new bit of writing for j00

[Dan_Dare]

here you go kids, some more writing from Dan 'fingers of lightning' Dare.

 

 

Moth Effect.

 

A short story by Dan Phillips

 

The Concrete is under my feet and I’m thinking. I’m thinking of all the times I’ve walked down this road, all the times my shoes have made their print on the flagstones. This could be any road in the world for all I know. Looking around me, I’m surrounded, surrounded by this modern day utopia you read about in the paper: do what you like, but play by our rules and come to live in our beautiful towns. Keeping my eyes up I can see the so very modern flats to my left: towering blocks of solid greys against the starless black thickness that blankets and smothers this place. People are still up, still at home and letting the world know through their factory made windows that throw out factory made golden light into the streets to remind us all that somewhere in the maze of identikit corridors and warehouse bathrooms from glossy magazines somebody is waiting for the world to happen to somebody else while they sit in a crappy arm chair, watching a re-run of a comedy which had no good jokes five years ago. The scene is repeated ad infinitum round the World

I keep up the pace. The wind picks up with me, cutting through my thick coat and skin like razor wire so that my muscles go taunt as climbing rope and my lungs feel like they just clenched into a fist. I breathe out, letting my breath leave me in a cloud and for a moment my face is shrouded in white, the product of my own industry, my own bodies’ routine and reproduction that sends blood cells, bloated with oxygen, round and round on a perfect assembly line until nothing’s left. There’s no keeping out the cold tonight but it strikes me how much the world around me is in defiance of how I feel. The air could very well be made of ice but the street is paved with hot bronze, pouring out from the street lamps that keep us so very safe from the Bogyman, distorting the world through shades of orange to ensure that the nations armchair politicians think it’s all ok and feel good when they have no opinions. After all, who is the Bogyman these days? The man outside? The man with a view on life? Me? Actually, I think I’m more concerned with the fact that I can hardly feel my fingers and that I just stepped into a puddle.

The puddle is from the rain this afternoon and it strikes me how much a simple puddle can say- they don’t just get there by themselves, they’re made by people, the thousands of footsteps from the thousands of people doing their thing. Day. In. Day. Out. Can you hear the footsteps? Can you feel the weight of twenty thousand designer leather soles for designer souls? The paving stones are nothing compared to that grisly routine, how can they hope to resist? How can they hope to stop the marching feet of a silent army? All they can do is cave in and drown in freezing water and mud and rotting leaves left to lie in the streets.

I’m distracted again. My thoughts are drifting back to my fingers again and I’m walking to the cash machine, punching in four digits to get out a few precious bits of paper, same as always only this time something interesting happens, the street lamp behind me that stands like so many dead and lifeless trees throws light onto the screen and just for a moment the light flickers as something flutters past, out of curiosity à turn to see what it was and I just catch sight of a Moth attracted by the bulb before it carries itself onto the next one. As it leaves I’m left thinking about that old saying about the butterflies’ wings that cause a hurricane across the world and can’t help but wonder if that’s what we really need. Maybe there isn’t the beauty left for butterflies anymore but there’s always the moth. Stronger, smarter and faster than the butterfly, maybe the ugly one is the real one that can cause the hurricane, cause the disaster to rip up the broken pavements, tear down the towers and shatter the glass facades we build up around us like some kind of massive, crushing safety blanket that drowns out the screams of your conscience and morals with the din of sports utility vehicles and their blinding headlights that freeze you dead like a rabbit on a motorway, stopping you from thinking, from being whole and real. It’s the curse of the modern life and as I look back to the soft, welcoming lights of the cash machine I realise that for all my self righteous anger, for all my strutting and spluttering I realise that I am just like them, just the same as the fans of god awful comedies and just like the dickheads in their ridiculous cars because that cash machine is what I plan my life around. It tells me how much money I have, lets me have it in little doses and if I ask nicely it gives me an advice slip to read at bedtime. There’s no humanity here, just a H.A.L for the modern age, a softly spoken machine with a red bulb replaced by a touch screen monitor and a key-pad.

Still, I actually have a place to be tonight, something to look for and I keep walking while the wind keeps blowing down this canyon of steel, concrete and glass. Eventually I get there, A club somewhere in the city and I step inside, pay my way and hand the coat to the girl behind the counter. I go into the bar and I realise this really is worth looking for. As soon as I open the door the dull bass thumps I could hear from the pavement while the bouncers patted me down transform, mutate and twist at the speed of thought into haunting synthetic beauty and cascades of silicone beeps, bleeps and wails that lurch from one time structure to the next, frantic drums rattle off like gunfire while the computer sounds fall around my ears like neon rain. Suddenly I even have a drink in my hands for small change and the music keeps throbbing like silk in my ears while all the time the walls are alive with LED displays that throw white light from strutting, juddering angular explosions of beats and loops that hypnotise and give us our revelations in the dark.

That’s when I notice them. That’s when I notice the crowd and I wonder how I missed them in the first place. Here they all are, all the legions of people that I was convinced must exist somewhere beyond the thin veneer of tower blocks and imposed, thought crushing identity. Here they all are, the red sleeved and angular children of a new revolution, clutching bottles like totems as their fists hammer the air, their silhouetted forms outlined by pulsing purple lights, obscured by clouds of smoke that erupt, like jetting steam from cooling towers, out of machines in the walls. It give the room a bizarre, pseudo science fiction look like some 80’s b-movie attempt and the people keep swinging and strutting to the music, their bodies crying out for the new, crying out for the change I desperately desire, to be released from the monotony of routine, from the clutches of airbrushed style gurus that broadcast their message through the TV set night after night until nobody can recall what came before, who came before, what the truth was before. All these people want is a release and I can’t stop myself from smiling a little at the thought as I look on the bright young things ahead of me as their faces light up from the bright screens of the latest model of mobile phone. Maybe this is the future, steam punk smoke machines and all: ten thousand kids, chelloveks, droogs and devotchkas or however you like it. All of them dancing in a crowd, all of them unique.

The thought stays with me as I leave a little early to avoid the taxi rush and I pay the guy some more small change to get me back home. Stepping out of the cab my movements are getting sluggish from the fatigue and the drinks I bought, but I keep up the pace down the last stretch to my place. Then the night gets interesting again. I catch sight of another moth, flapping along in the wind and all of a sudden I realise the bushes are swaying in time to the beat of the moths wings and as I look down a tiny chip of the flagstones is being carried along by the breeze. Picking the fragment up I hold it to my eye and cant help but think… ‘It’s a start’.

[King_Mushroom]

I like it. The subject matter particularly interests me. You have a real skill at finding suitable adjective's/adverbs.

Now i have never studied english/writing, but i think many of your sentences require more full-stops, while other paragraphs require less of them.

[Konfucius]

Another very nice story, very interesting thoughts and I agree with King Mushroom:

You have a real skill at finding suitable adjective's/adverbs.

[Shorty]

I agree with all points here (although I barely spotted any adverbs?) - including the point that there may not be enough full stops. That said I didn't feel as I scanned through it that there weren't many - just that some sentences seemed to roll on a bit too far. I did also agree with the points that its skillfull and well written though Sounds like an excerpt from a long and detailed novel.

 

Incidentally the grammar you were looking for with bodies' was body's :p

[Dan_Dare]

shit...no wait, it's bodies...

 

ah fuck it. the examiner can smoke it