickstart that I needed.

So I decided to use the same method again. Here is my first effort. I used this random word generator to come up with five nouns and five verbs:

Nouns I used

Engine
Clothes
Thought
Employer
Investment

Verbs I used

Summon
Chase
Determine
Cheer
Assess

This time, I thought I would challenge myself to write in a format I don’t think I have ever attempted before, a hundred word flash.

Present Imperative

by Ronan McNamee

Swim. Up to the air. Breathe. Curse your clothes. They catch every eddy, urging a return to drowning. Locate your employer. She bobs there on the surface; regards the depths. Consider her investment in you. Learn from her mistakes. Recognise the ice of the sea in your bones. Move. Chase survival, success. Stroke past her and her solitary Chu. Welcome the deep-freeze motivation. Summon your future. Allow it to cheer you, sustain you. Pause, paddle. Resist the chill in your blood. Hear the engine enter earshot. Determine the direction. Assess difficulty and distance. Chatter a grin. Swim.

Next Challenge

Five verbs: execute, finish, approve, undertake, take. Five nouns: development, surgery, union, shopping, system — The Randomly Generated words to use in writing the 500 word flash fiction due on Wednesday, 15th January, 2025.

Here’s the plan. I’m going to generate five more nouns and five more verbs right now. I am going to take these words and come up with a 500 word piece of flash fiction. If you’re interested, dear reader, I would invite you to do the same. I’m going to post my piece on this here blog next Wednesday. If you want, you can leave yours as a comment under this post or under my post next week or on your own blog and link to it, or you can write it in that little notebook you keep just for yourself, or you can write it on the wind so only the birds and the gods can read it.

Here are the words for next week:

Nouns for next week

development
surgery
union
shopping
system

Verbs for next week

execute
finish
approve
undertake
take

And this is the best part: I’m going to do this every Wednesday until I decide I’ve done enough. Feel free to join me in this weekly writing challenge, dear reader. Or maybe just try it this once and see if you like it. One way or the other、よろしくお願いします。

Flash Fiction: The Hunt

New year, old fiction

Happy new year, dear reader! I hope your 2025 is better than the year just passed. And thanks for your occasional glance at my humble blog in the last few months. If you are new here, although the dice pool dot com is normally an RPG-related blog, I also like to sometimes share the short and long form fiction that I have produced over the years. Since I have a splitting headache today and not much in the way of good ideas for original blogposts, it seemed like a good opportunity to post this piece of flash fiction. It’s exactly 500 words and came out of some randomly generated nouns and verbs as an exercise a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

The Hunt

by Ronan McNamee

I always think of my ambition as the gun I bring on a hunt. Continuing the analogy; job interviews, important proposals and meetings are everyday hunting expeditions.
But on today’s safari, we’re after really big game.

There he is, the prize: Dr Khan. I’ll call him the Great White Rhinoceros; I’m going to mount his head on the wall of my soon to be much larger corner-office. He is just as I pictured, minus the pocket protector; an irredeemable nerd; nervous,
slightly slovenly, side-parting.

My smile and greeting are genuine. I have never been so happy to meet anyone, to be staring down my sights at such a magnificent beast. My trigger finger twitches and I almost shoot early! He had been explaining his discovery, and I interrupted
like a rookie.

I check that my gun is correctly loaded and resume ambush position. He continues his boring explanation. I do glean a little important information, though. The
product he just developed, the product he is just about to sell to my company, enables the user not just to experience the world from the perspective of a bird or a tortoise or a duck-billed platypus, but to live it. No mere virtual reality headset, this.
This invention of Dr Khan’s will revolutionise humanity’s understanding of the natural world by literally allowing its users to become a part of it. It will also make my
company a metric shit-tonne of cash.

His explanations and interminable techno-babble proceed unabated for the entire walk through the university Physics Department until we are in his lab. I continue to nod and make the right noises. The hands holding my gun are becoming sweaty and my patience with the Great White Rhinoceros grows thin.

He stops talking, I level the barrel at him and fire.

