Category: Peril

Abandon hope, all ye who click here

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Fiction Peril

Oh, it WAS a dream

As her eyes drifted open, she realised that her dream had been reality.

The party, the explosion, the dismembered bodies strewn about the garden. All of it was real.

The horned beasts descending from hovering motorcycles, impaling the survivors on their spears. All of it had been real.

The horrific screams, as the elegantly dressed partygoers were torn limb from limb, the remains of their torsos being tossed this way and that, into the fountain and the pond and the summerhouse. All of it.

At that point all of her friends stood up and laughed at her for falling for their little practical joke. How stupid she was.

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Fiction Peril

A short story about lunch

It happened somewhere around what he thought was Poland. While planning his round-the-world trip, he hadn’t made any sort of contingency plan for implementation in the eventuality that he faced a huge red plastic wall.

But it was all perfectly clear now. He’d been standing on top of a sandwich all along. How can he have failed to realise this? If only he’d stood back once in a while, and looked at the bigger picture. The enormous apple to his left. The tough, gargantuan thermos flask behind him. It all made sense now.

“If only I’d known sooner,” he thought to himself. “I would have lived my life with more virtue.”

But it was too late now. The lunchbox closed over his head, and there was darkness.

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Peril

Brain dance

Sidekick and I were in the supermarket, buying supplies. The checkout girl wanted £4.05, so I gave her my five pound note which was in Sidekick’s hand at the time.

Sidekick then said “I may have 5p in here,” and started probing in his pocket. It’s a standard politeness thing to do, and it is also really funny when they then type in £5.05 into the machine to make sure that they don’t accidentally give you the wrong amount of change.

On the word “here”, my brain departed off on a whistle stop tour of the galaxy, swooping in arcs around planets and stars, skipping across dust clouds and asteroid belts, dancing around moons and suns and shooting majestically off across big black voids with pinpoints of distant stars twinkling all around me, before coming in to land at checkout 4, as the word “No!” erupted from my mouth like a slow-motion scene in a movie.

Sidekick just looked at me with pity.

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Peril

Focus

I remember when I was young, I used to lie in bed at night staring up at the corner of my bedroom. And in the strained light, I remember how my depth of vision used to go peculiar, and even though I was perfectly focused on the corner of my bedroom, I would feel like I was actually staring at a point that was a hundred metres away.

And then I’d get scared, and close my eyes, but it wouldn’t help because suddenly the backs of my eyelids looked like they were a hundred metres away. And so I’d try to sleep, but I’d have nightmares where I was standing next to things and they looked like they were actually a hundred metres away.

Those were some of the worst nights of my life. And right now, it is all happening over again. I am sat about twelve inches away from my computer monitor, and I feel like I am staring across fields at it. My hands look like they are six feet away. Everything in this room seems to be far, far out of reach.

It’s not looking good.

Categories
Fiction Peril

Screeching

So I was awoken at 5am this morning by an almighty screeching sound. At first, my mind tried to pretend that it was all part of the dream, but slowly I was roused into consciousness.

Then I opened my eyes, and instead of being in my bedroom, my entire bed was floating on a sea of molten lava, and there were all these weird twelve foot eagles circling around with flames dancing over their feathers. And in the middle there was this huge red beast with a face like a smacked arse – it must have been standing about four stories high – bellowing in this deep rumbling tone. The whole thing was really noisy, what with the bellowing beast and the screeching eagles.

Anyway, I punched them all in the face for waking me up and went back to bed, but I couldn’t get back to sleep.

I feel really rough this morning as a result.