It's been a while since I wrote and posted a short story, so here's one I wrote back in July for the Australian Writers' Centre Furious Fiction contest. It's an experiment with a different style. Terse, serious, not my usual smart-arse approach. I took an immediate dislike to the contest's prompts. I felt like it was leading submissions down a mawkish, sentimental path. So it inspired me to push hard in the opposite direction and as far away from a contrived, saccharine childhood memory as it would take me. The idea came quickly, easily and somewhat belligerently, as they sometimes do, and I enjoyed writing this one a heck of a lot. With the right idea percolating, this is a style and an approach I'm keen to revisit.
In addition to the 500 word maximum and a three day window to write it, the criteria were:
- Your story must include a CHILD (16 or younger) as its main character.
- Your story’s first sentence must contain two colours.
- Your story must include the words BUMPER, PRIZE and IMPOSSIBLE.
Father fell in a puddle of red and grey and did not get up. The Bearded Men carried the tatters of him home. The People stood aside and bowed their heads as they brought him through the Great Gate and up Wisdom Hill to the Keep.
Mother cried out when she saw them approach. She said she had seen it in the stones. She closed her doors and went to sleep that night and did not wake up. There was noise and screaming and the Bearded Men looked at me and spoke in loud voices to one another. They said it was IMPOSSIBLE. They said there was no other choice.
I stood upon the ancient, granite cliff top with a BUMPER of ale in hand, the copper taste of fox blood in my throat, as archers set my parents’ bones aflame. Their ash as one with our ancestral seas.
The Bearded Men said Mother and Father had been called to God but I did not hear God speak. The Bearded Men set a crown upon my head. They said it was my PRIZE of birth. The Bearded Men said I must rule, as Father. They said it was God’s decree but I did not hear God speak.
The Bearded Men said our enemies in the north would come, and come they did. They saw our land as soft and ripe for picking, as summer fruit. I sat in the Round Hall with the Bearded Men. A fire burned in the hearth. Acrid smoke pillared to the heavens, as my parents’ funeral pyre. With tears in their eyes they asked me if I chose acquiescence. But if I was to rule, as Father, I chose war.
The enemy raided our lands with savage incursions on our sacred earth. But the People were steadfast and repelled them with hatred. They could not be broken. For every step the enemy gained, they lost one in return. The war years were of attrition.
After five cycles, our neighbours to the East brokered an accord. I stood in a tent with our enemy. A ferocious man who wore the skulls of his own sons as trophies. A terrible man who made his generals quake. A blind man who called me child. I drove a knife into his throat. They did not expect this from one so young. And when I ate my enemy’s heart I was a boy no more.
My enemy’s commanders fled. I usurped their lands as my domain. From mountain peak to valley floor, there was prosperity. The People received me in rapture. The Bearded Men praised the Will of God. But still I did not hear God speak.
Perhaps I am God?