I assure him that we would never try to influence him to use his invention for any purpose but the one it was meant for. I convince him we share his values; the welfare of animals, the preservation of Mother Earth, yadda, yadda, yadda. I watch the smile creep across his face when I mention remuneration, a seven figure sum. He nods excitedly. He shakes my hand as I wonder what to carve into that wonderful, big hunk of ivory.

Khan leaves me in the lab as he rushes off to spread the good news to his trophy team. I receive a text. Unknown number. “I’ve seen you on Facebook with that elephant’s corpse,” it reads.

My gun clatters to the red dirt of the savannah. I hear the door being locked. I rise and approach the window to the next room. The Great White Rhinoceros is in there. His finger is poised on a button. His phone is in his other hand. I receive another
text: “Time for you to see how it feels.” He pushes the button.

I run and run and hide, heart hammering, legs aching, tail bleeding. Another gunshot. I bleed.

Flash Fiction: Anthropology

Funerals

I used to have a hard time keeping a straight face at funerals. When I was young, the only kinds of funeral ceremonies I ever attended were Catholic ones. They are almost entirely devoid of light-hearted or even poignant moments, in my experience. Instead, such occasions are concerned mostly with priests warning you about the danger your immortal soul is in if you continue your sinful ways and telling you about Jesus. Anyway, the build-up of emotion caused by this unsatisfactory vehicle for sending off your loved one would inevitably explode in titters and giggles over silly little things. So this story is about, what if a time-traveler from a future free of permanent death attended a funeral like that? Without the necessary context? What would they think? Also, what if it was an assignment for an anthropology class?

Flash Fiction: Anthropology

By Ronan McNamee

Attendance at a funeral was felt to be the ideal introduction to a society. It was a shock, that’s what it was. Why did the man in the robes spend so much time talking about this Jesus fellow? I thought the death-victim’s name was Gary. Why did everyone keep sitting and standing and kneeling? Why was no-one attempting to revive the deceased? I honestly felt as though I should intervene when I realised they had locked the poor man in a little box. Call a Reviv Team!

When they informed us all we were to proceed to the graveyard outside the pointy building I grew truly scared. They intended to bury the poor man! Perhaps he had been a criminal; perhaps this was his punishment. What sort of crime could warrant such barbaric cruelty, though? How could these people (some of them
called themselves Gary’s family for crying out loud!) sustain such a desire for vengeance once the man had already died. He must have been a terrible dictator or CEO of some kind, like Aldorf Hipler or Donal Drumpf? Perhaps he deserved it?
Outside, I discovered many marked graves. By the dates of death many of the incarcerated had been buried for decades. Far past their sell-by dates; no chance of reviving them anymore. I felt sick. I gave my left clavicle a rub to release some Calm. I relaxed and smiled at the woman next to me. “Did he steal something valuable?” I asked her as we shuffled together out of the pointy building into the rain. Her eyes, previously quivering with sympathy and sadness, turned hard and grey, her mouth drooped and she shook her head, turning to speak to the man beside her.

“What did you say to my wife?” said the tall, shiny-headed man to me. I looked to either side but he was definitely looking at me. I pointed at myself. He glared, tears streaking his face.
“What did you say about Gary?”
“I simply wished to understand his crime,” I wished I had read the preparatory pamphlet before I got myself into this.
“Crime?! You little toerag,” said the man lunging at my face with his fist, his fist! I had been struck by a human being at a funeral. I felt that I was beginning to understand the culture. It was one of violence and vengeance and lies.
“I just wanted to understand this funeral ritual!” I screamed. I feared for my own life now. The bald man was gaining allies from the crowd of brutes collected there by the graveyard.
“Understand it? I’ll give you one of your own, you fucker!” I turned and ran down the lane with the mob following. I rounded a corner and whispered, out of breath and scared witless, “Return, please, please please, Return.

And here I am, making this report to you.
What do you mean, failed? You can’t fail me for that! They were out for blood! Unfair test!

Flash Fiction: Kitsune

Japanese inspiration

I lived in Japan for a few years. I actually studied Japanese language, history and culture in university as well. I got into it through my love of manga and anime when I was young. A recurring motif in several of these stories and in Japanese mythology in general is that of the fox spirit, the trickster god who worked their magic on foolish humans for whatever unknowable reasons, or just for laughs. This story was a take on that. It is not particularly unusual to have this sort of story translated to the modern day. In fact, you can still visit shrines to Inari, the fox spirit in Japan today. But I liked the idea of pairing the fox spirit with the common phenomenon of dodgy looking recruiters in shopping districts of Japanese cities, looking for girls. This story is the result. I hope you enjoy it, dear reader.

Kitsune

by Ronan McNamee

The Galleria: home to predator and prey alike, wimp and bully, shyster and mark, the girls and the recruiters.
Over the Sega-Zone-din the boy in the suit called, “Oi, O-nee-san, are you alright?” He had dyed hair, tanned skin, a kind face. Michiko Minami had been stood up by her friends; not for the first time. She shook her head, long black hair curtaining her face.

“Call me Jun. I’ll be your knight in shining armour today.”
She smiled.

Later, they sat near Inari Shrine and she told him her dreams; her ambition to write songs and sing them. Someone clapped twice in the shrine. Michiko glanced. No-one was there but the two fox guardians. Everything paused. Michiko bowed towards the shrine.

“Can I hear you sing?” he asked. She suggested a local karaoke box. He clapped once and led her by the hand.
He bought her a couple of chuhai to loosen up the vocal cords. She was too young but she didn’t want to upset him.
“You’re very beautiful Michiko. You know that, right?” She reddened, turned away, but performed the next song with vigour.

“You could make more money than you’ll ever need, you’re so beautiful, Mit-chan. I could help you!” This time Michiko shuddered, closed her eyes, felt a squirming in her belly, a tingling sensation.
She opened her eyes to see Jun: a rat in a suit.
“Your eyes! What ar-?”
“They see you now.”

She ran outside to the alleyway in the back. The sensation enveloped her. She twitched and shifted; her breath caught and her muscles spasmed. Her mind and spirit rushed. She transformed.

Michiko sniffed the wind and, catching Jun’s scent, darted up onto a recycling bin; further up: top of a vending machine, corrugated roof. Behind an unlit snack-bar sign she hid.
He rounded the corner after her, scanned the alleyway.
She swished her fiery tail and blinked her golden eyes. An image of Michiko the girl appeared near the other end of the alleyway; uniform slightly bluer, hair a little longer than true: what she wanted him to see.

“Oi! Mit-chan!” Jun shouted, shoving shades onto his head. Michiko the girl turned, winked at him, then danced into the night. He broke into a run, passed right below her snack bar sign, calling her a “dumb kid.”
On four slender, white-socked legs she sped after him, all diamond grin, magnificent tail and golden eyes. Odd, watching herself lead him on. She made sure the image remained tantalisingly out of his reach all the way back to the shrine. It was… easy.

The fox guardian statues turned, eyes glowing, as Jun passed between them. He followed her heedlessly through the darkened doorway. With satisfaction, Michiko watched a golden luminescence begin emanating from the building. The kami kept its promise and she delivered what it wanted. She swished her tail and sauntered off into the night humming a tune that had only just occurred to her.

Flash Fiction: Potential

Competition

I used to love to take part in the flash fiction competitions held on the Escape Artists Forums. I think I have mentioned that before. I would read and re-read every entry, and vote in each round. The work of writing the actual flash fiction stories was instrumental in my development as a writer but reading and critiquing literally hundreds of flash stories over the years also helped me understand what to avoid and what to emulate. If you are an aspiring writer, you could do a lot worse than to take part in contests like this. It looks like the last one they held was a couple of years ago so they are about due for another one soon. Also, if you win, they reproduce it on one of their podcasts! Check them out at the link above.

Anyway, this is one of my more successful efforts. “Potential” got to the semi-finals of the contest for Escape Pod in 2018. I hope you enjoy it, dear reader.

Potential

by Ronan McNamee

“Do you remember the Earth, Momma?” Kevin bounced between ceiling and floor. Liberty couldn’t watch without nausea nibbling. She stood before their darkened porthole, preparing silver-packed lunches.

She sighed. “How many times, Kev? Why keep asking this question?”

Kevin’s reflection shrugged in the porthole.

Liberty knew why: he didn’t believe her answer. To her son, Earth was Heaven, the Happy Hunting Grounds, Valhalla; but he believed in it utterly. Of course he didn’t believe her.

“Did you ever see a bison, Momma?” Kevin performed his final dismount from the ceiling, not with a flourish but with a fart.

“Kevin!”

“I couldn’t help it!”

Shaking her head, suppressing giggles, Liberty rhymed off her standard response: “The bisons are all gone, my love, just like the pandas, turtles, codfishes. That Earth is dying, but we’re still here, L’il Kev. Our future is out there.”

Kevin shook his head and smiled wide. Wink! And he pushed off to the back of their cozy capsule. He began boxing a teddy in the face.

She would never convince him.

No need, she thought, in two more years, we’ll be out of here and escaping this graveyard. He’ll have to believe it. Or will he? Even then? Is there anything I can show him, or anything those scientists can say to make him understand the truth.

“It’s my own fault,” said Liberty softly into her panini. “I shouldn’t have told you this was a spaceship. But you’re my only company: had to console you somehow.” Louder, “Come and eat your lunch, L’il Kev.”

Kevin looked upon his defeated enemy, nodded once and floated over to her.

She handed him his panini, “I’m sorry, my love. I’m sorry I got us into this but it’ll be worth it in the end.” He gave her a cocked head and a scrunched-up puzzled face, grabbed the package and flew off again, laughing, waving his lunch at the porthole. Globs of mayonnaise and molten emmental exploded from it. Liberty winced. She knew the equipment was delicate but Kevin’s potential energy was often released in damaging ways; he was a bored six-year-old. Knuckling her eyes, she began her mantra, “It’ll be worth it in the end, it’ll be worth it in the end, it’ll b-“ Liberty’s nostrils twitched: smoke…

Kevin had abandoned his sandwich mid-capsule while he pretended to shoot her with a defunct thermoglue gun. “Pchew! Pchew!” He noticed nothing.

Liberty floated around, sniffing. She strained to listen but Kevin was too loud. Pleading was futile.

Liberty retrieved the extinguisher and flew about, blindly. The cabin filled with smoke. She began to panic when she heard, “Simulation ended.” Her son bawled. She looked around at him in the next booth.

A white coat loomed above her, “The trial is over, Liberty.” She shook her head, tears stinging.

“You were unable to maintain your capsule… your ticket off world is revoked.”

“No,” she whispered.

“You’ll be staying here on Earth. We thank you for your time.”

Short Story: Commute

Submission

This story is one of the few I submitted to a magazine. It didn’t make the cut but I still like it enough to share with you, dear reader. It’s a short story with a pretty clear collection of themes and what always felt to me like a pleasing format. I hope you enjoy it!

Commute

by Ronan McNamee

The train doors beep beep beep behind me. I stand on the slick floor and liberally drip. A clunk and a peep signal the train’s readiness to depart. I sigh.

The carriage is half full of half drowned suits and sodden hairdos. Ill-placed umbrellas release their gathered torrent in streams. It’s safer in a seat so I seek one out. All the usual faces, the grumps and the chatterers, the sleepy-heads and the readers, the men and the women. I’m looking for a woman. I get chatted up enough in work. There’s Sophia, eyes closed, head back against the headrest, lips pursed, breathing regular. That’s what I named her, of course. I’ve never even spoken to her. To me, she is the epitome of ‘Sophia,’ perfectly turned out, black hair, sallow skin, sophisticated. Too sophisticated, in fact, to even be fazed by the goings-on on the train. I’ve never seen her so much as open her eyes, though I’m certain she’s not sleeping. Distant cymbals can be heard from her earphones. In my mind that’s the percussion on a Zucchero song. I sit next to her and sigh another sigh, anxiety creeping up my oesophagus. Every moment is a moment closer to another eight hours in hell.

I wipe the last crumb of sleep from my eye and look around. The seats are all packed with familiar commuters. A holidaying couple corral their luggage in the space in front of the doors at one end of the carriage, a cyclist obliviously pisses off regulars at the other end. Debs is sitting across the aisle from me. Debs plays games all weekend long. It’s her only escape from a life that is otherwise unsatisfactory. She works in a game store where her boss leers at her and the customers joke about whether they would or wouldn’t as though she were a lewd selfie. Not my finest character to date. Swap the game store for a music store, her leering boss for my lecherous one (Greg has been ogling me since the interview) and her gaming for my vinyl collection and Debs is basically me. A little one dimensional, maybe. I notice she’s looking a wee bit uncomfortable with the attentions of the guy across the table from her. She pretends to apply her makeup, glances once anxiously at him over her compact. I watch as her irises widen and her mascara applicator pauses mid-stroke. She’s rocked by a shudder, almost drops the mirror, but her eyes are captured by his.

I take a look at her captor. The man is grey, not of hair, which is more like stringy, dry rice noodles, but of complexion. He seems ancient, mostly dust and brittle bones wrapped imperfectly in paper. His suit is a pigeon-grey that was once a raven-black. A black orb shifts under his bald brow, tracking Debs’ movements. I shiver involuntarily but I can’t keep my gaze from him. He fascinates me. He’s a physical manifestation of “Swordfishtrombones.” The train jolts to a stop. Debs breaks his hold on her. Then, heels and umbrella thrown out behind her, she click-clacks through the train car and out the beeping doors as fast as her bejegginged legs will carry her.

Swordfishtrombones just sits there, eyes in his lap with his gathered hands. The top of his head is blackened and blemished with sores and liver spots beneath his noodle-hair. I look away, out the window past Sophia, and turn up the volume on “Hazards of Love.” He doesn’t even look up when I pass him on my way to alight at Central.

Next morning and I’m taking off my shades to get a better look at my seating options as I step on the 08:09. My sun-dappled mood darkens as I spot all those usual faces. I struggle past Mrs Costello’s enormous handbag, sprawled in the aisle as per usual, Tuesday to Saturday. Mrs Costello I named for Elvis (‘Every Day I Write The Book’ Elvis, not ‘Suspicious Mind’ Elvis.) It’s her thick, black spectacle frames and spiky, black hairdo. She blabs away on her mobile, unaware of the commuter trauma caused by her oversized hand luggage.

My seat is the same as yesterday, right beside Sophia. Debs is missing, though. Odd. She normally applies her make-up somewhere on my carriage between 8:09 and whatever time she gets off, Monday to Friday. Maybe she’s on holiday, maybe she’s sick. Swordfishtombones is absent today too. I name the resulting emotion, “relievappointed.”

I fill my ears with Joanna Newsom. “Caaas-i-o-p-ah,” sings Joanna as I stew yesterday’s memories, mixing Greg’s lewd condescension with a dollop of Fallout-Boy-kid’s breast-obsession and a healthy twist of my own pickled bitterness. By the time I step onto the platform it has been stirred up into what I can only describe as a reddish-brown anxiety bisque. I sigh hard and march off to my doom again.

Black vinyl hair hangs in front of my face. Rain water falls from it in a sheet. I feel like bawling. I’m sick of this fucking train and all these assholes being herded to their shitty jobs in their depressing offices. I’m sick of this fucking country and its roulette-wheel weather not to mention its cheap, plastic umbrellas. I stand, fuming for a minute as I wipe my face and then check out my raccoon bandit mask in my reversed phone camera. Great! Fucking Wednesday! I pull a wipe out of my bag and stomp to the nearest free seat to sort my makeup out. My seat is at the same table that is occupied every week day by Indian Lou Reed (I assume this needs no explanation.) Indian Lou Reed nods at me but does not smile. I glare at him. Indian Lou Reed’s day job is as warehouse manager of a mid-size office-supply company where he attempts to ignore his colleagues’ casual racism all day long. But by night he is front man to tribute band, “The Velvet Underworld,” which cleverly mashes the music of his two favourite bands. It looks like he had a hard night on stage last night but the worst signs of it are hidden by his trademark shades.

Across the aisle… My breath actually catches. Directly across the aisle from me sits Swordfishtrombones. A spider crawls up my spine and another one skitters around my brain. He looks different, not younger exactly but more filled out, a starving man who’s had a good meal. On his head the dried noodles have become more like greasy squid ink pasta, plastered thinly to his worm-grey scalp. In profile I can make out the frayed end of a smile. I am staring now and I have no shame. His one visible eye, a marble shifting around in its pallid socket, draws me in. It reminds me of an old cathode ray tube television that has been switched off, dark and distortingly reflective. I glance away from his eye to see even his suit is a little more raven and a little less pigeon today. This time the object of his attentions is Sophia. Sophia has her eyes open. They are bloodshot and rheumy. This startles me more than Swordfishtrombones’ trip to the mortuary’s make-over artist.
Sophia’s face is almost unrecognisable. Gone is the sophisticated lady. Here sits an alcoholic bereft of hope. I can see a sob struggling to escape her throat as her lip trembles. She’s watching Swordfishtrombones. In fact, she can’t rip her bloody eyes from his. I want to reach out to her, touch her arm and comfort her, tell her he’s just some weirdo, tell her she’s too classy for this sort of behaviour. Instead, I keep my hands folded in my lap and watch their psychic battle over the table. I watch them until my stop is announced. I rise, feeling a hard, little bubble of anxiety squirming up from my belly. I back away down the aisle, all the while watching Sophia’s eyes. The doors beep, I start to turn to leave, Sophia’s eyes flicker my way, irises like bullet holes in her vein-cracked eyes. She fixes me with that gaze, pleading, then terrified, then resigned, then they flick back to Swordfishtrombones and I run. I’m weeping freely by the time I hit the platform.

“Why don’t I just quit,” is the question of the day. It is the question of many days, honestly. “Money,” and “fear,” are the usual answers. I’m on the train again. Preoccupied, I shove my sunglasses up on top of my head and sit opposite Mrs Costello. Auto-pilot. I’m on auto-pilot. That bastard, Greg. That fucking bastard. Did I lead him on? Did he just get the wrong idea? Maybe I said something to make him think I wanted to fuck him in the dirty old fucking shitty storeroom. Fuck that! This is not me! I don’t think this way! I’m beginning to understand why people do think this way, though. My stupid brain repeats this loop or something very similar every few minutes. Finally, my stomach lurches as the train pulls into Central. I close my eyes, clamp my jaw shut and rise.

Friday! I wish the Cure song were true. I’m not in love though, I think I’m in hate. My head pounds and I feel sick. One more day with that bastard. The sky roars as I mind my step through the 8:29’s sliding doors. I turn to watch the first tentative drops. I’m not even seated before a psychotic drummer starts to beat out a cacophony along the roof. My eyes are drawn to the darkening world beyond the window as I take a seat across a table from Mrs Costello. I choose it so he can’t sit opposite me. I can’t deal with any further existential terror this morning. My life is doing a good enough job providing that all on its own. Once I’m sitting, Sophia occurs to me. I was so wrapped up in my own shit yesterday I didn’t even look for her. I grip my armrest and whip my head around, the better to check out the carriage. No Sophia. I turn back knowing he’s there across from me. I keep my eyes closed, as if mid-blink. He comes with the rain. He comes with the misery and the end of the rope. He comes when you need him. I open my eyes.

Today he looks more like a rakish undertaker. His hair is slicked into a cow’s lick across his maggot-coloured forehead, the ghosts of black eyebrows have grown above his eyes, right above his… dark, quarry pool eye…